How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[White2Golf]

24 minutes ago, CHEqTRO said:

I suppose they have a contingency plan in case of US intervention. Isn´t the 1st Cavalry Division actually deployed in Poland?

Not all of it, probably just one of it's ABCT's.   

[Bulletpoint]

10 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

A bit of a warning if you want to watch the footage of the post Kyiv TV-tower strike floating on twitter. The picures of burned civilians are horrible.

I'm surprised any civilians would have been around, as the Russians had warned they would strike those locations.

Edit: I'm of course not blaming the civilians here.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Bulletpoint

[DesertFox]

3 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I'm surprised any civilians would have been around, as the Russians had warned they would strike those locations.

Unfortunetly not. From what I saw and can confirm in google maps there is a gas station nearby in the north of the tower. Yuriia Illienka Street...

[keas66]

Considering the performance so far  I am wondering if the Russians are not opening themselves  up for a ton of trouble with these long extended lines  . You only need a few organized units operating in the flanks to  cause a great deal of havoc .   One wonders how many combat effective   units the Ukrainians have left in the field  .

Attacking into the flanks of the Northeastern Probe heading for Kyiv .... their supply lines could be completely cut .

I guess the fact that this is not happening (yet ) is not a good sign ?

 

 

[akd]

14 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I'm surprised any civilians would have been around, as the Russians had warned they would strike those locations.

Edit: I'm of course not blaming the civilians here.

How else are they supposed to get around city and survive?

[Bulletpoint]

1 minute ago, akd said:

How else are they supposed to get around city and survive?

Again, I'm not blaming them. But when I heard the Russian threat to drop bombs there, I hoped that "at least people will avoid that area".

[Baneman]

5 minutes ago, keas66 said:

Considering the performance so far  I am wondering if the Russians are not opening themselves  up for a ton of trouble with these long extended lines  .

Agree - if I was a Russian commander, i would not be too sanguine about that thin eastward thrust towards Mariupol.

[Redwolf]

7 minutes ago, keas66 said:

Considering the performance so far  I am wondering if the Russians are not opening themselves  up for a ton of trouble with these long extended lines  . You only need a few organized units operating in the flanks to  cause a great deal of havoc .   One wonders how many combat effective   units the Ukrainians have left in the field  .

Attacking into the flanks of the Northeastern Probe heading for Kyiv .... their supply lines could be completely cut .

I guess the fact that this is not happening (yet ) is not a good sign ?

Would the Russians notice that their supply lines are cut given that they have no supplies?

[Bulletpoint]

1 minute ago, Redwolf said:

Would the Russians notice that their supply lines are cut given that they have no supplies?

No, but they might notice if they got surrounded. And with the already seemingly low morale, that could mean mass surrender. The more Russian soldiers that peacefully lay down their weapons now, the better.

[DesertFox]

 

 

[sburke]

27 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I wonder if the invasion of Ukraine has an unifying effect on the politically divided American population. 

yes it has relative to Russia.  We still have plenty to bang each other over the head with but feelings towards Russia are rapidly skewing to Cold War levels.  Even Trump and Tucker Carlson have altered their positions more in line with general sentiment.

https://news.yahoo.com/poll-74-percent-of-americans-call-russias-ukraine-invasion-unjustified-142128676.html

 

[Haiduk]

The moment of second strike on TV-tower. Looks like incendiary ammunition (or even thermobaric) - the cameraman of second video (GRAPHIC!!!) says about the missile. Look at second video with a victims - the family of four person, which walked on the street lays in the poses like after flame strike. Also the building of old abandoned sport center behind also have a track of huge flame. One man killed by misile fragments

 

 

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by Haiduk

[Sarjen]

That was 3 h before the strike on the TV tower. Russia is upping the ante of their "smart" missiles. I am a bit worried about their precision. As we could see with the attacks on airbases/airfields they weren't very precise.

[Sarjen]

1 minute ago, Haiduk said:

The moment of second strike on TV-tower. Looks like incendiary ammunition (or even thermobaric) - the cameraman of second video (GRAPHIC!!!) says about the missile. Look at second video with a victims - the family of four person, which walked on the street lays in the poses like after thermobaric strike. Also the building of old abandoned sport center behind also have a track of huge flame. One man killed by misile fragments

 

Isn't there a fuel station in the vicinity?

[DesertFox]

3 minutes ago, Sarjen said:

Isn't there a fuel station in the vicinity?

Yes there is. Here from Google:

Fernsehturm Kiew - Google Maps

 

[LongLeftFlank]

3 hours ago, DesertFox said:

 

 

Wow, this endemic 'out of gas and abandoned' clusterf$^* sounds just like a replay of the pathetic fate of the huge Soviet Mechanized Corps in 1941.

Or HG Wells 'War of the Worlds', where the seemingly unstoppable Martians all die of the common cold....

I mean, wasn't Russia basically a petro state last time I looked? You'd think of all the great powers, they would have remembered this small detail....

[Haiduk]

Sumy oblast. Russians abandoned own vehicles and fled. Reason is unknown. "2" can be symbol of 2nd Guard "Tamanskaya" motor-rifle division

 

[sburke]

2 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Good question. Another question. Why didn´t Putin attack while Trump was in office?

