How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[DesertFox]

40 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

A warning to those who might try to defend or otherwise sow disinformation about these reports.  There will be a lot more, so if you are going to to gymnastics to explain them away I might suggest limbering up, stretching, doing yoga, or whatever you need to do because you're going to have to work really hard at creating an alternate universe where these things are somehow Ukraine's fault.

Steve

Unfortunately there will be a lot of Yoga needed:

 

 

[JonS]

28 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

As to what to send to Ukraine it is about the logistics of it. 

I totally get the logistics/training based arguments. The significance of that discussion has been stunningly obvious since at least the Polish MiG-29 pseudo-debacle. The logistics aspects refer to which models to send, but I was referring to the "tanks are dead" discussion running in parallel with the "Ukraine needs more tanks" discussion. Those two ideas are in serious conflict with each other, and kinda more strategic than "BMPs or Marders?"

Edited April 3, 2022 by JonS

[Battlefront.com]

3 minutes ago, JonS said:

I totally get the logistics based arguments. That much has been stunningly obvious since at least the Polish MiG-29 pseudo-debacle. I was referring to the "tanks are dead" discussion running in parallel with the "Ukraine needs more tanks" discussion. Those two ideas are in serious conflict with each other.

I don't see where there is a conflict.  Right now armor is still valuable, so give Ukraine viable armor replacements to the fullest extent possible.  That is a consistent and coherent argument.

Arguing that in preparation for the next conflict the role of heavy armor (in particular tanks) might not be as important, or even important at all a bit further down the road, is not inconsistent with the first argument.

At least this is how I've been arguing things.  Or to boil it down:

- Today tank good.  Give more tank!

- Tomorrow tank not good.  Give something good not tank!

No inconsistency, no conflict.

Steve

[DesertFox]

 

 

[The Steppenwulf]

1 hour ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Theory no. 1 reeks of the kind of self promoting BS that Erdogan likes to spread around.

Fine, but then it begs the question why the Kremlin declared it would withdraw 48-24 hours before they did? No sane defence ministry would make public what it was going to do in advance, unless they were totally risk averse. 

In addition the public announcement took place exactly during the middle of those talks - coincidence?

I don't think any 'stand-off/withdrawal agreement' needed the arbitration of Erdogan (or even the knowledge of the Turks), there were other 'players' at those talks that might have been instrumental, not to mention that the Turks aren't claiming anything. It's just an idea by way of explanation that fits the facts, nothing more. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by The Steppenwulf

[Fenris]

A little bit of good news

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, DesertFox said:

Unfortunately there will be a lot of Yoga needed:

 

 

Kind of puts the knee-capping incident into a different perspective.

This was almost inevitable sad to say.  A lot of this has the whole “civilian reprisals” feel to it.  However I would not rule out some old fashion “ethnic cleansing”.  Not much to add on a military assessment as this sort of thing is a blight on the profession.  I would only add that this either demonstrates an extreme loss of control, or Russian high command has gone to a pretty dark, and stupid place.  Stuff like this results in assassinations and reprisal attacks for a century.  Further any hope of normalization with the west has left the building as any easing of sanctions will now be tied to warcrime investigation and prosecution.

This sort of thing also plays into any anti-war support in Russia itself as these tales of atrocities come home.  

This right here is why war is best left to gaming.

[danfrodo]

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

This right here is why war is best left to gaming.

Or as I like to say "I am interested in military history .....as history"

This live action kind of war makes me sick.  I mean, this is some really really sick stuff.  why do any of this?  Why why why why?  Russia has everything it needs to be prosperous.  (oh, except the will)

[DesertFox]

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This sort of thing also plays into any anti-war support in Russia itself as these tales of atrocities come home.  

This right here is why war is best left to gaming.

Yes correct. Don´t want to sound like Kassandra but we ain´t seen nothin of Mariupol yet...

