How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Suleyman]

Russians made same moderate gains around Severodonetsk, but it looks like Ukraine is taking back the Kharkiv area. I mean unless the Russian increase their manpower by huge amounts I don’t see how they win the war. 

[akd]

Fine. Removed. But if you are not a resident in the country where a contested monument stands, you need to STFU.

Edited May 7, 2022 by akd

[danfrodo]

Just now, akd said:

Not the same thing at all.  Greece was not politically dominated by Germany after the war and Greek people decided which monuments and memorials were appropriate on their soil.

whoa y'all, this aint gonna go nowhere good.  This Ukraine thing however, it's got some legs.  Let's get back to it.

[Huba]

3 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

whoa y'all, this aint gonna go nowhere good.  This Ukraine thing however, it's got some legs.  Let's get back to it.

Right, back to present. It looks like the Russian offensive is intensifying, but also is more and more limited geographically, and will reach the culmination point shortly. Let's hope Ukrainians will be able to hold in Donbas for the next few days, after that it should be more downhill.

 

Edited May 7, 2022 by Huba

[OldSarge]

Today's assessment from ISW

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-6

Key Takeaways

• The Ukrainian counteroffensive along a broad arc north and east of Kharkiv city took further terrain and will likely push Russian forces out of tube artillery range of the city in the coming days. The ability—and willingness—of the Ukrainian military to concentrate the forces in Kharkiv necessary to conduct this operation indicates Ukrainian confidence in repelling ongoing Russian attacks with their existing forces in the region.
• Russian forces did not make any progress on the Izyum axis.
• Russian forces likely secured small gains on the outskirts of Severodonetsk in the last 24 hours but are unlikely to successfully surround the town.
• Russian forces continued assaults on the Azovstal plant, but ISW cannot confirm any specific advances. Likely widespread civilian resistance to the Russian occupation may additionally be disrupting previously announced Russian plans to conduct a Victory Day exhibition in Mariupol.
• There were no significant changes on the southern axis in the last 24 hours and Russian forces continued to reinforce their forward positions.
• ISW cannot confirm reports of a Ukrainian anti-ship missile strike on the Admiral Makarov at this time

.

Edited May 7, 2022 by OldSarge

[panzermartin]

6 minutes ago, akd said:

Not the same thing at all.  Greece was not politically dominated by Germany after the war and Greek people decided which monuments and memorials were appropriate on their soil.

Hey, we are still politically dominated by Germany. Bullied at some point. The worst of the people I know thought it was good to offend dead people as revenge. 

[Kraft]

29 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

It's still a WW2 monument, not a stazi agent bust. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes

I dont think it makes sense to say "equal" in any way, but the list is long and putting up monuments in those areas that suffered is domination of the conquered nation as Steve said.

Not to stray too far into OT but as an example: the vast majority of US Civil War statues were errected around the time NAACP  was founded and Southern States were enacting Jim Crows laws. Another major uptick in monuments happened during the Civial Rights movement.

The reason was at no point simply about "historical memory preservation" but aimed very much at current politics of the time.

Kharkiv frontline shift between early march to early may.

 

 

Edited May 7, 2022 by Kraft

[Kinophile]

Monuments, schmonuments.

Pointless diversion. We all have opinions and anyone stating them here is unlikely to change theirs. We're just gonna slam doors on each other, to no good end and to the absolute detriment of this wonderful Thread.

Lets pivot back to the war happening right now, not waste our energies on the long gone battlefields of decades ago.

I, for one, want to see what UKR does with the Kherson knot...

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, Ultradave said:

My take on why Putin waited is that maybe he wasn't quite ready, but thought he had lots of time, because Trump was undermining NATO unity, restricted aid to Ukraine, had aid to Ukraine stripped from the party platform, and Putin assumed Trump would be reelected so there was time.

Once that didn't happen, every day that passed made Ukraine more capable, and Biden repairing NATO links. Time suddenly was not on his side.

My take anyway, FWIW. Could be simpler. He just got a wild hair one day and told them to attack.

Dave

The other piece of "why now ?" is the situation in Belarus. Lukanhesko had been playing Russia off against Nato for decades, literally decades, while running the country as his personal fief. It was only in the last couple of years that he had to pick and and essentially subordinate himself to Putin almost completely for the backing to stay in power. That let Putin start ~110 miles from Kyiv, instead of several times that. I am fairly sure that helped convince Putin he could do this quickly enough to get away with it. A brilliant combination of a blown dam, sheer courage, volunteer drone pilots, and NLAWs held him off for long enough for the rest of Ukraine, and NATO to get themselves set for the war. And it suddenly became clear that both plan B, and most of the logistics even for plan A were mostly hand wavium, and vodka flavored hot air.

 

Kicking off a real uprising in Belarus remains THE best way to just END this, by the way. May 9th would be a great time.

[Huba]

3 minutes ago, Kraft said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes

I dont think it makes sense to say "equal" in any sense, but the list is long and putting up monuments in those areas that suffered is domination of the conquered nation as Steve said.

