Huba

For trucks 300 should be enough, 40mm grenade equivalent going through the windshield is going to ruin your day. The 600 with 40km range - we already had a talk about drone warfare, sounds really scary. There aren't numbers yet to use those as generously as UA would like probably, but as recon assets those should also be very useful.

Reportedly the first transports from last batch of US military help already started arriving I think on Saturday, this probably includes Switchblades. There was report today that Ukrainians train with US guns, but that's in CONUS so probably a week away at least till those start shooting.

Quite a bit of tension was built up waiting for this moment of truth. Quality of sleep tonight is going to be really crappy. Edit: ISW is here already The first map at least

The last thing you see before you die. Harsh.

The weak point of this plan to me is that Russians have to take Sloviansk by storm to really proceed further south. We might assume that the city is a fortress now. They don't have a very good track record for taking well defended cities fast up to this point. May the purpose of this push from Kreminna be to just threaten the forces east of Izium, force them to retreat or cut them off and thus secure the flank of forces there, which then push towards Barvinkowe, not engaging in fight for Sloviansk? As you said, we'll find out soon...

There were multiple cases of locals resisting the invading (Russian) army though - Chechnya, Georgia, now Ukraine. What I wonder is how Russians in Crimea would react to a perceived "Ukrainian attack on their land". Especially as we see the Great Patriotic War rhetoric being totted by the propaganda macine. Hopefull they just sit and watch, or leave as you suggest.

@kraze @Haiduk Thank you for your replies. So to summarize: - In LDPR it is unlikely that locals will be actively hostile, more like indifferent. The most Pro-Russian elements are already fighting, or will evacuate to Russia. After recent actions of Russians there ( like forcibly pressing men into the army), attitudes towards Russians are probably turning to worse. - Crimea has a big ethnic Russian population, including recent immigrants. It will be hard to count on general local support there, and some at least might be openly hostile. Some of the locals (what is left of Crimean Tatars, remaining people who identify as Ukrainians) might be unhappy with the ongoing russification though, but in general the attitudes are conflicted. TBH this sound like a ground for a local "civil war" type scenario a bit, might be nasty.

Shold have written "republics", no doubt about their status. Edit: all the ethnic cleansing and immigration that Russians did will be difficult to deal with for sure You don't want a 5th column there for sure, but can't use the same methods as them, just for the sake of international support. What is great is thet we went from asking if Ukraine survives to discussing liberation of pre 2014 territories in less then two months

All right, so I have a question, mostly to @kraze and @Haiduk, but of course everyone is welcome to chip in. What is a general attitude of Ukrainians towards: a) population of the "Peoples Republics" and Crimea b) soldiers of the military units from those regions Are they traitors and scum, or just unfortunate souls that small group of pro-Russians takes advantage of? If UA army was to enter these lands, how will the local population greet them? I don't recall any biggger defections of Republics' soldiers to UA, those aren't common at this point?

Here's a nice analysis of the photos: https://twitter.com/vcdgf555

There, fixed that for you.

Assuming that's what happens, they suffer more losses but not as severe as if they went with the offensive. What is the next step for Ukraine then? They might concentrate on attrition while reinforcing and refitting their force, absorbing new western equipment etc, but ultimately they will have to go on offensive I'd think?

So the talking head says that Russia has to brace for long sacred war against Ukraine (and the West). Diplomacy sound less and less like and option. In general it looks to me that Putin might already understand in what **** he's in, and decided that to salvage the situation, he has to choose the North Korean path. Makes sense if holding to power is your only rationale.

I just came across those photos. Yay or nay - is this Moskva? Are those legit and not photoshopped?

You mean like this? Welcomng them with flowers, big time.

That would make more sense, agreed. Still you'd have to have them more or less at gunpoint most of the time to avoid sabotage and "unfortunate accidents". I recall some weeks earlier reports of civilians being pressed to build field fortifications somewhere in the south. I bet every inch was known to UA army the same day.

If you want your officers fragged, that looks like a perfect way to achieve this. Honestly, with the level of hostility between the sides at the moment, giving guns to Ukrainian men mixed with your own units sounds mighty stupid to me.

More Ukrainian trolling

I might dare for a longer post later, but confined to a phone I'll only say that what @The_Capt describes can be summarized as two robotic swarms battling it out - in the long term I agree that that's where we are heading. Technology is largely there, we just need to develop particular solutions and overcome ethical restraints The concept was explored by various SF authors quite a bit, but I'd really like to recommend Stanislaw Lem's book "The Invincible". It was written in 1964, yet the maximalistic concept of the robotic swarm described there is really amazing even by today's standards, with 60 years of technology advancements. A pure hard SF gold, can't praise it enough.

This probably means nothing, but if somee DPR unit would change sides and Nova Kakhovka suddenly fallen in UA control...

My impression is that those 18 guns and ammo are really a token force that won't have too much overall impact on the situation on the ground. 40000 is more than 2000 rounds per gun, this sound really excessive, unless you do WW1 style preparatory barrages. What I think those guns really are is a first step toward UA moving to NATO calibers. 152mm rounds supply will dry up at some point. Already Slovakia sent (or will send) some of SP Zuzana howitzers, and more NATO 155 guns will follow. There were talks about buying some PzH 2000 from Rheinmetall stocks- this might be possible if German government finally gets it's act together; maybe Lithuania will be willing to part with their too. Those would introduce a radical change in capability for UA army, those are first class even compared to newer designs. Ultimately though, the only NATO army that has significant stocks of mothballed artillery is the US army and if this war is prolonged, Ukraine will have to look there for equipment. In the meantime 122 mm rocket (RM70 and BM21) and tube artillery (Polish 2S1) is making its way to Ukraine as we speak. There are considerable stocks of those available in Eastern European NATO armies. Poland had 13 modernized battalions of 2S1 at one point, we could part with considerable part of these I think. What is interesting to me is that IIRC apart from these 18 155 guns from the last US arms package, it was mentioned that other long range system was to be delivered. I can only assume that it means HIMARS or M270. Those coupled with GMLRS rockets would be a complete game changer in artillery war I think. Let's see what happens, situation seems to be developing really quickly and it looks like more and more weapon systems seem to be on the table again. Actually I don't think it was stated explicite what guns were to be delivered. My bet were M198 or M777, as those are easier to airlift. Video with M109s on rail cars in Poland showed equipment moving to the Baltics I think.

Had to, not sorry

There is an update on that now, according to this source locals "just" helped to correct artillery fire. https://odessa-journal.com/the-armed-forces-of-ukraine-hit-the-enemies-in-tokmak-local-residents-helped/

I had no idea that Finns have a sense of humour o_O

I think that with UGVs the crucial difference is the ranges at which engagements take place and the fact that terrain generally restricts the lines of sight, limiting your comms to a large degree. I'd think that jamming an UGV radio link from 30 meters in urban setting (with some dedicated device/ weapon yet to be designed that can be a LOS/ beam type device), would be quite a different level of challenge that generally denying the skies to low level flying UAVs through jamming. My point being that the combat UGV, designed for face to face combat and not launching NLOS misiles will have to have a degree of autonomy built in them. Which is fine, just really creepy.