 

 

[The_Capt]

15 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Or as I like to say "I am interested in military history .....as history"

This live action kind of war makes me sick.  I mean, this is some really really sick stuff.  why do any of this?  Why why why why?  Russia has everything it needs to be prosperous.  (oh, except the will)

Well Clausewitz kinda left these parts out.  War is personal and worse it strips off all the veneer of civilization pretty quickly.  Military discipline is not just about keeping people from running away, it is just as much about ensuring they can still see which way is up. 

Why did they do it?  Because they can.  And in the end we are all scared monkeys that are equal parts kind as we are cruel.  You de-humanize your adversary hard enough and it is a slippery slope right to this sort of stuff.

Edited April 4, 2022 by The_Capt

[Offshoot]

3 hours ago, Ultradave said:

In the Chernobyl cleanup a LOT of topsoil was removed to remove the contamination as much as possible, at least put it all in one area. That would have been MUCH harder to do in the middle of a forested area and I don't know if that was even done or just set off as a higher level exclusion zone.

Someone earlier had said the forest was replanted. This appears to be the case:

"The forest hit hardest by the nuclear blasts was a pine plantation that stood directly in the path of the most deadly debris. Pines are extremely sensitive to radiation, and the trees turned rust-orange before they died; workers nicknamed the plantation the “Red Forest.” As part of the effort to contain the radioactive material, they bulldozed it, buried the trees in more than 5 million square yards of topsoil, and covered the area with more than a foot of sand. Then they replanted it with pines. As the new trees grew, radiation in the soil suppressed an enzyme that contributes to the classic single-stem conifer shape, resulting in an expanse of odd-looking, bushy dwarf pines."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/08/chernobyl-fires/615067/

[Ultradave]

6 minutes ago, Offshoot said:

Someone earlier had said the forest was replanted. This appears to be the case:

"The forest hit hardest by the nuclear blasts was a pine plantation that stood directly in the path of the most deadly debris. Pines are extremely sensitive to radiation, and the trees turned rust-orange before they died; workers nicknamed the plantation the “Red Forest.” As part of the effort to contain the radioactive material, they bulldozed it, buried the trees in more than 5 million square yards of topsoil, and covered the area with more than a foot of sand. Then they replanted it with pines. As the new trees grew, radiation in the soil suppressed an enzyme that contributes to the classic single-stem conifer shape, resulting in an expanse of odd-looking, bushy dwarf pines."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/08/chernobyl-fires/615067/

Cool. Pretty interesting. Do we know that this is where they were?

Dave

[akd]

1 hour ago, DesertFox said:

Unfortunately there will be a lot of Yoga needed:

 

 

Also raises the question of whether the Russians are burying their own there because they don’t currently have the logistics to move them all the way back to Russia from this extended position.

[danfrodo]

12 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well Clausewitz kinda left these parts out.  War is personal and worse it strips off all the veneer of civilization pretty quickly.  Military discipline is not just about keeping people from running away, it is just as much about ensuring they can still see which way is up. 

Why did they do it?  Because they can.  And in the end we are all scared monkeys that are equal parts kind as we are cruel.  You de-humanize your adversary hard enough and it is a slippery slope right to this sort of stuff.

well put.  Scared monkeys.  with a penchant for mob psychology & mob action.

And Putin decides on risking everything instead of simply doing the right thing for Russia.  It aint rocket science.  They have a strong history of science education, at least at the university level.  They have a lot natural resources.  No one is actually going to attack them.  They have customers for their fossil fuels right next door in china & europe.  Putin could've made Russia 'great' in the sense of prosperous happy people.  Instead he went for the Hitler version of 'great'.  And is getting worse result so far.  At least hitler had France.  For a while.

 

[Offshoot]

16 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

Cool. Pretty interesting. Do we know that this is where they were?

Dave

The Red Forest has been reported as a place the Russian soldiers dug trenches. If some are now getting sick, it would make more sense given your earlier comments.

[Kinophile]

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-3

So, I guess we can call these additional units currently combat ineffective:

• 3rd MRD (C/Os at various echelons of the division refusing orders due to excessive losses)
• 31st Sep. Airborne Regiment (refusing orders due to excessive losses)
• 59th Tank Regiment (c.80% losses)

So, Izium is next. Not the town itself but the steppe south of it.