Not to stray too far into OT but as an example: the vast majority of US Civil War statues were errected around the time NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was founded with another uptick in monuments during the Civial Rights movement. The reason was not historical memory but aimed very much at current politics of the time.

Kharkiv frontline shift between early march to early may.

 

 

 

And on top of that, there are rumors (not yet confirmed) that Russian troops retreated even further north, up to Liptsi. I think Haiduk already mentioned it, but here's another source:

 

[Suleyman]

Are they likely to succeed? If they are, I think they will bypass the city, encircle it as well.

Edited May 7, 2022 by Suleyman

[FancyCat]

 

[Harmon Rabb]

7 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

 

If 600-800K is really how much Russia really needs to defeat Ukraine that is good news for Ukraine because I don't think Russia would be able to mobilize that many people.

Realistically how many people would Putin be able to mobilize for this war of he did call for a mobilization next week?

[BeondTheGrave]

18 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

If 600-800K is really how much Russia really needs to defeat Ukraine that is good news for Ukraine because I don't think Russia would be able to mobilize that many people.

Realistically how many people would Putin be able to mobilize for this war of he did call for a mobilization next week?

Ive been thinking about this a bit. 1mil people is a lot of people. If they go whole hog well really put to the test what I've always said about mass mobilization in the precision guided age (that is, its not feasible). I think Putin could put 50k people in uniform a month and get them into Ukraine. I bet Ukraine could kill half of them and render the other half totally incapable of fighting, resulting in a net drag on Russia's capability to continue fighting. Drafting 800k people is also going to be massively expensive. 

My thought was that the draft may not be the 'everyone but the infirm' kind were used to. I dont really know much about how the Russian reservist system works, but I could see the draft being a bit of a stick to get older unwilling vets back into uniform. Maybe your 30yo contract soldiers who served out a term or two then decided to go home and farm cabbages or work for 1C in a city? Ive often thought that, in terms of drafting and mobilization, thats the way to go if you need to return to a broader based conscription system. Use the draft not to hoover up every yokel on his farm, but to instead draw up lists of people with skills or past experience and then force them into uniform to make up for some shortage you have. 

Not really sure if thats possible in the Russian system, or indeed necessary. IIRC the USArmy has some mechanism to recall someone to active service at basically any time, if its really hit the fan. Maybe Russia has already been doing this? Well anyway my track record on predictions is poor, I am a historian after all. This is just something I had thought the other day. 

[sross112]

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

 

I, for one, want to see what UKR does with the Kherson knot...

Me too!!! This is just killing me!! The Kherson area map from ISW starting about 3 or so days ago show a UA drive along the Dnepr down to the first bridge. It's been hanging there and no information coming out about it at all. Killing me!! Are the UA unhinging the Kherson defense and the Kharkiv defense simultaneously? I've just been dying to hear that they have. 

The UA Opsec has been pretty darn good and the RA ISR has been pretty darn bad so I wouldn't be surprised if this happened and the RA doesn't even know it. I use the reference from a couple days ago of a UA pontoon bridge that was in place for at least a week without the RA having a clue for the possibility of this happening without their knowledge. 

Edited May 7, 2022 by sross112

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Phantom Captain said:

The last word is the cemetery at Arlington.  The former home of General R.E Lee and his wife.  Best FU in history.  Imho, of course.

Like any proper Irishman, Montgomery Meigs knew how to deliver a proper FU.

[Battlefront.com]

Two semi-related thoughts based on where the war is at as of today:

1.  Before the ware I was thinking, off the cuff, that Russia needed about 500,000 to take eastern Ukraine and to keep it for any significant length of time.  An additional large force of civilian police and government authorities would be needed to pacify the civilians.  Obviously Russia went in with about half that number and we know how that's turned out so far!

At this point their existing forces are pretty much used up (see next point) and Ukraine is mobilized, so I'd say even to keep what little they have (compared to what they were originally after) they will need at least 500,000.  Not over time, all at once.

The manpower technically isn't a problem as they do have large amount of reserves on paper.  But what are they going to equip them with?  I don't think they have the uniforms for that many, not to mention boots, small arms, helmets, body armor, and the other basics needed just to put a soldier into the line.  They MIGHT be able to scrape together the uniforms from old stocks not already sold off for scrap/surplus, but boots?  I doubt it.  The rest of the stuff?  Yeah, really doubt it. 

One indication of this is that when the war started the DLPR forces were largely kitted out with contemporary Russian uniforms.  The first couple of waves of conscripts were too.  But lately the conscripts I've seen as POWs and in videos seem to be increasingly kitted out in random stuff.  This either means that they have them but their logistics are totally not up to the task, or they don't have them and have to make do with whatever they can find.  Either way, if Russia is having difficulty outfitting a few tens of thousands of conscripts then how is it going to handle hundreds of thousands?

 

2.  We know Russians suck at offensive tasks.  That's pretty evident.  The question we're about to get answered is if they suck equally well at defensive tasks.  Especially with the shattered and combat fatigued demoralized remains holding the front vs. what the Russians had when the war started.

