How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

18 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

1 hour ago, SeinfeldRules said:

 

Yes, this is how I interpreted the numbers as well.  "Irretrievable" losses is a standard way to summarize the permanent damage done to a military force.  It's the number we bean counters care most about when looking ahead to the next battle.  WIA is too vague and sometimes the totals for MIA and POW are significant.

The way Russian vehicles explosively deconstruct, and then burn, I wold assume they have a LOT of MIA. Does anybody have any idea what the Russian standard is for declaring someone one or the other? Is it just a question of what allows the commander to steal more money? I am still betting on a non trivial racket of collecting death benefits for soldiers that never existed in the first place, and are now conveniently KIA/MIA.

[Suleyman]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

Hostomel was guarded with small number of personnel of 4th National Guard rapid reaction brigade. Russians seized airfield after almost all day clashes (but lost two helicopters over it and at least two more on approach). Because of mech. units were involved in fights northern, UKR forces had time to gather reinforcements and artillery and pushed off VDV (45th VDV spetsnaz brigade and 31st air-assault brigade - total 300 men in first wave) from airfield. But on next day first Russian mech.units arrived  as well as new wave of VDV, which came from Belarus on BMDs and other part probbaly again on helicopters, so after heavy fighting Russians took airfield again and seized it up to the April.    

I appreciate the info crazy assault honestly but they wasted their surprise potential with that, Ukraine responded fast.

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, Suleyman said:

I appreciate the info crazy assault honestly but they wasted their surprise potential with that, Ukraine responded fast.

It was worse than just Hostomel.  I don't think anybody has an accurate count for how many helicopter assaults were made in the first few days, none of which survived for more than a few hours.  The most significant ones I can think of were around Mykolaiv.  There was supposedly one as far away as Odessa.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

But the sword is cutting both ways, deeply...

 

Recently uploaded video about the Battalion, starting out with an interview with Kum:

 

[Suleyman]

32 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

It was worse than just Hostomel.  I don't think anybody has an accurate count for how many helicopter assaults were made in the first few days, none of which survived for more than a few hours.  The most significant ones I can think of were around Mykolaiv.  There was supposedly one as far away as Odessa.

Steve

Hostomel assault you can kind of make sense, they assumed it would be empty or almost no resistance and that the ground forces would link up quickly. But Mykolaiv and Odessa? What were they smoking (or drinking?) 

Edited June 19, 2022 by Suleyman

[Beleg85]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

After the Cold War ended there was some confirmation of mid 1980s assessments that if the Soviet Union tried to launch a war against NATO that there was serious doubt if the Warsaw Pact countries would all go along with it.  IIRC the one they thought might not even try to fight was Poland, whereas East Germany and Czechoslovakia might put up some fight and then quickly withdraw.  After the curtain came down it was clear that *NONE* of the Warsaw Pact countries were in any state to fight a high intensity conflict.  So whether it was local commanders figuring out that they were out matched or it was a hatred of the Soviets or a combo, I don't know, however in the context of a shooting war they reasons for defections wouldn't be relevant.  Only the defections would be.

Steve

Exactly. The whole army was frankly a kind of theatre, like entire economy and state btw- everybody knew it had no sense, but no other options existed so the atmosphere of pointlessness relaxed by humour prevailed. Even political and military leaders rarely have any faith in it; imagine entire army of The Good Soldiers Švejk's put on BMP's.

There were some stories when they supposedly have their embedded Soviet political advisors during Operation Danube (there was at least one Russian per company/detachment to keep an eye on them) virtually under house arrests, keep them permanently drunk or put them "between the shoulders" to not let them molest local Czechs too much. For many of those soldiers Czechia expedition was really a shame to be in. I heard Hungarians have very similar experiances.

 

By the way and not to do offtopic- whole Operation Danube was much better planned and executed as military operation than ****show we are watching now.

 

3 hours ago, Grigb said:

Interesting detail of 1 phase fighting.

Quote

I talked here with [RU] specialists in automated control systems-automated control systems. They are responsible for the operation of computers, servers and surveillance systems. Interesting details of the first days of SVO [RU euphemism for the war] have come to light.

In Ukraine, there is/was a network of the "Smart City" type. Video cameras on streets, roads, communication towers, billboards, poles and even road signs were used for fighting.

That is, when they noticed a military column, they calculated its speed of movement and used it for aiming. And they had success.

Expand  

[EDIT] Civilian surveillance systems is something that for sure needs to be taken in to account when fighting in the cities.

Interesting. It seems we underestimated the Chechens fighting streetlights. Kadyrov is indeed a true mastermind.