I think this gets into a Putin state of mind thing and all anyone can do is speculate.   We may never know why now.  I don't think this would have worked any better under Trump.  The US population has become very strongly pro-Ukraine.  Certain dynamics might have been different, but it is the Ukrainian resistance that has galvanized the global community.

 

According to Lavrov it was because of a Ukrainian nuclear threat.  

Russia's Lavrov: Ukraine was invaded to stop nuclear threat (yahoo.com)

I think Lavrov is trying to emulate Baghdad Bob.

Edited March 1, 2022 by sburke

[OldSarge]

5 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Wow, this endemic 'out of gas and abandoned' clusterf$^* sounds just like a replay of the pathetic fate of the huge Soviet Mechanized Corps in 1941.

Or HG Wells 'War of the Worlds', where the seemingly unstoppable Martians all die of the common cold....

I mean, wasn't Russia basically a petro state last time I looked? You'd think of all the great powers, they would have remembered this small detail....

 

It does beggar belief that a modern mechanized military would forget about little things like that. You'd think that they would've wargamed this operation out before they even started to their form up positions.

[Vet 0369]

7 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Yeah, that really baffles me too. Another thing I still don´t get is the obvious lack of russian geographical orientation of their units operating in Ukraine. Lots of vehicles and columns get lost, don´t know where they are, etc... Even in the 80s during REFORGERs we used 1/50.000 scale maps on every tank of our unit and made sure that down to the smallest corporal everyone knows exactly about his whereabouts. But now that the russians are supposed to have their own GPS (forgot the name) system, it is as if they neither have or make use of maps nor seems to be the russian GPS available to them right now.

I see the difference as the following: In the 80’s, western GPS was basically brand new. I got out of the USMC/USMCR in 1982, and never saw a GPS. We did of course trained a lot with 1:25,000/1:24,000 maps. We also used 1:50,000 maps, but we were infantry. In Reforger, you had to be extremely careful that you didn’t get lost and inadvertently cause WW III.

I volunteered to teach Map and Compass , and Land Navigation to my son’s Boy Scout troop in 2015. One of the Scouts, who later became a USMC Officer, asked what use it was because we had GPS by then. I responded by saying “and will you do if a solar flare or a hostile power takes out the GPS constellations? That’s also why the Russians developed GLONASS, so they couldn’t be cutoff from the western GPS.” Maybe corrupt officers or senior NCOs sold parts of the systems and the troops no longer knew how to use a map or compass, or both.

[cyrano01]

2 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Sumy oblast. Russians abandoned own vehicles and fled. Reason is unknown. "2" can be symbol of 2nd Guard "Tamanskaya" motor-rifle division

 

So, if the Taman Guards are out of the way now's the moment for a coup in Moscow? Gerasimov? Bortnikov? Anyone?

[akd]

5 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Sumy oblast. Russians abandoned own vehicles and fled. Reason is unknown. "2" can be symbol of 2nd Guard "Tamanskaya" motor-rifle division

 

What does he say last BTR on right in back row is? Battery command vehicle?

Edited March 1, 2022 by akd

[BeondTheGrave]

1 minute ago, Haiduk said:

Sumy oblast. Russians abandoned own vehicles and fled. Reason is unknown. "2" can be symbol of 2nd Guard "Tamanskaya" motor-rifle division

 

2 GMRD just moved across the border a few days ago, but had not AFAIK been committed. I had thought it was one of the better divisions. BTR 80s indicate members of the 1st Guards Motorized Rifle Sevastopol Red Banner Order of Alexander Nevsky Regiment, source Global Security also cause it a 'Parade' division, clearly one of the equipment showcases. I had thought for sure they had T-90s and had been awaiting their deployment to the conflict. But now I see some sources saying its more -72B3s so I dont know what to believe. Just anecdotally though, those BTRs look like their in great shape. 

[DesertFox]

1 minute ago, Vet 0369 said:

One of the Scouts, who later became a USMC Officer, asked what use it was because we had GPS by then.

F**k sake! I hope today he thinks differently about having a map or at least a sketch of a map.

[chris talpas]

Long time lurker who harkens back to the original beyond overlord days.

Thank you Steve and BFCElvis for letting this thread go on, and your reasonable moderation policy.  Thank you as well Steve for the insightful commentary; I find it a very useful and informed source of information -Your background in Soviet and Russian military history and the time spent beforehand in scoping out the backstory around CMBS which has turned out to be prescient.  Thank you as well for the countless hours of enjoyment I've had over the years playing your creations!

To the contributers -thank you as well for the information and commentary.  It makes for a good sanity check against the other sources of information that bounce around out there.

To Haiduk -I wish you all the best for success and safety in defending against this onslaught driven by one man whose actions right now do not seem rationale

To the people of Ukraine: Slava Ukraini!

To the people of the rest of the world -keep pressure on your governments to continue to help Ukraine with meaningul aid and punish Russia till they withdraw.

Finally to the people of Russia: I hope that Vladamir Putin's days as your leader are short and that you have a real democratic opening.  I think the west bears no ill will to Russian people.  I think most of the world would welcome a democratic and economically thriving Russia.

Chris