How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

46 minutes ago, Grigb said:

While @haiduk is way - there are rumors that RU throwed freshly made reserve unit from Kantemir division at Izum. It got hit very hard. 

Translation: Izium area, Kharkiv obvlast, Ukraine. Our troops tried to attack with new-formed forces. It's turned out fu..d up. Those, who have seen yesterday numerous of helicopters from Valuyki toward Izium [means evacuation of heavy injured] - yes, this is it. No proofs [in sense "don't expect from me official confirmations, videos, sources, names etc"]

Translation:

So, what was it in the end? 

Kantima [Kantemirovskaya division] in big trouble

Several days ago UKR volunteer Roman Donik issued in own twitter documents of killed or captured Russians from this division - all 2001-2003 years of born. Looks like "elite" tank division replaced losses with very young soldiers. 

 

Edited June 23, 2022 by Haiduk

[dan/california]

27 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Good thought!  I've also pondered it. 

Honestly, I think there are so many good organizations out there where you know your money will be put to immediate and effective use, I just suggest individuals donate to them.  I've funded everything from body armor to helping a cat café.  Quite a spread   The big charity in Poland I gave money to was a bit tricky because they only take bank transfers and that is difficult and expensive for us non-Europeans.  I PayPal'd money to a Polish friend who then wired it to them.

Here's a suggestion.  Someone on this Forum could maintain a list of vetted aid organizations and how to connect with them.  That person could upload it as a document somewhere and put a link to it in their Forum sigline.  People interested in helping out, but not knowing where, can download it and make their own donations.  If there's a payment transfer complication, like my Polish example, then they could PM one of our members here and see if someone can help facilitate the transaction.

Steve

Going to throw this out one more time, Battlefront should sell Ukrainian stamps. I think a LOT of people would buy them from a U.S. source they already trust with their credit card number.

E.U. news is FANTASTIC, and irrevocable proof that Putin has lost this war.

44 minutes ago, Grigb said:

While @haiduk is way - there are rumors that RU throwed freshly made reserve unit from Kantemir division at Izum. It got hit very hard. 

This also excellent, and they need to do everything they can to get it all over Russian outlets/channels in full bloody color to remind all those poor Russian fools that draft dodging, even high risk draft dodging, is the better option.

[Haiduk]

Captured Russians on Izium - Sloviansk direction. Krasnopillia village area

 

[Battlefront.com]

An example of an infiltration unit.  One of the many benefits of light infantry is you don't need massive bridgeheads to poke the enemy on the other side of a river

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarRoom/comments/vis3b3/exclusive_information_from_the_special_unit_wild/

Steve

[Haiduk]

If on Izium - Sloviansk axis we have some success, on Popasna - Lysychansk axis we have more troubles in this day. Reportedly Russians moved on this directions one more BTG. Today Russians forces captured villages Loskutivka, Rai-Oleksandrivka and forces of DPR from 100th brigade (so-called Repubilcan Guard, somethig avarage in DPR between National Guard and VDV) captured Mykolaivka village, which was under  dozen attempts of assault in previous two weeks. In Loskutivka Russians claim they captured 16 UKR soldiers.

So, for Ukrainain troops of 24th mech. brigade in area Zolote - Hirske remained narrow corridor to withdrawing through Vovchoyarivka. There is no clear info about theese towns, but some our sources on RUMINT level say all heavy equipment and main part of troops withdrew to Lysychansk as far as in weekend, and in towns only screen forces remained. 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2022 by Haiduk

[Artkin]

23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

An example of an infiltration unit.  One of the many benefits of light infantry is you don't need massive bridgeheads to poke the enemy on the other side of a river

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarRoom/comments/vis3b3/exclusive_information_from_the_special_unit_wild/

Steve

The push toward lightweight synthetics and overall the ECWCS style of dressing makes being soaked with water less of an issue. The ability to walk yourself dry in an hour would be invaluable for a recce role. Who knows what they are wearing, but that's what I would if I had to cross rivers multiple times. A merino wool baselayer would migitate your odor. Though I'm not sure how big of a deal body odor would be in an environment like this. There must be all sorts of smells in the air like the artillery bursting around them.

In any case I imagine they're not too far from the front so maybe it's not as big of an issue.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I get what JonS is saying, though, which is that the examples are a fairly narrow slice of the total "combined arms" spectrum.  For the most part recon and artillery in support of entrenched infantry with few heavy weapons.

