How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[arkhangelsk2021]

Russians MLRS a town called Sartana, population ~10,000.

[BeondTheGrave]

 

Big news coming from Zelensky if true. I have seen pushback though that it isn't accurate. Still coming from an official account like that suggest big movement on the issue. Either Turkey has agreed to close the straits or it is suggesting thats on the table. 

 

Also interesting footage. Note the roof slat armor on the tanks. IDK if it would help from a top down Jav attack, pretty sure its not especially useful in a side on attack. 

 

Edited February 26, 2022 by BeondTheGrave

[Bulletpoint]

Cluster munition MLRS?

[BeondTheGrave]

4 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Cluster munition MLRS?

There is evidence that cluster munitions are being employed. 

 

[Bulletpoint]

Just now, BeondTheGrave said:

There is evidence that cluster munitions are being employed.

 

 

I meant in the video from the town of Sartana which @arkhangelsk2021 shared a bit above. Should have been more clear about what I meant.

[Battlefront.com]

I think I'm going to weigh in here a bit.  For those of you who don't know, my background is more historian than game designer.  The latter came about from the former.  My primary area of interest is warfare, including the political, societal, and economic aspects.  European warfare is my specialty, with WW2 Eastern Front being the tip of that spear.  Since about 2008 I've been very interested in Russia in the same way the Soviet Union of old.  That date should ring a bell for you guys.

When 2010 came around we started developing Black Sea and the backstory for it.  What we came up with was almost identical to what actually happened in 2014.  I know, because I have drafts of it that I recently reviewed.  Hell, I even did battle maps and the initial phase overlayed almost EXACTLY with the frontilne of 2014.  It gave me goosebumps to look at that again.

What happened from 2014 through to last week was fairly easy to predict.  Putin has been, up until now, very predictable.  And because his grip on power is so tight, the actions of the Russian state have also been very predictable.  I even would say I have a certain admiration for Putin as a historical figure.  He has been one of the most successful autocrats in modern history by pretty much every measure.  Note that I've used the past sense.

Until a few days before the war I was on the fence about what was and wasn't bluff.  Since bluff and causing people to guess is a big part of how Putin operates, it's always tough to know what is real and what isn't.  Like many Putin watchers, I was troubled by many things that seems different (not in a good way) than the past.  Like many Putin watchers, I paid attention to reports about possible mental health issues.  Like many Putin watchers, I gave him credit for current events based on his handling of past ones.

A couple of days before the war my opinion changed to thinking a war was his desired goal in the first place.  Not bluff, goal.  However, until the morning of the attack I thought it would be a more limited war in the Donbas.  Very quickly I figured out I was wrong.  I was also wrong that Belarus would be kept as threat, not a primary point of attack.  So wrong on both counts.

What I was not wrong about was that Putin has been building up to this for more than a year, but in particular since the summer.  I'm sure Biden didn't come up with the idea of making the US intel public ahead of time, but he was smart enough to see that was the best course of action available.  Brilliant, in fact.  So whomever made the case to Biden this was the right thing to do should get a big, gold colored award.  One of the most intelligent responses to Putin's aggression I've ever seen.  I could go on and on about why that was so huge, as I could the strategy about handling sanctions, but I will leave it at that.

Drawing historical parallels is instructive only if you look at the big picture elements as below that there's always too many differences.  In this case we have a Hitler and Czechoslovakia situation.  Just like then the West now had a choice... allow an autocratic and highly aggressive government to absorb a neighboring country so as to further its own aims or stand up to it.  The leaders of democracies in 1938 made the wrong call and allowed Hitler to do as he pleased in the hopes that would be the end of it. The debate about how much more could have been done or not done is a different matter.  What I'm talking about is the basic decision... sell out a country or stand by it in the face of aggression.  This time the West made a different decision and, I believe firmly, the correct one.

Anybody that thinks Putin has a reasonable list of demands should go back and look at the "reasonable" demands made by Hitler.  Those demands were not reasonable and they were only the tip of the iceberg.  The real motivations for taking over its neighbor were vastly more involved than that.  If you don't understand the real motivations, you can't understand much of anything.

Steve

[Haiduk]

Relatively rare Russian equipment, involved in war - Tyfoon-K vehicle of 96th recon brigade. 

Edited February 26, 2022 by Haiduk

[CHEqTRO]

Somewhat graphic content (I think no dead bodies are shown, but still just in case):

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I have until now avoided to post any combat videos or the aftermath of such actions, but I decided to make an exception with this one, due to the impressive nature of the footage. A russian armored column ambushed and destroyed by Ukranian forces. You can see that guy carrying a NLAW, and some russian vehicles burning.