Spring is upon us, but the impending battle will be in a pretty foliage free AO.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336588030_14th_EDGG_Field_Workshop_Ukrainian_steppes_along_climatic_gradients

This will accentuate long range fires and even more so deep ISR and OTH missile strikes. UKR logistics lines will be much more vulnerable, with railways being a primary target. RUS also has close proximity to a wider array of their own Air assets.

Past a certain point, UA had a good chance of winning the Battle of Kiev. With a fortress city as their base, excellent covered terrain and an abundance of approach avenues, concentrated AA/AD, plus proximity to NATO supply, UKR had a lot of positives to draw on. RUS had almost the inverted negatives.

But now the East seems like a very, very different fight, requiring a very different set of skills, gear and assets. The distances involved will make this a tech struggle.

If Kiev was a knife fight, this will be a sniper war. 

I don't mean literal sniper combat, but the long range plinking of enemy assets by whatever can hit them at 4km range. 

Thoughts...?

Edited April 4, 2022 by Kinophile

[BletchleyGeek]

1 hour ago, The Steppenwulf said:

then it begs the question why the Kremlin declared it would withdraw 48-24 hours before they did?

As has happened several times during this war, translation from Russian/Ukrainian sometimes is a bit loose. What I read they said - from a source in English and another in Spanish - is that "they would scale down significantly operations north of Kyiv". 

The "Kremlin" also has declared, in no particular order and within the same time span the following: that they have "written" guarantees of Ukraine agreement on neutrality, that they have proof of Ukraine planning an attack with biological weapons, that their true objective has been always the Donbas, and that the war crimes we are all seeing documented are fake.

[Kinophile]

I wonder if UA needs to focus on Air and Artillery. 

Decimate the RuAF as a useful asset., absorb ground attacks through time and space while going full deep-penetration against RUS arty. 

[LongLeftFlank]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I would only add that this either demonstrates an extreme loss of control, or Russian high command has gone to a pretty dark, and stupid place.  

Stuff like this results in assassinations and reprisal attacks for a century.  

[Added by LLF]

As I noted a while back, provoking the Ukrainians into enacting reprisals against their own Russian minority (see map) may well be the actual war aim here.

Cold and evil, sure, but do I really need to convince folks here that Putin et al. are up for that, since they can't have their quick and dirty 'reunification'?

Failing that, reawakening the Bloodlands in East Ukraine is Russia's best way of bookmarking this region for a later replay....

[Battlefront.com]

Not too surprisingly, the big "scary column" was held up, in part, by small ambushes by long range special forces attacks:

https://www.businessinsider.com/elite-ukrainian-drone-unit-on-quad-bikes-ambushed-russian-forces-the-guardian-2022-4

Steve

[danfrodo]

I think at the end of another day in  this war I am on the same page with Aragorn.  This fight aint over.  The south is yet to be decided.  Hopefully RU forces will either be stopped or will overextend, yet again.  And hopefully UA forces can prey on RU supply lines.  I wonder how much infiltration opportunities there are for UA along that very long front line?

The gods always punish hubris.  Putin still has seemingly powerful forces so I am still worried about just how much territory and people Ukraine will still lose.

[Battlefront.com]

From today (April 3) ISW update.  C3K, this is aimed at you:

Quote

Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv. Russian forces are completing their withdrawal, but
not in good order. Ukrainian forces are continuing to clear Kyiv Oblast of isolated Russian troops left behind in the retreat, which some Ukrainian officials describe as “lost orcs.” Russian forces had attempted to conduct an orderly retreat from their positions around Kyiv with designated covering forces supported by artillery and mines to allow the main body to withdraw. The main body of Russian troops has withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro and is completing its withdrawal from the east bank, but the retrograde has been sufficiently disorderly that some Russian troops were left behind.

...

