How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Armorgunner]

Not much progress for the Nazirussians in Sievierodontetsk, according to Brittish intelegence!

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/britain-says-russian-forces-have-not-made-advances-into-south-sievierodonetsk-2022-06-11/

 

[LongLeftFlank]

On 4/23/2022 at 5:31 AM, Combatintman said:

Dovhenke is certainly useful if you want to motor down the main road into Slovyansk but indirectly.  It sits in dead ground to that road so direct fires onto it are not possible but I see this as either an operation to secure the flanks for anything rolling down the road by denying a safe haven for shoot and scoot ATGM equipped parties or potentially using a covered approach to get into the wooded feature east of the village which does offer LOS onto the road.  That then serves as a jumping off point to clear the woods SE and east.

This area of ground leapt out at me early on when I was doing the terrain analysis as either a potential Named Area of Interest (NAI) or a Target Area of Interest (TAI).  It is not a bad Engagement Area (EA) and sits between a battalion and company-sized defensive position.  If resources permit, the Ukrainians could bottle that road up comfortably with a battalion (see diagrams) and if resources are tighter, it is possibly doable with a company, particularly if supported by a reasonably swept up obstacle plan with some gunnery on priority call.  My instinct for the latter option would be to position the company where the southernmost company astride the road is located in the battalion laydown.

 

At this point, I want to ask for a moment of silence (looking at you, Eurosquabblers!) for the heroic defenders of Dovehnke.

And yet another kudos to our own @Combatintman who flagged this innocuous looking (to we lesser mortals) bit of ground as a key barrier to the RA advance from their hard won Izyum bridgehead to Sloviansk.

....On that same note, I'd like to revisit another astute post of CIMan in mid April, where he ID'ed various attack axes for the Russian 'pincer, and then predicted the Russians would end up getting forced onto the hardest, bloodiest paths.

Nailed it, mate.

1.  AA1 promptly bogged down in the open country, and that sector now seems increasingly dominated by UA artillery. No blitzkrieg for you, Popov!

2. AA3 worked ok at first, up until it hit Lyman and then it took 3-4 further weeks of costly fighting to clear that town and the forests behind it, and secure the S-D River line.

3. AA2 hit a dead stop at Dovhenke, as noted and has had to take the hard way around.

4.  AA4? has basically stopped on the start line at Sieverodonetsk.  Ivan is beating his head against a stone wall and getting counterpunched.

Edited June 11, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Armorgunner]

@Battlefront.com If this war, is ongoing for years to come? Wich I really do not hope for! For the sake of the Ukrainian people, and their brave soldiers! 

But will the module for Black sea release anyway? Maybe with degraded Nazirussian capacity, as they showed IRL?

[Bulletpoint]

11 minutes ago, Armorgunner said:

@Battlefront.com If this war, is ongoing for years to come? Wich I really do not hope for! For the sake of the Ukrainian people, and their brave soldiers! 

But will the module for Black sea release anyway? Maybe with degraded Nazirussian capacity, as they showed IRL?

That's up to the scenario builders. I can only assume that anyone making a scenario based on this war will turn down the quality of Russian troops quite a bit.

[LongLeftFlank]

On 4/19/2022 at 10:19 AM, Kinophile said:

Lyman to Slovyansk is a death march.

Even the terrain from Khrestyshcho to Slovyansk is a wide, bare slope completely vulnerable to long range fires from S/SE of Slovyansk. Just take a gander at this rough panorama:

From google maps, here:

Anyone coming over that horizon is visible from ~5 km (at this spot, above pictured):

to ~10km at this spot:

Enjoy that long descent into hell, ****ers.

@Kinophile also gave us a preview in April of what RA 36th CAA is looking at now that the road to Sloviansk is, umm, open....

[DefMon3] 36th Combined Arms Army (RU) in the Izium area are supposed to have got 1000+ troops and 100 equipment in reinforcement. Unknown types. 

[some red zones are debatable]

Notice they have the Sviaty Hory massif (the river bend) on their left, untaken, and ahead some more woodlands, how nice. Their right flank is paralleled by that great big canal there, which prevents any kind of right flank maneuver. So there's really only one road left for them, hey diddle diddle....

****

Bonus tweet, from Khodorkovsky. Yup, that arschloch.  I guess he's on our side now, but still scum. Pony up for some MANPADS, scumbag.

These kids got your Land of Hope and Glory right here, Putin....

