zinz
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Posts posted by zinz
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To be fair to the Russians they didn't have to hide until now. And they really want to learn the hard way at every step
16 minutes ago, The_Capt said:So on that first post, this is what we mean when we say “illuminated battlefield”. Neither side can move vehicles or even pers without getting picked up well out and then lit up. This was up near Sumy which is over 100km from Kharkiv. We have seen this again and again in this war. The larger the concentration, the greater the likelihood of interdiction and annihilation. So we then see both sides penny packeting mech to sneak them forward, and everyone in the west goes “see, they don’t know how to do combined arms!” I am beginning to think that it is us who don’t know how to do modern combined arms in this environment.
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In general, the last few days, also the number of reports about destruction of the Russian artillery went down – simply because this is ever more seldom deployed in combat: it suffered such heavy losses over the last few months (and that while ZSU artillery was so short on ammo): now, when Ukrainians have artillery ammo again, the Keystone Cops are trying to save what’s left of their artillery. Of course, the less the Russian artillery is shooting, the better.
That's an interesting observation from Tom Cooper. Do we have more evidence for that claim?
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-29-may-2024
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45 minutes ago, Viko said:
Of course this was a disaster for Ukraine. thousands of Ukrainians from the Kharkov region lost their homes. Ukrainian enterprises in the Kharkov region were destroyed. I’m not even talking about the number of killed and wounded Ukrainians. All this is a real disaster for Ukraine
And strategically in my eyes not the smartest move as it turns out now for Russia. Russia chose escalation by opening a new active front with attacking over the international border. Countries like the US and Germany were forced to change their policies as reaction to Russias escalation. Those are the two countries with most military aid to Ukraine. We have tons of countries announcing that it's fine to strike military targets inside of a nuclear power. That's quite a change to when the war started and Germany was at most giving helmets to not anger the Russian bear.
So bringing the war with strikes to Russia proper is strategically much more important than a few more villages and a small town raced to the ground. I am sure it's horrific for those living there. But if Russia wouldn't have used those troops in Kharkiv they would be used somewhere else and there homes would have been destroyed.
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https://mastodon.social/@noelreports@mstdn.social/112543109834817359
Next Evolution of cages around vehicles. This time for motorbikes
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https://materie.at/gb/der-grosse-agentenaustausch-in-mitteleuropa/
Russia had to completely reorganize their spying setup in Europe. The only remaining bases remain in Austria, Hungary and Switzerland.
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1 hour ago, FancyCat said:
How legit is bild? German news. They have a article on Germany and U.S threatening Ukraine over the use of Western air defense but I don’t wanna post clickbait or false news.
It's Bild. Sure it's some kind of clockbait. But that doesn't mean that the story isn't correct.
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2 hours ago, billbindc said:
No idea...but there should have been bright red "Do Not **** With This" warnings all over these targets on the Ukraine side. Kyiv actively hurt it's cause here. Acton with more detail:
To be honest in those two pictures they mostly hit the building around the radar. It is extremely likely that this rooms were used for some form of c&c. Judging by these pictures alone for me they look definitely like something Ukraine wants to hit. Too bad for Russia to put two eggs in one basket.
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As news agencies are hyping the news that “Putin wants negotiations on the current front line”, please note this not any news. Really - if you search the phrase “признать реалии на земле” (recognize the realities on the ground), you will see it goes well back into 2023 in Kremlin statements and repeated nearly every month since. This is the phrase that #Russia uses when they refer to negotiations where #Ukraine is expected to recognize Russia’s territorial conquests.
Please, do not blindly follow the media induced amnesia where any old news can be recycled into a “exclusive news” clickbait…
https://mastodon.social/@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl/112495522037131982
Counter point that it is a new narrative. Well knowing how western media works with its hype cycles it's totally plausible that it's making the rounds right now because they want to report on something.
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https://mastodon.social/@MAKS23/112490580627635439
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Yesterday, 5 ATACMS missiles struck the positions of the Russian air defence in Mospino, Donetsk region, - RU source
2 S-300/400 launchers destroyed;
1 S-300/400 launcher damaged;
Radar "96L6E" destroyed;
S-300/400 control point destroyed.