A: I saw enlisted members of a recce platoon directly involved, in the field, in identifying a target, feeding that data into the system, and adjusting fires. It took them a couple of minutes to work out exactly right grid location they wanted because it was hard at some points to see into the woodline with the drones. The time lapse from first called shot to spotting round strike was less than a minute and at least half of that was round flight.

It is not how  a thing is done, it is what it does to an opponent.  By changing the range and speed of this narrow slice, the UA has overstressed the RA system (Doctrine, Organization and Equipment).  This has been enough, particularly when employed in depth, to stall every Russian offensive so far, even in open country...that is a lot more than a minor nuisance.  Adding in self-loitering, smart-next gen ATGMs and "combined arms" takes on new dimensions.

Finally, "narrow" is also not really accurate.  Tactically, on the surface, it appears as light infantry and artillery; however, there is an information aspect here which is having operational/strategic effects.  Showing the world in near-real time those Russian systems getting hit has paid off well beyond the losses of Russian offensive momentum.  Add to this space-based ISR and "combined arms" starts to stretch.

Maybe we are reluctant to recognize it as "combined arms" due to lack of armor - how many major tank battles have we seen in this war?  As far as we can tell the Russian have abandoned major armored manoeuvre as well.  Now before this turns into "the tank is dead...no it isn't!", I suspect that the tank may make an appearance when one side breaks after the attritional phase.  My money is on the UA, who have the logistics for it and the fact that the RA has not developed the same dispersed smart-mass defensive system.  They have gone with mass (they cannot sustain) or likely more traditional "digging in".  Once those RA lines give out, we may finally see massed armor but it will have to contend with air power - I can't see the Russian Air Force being able to sit it out in the face of a major UA offensive.  The cry will be for more western AD then.  In fact one can trace this ware by Ukrainian requests for support.  First it was ATGM/MANPADs and ISR, now artillery and deep strike, AD and offensive systems should be a good indication of moving to the next phase. 

 

[The_Capt]

9 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

If on Izium - Sloviansk axis we have some success, on Popasna - Lysychansk axis we have more troubles in this day. Reportedly Russians moved on this directions one more BTG. Today Russians forces captured villages Loskutivka, Rai-Oleksandrivka and forces of DPR from 100th brigade (so-called Repubilcan Guard, somethig avarage in DPR between National Guard and VDV) captured Mykolaivka village, which was under  dozen attempts of assault in previous two weeks. In Loskutivka Russians claim they captured 16 UKR soldiers.

So, for Ukrainain troops of 24th mech. brigade in area Zolote - Hirske remained narrow corridor to withdrawing through Vovchoyarivka. There is no clear info about theese towns, but some our sources on RUMINT level say all heavy equipment and main part of troops withdrew to Lysychansk as far as in weekend, and in towns only screen forces remained. 

 

 

So I have to wonder...if the plan was to surround Lysychansk from the south...then why do the whole thing at Severodonetsk?  The Russians have been at Popasna for weeks and could have done this operation without slamming their heads against the wall on the other side of the river.

This whole thing feels disjointed and ununified.  Well people were waiting for the bold Russian pincer operation - a roughly 10 x 10km area done in slow enough time to allow for a UA withdrawal, and it only took nearly two months.

[Huba]

16 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So I have to wonder...if the plan was to surround Lysychansk from the south...then why do the whole thing at Severodonetsk?  The Russians have been at Popasna for weeks and could have done this operation without slamming their heads against the wall on the other side of the river.

This whole thing feels disjointed and ununified.  Well people were waiting for the bold Russian pincer operation - a roughly 10 x 10km area done in slow enough time to allow for a UA withdrawal, and it only took nearly two months.

IIRC, the initial UA feint made RU move deep into Severodonetsk and officially claim it taken, only to be counterattacked and almost pushed out of the city. They made look as if they didn't intend to put any fight, so orcs proceeded to take the area and announced the victory. At this point, the RU options was to either mass everything and take the bloody place no matter what, or be humiliated thoroughly, possibly with UA infantry infiltrating the forests around and getting really close to vulnerable rear areas.

I'm really trying not to give UA more credit that it deserve ( which is plenty anyway) but in this case it was REALLY well played on their end.

 

Edited June 23, 2022 by Huba

[Suleyman]

I think the goal is to completely surround Lysychansk. If they are successful in this operation it seems they will make small rapid gains and they can have better chances towards Slavyansk.