Edited February 26, 2022 by CHEqTRO

[CHEqTRO]

Also:

There seems to be a huge russian attack from the direction of Melitopol towards Mariupol right now. Lets see if the Ukranians are able to avoid encirclement

[Rinaldi]

Been binging the news nonstop - have barely got any work done. Stay safe, Haiduk - and others who are less visible but in the conflict zone. All right minded people are with you.

Speaking of right minded people, how telling it is that so many of the usual suspects have fallen silent on these forums. I hope you stay silent, you silly little men :). 

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

Also interesting footage. Note the roof slat armor on the tanks. IDK if it would help from a top down Jav attack, pretty sure its not especially useful in a side on attack.

It won't make any difference to a Javelin.  The overmatch power is more than enough to go through thin turret top armor.  The standoff distance of that slat just isn't enough to matter.

Steve

[Rinaldi]

Has their been any confirmation that the Bosporus has been closed to Russian military traffic yet? I've seen a post above but that contradicts earlier info, right?

[Aragorn2002]

6 minutes ago, CHEqTRO said:

Somewhat graphic content (I think no dead bodies are shown, but still just in case):

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I have until now avoided to post any combat videos or the aftermath of such actions, but I decided to make an exception with this one, due to the impressive nature of the footage. A russian armored column ambushed and destroyed by Ukranian forces. You can see that guy carrying a NLAW, and some russian vehicles burning.

What a lovely sight. Fight on, Ukraine!

[Aragorn2002]

7 minutes ago, Rinaldi said:

Has their been any confirmation that the Bosporus has been closed to Russian military traffic yet? I've seen a post above but that contradicts earlier info, right?

It would certainly be very surprising. The Turks remembering they are member of NATO.

Edited February 26, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[Sgt Joch]

On the roof slat armour, there was a lot of speculation about what it was when it first started appearing a few months back. It is doubtful it will provide any meaningful protection against Javelins. Some have speculated it is more designed to provide protection against drone attacks.

[CHEqTRO]

1 minute ago, Rinaldi said:

Has their been any confirmation that the Bosporus has been closed to Russian military traffic yet? I've seen a post above but that contradicts earlier info, right?

Zelensky has made an appeal to Turkish officials to do so, that has been taken mistakenly as confirmation. As of now, Turkish official have made no comment. There are some problems with them going ahead with such an action:

1. Montreaux convention doesnt allow to close the strait, even in case of war.

2 Doing so would be similar to enacting a no-fly zone. Its an action that has to be enforced via hard power, and will result most likely in confrontation between NATO and Russia

[BeondTheGrave]

2 minutes ago, Rinaldi said:

Has their been any confirmation that the Bosporus has been closed to Russian military traffic yet? I've seen a post above but that contradicts earlier info, right?

 

I believe we are in the state known as Schroedinger's Straits. The Straits are neither open nor closed until examined by an observer. 

Kidding aside I posted that info because it seems to me like attacks on neutral shipping in the Black Sea have changed Ankara's calculus. At the beginning of the conflict the answer seemed to be a "hard no." Today, for Zelensky to have misunderstood Ankara's position means that the answer isn't as cut and dry as it was before. Seems to suggest a very real chance that the straits could indeed be shut. 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, arkhangelsk2021 said:

Here's the problem, though. Which part of the Russian position looked "maximalist" to you? I've pointed out several areas in the proposal where they clearly are willing to make concessions just to get their proposal agreed to fast - such as all but saying that 15 nations (as long as they aren't the US or one of two or three big ones) can support Ukraine. It starts out by allowing the US to continue exercises with the Baltic States or Poland (just not permanent deployment, and the US has always claimed it doesn't have substantial permanent deployments in that area). It even only requires a mere thirty days notice to disengage.

In other words, suppose NATO and ratifies it. FIFTEEN countries can continue to help Ukraine. Further, if Russia violates the position (in NATO's opinion), in only 30 days the United States can withdraw, say "We've tried it. It didn't work. It's all the Russians fault." and get back on the course of eventually getting Ukraine into NATO.

So this is interesting and in the spirit of the thread I am not going to make this personal.  Instead I think we have a fundamental failure to understand different perspectives.  I have no doubt at all we in the west do not fully understand the Russian/Putin perspective, hence why I think we are having such a reaction to all this, but this appears to cut both ways.