Russian air defense. So hot right now.
In the past Russia was moving air defense systems from Kaliningrad and the far east to Ukraine. Do we know of any recent movements?
Edit more pics :
https://mastodon.social/@noelreports@mstdn.social/112490693861087410
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6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
We always return to this question because it's always the one that matters given Russia's strategy of wearing out Ukraine before it wears itself out.
It's an attritional war right now.
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8 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
This is a mistake we have seen western pundits make repeatedly, these are far too large muscle movements for the RA of 2024. First off, there is no "surprise" left anymore. It has been reported that the UA saw this one coming well out but were either restricted by ROEs or simply did not have the resources to stop right at the border.
The RA is not able to do "drives" at this point. They do not have the logistics nor combat power to sustain it. Nor do they seem able to exploit any "fixing".
Surprise is still very much a factor. Surprise of timing and action or inaction. Sure as soon something moves it's seen by the enemy. But look back at the Ukrainian counter offensive in Kharkiv. Russians knew about the buildup of troops but were still surprised by Ukraine actually attacking them.
And also this tries to reason why from a Russian perspective they are choosing these options. Not if Russia is able to achieve them or if it's objectively a good option.
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https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/cp/144780479
Tom Coopers thoughts on Russias Kharkiv push. Article is already from 13th of May. But not much has changed since then. The article is really long so I posted some relevant excerpts for the discussion here.
QuoteThis is not a simple feint or border raid. However, it is also not something that could in and of itself alter the course of the conflict. Moscow’s forces aren’t charging for the Dnipro west of Kharkiv, at least not yet.
That’s why I see Moscow’s Kharkiv play as an opportunity more than a threat. In fact, unless these operations are a very sophisticated feint ahead of a sudden push west of Kharkiv towards the Dnipro, these attacks falling to the east of the city implies that Moscow has chosen a more limited option in keeping with its ongoing attrition campaign.
The orcs do aim to turn Ukraine’s flank, but only by extending the existing one. Another reason for this offensive is simply paying Ukraine back for the raids that Russian freedom fighters mounted against Belgorod from Kharkiv this spring.
Certain affronts compel Putin to respond in a particular way to preserve the illusion of power he depends on. The timing and pace of the recent bombardment of Ukrainian energy sites suggest that it is a revenge campaign for Ukraine’s attacks on ruscist oil infrastructure more than part of a coherent strategic plan to cripple Ukraine’s economy.
Putin, simply put, is winging it. He’s attacking now because the next four to six weeks mark a point of vulnerability while Ukraine waits for delayed aid to arrive. His forces appear to be making a naked effort to turn the flank of the Kupiansk front, fearful of the risk trying to cut off Kharkiv and reach Dnipro would entail. Good way to lose a field army if you screw that up, as the orcs have done with every other large-scale offensive for two straight years.
As I’ll lay out in the second section of this week’s post, Putin seems to be trying to replicate the part of the 2022 assault that actually worked. It probably won’t a second time, though.
Moscow’s efforts on the new Kharkiv front are making the headlines this week, but having failed to break through beyond a tactical level anywhere since Avdiivka fell three months ago Moscow is visibly committed to a naked strategy of attrition. Putin can’t win the war, so he has to hope his enemies cede the field after becoming discouraged by the costs of continuing the fight.
Three trajectories seem likely:
A. Moscow could be activating this sector, and probably others like Sumy, to the northwest of Kharkiv, to stretch out Ukrainian forces by presenting a credible threat. This could ease efforts elsewhere.
B. It could instead be fixing Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv area ahead of a surprise offensive west of the city.
C. The aim could be to outflank Ukraine’s defenses north of Kupiansk in a bid to restore the drive on Sloviansk from the north, repeating the success of early 2022.