 

TOS thermobaric attacking soldiers in houses. What chances of survival you think they had if sitting in the cellar??

[Battlefront.com]

31 minutes ago, Suleyman said:

Hostomel assault you can kind of make sense, they assumed it would be empty or almost no resistance and that the ground forced would link up quickly. But Mykolaiv and Odessa? What were they smoking (or drinking?) 

These were smaller assaults intended to capture key terrain objectives, such as road junctions and bridges.  The Odessa landing was likely a recon mission.  All pretty much standard missions that all nations with such capabilities routinely practice.

The problem with the Russians was not having a realistic battle plan or the apparent ability/willingness to modify pre-war planning based on actual ground conditions.  Hostomel was a perfect example of this.

Overall, the Russian plan assumed minimal and/or disorganized Ukrainian resistance.  To ensure that resistance didn't have a chance to form, Russia planned a "blitzkrieg" style attack complete with airborne operations in advance of armored columns.  The overall design was to be everywhere all at once before Ukraine knew what hit them.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the Russian plan, as there was nothing inherently wrong with Market Garden.  Militarily it was sound.  Well, except for one tiny problem... it rested on a single assumption and if that was wrong there was absolutely no saving the plan.  The assumption, of course, was that Ukraine's military would crumble after minimal resistance.

This is all pretty well documented and discussed, so not much point going over it in detail.  However, this context is necessary to understand the context of the helicopter assaults and to judge it appropriately.

As I've said, the helicopter assaults on Hostomel and the other locations were all rational parts of a rational military plan.  What was not rational was having a strategic plan that had little room for error and absolutely no backup in case there was.  None. 

Because the plan was proven inherently flawed by Day 2 (I'd argue Day 1) the Russians should have reevaluated their operations, in particular anything that was deemed "risky" even according to the original plan.  Sending in OMAN units into Kyiv on a moronic "Thunder Run" type activity was just as idiotic as trying to do a helicopter assault way ahead of stalled ground forces.  Running logistics through areas that had not been properly secured was suicidal.  The fact that ANY of this was allowed to happen is an indictment of the entire Russian leadership from top to bottom, but the fact that it continued to happen for WEEKS can be said to be "insane".  Not just incompetent, I really do mean "insane".  Check out any definition of the word you like and you'll see what I mean

Steve

[poesel]

13 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

TOS thermobaric attacking soldiers in houses.

Question: isn't thermobaric ammo creating this globe like ex-/implosions? This looked pretty regular to me.

[Battlefront.com]

25 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

 

TOS thermobaric attacking soldiers in houses. What chances of survival you think they had if sitting in the cellar??

Typical Russian video.  We have no context for where this house is within the strike zone.  For all we know they missed it completely.  At least it looks plausible that the close up and the far shot are from the same area, which is not always the case with Russian videos.  We also have no sense of how much time passed between the close up and the far shot.

Assuming that these two video streams are related, and that the target house was in the epicenter of the fireballs, then it's unlikely the platoon suffered no casualties.  Beyond that, however, it's impossible to say.

What has been noted in previous conflicts is that thermobaric explosions are not as deadly in reality than they are on paper.  In fact, there are some situations where a conventional HE round would be superior to thermobaric.

I'm not an expert on the look of the detonations, but to me they do look like thermobaric.

Steve

[Beleg85]

42 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Typical Russian video.  We have no context for where this house is within the strike zone.  For all we know they missed it completely.  At least it looks plausible that the close up and the far shot are from the same area, which is not always the case with Russian videos.  We also have no sense of how much time passed between the close up and the far shot.

Assuming that these two video streams are related, and that the target house was in the epicenter of the fireballs, then it's unlikely the platoon suffered no casualties.  Beyond that, however, it's impossible to say.

What has been noted in previous conflicts is that thermobaric explosions are not as deadly in reality than they are on paper.  In fact, there are some situations where a conventional HE round would be superior to thermobaric.

I'm not an expert on the look of the detonations, but to me they do look like thermobaric.

Steve

Thanks, interesting if grusome.

2 very interesting videos of Toshkivka, a town S of Lysychansk, something could turn into CM scenario. I wondered why they did not put more pressure along this axis before, instead of hitting repeatedly at the wall with their heads in Severdonetsk.

Russians are coming by a road (of course) trying to probe the defenders. There are a destroyed machines from attacks before; town is heavily destroyed too. The satellite photo Def Mon also show interesting set of trenches inside a city. It seems even in this example Ukrainians retort to artillery rather than using their ATGM and grenade launchers (at least that's what in video).