So, why this is very unreasonable:

- First, any western politician who accepts these terms will have a Neville Chamberlain meme tattooed to their forehead right until the next election cycle, so there is that.

- Next, the "rules" say that the only international body that can make dictates to a nation or group of nations is the UN itself via the UNSC...and it just got shot in the head (again) by a veto carrying nation.

- Further, the "rules" then state that the only nations that can or cannot "allow the US" or anyone else for that matter to exercise anywhere are the recognized sovereign nations that control those territories.  A third party nation, like Russia cannot dictate it for them, that is a violation of a state.  Same goes for "allowing" 15 nations to still support Ukraine - except the US and three "others" - again the only nation that can legally determine that is the Ukraine itself.  To even suggest this as a starting point is in effect negotiating how much sovereignty Russia can violate, which is "none" under the current international system.  This is akin to breaking into someone's house and negotiating what you can steal as "reasonable negotiation",

- But but, the US in Iraq.  I know this will come up and it definitely has some baggage; however, Iraq was a known and sanctioned rogue state that even though the global order did not like the US move, could live with it because the angels were not really on Saddam's side.  Russian cannot apply the same calculus here as neither the Ukraine or Baltic states are doing anything except exercising their own sovereignty in a manner that Russia does not agree with.  

- Again on the US. In '03 Canada said "nope, not in big guy" on the whole Iraq thing.  If you want a parallel between Russian and Ukraine, US and Canada is not a bad one (we even had a war way back).  Canada is in a lot of ways a satellite state to the US, so when we said "no", well there were a lot of hurt feelings and nasty rhetoric but we did not see ("or else") threats of military force if we did not support.  So what?  Russian actions before, during and no doubt after this whole thing are nowhere near accepted norms baseline and from that position this was always going to be a non-starter

 

[Aragorn2002]

3 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

 

I believe we are in the state known as Schroedinger's Straits. The Straits are neither open nor closed until examined by an observer. 

Kidding aside I posted that info because it seems to me like attacks on neutral shipping in the Black Sea have changed Ankara's calculus. At the beginning of the conflict the answer seemed to be a "hard no." Today, for Zelensky to have misunderstood Ankara's position means that the answer isn't as cut and dry as it was before. Seems to suggest a very real chance that the straits could indeed be shut. 

I very much doubt that. 

[Haiduk]

29 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

Also interesting footage. Note the roof slat armor on the tanks. IDK if it would help from a top down Jav attack, pretty sure its not especially useful in a side on attack. 

[DesertFox]

 

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497564078897774598?s=20&t=zVoERV6AcOqi1ZSqdWFexg

Edited February 26, 2022 by DesertFox
Link to tweet inserted

[Haiduk]

Another column of abandoned Russian Grads. Probably out of fuel and abandoned

PS. If yoy see a snow on the photos -this is Kharkiv and partially Sumy oblasts

Edited February 26, 2022 by Haiduk

[Vet 0369]

7 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

I didn't know there were US nuclear weapons in the Ukraine. US never objected to conventional weapons from the Soviet Union in Cuba. 

There aren’t. The Cuban Missile Crisis was more about the (then obsolete) U.S. nuke capable ballistic missiles in Turkey. The U.S. removed them from Turkey as a result of the crisis. The missiles in Cuba were ICBMs that were nuke capable. I witnessed that crisis first hand and remember how we discussed amount ourselves in school, whether or not we would be going to war.

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, Haiduk said:

Another column of abandoned Russian Grads. Probably out of guel and abandoned

I am all about verify, verify and verify especially in the middle of a war, but this is really weird if true.  In western doctrine finding and killing these things was near the top of the target list.  To have an HVT like this "run out of gas and be abandoned" points to an unraveling of Russian logistics (and morale) at least on this road.

[akd]

19 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

 

I believe we are in the state known as Schroedinger's Straits. The Straits are neither open nor closed until examined by an observer. 

Kidding aside I posted that info because it seems to me like attacks on neutral shipping in the Black Sea have changed Ankara's calculus. At the beginning of the conflict the answer seemed to be a "hard no." Today, for Zelensky to have misunderstood Ankara's position means that the answer isn't as cut and dry as it was before. Seems to suggest a very real chance that the straits could indeed be shut. 

I read Zelensky’s tweet as appeal meant to embarrass if not followed through on, not a report of Turkish action.

Reports high level officers of Russian 35th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade have been captured: