How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Cederic said:

Stupid question time: Are there any photographs since that confirm those tanks bogged down? How do we know the image getting all the analysis wasn't taken while they were crossing, and that they didn't complete that crossing?

(It's possible one's already been posted here, and that I've missed it - I fear I'm joining the left flank in river fatigue)

It is all conjecture, but the image definitely wasn't taken during crossing.  Not even the Russians would have tried to get them all across at once like that.  The hatches are all open, no signs of crews in any of them, no signs of activity on the shore, etc.

Tanks do not float when they cross, they drive on the bottom and use snorkels to keep their engines running.  Because of that a tank can bog in a river bottom exactly the same way it can bog in a muddy field.

The above Russian source that said they were deliberately abandoned is certainly possible.  It would explain the fairly uniform distance from the shore, though my theory that it's similar conditions produce similar results is also valid.  The Russian source, however, could be doing what biased sources try to do... try to mitigate a sign of weakness.  In this case, "our tanks didn't stupidly swim into the river and get lost, we did it deliberately so they wouldn't fall into enemy hands".  The loss of the tanks is the same, but the perception of Russian intelligence is quite different between the two.

I'd put the odds higher that they were deliberately abandoned.  I think the reason I didn't come up with that as a possibility to start with is that my "benefit of the doubt" for Russian tactics is finally running out.  I looked at the picture and first thought was incompetence rather than reasonable decision.  And I still think that's a strong possibility because, well, just because

Steve

[fireship4]

More footage of the Donbas river crossing site:

 

[The_Capt]

36 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

It is all conjecture, but the image definitely wasn't taken during crossing.  Not even the Russians would have tried to get them all across at once like that.  The hatches are all open, no signs of crews in any of them, no signs of activity on the shore, etc.

Tanks do not float when they cross, they drive on the bottom and use snorkels to keep their engines running.  Because of that a tank can bog in a river bottom exactly the same way it can bog in a muddy field.

The above Russian source that said they were deliberately abandoned is certainly possible.  It would explain the fairly uniform distance from the shore, though my theory that it's similar conditions produce similar results is also valid.  The Russian source, however, could be doing what biased sources try to do... try to mitigate a sign of weakness.  In this case, "our tanks didn't stupidly swim into the river and get lost, we did it deliberately so they wouldn't fall into enemy hands".  The loss of the tanks is the same, but the perception of Russian intelligence is quite different between the two.

I'd put the odds higher that they were deliberately abandoned.  I think the reason I didn't come up with that as a possibility to start with is that my "benefit of the doubt" for Russian tactics is finally running out.  I looked at the picture and first thought was incompetence rather than reasonable decision.  And I still think that's a strong possibility because, well, just because

Steve

Of course one thing no one is talking about is that the UA will have to attack across this river as well.  What does UA engineering look like?  If they stick to the Light playbook you can get away with a lot less logistically, so even rope ferrying will work.

Edited May 14, 2022 by The_Capt

[Harmon Rabb]

Likely another TB2 delivery from Turkey.

[Haiduk]

@sburke @Kinophile

Mayor Ramis Zagretdinov, motor-rifle battalion commader of 35th guard motor-rifle brigade, 41st CAA, Central military district. Got killed 8th of May. Very likely he is a victim of Siverskyi Donets crossing in Dronivka-Serebrianka area, where BTG of 35th brigade was involved.

Retired (?) mayor (?) Ivan Kravchenko. Battalion commander. He has a chevron of GRU, but also has a sign of Donbas Volunteer Union, so currently he was not officer of Russian regular troops. Either DPR battalion commander (regular or conscripts), or Russian volunteers battalion commander.  Experienced soldier, which passed many local conflicts. Got killed 15th of May

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by Haiduk

[kraze]

One of the freshly liberated villages near Kharkiv.

Russians poured a bowl of water using the shower and then washed themselves using the dipper. They also pissed into buckets because they have no idea how to properly use the toilet.

I mean this is nothing new, but it's another example which explains why they keep coming here, throwing their lives away.

Edited May 14, 2022 by kraze

[Haiduk]

36 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

What does UA engineering look like?

Engineer troops are part of Support Command. 

Recon squads has one recon-sapper in squad, but also all other have basic sapper training.

Battalion has engineer-sapper platoon.

Brigade - Engineer support group (some similar to sapper battalion)

Operative command - Operative support regiment (sappers+CBRN)

Support Command  has in own subordianation two engineer brigades, road support center, and support regiment (pontoon-bridge unit)

Edited May 14, 2022 by Haiduk

[acrashb]

6 hours ago, Holien said:

Interesting comments re the possibility of China sharing data with the Russian forces. Not sure if that is true, I guess possible

Absolutely possible (I work in information security), and reinforces recent comments by the Governor of the Bank of Canada about "open trade" vs. "open and secure trade".  The world's systems are likely to bifurcate after this - it's already started through sanctions.

For about a decade I have been talking to clients about risks in becoming dependent on, exposing intellectual or even physical property to, allowing confidential information / PI/PII/PD/PHI to leak into, or having significant reputational exposure to what I have called "strategic competitors" - this language was acceptable in business settings where politics can't be discussed.  It's resonated fairly well and will no doubt be even stronger in the near future.

3 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Talking about China. Came across this youtube post by one of my heroes, Jordan Peterson. Why China will fail.

The overall message is about flexibility in open societies, which many pages ago I likened to a faster OODA loop.  Peterson has spent a lot of his professional life studying authoritarian systems, to the point where he was asked to write the foreword to a reprint of the 1970s classic The Gulag Archipelago - so his thoughts around China are worth listening to even though one could not say he had serious academic credentials in the area.  Of course, to the extent that we lose the open nature of our society all bets are off, and there can be spurts of success and failure in the Chinese and Western systems - noise in the data that shakes the lives of thousands or millions of people.  History is messy.

10 hours ago, chrisl said:

I'm familiar with him, and actually sat next to his former book agent on a plane a week or so before this past xmas (by dumb luck).  We didn't talk about Zubrin, but I think we did talk about space.

Russia is probably 40-ish years behind in space ISR assets, much like they're behind in things like microelectronics and NVG. [...]

I came across an article (linky here) a while ago about when the big divergence between US and USSR capability happened in space.

[...]All of which leads to the Russian anti-satellite test in November.  There was speculation at the time that it was intended to produce a ton of debris to blind the west so that they could do exactly what they did.  T

 

Fantastic response, thanks, and good links.  Russia's backwardness is unsurprising given the overall state of their economy and that one can reasonably assume corruption affects the space program like everything else.  I'm less concerned about Russia's space supremacy (especially after the current war) but thinking to the future - China.

On the last point, the potential for "Kessler syndrome" makes the uncontrolled (anything other than deliberate de-orbiting) destruction of LEO satellites incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.  But I think it's inevitable, if / when there is a next peer-to-peer or peer-to-near-peer war, that LEO and other satellites will be in an active combat zone.  This extends even further the concepts of frontage and battlespace.

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by acrashb

[Suleyman]

It does restore hope that the RU forces aren't all evil drunkards if that they drove the vehicles there to abandon them. I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to arty those vehicles as well since the UA forces are good at capturing equipment. The KIA/WIA count should be lower than said now then. I don't understand why the forces that crossed over didn't decide to just hold out and be supplied, they still could have put up a formidable defense until they sorted out the situation. Seems like they might have been completely surrounded across the river.

UA claims victory in Kharkov, since the city is out of attack range from RU forces (although the city never was in danger, too low amount of RU forces to even consider an attack) I wonder if the Russians will start to target UA forces that are away from the main city defenses, or will they just keep them there with the mass force they got in Belgorod. ( still a great victory for Ukraine )

How effective have MLRS like BM-21s, BM-27s, and BM-30s been in this conflict so far? Does anyone have good information on that. Before this war started, I assumed the Russians' main advantage in conflict with any force would be their MLRS and artillery. 