The disorder of the Russian withdrawal suggests that at least some of the units now reconcentrating in Belarus and western Russia will remain combat ineffective for a protracted period. Russian troops attempting to refit after pulling back from around Kyiv will likely have to reconsolidate into their units, identify which soldiers are still present, sort out their equipment and assess its combat readiness, and generally reconstitute before they can even begin to receive replacements and new equipment and prepare for further combat operations.

I think it has to be remembered that Russia had two big advantages in its withdrawal:

1.  All it had to do was get over the Belorussian border and they would be "safe".  This isn't a usual characteristic of a large scale withdrawal.  Normally you have to withdraw to defended lines and if you don't have those put together then things can keep going downhill.  Not so in this case.

2.  The distances the Russians had to cover were quite small.  In some cases as little as 30km, maybe as much as 100km.  A soldier on foot can do 30km in 6-8 hours.  In a vehicle, it's theoretically as little as 1/2 an hour even for something tracked.

These two things combined means the Russians could totally screw up their withdrawal and still probably wind up with most forces in Belarus before Ukraine could cut them off.

However, to pull this off they had to move fast and moving fast probably meant leaving a lot of stuff behind that could have been withdrawn if there was more time.  That added to the losses suffered while in Ukraine does seem to indicate that the units there aren't in good enough shape to immediately feed back into the frontline.

Steve

[dan/california]

They seem to be doing three quarters ok against the Russian planes. Where they really have a problem is missiles, both short range ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles. They seem to shoot down some of them, but not nearly all. It will hard to run an offensive on open steppe down towards Mariupol if they can't ever have a troop or logistical concentration stand still for more than half an hour. I really don't see a good solution other than NATO air defense systems, if they absolutely have to have NATO crews, just have them join the Ukrainian foreign legion. I don't think they would lack for volunteers. They are purely defensive systems after all. I am ever less tolerant of fine distinctions in how we will and won't encourage the Russians to go home. After at LEAST ten thousand ATGMs and and probably several thousand stingers, I think we can just assume the Russians are mad. 

[dan/california]

However, to pull this off they had to move fast and moving fast probably meant leaving a lot of stuff behind that could have been withdrawn if there was more time.  That added to the losses suffered while in Ukraine does seem to indicate that the units there aren't in good enough shape to immediately feed back into the frontline.

Steve

 

I can't find the link now, but an entire company of well equipped Russian infantry was feeling hard pressed enough to literally dump all their gear, ballistic vest, rifles, radios, packs....everything, and swim across one of the small rivers west of Kyiv. Given the probable water temperatures in that part of world at this time of year that is leaving in a VERY large hurry.

[LongLeftFlank]

2 hours ago, Kinophile said:

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-3

So, I guess we can call these additional units currently combat ineffective:

• 3rd MRD (C/Os at various echelons of the division refusing orders due to excessive losses)
• 31st Sep. Airborne Regiment (refusing orders due to excessive losses)
• 59th Tank Regiment (c.80% losses)

So, Izium is next. Not the town itself but the steppe south of it.

Spring is upon us, but the impending battle will be in a pretty foliage free AO.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336588030_14th_EDGG_Field_Workshop_Ukrainian_steppes_along_climatic_gradients

This will accentuate long range fires and even more so deep ISR and OTH missile strikes. UKR logistics lines will be much more vulnerable, with railways being a primary target. RUS also has close proximity to a wider array of their own Air assets.

Past a certain point, UA had a good chance of winning the Battle of Kiev. With a fortress city as their base, excellent covered terrain and an abundance of approach avenues, concentrated AA/AD, plus proximity to NATO supply, UKR had a lot of positives to draw on. RUS had almost the inverted negatives.

But now the East seems like a very, very different fight, requiring a very different set of skills, gear and assets. The distances involved will make this a tech struggle.

If Kiev was a knife fight, this will be a sniper war. 

I don't mean literal sniper combat, but the long range plinking of enemy assets by whatever can hit them at 4km range. 

Thoughts...?

Terrific visuals @Kinophile, many thanks.

That relief map alone answers the question of why the seemingly minor provincial road junction at Izium was such a pivotal point in the battles of 1942 and 1943, and remains so today.