Edited June 19, 2022 by Beleg85

[Calamine Waffles]

https://wartranslated.com/day-115-june-18-summary-of-arestovych-and-feygin-daily-broadcast/
 

Quote

Kherson capture in February – Russia bribed SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) regional director’s assistant, had plans of mine fields, coordinated aviation [link]. First time in Ukraine, when government official is accused

I had suspected there probably was some treachery involved in their success on the Southern Front. Also suspected it was the SBU, as they were never reformed or "purged" the same way as the ZSU was post 2014.

[Suleyman]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Because the plan was proven inherently flawed by Day 2 (I'd argue Day 1) the Russians should have reevaluated their operations, in particular anything that was deemed "risky" even according to the original plan.  Sending in OMAN units into Kyiv on a moronic "Thunder Run" type activity was just as idiotic as trying to do a helicopter assault way ahead of stalled ground forces.  Running logistics through areas that had not been properly secured was suicidal.  The fact that ANY of this was allowed to happen is an indictment of the entire Russian leadership from top to bottom, but the fact that it continued to happen for WEEKS can be said to be "insane".  Not just incompetent, I really do mean "insane".  Check out any definition of the word you like and you'll see what I mean

Steve

I agree with you, I think in a twisted way the Russians needed this in order to learn lessons (not that I care or support them) they never learned from the 5 day war in Georgia, nor even from the issues LPR/DPR faced.

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

TOS thermobaric attacking soldiers in houses. What chances of survival you think they had if sitting in the cellar??

Practically none, the shockwave would end up killing them unfortunately... not to talk about the insane thermobaric heat and explosion. The Russians use TOS to devastating effects, and I'm surprised they don't use them in Severodonetsk. 

[Suleyman]

25 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

2 very interesting videos of Toshkivka, a town S of Lysychansk, something could turn into CM scenario. I wondered why they did not put more pressure along this axis before, instead of hitting repeatedly at the wall with their heads in Severdonetsk.

Russians are coming by a road (of course) trying to probe the defenders. There are a destroyed machines from attacks before; town is heavily destroyed too. The satellite photo Def Mon also show interesting set of trenches inside a city. It seems even in this example Ukrainians retort to artillery rather than using their ATGM and grenade launchers (at least that's what in video).

I would much more rather my unit go through the fields in line formation instead of columns on a road but it looks like they shelled the buildings to the point where there would be no threat on them approaching like that. still what if there is an angry Ukrainian squad with a RPG waiting for them to drive by.

[LongLeftFlank]

6 hours ago, Haiduk said:

This is obvious fake and "Victorious news". Maybe source of theese numbers is Gerashchenko, known sh...t-newsmaker.  9457 killed PMC? With their total number in Ukraine about 8000-9000 according to Russian information? Seriously? Even official number sometime looks overestimated, especially in aviation losses. But this is just "moral booster for housewives"

Noted re Geraschenko; the 'Truth and Freedom and Rock and Roll' site is also very rah rah, which is why I flagged it with a health warning.

@sburke has confirmed, what, 400 Russian senior officers KIA to date?120 days of combat x 1 'bump or bang' per day that yields an average of 6 KIA (plus additional wounded) = 720 KIA in mass casualty events.

Most of the other bangs that hit something with people in or by it *may* average 1 hapless grunt or driver killed outright at a time, even with demonstraby sh*te rear services that mean there's rarely a 'golden hour' for medevac.  And Bog knows how you count or even guesstimate those.

So it is clear you need quite a lot of them to sum up to 35,000 dead, although a deaths figure in the mid 20ks, including militias, would not entirely astonish me.

Humans are strangely hard to kill outright.

(as we have observed, CM tends to be far bloodier than the real deal, although we can rationalise that a lot of the pixeltruppen 'down' are not in fact badly hit but simply no longer available for any military purpose within the scenario timeframe)

...Which is why destruction of enemy formations -- whole companies or battalions casualties AND captured -- is crucial for either side to make headway in this war.

But as @The_Capt notes, fortune seems to firmly favour the defence at this particular moment.  To hark back to Steve's prior analogy, nobody has 'Busted the Bocage' yet; but the proper analogy may well be Verdun.

Edited June 20, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[paxromana]

9 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Very interesting takes as always. Some notes from layman historian:

1.Main questions as to this war (not your conclusions) stays the same: did Ukrainians did it through super-smart tactics, or it was rather Russian slopiness? Attacking huge, spacious determined enemy nation with unprepared and understaffed 150 k army was always a receipt for failure, regardless of new era in warfare. So nothing works as it should because it is not used as it should. Also Russians did concentrated artillery in Donbas now, but they lack mass (and quality) to breach lines; thus, their artillery is not used as it should be.