Edited June 11, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Aragorn2002]

1 hour ago, Armorgunner said:

No it´s not 6:30 am! It´s 3:40 pm  And sorry for me who continued with off topic!

Who cares.

But I must admit I like the tactical evaluations better. 

Edited June 11, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[LongLeftFlank]

1.  Interesting graphic, for any comment the artillery mavens may have beyond, well, sure, this is Basic Artillery 101....

I have very little knowledge of gunnery myself, but I do recall from Dien Bien Phu readings (and a battlefield visit) that French artillery commander Col. Piroth was entirely confident that his 155mm battery could erase any lighter Viet Minh guns emplaced on backslopes using this technique. And he also kept his own guns in open pits to enable a 360 field of fire.

What he wasn't counting on, of course, was the VM emplacing many guns on the forward slopes, in caves....

2. Also in the artillery department, when the Russians are also having to conceal their supply dumps in civilian facilities (and they've finally figured out that they ought to), you know the UA is doing its work....

Quite an intense bombardment too, correcting fire. 

Edited June 11, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Armorgunner]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

That's up to the scenario builders. I can only assume that anyone making a scenario based on this war will turn down the quality of Russian troops quite a bit.

For sure! But I hope they will do that! Make some easy Scenarios, where the Nazirussian troops disengage, like IRL in the war!

So you as a player! Can feel the motivation of your Ukranian troops. And realy feel the no motivation on the Nazirussian side!

Edited June 11, 2022 by Armorgunner

[Beleg85]

22 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

@Kinophile also gave us a preview in April of what RA 36th CAA is looking at now that the road to Sloviansk is, umm, open....

But isn't it that wide open fields next to Slovyansk actually favour Russian side and play into their tactical handbook? Even considering their traditional bardak, of course, and assuming they can amass enough troops for the push.

Edited June 11, 2022 by Beleg85

[Armorgunner]

16 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Who cares.

But I must admit I like the tactical evaluations better. 

haha 

[LongLeftFlank]

Just now, Beleg85 said:

But isn't it that wide open fields next to Slovyansk actually favour Russian side and play into their tactical handbook? Even considering their traditional bardak, of course.

Quite correct in theory, but it didn't work out that way at all for them in the textbook tank country southwest of Izyum. Artillery and the usual ATGMs.

[Seminole]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

So Kosovo and Libya have been brought up a couple times now as examples of “NATO aggression” and some weird theories on the US somehow “using NATO” to do its bidding.  

To not be misunderstood, NATO serves the interventionist cause as an international fig leaf for aggressive U.S. military action.

 ‘It’s not America doing this, we’re answering the international call for justice.’

Politicians in part use this concept of multilateral international support to try and sidestep domestic support/authorization.  Recall Bush I’s team considered they didn’t have to get Congressional support, and argued the president was already authorized to answer the UN’s call to military action.  Now they wisely obtained that support prior to hostilities (unlike Clinton (vote failed for Congressional authorization) and Obama (never even sought Congressional authorization)). 

Do you think any EU members were going going to initiate a bombing campaign against Serbia without the U.S.?  It’s almost as laughable logistically as it is from a military efficacy standpoint.

As for the UNSC:

NATO countries attempted to gain authorisation from the UN Security Council for military action, but were opposed by China and Russia, who indicated that they would veto such a measure. As a result, NATO launched its campaign without the UN's approval, stating that it was a humanitarian intervention. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force except in the case of a decision by the Security Council under Chapter VII, or self-defence against an armed attack – neither of which were present in this case.^[34]

With respect to Libya, again the U.S. president failed to obtain Congressional approval, and I already linked the UK parliament’s report on the lies used by Western politicians to justify the bombing campaign and support for the Islamist revolutionaries:

An in depth investigation into the Libyan intervention and its aftermath was conducted by the U.K. Parliament's House of Commons' cross-party Foreign Affairs Committee, the final conclusions of which were released on 14 September 2016 in a report titled Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK's future policy options.^[232] The report was strongly critical of the British government's role in the intervention.^[233][234] The report concluded that the government "failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element."^[235] In particular, the committee concluded that Gaddafi was not planning to massacre civilians, and that reports to the contrary were propagated by rebels and Western governments. Western leaders trumpeted the threat of the massacre of civilians without factual basis, according to the parliamentary report, for example, it had been reported to Western leaders that on 17 March 2011 Gaddafi had given Benghazi rebels the offer of peaceful surrender and also that when Gaddafi had earlier retaken other rebel cities there were no massacres of non-combatants.