Edited May 14, 2022 by Suleyman

[Suleyman]

Double Post* don't mind this

Edited May 14, 2022 by Suleyman

[billbindc]

14 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So something to think about here.  I have been wondering in the question of Crimea.  If the UA can effectively translate its methods to operational offensive, and the actions around Kharkiv suggest they can.  While at the same time the RA is nearing a form of collapse.  Then what happens when/if the UA decides to re-take the Crimea by force?  That is, from a Russian POV, Russian territory and Sevastopol, the port of the Black Sea Fleet, and major economic hub.  They, according to their doctrine, could justifiable employ WMDs in it defence.

It looks like the Russian may be signalling that they are thinking about doing the same with the current occupied territories via annexation:

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-annexation-occupied-ukraine-putin’s-unacceptable-“-ramp”

Now ISW is not perfect, they got it wrong on the May 9th mobilization but there is a lot here that matches what we have been seeing.

Russian doctrine says nuclear weapons could be used by Russia "in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it or its allies, and also in case of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened". 

It's very big step from that caveat to nuking Ukraine over Crimea. Forgetting the strictly military effects, I think it's a given that Russia would be ejected from its Security Council seat and the gloves would come completely off for aid to Ukraine, economic embargo, directly subverting Lukashenko and Putin's regimes, etc. And China's position would be, to put it mildly, unfavorable. China's no-first-use policy is very clear: 

 "China undertakes not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon States or nuclear-weapon-free zones at any time or under any circumstances."

As with every other scenario for using nukes, it's certainly possible but there's simply no case in which such a step makes things easier rather than harder for Putin and his kleptocracy.

 

[Fernando]

4 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Couldn't disagree more. As often mentioned in the past weeks Russia has to be brought to it's knees and cleansed of all filth that makes her start wars and export misery to it's neighbours. Putin might be replaced by a more moderate and reasonable leader, but it will not take long before another dangerous bastard will grab power. It's not just Putin and his gamg, it's a country, a people, a culture and a way of thinking that has to be rooted out, before we're going back to 'business as usual', whatever that means with Russians...

This way of thinking, which implies that peoples are a solid and unique group that must be treated and punished for their sins in a unique and total way, reminds me of something very ugly.

From there, it is a very short step. to suggest a "Final Solution" for the Russian people because all of them are guilty of being Russian.

For my part, I deeply detest the Russian government, but I pity the Russian people. 

[Calamine Waffles]

1 hour ago, acrashb said:

The overall message is about flexibility in open societies, which many pages ago I likened to a faster OODA loop.  Peterson has spent a lot of his professional life studying authoritarian systems, to the point where he was asked to write the foreword to a reprint of the 1970s classic The Gulag Archipelago - so his thoughts around China are worth listening to even though one could not say he had serious academic credentials in the area.  Of course, to the extent that we lose the open nature of our society all bets are off, and there can be spurts of success and failure in the Chinese and Western systems - noise in the data that shakes the lives of thousands or millions of people.  History is messy.

I don't know, I think he was pretty questionable choice for that (and I don't just mean from his lack of credentials).

Quote

Peterson views the The Gulag Archipelago as providing clear evidence against communism and group identity, and in favour of western individualism, but Solzhenitsyn did not draw this conclusion.

Solzhenitsyn strongly rejected communism. But he also, based on his experience living in the United States, rejected western individualism.

Peterson’s understanding of the Gulag seems both limited and dated, and his YouTube video speaking on The Gulag Archipelago is riddled with factual errors. These facts make Peterson an odd choice for an academic voice on this subject.

 

[Aragorn2002]

7 minutes ago, Fernando said:

This way of thinking, which implies that peoples are a solid and unique group that must be treated and punished for their sins in a unique and total way, reminds me of something very ugly.

From there, it is a very short step. to suggest a "Final Solution" for the Russian people because all of them are guilty of being Russian.

For my part, I deeply detest the Russian government, but I pity the Russian people. 

At the moment it's rather hard to keep them apart.

[The_Capt]

24 minutes ago, billbindc said:

when the very existence of the state is threatened

I am pretty sure that has been the foundation of every argument Putin has made to date, so we are already there.