Yes, I think it's too early to come to definite conclusions about whether, for example, Armoured Vehicles have become next to useless or how important airpower and artillery are likely to be in the future. 

Why?

For the simple reason that the Russians have mishandled every single aspect of this misbegotten invasion from the get go. How would a Ukraininan style army have performed against a US style invasion of the same size?

And how would a Russian Army perform against a US/NATO style army?

From that point of view I think that any definitive conclusion is way premature ... and may not even be possible.

Edited June 20, 2022 by paxromana

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Humans are strangely hard to kill outright.

good point, though very easy to kill them via lack of medical care once the body is penetrated by dirty, nasty metal or severely burned.  And there's reports of poor medical care for wounded Russian soldiers.  That's why I wonder about the number of total losses the russians are experiencing.

[sburke]

16 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

good point, though very easy to kill them via lack of medical care once the body is penetrated by dirty, nasty metal or severely burned.  And there's reports of poor medical care for wounded Russian soldiers.  That's why I wonder about the number of total losses the russians are experiencing.

what was that percentage of the number of deaths in that hospital list Haiduk posted and how does that compare to NATO expectations of survival rates for troops that have been casevac'd?

[Battlefront.com]

10 hours ago, The_Capt said:

4.  Likely a combination of both to be honest. On those initial axis of attack the RA had superiority in concentrated.  As per point #1, I agree, the RA did actually employ manoeuvre in the opening phase of this war...and it did not really work.  At least not enough to achieve their over all strategic objectives.  They took some ground and then stalled and had to fall back as focused attrition and imposed friction took its toll.  Now if they had really upscaled, say 1 million men and applied the same game plan it may have worked - they still would have taken significant casualties but they would likely have had enough "oomph" to at least go with the "sieging cities" option. 

This point a couple of pages ago is a good companion to what I said a few posts ago about the Russian strategic plan being militarily sound with one exception... it wasn't realistic.  A small and rather critical exception   Now, one can argue that an unrealistic plan isn't a sound one by definition, but I don't think that is the case at all.  Think about another great fiasco for a sec; Market Garden

As I mentioned, Market Garden is a great example of a good plan that didn't work because it was based on the premise that they were dropping into territory held by scraps, not two reconstituting "elite" armored divisions.  Would Market Garden have worked if the SS units in the Arnhem area were not there and nothing similar was there in its place?  Very likely yes, despite the tougher than expected resistance along the frontline.  With that in mind, was there a chance that the Russian strategic plan to take over eastern Ukraine would have worked if the Ukrainian will and ability to fight was as bad as Russia thought?  Yes, I think it could have.  Russia invaded with enough forces to occupy key areas in short order provided nobody shot at them with any gusto, and even with all the vehicles that broke down there were plenty to get the troops to where they needed to be.

The reason why both Market Garden and the Russian fiasco failed is the same.  Risky and bold plans that relied on a presumption of enemy weakness that intelligence failed to uncover (or convince decision makers) was utterly false.  In fact, at the last minute there were some warnings put to SHAFE that the Germans were stronger than expected, but those concerns were dismissed because they didn't want to derail the operation.  They should have at least modified it!

What we wound up with was a Russian military that was maneuvering properly for a war in a parallel universe instead of the one they were in.  Obviously that did not go well

Coincidentally, I just found this clip somewhat randomly.  Apparently amongst the captured documents of Hostomel was a timetable for all the things they were supposed to achieve, including occupation of specific buildings within Kyiv.  More hard evidence of Russia's plans for an extremely short war (not that the average pro-Russian is going to admit to it)

 

[LongLeftFlank]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Typical Russian video.  We have no context for where this house is within the strike zone.  For all we know they missed it completely.  At least it looks plausible that the close up and the far shot are from the same area, which is not always the case with Russian videos.  We also have no sense of how much time passed between the close up and the far shot.

Assuming that these two video streams are related, and that the target house was in the epicenter of the fireballs, then it's unlikely the platoon suffered no casualties.  Beyond that, however, it's impossible to say.

What has been noted in previous conflicts is that thermobaric explosions are not as deadly in reality than they are on paper.  In fact, there are some situations where a conventional HE round would be superior to thermobaric.

I'm not an expert on the look of the detonations, but to me they do look like thermobaric.