The idea that France would have militarily intervened without the U.S. is not tenable.  This military intervention never happens without the White House agreeing to it, for what we have learned are dubious public reason.  

Regardless, neither the Serbian or Libyan interventions where ‘defensive’ responses by NATO, bolstering the notion the ‘defensive alliance’ was indeed more than that, and used to aggressively intervene in foreign countries that had never attacked a NATO member.  
That is reality.  
You can say the Russians are paranoid, but you can’t say truthfully that NATO is just a defensive alliance.  Clinton and Obama decided to use it for diplomatic cover when they lacked UN and Congressional authorization for their desire to solve problems with bombs.  

[keas66]

13 minutes ago, Seminole said:

To not be misunderstood, NATO serves the interventionist cause as an international fig leaf for aggressive U.S. military action.

 ‘It’s not America doing this, we’re answering the international call for justice.’

Politicians in part use this concept of multilateral international support to try and sidestep domestic support/authorization.  Recall Bush I’s team considered they didn’t have to get Congressional support, and argued the president was already authorized to answer the UN’s call to military action.  Now they wisely obtained that support prior to hostilities (unlike Clinton (vote failed for Congressional authorization) and Obama (never even sought Congressional authorization)). 

Do you think any EU members were going going to initiate a bombing campaign against Serbia without the U.S.?  It’s almost as laughable logistically as it is from a military efficacy standpoint.

As for the UNSC:

NATO countries attempted to gain authorisation from the UN Security Council for military action, but were opposed by China and Russia, who indicated that they would veto such a measure. As a result, NATO launched its campaign without the UN's approval, stating that it was a humanitarian intervention. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force except in the case of a decision by the Security Council under Chapter VII, or self-defence against an armed attack – neither of which were present in this case.^[34]

With respect to Libya, again the U.S. president failed to obtain Congressional approval, and I already linked the UK parliament’s report on the lies used by Western politicians to justify the bombing campaign and support for the Islamist revolutionaries:

An in depth investigation into the Libyan intervention and its aftermath was conducted by the U.K. Parliament's House of Commons' cross-party Foreign Affairs Committee, the final conclusions of which were released on 14 September 2016 in a report titled Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK's future policy options.^[232] The report was strongly critical of the British government's role in the intervention.^[233][234] The report concluded that the government "failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element."^[235] In particular, the committee concluded that Gaddafi was not planning to massacre civilians, and that reports to the contrary were propagated by rebels and Western governments. Western leaders trumpeted the threat of the massacre of civilians without factual basis, according to the parliamentary report, for example, it had been reported to Western leaders that on 17 March 2011 Gaddafi had given Benghazi rebels the offer of peaceful surrender and also that when Gaddafi had earlier retaken other rebel cities there were no massacres of non-combatants.

The idea that France would have militarily intervened without the U.S. is not tenable.  This military intervention never happens without the White House agreeing to it, for what we have learned are dubious public reason.  

Regardless, neither the Serbian or Libyan interventions where ‘defensive’ responses by NATO, bolstering the notion the ‘defensive alliance’ was indeed more than that, and used to aggressively intervene in foreign countries that had never attacked a NATO member.  
That is reality.  
You can say the Russians are paranoid, but you can’t say truthfully that NATO is just a defensive alliance.  Clinton and Obama decided to use it for diplomatic cover when they lacked UN and Congressional authorization for their desire to solve problems with bombs.  

So  ...if I can summarize .... America BAD  , so NATO by association BAD  , and Russia ? Neutral at worst  but obviously worried about being spontaneously invaded by the BAD Americas/NATO   ?

 

[MikeyD]

Quote

NATO serves the interventionist cause

Huh? 'Interventionist' cause? You mean intervening in the Russian rape of Ukraine and Muldova?

[Aragorn2002]

5 minutes ago, keas66 said:

So  ...if I can summarize .... America BAD  , so NATO by association BAD  , and Russia ? Neutral at worst  but obviously worried about being spontaneously invaded by the BAD Americas/NATO   ?

 

On the contrary. NATO (including the US) is far too cautious and decent. We should be far more aggressive. The world would be a much better place for it. 

[Ts4EVER]

7 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Huh? 'Interventionist' cause? You mean intervening in the Russian rape of Ukraine and Muldova?

I guess what he is saying is that these "interventions" don't have a great track records and were usually excuses for pursuing American interests. Quite often they made things worse, in fact. Probably another reason why Germany isn't that keen on supporting any adventures.

[keas66]

Just now, Ts4EVER said:

I guess what he is saying is that these "interventions" don't have a great track records and were usually excuses for pursuing American interests. Quite often they made things worse, in fact. Probably another reason why Germany isn't that keen on supporting any adventures.

Does anyone have any real "interests" in The Balkans other than praying they don't start up more trouble ?

Libya - yeah that was a mess .

[The_Capt]

45 minutes ago, Seminole said:

To not be misunderstood, NATO serves the interventionist cause as an international fig leaf for aggressive U.S. military action.

 ‘It’s not America doing this, we’re answering the international call for justice.’

Politicians in part use this concept of multilateral international support to try and sidestep domestic support/authorization.  Recall Bush I’s team considered they didn’t have to get Congressional support, and argued the president was already authorized to answer the UN’s call to military action.  Now they wisely obtained that support prior to hostilities (unlike Clinton (vote failed for Congressional authorization) and Obama (never even sought Congressional authorization)). 

Do you think any EU members were going going to initiate a bombing campaign against Serbia without the U.S.?  It’s almost as laughable logistically as it is from a military efficacy standpoint.

As for the UNSC:

NATO countries attempted to gain authorisation from the UN Security Council for military action, but were opposed by China and Russia, who indicated that they would veto such a measure. As a result, NATO launched its campaign without the UN's approval, stating that it was a humanitarian intervention. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force except in the case of a decision by the Security Council under Chapter VII, or self-defence against an armed attack – neither of which were present in this case.^[34]

With respect to Libya, again the U.S. president failed to obtain Congressional approval, and I already linked the UK parliament’s report on the lies used by Western politicians to justify the bombing campaign and support for the Islamist revolutionaries:

An in depth investigation into the Libyan intervention and its aftermath was conducted by the U.K. Parliament's House of Commons' cross-party Foreign Affairs Committee, the final conclusions of which were released on 14 September 2016 in a report titled Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK's future policy options.^[232] The report was strongly critical of the British government's role in the intervention.^[233][234] The report concluded that the government "failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element."^[235] In particular, the committee concluded that Gaddafi was not planning to massacre civilians, and that reports to the contrary were propagated by rebels and Western governments. Western leaders trumpeted the threat of the massacre of civilians without factual basis, according to the parliamentary report, for example, it had been reported to Western leaders that on 17 March 2011 Gaddafi had given Benghazi rebels the offer of peaceful surrender and also that when Gaddafi had earlier retaken other rebel cities there were no massacres of non-combatants.

The idea that France would have militarily intervened without the U.S. is not tenable.  This military intervention never happens without

the White House agreeing to it, for what we have learned are dubious public reason.  

Regardless, neither the Serbian or Libyan interventions where ‘defensive’ responses by NATO, bolstering the notion the ‘defensive alliance’ was indeed more than that, and used to aggressively intervene in foreign countries that had never attacked a NATO member.  
That is reality.  
You can say the Russians are paranoid, but you can’t say truthfully that NATO is just a defensive alliance.  Clinton and Obama decided to use it for diplomatic cover when they lacked UN and Congressional authorization for their desire to solve problems with bombs.  

You are only telling half the story to match your narrative.  The UNSC passed 3 resolutions to get Serbia to stop killing people (a fourth after the bombings)  and then passed 1244 which authorized a direct ground intervention by NATO (KFOR).  Further, NATO nations tried to get a resolution but were blocked by China and Russia as you note above...why?  Because Serbians were ethnic cleansing again which everyone still remembered from 1995.  This followed the precedent set in 1995 of NATO airstrikes to protect UNPROFOR, which led to UNSCR 1031 and the NATO ground intervention of IFOR.

Making a link back to US politics and "expansion" in Kosovo makes zero sense - just as it does for Libya frankly.  For Libya, UNSCR 1973 was put forward by France, Lebanon and the UK...what in the hell does this have to do with "Congressional approval"?  1973 was a classic Chapter VII, and again, Russia and China were on the SC and let it go.  Kosovo and Libya were interventions to try and stop repeat humanitarian offenders and dictators from doing worse - not some Rub Goldberg attempt by NATO to rule the world as a puppet of the US.