The level of force that Moscow is applying does make whatever is going on look like more than a feint. A video emerged showing a ruscist Iskander ballistic missile taking out a Ukrainian Vampire multiple rocket launcher after it returned to a hide. But that’s a bit like using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito. The Vampire is a Ukrainian variant of the standard Grad rocket launcher used by almost every Soviet customer since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s not a target worth using a precision guided ballistic missile on unless you absolutely must - or want to make a point.
Moscow either really cares about this operation or wants Ukraine to think it does. The best feints are ones that you can’t ignore, after all. However, Ukraine has a plan for this sort of thing and fortifications prepared well enough back from the border that Moscow couldn’t interrupt construction with routine shelling.
The question is how much firepower Moscow eventually throws in. If it does indeed have a 120,000 strong strategic reserve prepared, that amounts to about a dozen of the Soviet style divisions appearing on the battlefield today. Abandoned is the battalion tactical group concept, which Moscow’s military machine was never professional enough to make work. Now we’re dealing with triangular divisions with three core regiments of infantry each with several separate battalions and at least a company of disposable assault troops in each.
For Moscow, the main attraction in initiating offensive operations in this region, aside from potentially Ukrainian reserves away from intervening on other fronts, is that Ukraine is unable to strike deep into its logistics network. Every ruscist operational push is halted before it gets more than ten kilometers in part because of the inefficiency of the distributed supply system Moscow had to adopt.
That’s why the restriction on Ukraine using ATACMS and other fancy precision weapons with a range out to several hundred kilometers is so asinine. Early in the conflict there was reason to fear that Moscow might see ballistic or cruise missile launches from Ukraine as the start of a broader NATO intervention - or worse, a disarming nuclear strike.
But as everyone has had time to observe everyone else’s behavior, it’s blatantly obvious that nobody is using this war as a pretext to launch a disarming or decapitating strike, nuclear or otherwise. At this stage in the game Moscow is simply not going to believe that the few dozen missiles that might land in its territory at any given time from Ukraine constitutes a threat to the survival of the regime.
Putin has apparently finally realized that if he’s going to open a new front, Kharkiv is his best bet - until, of course, ruscist troops move far enough away from the border that their supplies have to be cached on the Ukrainian side. Then it’s HIMARS and ATACMS o’clock. This is part of why I don’t expect his forces to replicate their successes of early 2022.
Now, some will no doubt insist that Moscow is making a mistake by not concentrating all available forces on a truly decisive front. However, a lot of times people talk about logistics without realizing that effective throughput will vary.
By that I mean that it is very possible to saturate the logistical potential of an area to such a degree that adding more troops does more harm than good. It’s why you can’t really talk about Ukraine holding interior lines.
Thanks to drones, you have to spread forces out a lot more. Concentrating them for a decisive strike is likely now a matter of attacking intensively along a broader front than was standard in Cold War tactics when even a few dozen armored vehicles could effectively hide in gaps between enemy radar and satellite scans. To break an enemy front now demands operating across a wider area while somehow building up enough momentum to prevent a new defensive line from forming a short distance behind the one you seized.
Your basic options are to overwhelm an entire front that is or can be isolated or push everywhere, wearing the enemy out until a weak spot forms. The latter is an approach best suited for decentralized, highly autonomous teams, not the intensive mechanized assaults Moscow relies on. Thanks to the lack of major terrain obstacles in the steppe except water channels, lakes, and settlements, the former option is also not ideal for Moscow - hence its persistent efforts to create a cauldron, trapping Ukrainian forces inside.
My expectation over the next two months is that Moscow commits a substantial portion of its reserves to offensives across the entire line of contact. Training about 10,000 more orcs than it has lost each month for the past year, cobbling together units by using motorcycles, ATVs, and golf carts along with MT-LBs from the 1950s and tanks (poorly) protected by metal screens, the army Moscow has on paper is as big as the one it started out with in 2022. But that obscures a tremendous degree of irreversible degradation thanks to the callous way Moscow treats its front line troops.
The most sensible approach would be to apply all its remaining firepower to an area where it stands a chance at surprising Ukraine with how fast it can actually move. As I’ve written in the past, that’s a risky play that probably wouldn’t work but is likely Putin’s only hope.