Steve

That would be interesting; mine the hell out of the Azot complex, then withdraw and let the Russian pioneers come in to clear it, and the Tiktok Imam to come in with Wargonzo et al. for some nice Mission Accomplished PR photo ops.

....And then detonate a daisy chain of daisy cutters, or ammonium nitrate, or whatever's handy, sending the whole complex into orbit. An aerosol cloud would be ideal, but tougher to engineer. Keep it simple.

 

Talk about your mass casualty event....

Edited June 20, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Suleyman]

That would be detected fast, especially since that is a major focus of the Russian military right now. 

[Battlefront.com]

From yesterday (June 19th) ISW report.  More signs of the consequences of Russia's stripping of "quiet" sectors to provide forces for Donbas:

Quote

Russian forces are continuing to accumulate equipment and manpower in central Zaporizhia Oblast, specifically along the Dniprorudne-Vasylivka-Orikhiv line, likely in response to Ukrainian counterattacks.  Fedorov stated that Ukrainian forces pushed the Zaporizhia Oblast frontline 10 km south. Ukrainian officials have previously reported that the Zaporizhia frontline shifted five to seven kilometers south and it is unclear whether Ukrainian forces have advanced 10 km in total or in addition to these earlier advances. Ukraine’s Zaporizhia Regional Military Administration stated that Russian troops are moving equipment and vehicles from Crimea through Melitopol toward the Vasylivka and Polohy areas and that Russian sabotage groups clashed with Ukrainian troops near the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border on June 19.  Russian forces are likely accumulating troops in Zaporizhia Oblast to defend against ongoing Ukrainian counterattacks towards Melitopol that could threaten Russian control of the city.

Two things in this passage that is consistent with my view of how Ukraine wins the war.

Russia strips forces from one place to concentrate elsewhere, Ukraine waits until the line is thin enough and then launches a fairly small scale counter attack that threats that local area.  Russia then has to rush SOMETHING back to this area from SOMEWHERE to arrest the threat.  If Russia had forces to space, it wouldn't need to strip some from the front in the first place, therefore rushing something back means it's coming from some other place OR would have if it wasn't diverted.

Relocating forces like this is bad on a number of levels.  One is that it takes time for a unit to acclimate to it's battlespace, get used to who it is fighting, who it has on its flanks, local commanders, supply routes, and any number of other things.  Ripping a unit out of an area it is familiar with reduces the effectiveness of the units that remain.  Adding new forces to an area requires readjustments by everybody.  Therefore, rushing units around from here to there is generally a bad thing, especially from static positions.

Steve

[Artkin]

There are a lot of jobs in the RuAF that need positions filled right now, particuarly in the West. I don't see how a military recovers from a miserable situation like this. New formations would have to be created with fresh officers at this point. Feels very 1941 to me. 

[Artkin]

Any DPR veterans left? Barely. Any LPR veterans left? Not really. Ok. RuAF in Donbass Pre-2022 veterans overall? Probably very few if any left. 

Syria veterans? A select few maybe. 

Afghanistan veterans? 

VDV (Russia's highest density of contracted personel)? 

How about higher staff? 

The RuAF is without a doubt a conscript army at this point. 

[kraze]

6 hours ago, Calamine Waffles said:

https://wartranslated.com/day-115-june-18-summary-of-arestovych-and-feygin-daily-broadcast/
 

I had suspected there probably was some treachery involved in their success on the Southern Front. Also suspected it was the SBU, as they were never reformed or "purged" the same way as the ZSU was post 2014.

SBU was purged hard. It's a bit more complicated than that and involves nepotism, incompetency, cowardice, all under a 'pro-russian lobby gaining some power back' sauce.

Part of that "pro-russian"* lobby is Gerashchenko hence why I, just as Haiduk, strongly advice you to avoid him. Same as I advise you to ignore Podoliak, Arakhamiya and Arestovich as they are from that very same lobby. It's our burden to deal with them.

*It's in quotes because they don't exactly want us to become a territory of Russia like Belarus de facto did, but those people realize they won't be able to be corrupt if Ukraine goes for EU and NATO and hope that they can simply deal with Russia instead, like it was before 2014, with someone more "moderate" than putin at the helm. Of course this will never work out because there are no "moderate" russians as 300 years of history show, but politicians aren't always the most intelligent and educated bunch.

[Haiduk]

@sburke @Kinophile

Captured pilot of Russian Su-25, which was shot down yesterday by 72nd mech.brigade turned out PMC-mercenary mayor (probably retired) Andrey Fedorchukov

 

Edited June 20, 2022 by Haiduk