France intervening without the US - you have heard about Mali (Op Serval)?  In fact there were more: https://www.okayafrica.com/french-military-in-africa/

I can say NATO is a defensive alliance - the history of the Alliance has been defensive from the beginning.  NATO has done interventions on behalf of the UN and failing that, with the support from the international community.  To  make all this some self-centered US political issue is frankly insulting to all the nations and its military members who participated on those missions.

Finally, we know NATO is not a US puppet because it stayed out of Iraq in '03 (which did not have UN cover) and only went into Afghanistan when it did.  This is not the behaviour of a "puppet alliance doing the bidding of a US president who can't rule the planet based on domestic political landscape".  Russia is paranoid...because they are Russia, and no one likes/trust them because of history.  And Putin just took out a big red marker and underlined that dislike/trust for the next 50 years by unilaterally invading a neighbor.  And attempts to play "pick-and-chose" history to create a justification for Russian behaviour is just wrong.   

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by The_Capt

[MikeyD]

Scroll up a couple pages and you'll see a video of Putin announcing that Russia is back in the empire business and plans to reabsorb all former Soviet slave nations. In that context how can anyone bash NATO?

[Aragorn2002]

"Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Vadym Skibitsky stated that Russian troops possess 10 to 15 artillery pieces to every one Ukrainian artillery piece and that Ukrainian forces have almost completely exhausted their artillery ammunition.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-10

That doesn't sound good, does it?

 

 

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[Battlefront.com]

42 minutes ago, Seminole said:

Do you think any EU members were going going to initiate a bombing campaign against Serbia without the U.S.?  It’s almost as laughable logistically as it is from a military efficacy standpoint.

Let me ask you a question... do you think any EU members are going to initiate a bombing campaign against a peaceful neighbor that is not engaged in its SECOND genocidal activity with or without the US?  It's almost laughable logistically as it is from a military efficacy standpoint.

See what I did there?  I pointed out the inherent flaw in the concept that NATO is some sort of tool for some sort of aggressive US foreign policy.  I could expand upon that, for example pointing out that the US would prefer Europe to clean up its own messes without risking US lives and treasure, but that is likely not going to resonate with someone who doesn't understand how the world really works.

Bottom line, Russia and its ideological supporters have never once come up with a coherent argument that shows NATO to be a threat to a peaceful Russia.  You tried (twice) to challenge my assertion and have, instead, simply confirmed it even more.

NATO is a threat to Russia only because Russia is a threat to its neighbors.  Period.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Scroll up a couple pages and you'll see a video of Putin announcing that Russia is back in the empire business and plans to reabsorb all former Soviet slave nations. In that context how can anyone bash NATO?

It would be a fun challenge to find any Western head of state making any such claims on Russian territory.  I'd even allow the person to submit anything from any Western leader since NATO was formed. 

Putin is now just saying out loud what everybody in the West (who isn't paid or ideologically warped) has known since the end of WW2... Russia, and it's Soviet past life, is an aggressive, expansionist government intent on enslaving peoples that want to have nothing to do with Russia.

And the evil NATO, made up of many of the would be Russian victims, is against this.  Shame on NATO for presenting a threat to war mongering Russia!

Steve

[Ts4EVER]

Hope that "ideological supporters of Russia" wasn't aimed at me... I have no love for Russia, I just think that especially in this forum there is sometimes too much emotion and black-and-white thinking applied to what I see as basically a good old-fashioned hegemonical conflict for spheres of influence by two great powers (or rather, one great power and one play-acting as one).

[LongLeftFlank]

18 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

"Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Vadym Skibitsky stated that Russian troops possess 10 to 15 artillery pieces to every one Ukrainian artillery piece and that Ukrainian forces have almost completely exhausted their artillery ammunition.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-10

That doesn't sound good, does it?

Grauniad, citing the same source.

 

 

[cesmonkey]

10 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

"Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Vadym Skibitsky stated that Russian troops possess 10 to 15 artillery pieces to every one Ukrainian artillery piece and that Ukrainian forces have almost completely exhausted their artillery ammunition.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-10

That doesn't sound good, does it?

 

 

 

Below is a similar complaint from a source many are skeptical of.

Question:
If you were commanding the Ukrainians would you counter-attack in the Kherson and Kharkiv region in order to pressure the Russians to divert resources from the Donbass salient, or would you take a defensive posture almost everywhere in order to conserve your artillery ammunition until more substantial stocks are delivered from the West?