The frontages that are held by newly conscripted, non-trained personnel are likely going to melt under any amount of Ukrainian offensive power.  That's pretty much a given.  If these guys are holding a sector of front without significant regular Russian Army backup they're going to break pretty quickly and there's likely not much in the way of mobile reserves that are in decent shape.

This means that if Ukraine kicks a select place hard, it should crumble fairly readily and Ukraine's advances will mostly be limited by typical issues with advancing (traffic congestion, caution, uncertainty, logistics, etc.).

I think this is what we're witnessing around Kharkiv.

Steve

[dan/california]

Any game/module/battle pack updates you could throw out to pull this discussion back on topic, a little?

 

Edit

Otherwise I might have to revisit my theory that a Polish-Ukrainian Union is the easy way to pull Ukraine into the EU and Nato. Think about it,  anything that would make make Scholz and Putin pop an artery at the same time has to be a good idea.

Edited May 7, 2022 by dan/california

[FancyCat]

 

 

'

[Aragorn2002]

6 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Well, umm, thanks, I think....

Brother, I guess I've ended up as your last friend on here. It is a gaming forum and I cut you some slack personally as a good contributor to the community. But you are just living in a looking glass world right now, defending something that is just not worth defending.  I mean Russia.

As a 'leftist', you need to be aware that your country -- Mother Russia or the Last Hope of Socialism or Christianity or Whiteness or whatever you call it -- is simply nothing special in the world today as a polity, a gene pool or a civilisation.

(Neither is mine, btw).

Chess is a spectator sport in Russia, fine (so's binge drinking). And smart work keeping pace with global Yankeedom on the Bomb and space race and all. But today, South Asian kids are lapping Russians (and Americans and Germans and everyone else except maybe Koreans) in the quants that matter. And they'll move anywhere to seek good profitable work, and mainly stay sober.

So forget Third Rome, Pushkin, your Great Russian Soul, the Brandenburg Gate and all that other baggage. There are no Exceptional Nations. No master races. No orcs either, just humans behaving badly. Or in other times, just trying to make their way in the world.

So, grok this please.  It is a GOOD THING that Russia as we know it today is devolving, maybe even breaking up entirely. Good for its neighbours, good for its non-Slavic minorities and, especially, good for Russians themselves.

A whole world opens up for you all, at the crossroads of the 'Asia century' (which is already into its fourth decade, btw -- I count from 1991) once you get Moscow's boot off your necks.

The future isn't slavery. Or if it kind of is in your particular belief system, then it's the same treadmill the average American is looking at now. And on the flip side, as a fluent English speaker with good quants you stand as good a chance of becoming one of the smug global master "PMC" class as anyone else on our planet. 

.... Or you can collectively sit in a cafe and ramble on about some sinister cabal robbing you (and vaguely threatening to burn the place to the ground if you can't have things your way). While each year more diligent and less prideful peoples grab the new world with both hands and leave you behind.

[/rant]

That. +1

[sross112]

Artillery question:

Recently it was announced that there will be some Pz2000's delivered for use in the UA. People have mentioned they have the ability to shoot 5 rounds in a MRSI (Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact) fire mission. My question is how much this reduces the effective range? If you are able to deliver a maximum range of 30 km you can't put 5 rounds in the air at the same time from the same gun and have them all land together at the 30 km mark, it would have to be reduced and I'm thinking significantly reduced. The first round would have to be low speed and high trajectory and the last at high speed low trajectory in order for them to hit simultaneously. So how much reduction in maximum range is there for a fire mission of this type?

[dan/california]

34 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

 

 

'

#Avdiivka for some reason pulls up a zillion Russian trolls on twitter. Any obvious reason they would point the troll farms there?

[Kinophile]

3 minutes ago, sross112 said:

Artillery question:

Recently it was announced that there will be some Pz2000's delivered for use in the UA. People have mentioned they have the ability to shoot 5 rounds in a MRSI (Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact) fire mission. My question is how much this reduces the effective range? If you are able to deliver a maximum range of 30 km you can't put 5 rounds in the air at the same time from the same gun and have them all land together at the 30 km mark, it would have to be reduced and I'm thinking significantly reduced. The first round would have to be low speed and high trajectory and the last at high speed low trajectory in order for them to hit simultaneously. So how much reduction in maximum range is there for a fire mission of this type?

https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-MRSI-Multiple-Rounds-Simultaneous-Impact-technique-work-for-an-artillery-gun-system

"And the German Panzerhaubitze 2000 can do 5 rounds at targets up to 17 km away. There are others."

Quora, so fistful of salt. But checks out.

Edited May 7, 2022 by Kinophile

[Aragorn2002]

8 hours ago, LukeFF said:

Pfft, whatever. It's a monument to one of the most genocidal regimes the world has seen. The sooner it's torn down the better. 

Precisely.

[FancyCat]

17 minutes ago, dan/california said:

#Avdiivka for some reason pulls up a zillion Russian trolls on twitter. Any obvious reason they would point the troll farms there?

Russia is making moves, one would assume the pro-Russian accounts would be excited.

Also, goddamn if this is current and actually in the Donbas, the amount of audacity to operate...