I totally agree the repurcutions of this are significant and I still suspect that tactical nuclear weapons and chemical are the most likely course if they go down this dark path.  However, the Russian-ification of near abroad is not new in the Russian calculus and as per ISW assessment, it does line up as internal justification - I don't think Russia cares, understands or has a strategy for external normalization right now, this whole thing looks and feels like crisis management.  

The release of tactical nuclear weapons or other WMDs comes with all the escalation risk we have laid out here.  I suspect if the UA attacks the "new Kherson Republic" that Russian escalation will result in a western response.  If they do so in defence of the Crimea, I am not so sure. We were already soft on Crimea before this started and I honestly thing western sentiment is not to risk a strategic exchange over it.  Either way we can see a possible really dangerous game of chicken happening here.   This leaves us all hoping that someone...anyone...takes Putin and his cronies out of the equation.  Use of nuclear weapons of any type is in effect ripping off ones own steering wheel.

As to a lot of the other western non-military threats, I think Russia is well past caring (except maybe China).  UNSC - seriously, who cares in Russia?  Economic Embargo - sure, not sure how much worse or faster it will hurt the Russian economy.  Direct Subversion - we should already be there, however, these things take time to set up, let alone execute and as we found with Saddam, sometimes they do not work.  All Putin seems to care about at this point is hard power, zero negotiation and keeping Putin in power , which means polishing this turd of a war until it gleams.

I guess in all this the question really is, "what is our collective red-line here?"  We have not been good at these in the past. 

[Aragorn2002]

15 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

I don't know, I think he was pretty questionable choice for that (and I don't just mean from his lack of credentials).

 

I like him, you don't. Let's leave it at that.

[billbindc]

26 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am pretty sure that has been the foundation of every argument Putin has made to date, so we are already there.

I totally agree the repurcutions of this are significant and I still suspect that tactical nuclear weapons and chemical are the most likely course if they go down this dark path.  However, the Russian-ification of near abroad is not new in the Russian calculus and as per ISW assessment, it does line up as internal justification - I don't think Russia cares, understands or has a strategy for external normalization right now, this whole thing looks and feels like crisis management.  

The release of tactical nuclear weapons or other WMDs comes with all the escalation risk we have laid out here.  I suspect if the UA attacks the "new Kherson Republic" that Russian escalation will result in a western response.  If they do so in defence of the Crimea, I am not so sure. We were already soft on Crimea before this started and I honestly thing western sentiment is not to risk a strategic exchange over it.  Either way we can see a possible really dangerous game of chicken happening here.   This leaves us all hoping that someone...anyone...takes Putin and his cronies out of the equation.  Use of nuclear weapons of any type is in effect ripping off ones own steering wheel.

As to a lot of the other western non-military threats, I think Russia is well past caring (except maybe China).  UNSC - seriously, who cares in Russia?  Economic Embargo - sure, not sure how much worse or faster it will hurt the Russian economy.  Direct Subversion - we should already be there, however, these things take time to set up, let alone execute and as we found with Saddam, sometimes they do not work.  All Putin seems to care about at this point is hard power, zero negotiation and keeping Putin in power , which means polishing this turd of a war until it gleams.

I guess in all this the question really is, "what is our collective red-line here?"  We have not been good at these in the past. 

Before the war, the tendency was to over credit Putin with strategic nous. I think at the moment, there's a very understandable tendency to believe he has no long term strategic vision at all. My take is that you can see from the decision not to take the risk of mobilization, the successive reductions in the goals and scope of Russian offensives, the backdown from demands for payment in roubles for oil contracts and the payments to avoid default (inter alia) that Putin is being rational (if not reasonable to us). And all of those decisions were made after a pretty logical assessment of the costs/benefits of taking the more drastic route that would complicate things in the future for the Russian state. In short, there's clearly evidence that Russia has not decided to go full North Korea and any nuclear use would make that a given.

They might do it and they are certainly signaling as hard as possible but so far that's all they've done. Let's hope that trend continues.