Being a coward unwilling to roll the dice and accept the outcome, he is set to take a middle approach: threaten Kharkiv and perhaps try to repeat the initial success of the eastern wing of this axis of advance and try to get behind Sloviansk. Couple that with collapsing the Siversk bulge on the other side and laying siege to Kostiantynivka, and Moscow would go into summer with a propaganda win.
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■ Casualties slightly above 7-day average; milestone of 500k may be reached on Saturday
■ Equipment losses slightly below average; most 7-day drone & artillery losses to date
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strikes intensify; 12 
strikes reported
■ Poternet: +256
names added to KIA database
https://mastodon.social/@ragnarbjartur@masto.ai/112489748266891113
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Pressures from the war in Ukraine are reportedly contributing to a massive staff shortage in Russia's internal security forces. The Interior Ministry is said to be short of 152,000 staff. As a result, it is reportedly "paralysed" and unable to do its job of fighting crime.
The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel reports that Interior Ministry head Vladimir Kolokoltsev recently told Russia's Federation Council (the Russian legislature's upper house) that his ministry was short of 152,000 personnel. This figure had increased by 150% in the last 6 months.
This follows reports last year about tens of thousands of vacancies in the Ministry of the Interior (MVD), with many policemen and other security personnel quitting to find better prospects elsewhere. The situation appears to have got worse since then.
According to an Interior Ministry source, this is due to a combination of cumbersome recruitment processes, competition from the military due to better salaries being offered to go and fight in Ukraine, and a steady exodus of demoralised employees.
New employees must pass a military-medical examination and obtain various pieces of paperwork for employment (presumably for vetting purposes), which takes 6 months. Once they join, they must undergo 6 months of training. It therefore takes a year for them to be operational.
Excessive bureaucracy and mismanagement within the MVD are also cited as factors. According to VChK-OGPU's source, the flow of resignations increased after it became clear that Kolokoltsev would be staying in his position.
"The reason for this is the fact that [the MVD's] work is completely paralysed, employees are puzzled by tasks unfamiliar to them, as well as instead of a real fight against crime there is paperwork, assignments, checks, and reports."
The Interior Ministry's problems illustrate how the pressures of the war in Ukraine are hollowing out other elements of the Russian state. As previously reported, the result has been a rise in crime, with many serious offences including rape and murder going unsolved. /end
Source:
https://t.me/vchkogpu/48292https://mastodon.social/@ChrisO_wiki/112472540071030065
Kind of to be expected that especially members of security / police etc. Are going to the war in Ukraine and dying there. These are missing inside Russia now.
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Another thing to consider, that Russians Kharkiv adventure is putting a lot more pressure on western governments to allow use of western weapons inside Russia. It might be quite painful for that to happen for as little as Russia has gained.
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10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Some good news from Haiduk! It's good to see you back after some days off
- The ship "Tsyklon" was hit and sunk, which is modern ship that is responsible for launching Kalibur missiles. Not only that, but it wasn't the useless ship "Kovrovets". On top of that, it's another score of a Russian ship that got sunk because Russia was too stupid or desperate to keep it away from Sevastopol.
- Kadyrovites got a nasty surprise from GLSDB's which supposedly Ukraine hasn't been able to use effectively. They looked pretty effective to me! The loss of a plane and pilot, possibly connected with this attack, is sad to hear.
- Some evidence that Russia is having to prioritize ATGM allocations and the Kherson area is (not surprisingly) being shorted. Inside this good news is more hints that Russia is running its Cold War stocks down as older missiles are apparently being distributed to troops that aren't functional. I'm a little surprised that Russia doesn't have the ability or willingness to "refresh" potentially defective missiles before giving them out.
- Röpke appears to have spread some misinformation. IIRC he is good at that, though I haven't heard anything out of him in a long time (his Twitter feed is ancient). Sneaking into a gray zone, taking a picture, then heading out is a trick both sides use to spread a false message.
- An attack on Russian petro infrastructure in Vyborg by very long distance drones. This is interesting because it's near a NATO country. I wonder if Finland was given a headsup?