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by billbindc

[danfrodo]

2 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Before the war, the tendency was to over credit Putin with strategic nous. I think at the moment, there's a very understandable tendency to believe he has no long term strategic vision at all. My take is that you can see from the decision not to take the risk of mobilization, the successive reductions in the goals and scope of Russian offensives, the backdown from demands for payment in roubles for oil contracts and the payments to avoid default (inter alia) that Putin is being rational (if not reasonable to us). And all of those decisions were made after a pretty logical assessment of the costs/benefits of taking the more drastic route that would complicate things in the future for the Russian state. In short, there's clearly evidence that Russia has not decided to go full North Korea and any nuclear use would make that a given.

They might do it and they are certainly signaling as hard as possible so far that's all they've done. Let's hope that trend continues.

 

I think I'd nuance what you said.  Putin had some strategic vision, even if it was often just opportunistic.  But now he's trapped by his lack of strategic execution, so all the vision stuff is out the window.  Like you said, he's in crisis management, and it's ad hoc crisis management.

[Harmon Rabb]

New video of an M777 in action.

[akd]

High res mockery:

[Calamine Waffles]

44 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I like him, you don't. Let's leave it at that.

I don't know him enough to have an opinion of him as a person. But I do know he was a professor of psychology at the university where I studied (Toronto), hence I am somewhat unsure of how reliable he is as a political commentator. Let's leave it at that.

[dan/california]

 

23 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

I think I'd nuance what you said.  Putin had some strategic vision, even if it was often just opportunistic.  But now he's trapped by his lack of strategic execution, so all the vision stuff is out the window.  Like you said, he's in crisis management, and it's ad hoc crisis management.

I am out of likes, so will simply say agree 100%. The plan was for a Coup/Czech 1968 scenario. There was not the slightest thought given to it not going well. Everything since is 100% improvised, in a system where it takes six months of planning to do ANYTHING. It is going about as well as you would expect. The suicidal river crossing have whiff of outright panic in at least parts of the Russian command structure. 

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by dan/california

[The_MonkeyKing]

No Excalibur for Ukraine?

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, acrashb said:

Fantastic response, thanks, and good links.  Russia's backwardness is unsurprising given the overall state of their economy and that one can reasonably assume corruption affects the space program like everything else.  I'm less concerned about Russia's space supremacy (especially after the current war) but thinking to the future - China.

On the last point, the potential for "Kessler syndrome" makes the uncontrolled (anything other than deliberate de-orbiting) destruction of LEO satellites incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.  But I think it's inevitable, if / when there is a next peer-to-peer or peer-to-near-peer war, that LEO and other satellites will be in an active combat zone.  This extends even further the concepts of frontage and battlespace.

 

China is much closer to becoming a peer space power.  They have much more electronics capability, even if they don't control all the knowledge.  They're the only country besides the US that has successfully landed on Mars, and they did it in a rather dramatic fashion - they skipped all the orbiters, stationary landers, and small rovers and just went straight to a full up combined orbiter+lander+big rover mission, and did it the first time out.  They aren't quite caught up, but they've been launching a lot and improving their capability rapidly.  On the bright side, if there were to be a conflict that probably makes them much less likely to just go shattering things into space debris because they'll have just as much to lose from an uncontrolled debris field.  They're more likely to develop capability to disable specific satellites without making a mess and would be able to develop the capability for it.  Russia had very little to lose by basically exploding a frag grenade in space - a few old satellites that might already be junk anyway.  

And it's already a mess up there and getting worse - Starlink is just getting started and they're already producing a ton of near misses all the time (link).  There are various proposals to try to collect some of the garbage, but I don't think anybody has really come up with a good technology or plan yet.  But with the cost to launch a swarm of cubesats to LEO, I can imagine that even if it becomes an even higher collision risk environment, short lifetime ISR cubesat swarms could become a thing.  Just launch a bunch, knowing they'll all be dead in a few months.

[akd]

Counterattack operations around Kharkiv:

 

Russian BMP-3 attacking a Ukrainian crossing attempt of Siverskiy Donets west of Izium:

Ukrainian fighting position, somewhere in Kharkiv area:

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by akd