That's a decent enough list for this weekend, so if I missed anything I think I can be forgiven
Steve
Well you missed another attack on an airport.
https://mastodon.social/@MAKS23/112473360484915234
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Satellite images of the Kushchevskaya airfield, which was attacked by a UAV on May 19.
️Judging by photo, 3 Su aircraft were destroyed/damaged. All others have been moved or left the airfield.
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52 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Not according to this article:
For sure the rounds were cheaper before the war when demand outstripped supply. But it's still about double what you're thinking it was.
As for a good quality FPV with an explosive on it, I did not say $300 as that's not the sort we're talking about. In my post I put in a price of EUR 2k to EUR 3k for a good quality FPV drone, which is about $3000 to $3500. Roughly the same acquisition cost as a new production dumb 155 round.
However, the total cost of that 155mm round delivered to the breach block of a cannon is way higher than its acquisition cost. How much? I have no way to estimate it, but it's not cheap. An FPV drone, on the other hand, can literally be brought to the battlefield in a backpack. Whatever the cumulative costs are for the FPV, it will be dramatically lower than the 155mm shell.
So even if we presumed a dumb 155mm shell was the combat equivalent of a FPV drone, the FPV drone is cheaper. But because the FPV is a precision weapon it should be considered superior to a dumb 155mm shell. Perhaps as effective as a smart round that costs 30x more.
Steve
Any source for the FPV pricing? Hell a Mavic 3 costs 2000€ of the shelf and that is miles too fancy for a FPV drone. The correct price for the front line FPV drones that take out tanks and Infanterie which we all have seen so many times is most likely around 500€ if it's not sold by the military industrial complex.
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https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-mobilization-ukraine-stealth-recruiting/32948631.html
Russian mobilization. Mostly through financial incentives and peer pressure
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500k casualties projected by end of May
■ Most engagements & 2nd-highest casualties 2024 so far
■ Equipment losses slightly above average; artillery in last 7 days at a record height
■ Massive
missile strikes but a fair share of them intercepted
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air & artillery strikes combined in GSUA's report; close to 7-day average
■ Oryx: 100
45 ; 30-day ratio of 3.0x, >3k tank losses confirmed
■ Poternet: +287
names added to database
https://mastodon.social/@ragnarbjartur@masto.ai/112410337183781506
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https://theins.press/en/confession/271412
Stories from the lucky ones in the meat assaults
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9 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:
Not sure if this has been posted here before
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https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-4-may-2024
Tom Cooper points out the increased hunt for Russian air defense systems in the last week. Accompanied with firework videos.
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1 hour ago, poesel said:
Doesn't GLSDB have an IR seeker? Shouldn't that work at least against hot targets?
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-30-april-2024
According to Tom Cooper the seperation from rocket to bomb is the problem currently. That sounds fixable at least but is not a small problem to get right.
QuoteThat is the ground-launched small diameter bomb (SDB, also known as the GBU-39). And then, so say contacts, the problem is not with the Russian jamming of the GPS, but with the system responsible to disconnect the GBU-39 SDB from the booster, once the weapon is launched and airborne.
The booster serves the purpose of launching the weapon, getting it airborne and to its trajectory to the target. The booster burns for few seconds: that’s enough to get the weapon to its speed and trajectory. Once the booster burns out, it’s ‘spent’, disconnected from the weapon and falling away in order not to spoil the weapon’s performance. Lately, GLSDBs began suffering a mechanical failure in which the booster section failed to separate, as result of which all too many GBU-39s were missing their target. Thus, and to prevent unnecessary waste of expensive weapons, the ZSU has withdrawn the GBU-39 SDBs from use (until the manufacturer solves the problem).
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57 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:
I hope this spike in the number of Russian artillery systems claimed to have been destroyed means Ukraine is started to receive artillery rounds in bigger quantities, i.e., counter-battery fire.
Most likely glmrs rockets. Artillery rounds more likely for the infantry.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
https://archive.is/2024.06.02-202639/https://www.ft.com/content/f7a34e3e-bce9-4db9-ac49-a092f382c526
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