[Haiduk]

Southern front is Terra Incognita for news. UKR keep tough OpSec, Russian side just often hasn't insiders or military corerspondents there, so information about warfare on wide front from Kryvyi Rih, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Velyka Novbosilka. UKR soldiers in twitter sometime hint on some things, but most information still on RUMINT level.

Though, there is semi0official confirmation, UKR troops pushed back Russian or DPR troops from Pavlivka village and as wrote DPR sources keep fighting on Yehorivka village outskirts. Also General Staff reported Russians today shelled neighbour Shevchenko village, so it's also probably contested. There is unknown either this just some tactical move, or something bigger. 

Further to west UKR troops reportedly pushed enemy forces and approached to Polohy town. If our troops will manage to libarate this town they cut roacade railway supply route of whole southernm front on the left bank of Dnieper.

 

Edited June 23, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

27 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This whole thing feels disjointed and ununified. 

No. Izium, Lyman, Siverodonetsk and Popasna groups are acting in one scenario. I will write about this later, but I need to gather most important things about this from long analysys of Mashovets and translate this. 

Edited June 23, 2022 by Haiduk

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So I have to wonder...if the plan was to surround Lysychansk from the south...then why do the whole thing at Severodonetsk?  The Russians have been at Popasna for weeks and could have done this operation without slamming their heads against the wall on the other side of the river.

I've been wondering this since we started talking about a big offensive in the Donbas.  We have to look back at how this poor excuse for an offensive started to find our answer.

Anybody with even a small sense of strategy would see that the best thing to do was move south from Izyum and north some place along directly below it.  Pinching off the LOCs would make holding Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, and everything else in that area, impossible.  Clearly Russia intended to do exactly this when it started the offensive, yet we find ourselves where we find ourselves!

Here's a theory of how we got to where we are today.

The Izyum force was exhausted before the offensive started.  The units there either got bloodied taking Izyum or were decimated units recently withdrawn units from northern Ukraine.  They made very little gains at great cost. 

The southern pincer didn't do much better.  For weeks they couldn't find a way to breakthrough anywhere.  Eventually they got Popasna, but again the breakthrough forces were bloodied quite badly.  Reinforcements were bloody remains of Mariupol that were of questionable value.

It seems the next bright idea was to force the Siverskyi Donets and drive south at a narrower point in the neck, meet up with Popasna, and achieve a result similar to their original plan, just not as large an area.  And yes, we all know how this turned out

While all this was going on Russia used the LPR forces to keep pressure on the Severodonetsk.  I think the idea was to either keep the Ukrainians pinned down or give them a reason to flee the second their LOCs were disrupted.  But the pincers didn't happen so it was boiled down to a simple frontal assault.

I think this is the point at which Putin's alleged meddling comes into play.  Seeing that there was no quick victory for the Donbas he decided that Severodonetsk needed to be taken and taken fast.  He figured with enough pressure the Ukrainians would withdraw because, well, Ukraine doesn't need to stay there.  But this failed as well.

And that brings us to about a week ago when the Toshkivka defenses began to crack.  Izuym still stalled, Popapsna making tiny gains, and Severodonetsk a bloody mess, so new effort put into Toshkivka to try and break the Ukrainian defenses that way.

At least this is how I interpret the last two months of Russian ops.

8 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This whole thing feels disjointed and ununified. 

Ya think?

Steve

[BigDog944]

4 hours ago, sburke said:

Too bad they don't follow the example of Heaven's gate or Jim Jones and just put themselves out of our misery.

Take some time to think about what you just wished for please, for your own sake.

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, Haiduk said:

No. Izium, Lyman, Siverodonetsk and Popasna groups are acting in one scenario. I will write about this later, but I need to gather most important from long analysys of Mashovets and translate this. 

Ooo!  That will be interesting.

I think what The_Capt and I feel is that the coordination between the points of effort has been inconsistent and more opportunist than planned.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, BigDog944 said:

Take some time to think about what you just wished for please, for your own sake.

Yeah, my thought too.  Neither of those infamous cults had access to massive stores of nuke, bio, and chem weapons.  Imagine if the Japanese based Aum Shinrikyo had access to that sort of stuff?

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

37 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Finally, "narrow" is also not really accurate.  Tactically, on the surface, it appears as light infantry and artillery; however, there is an information aspect here which is having operational/strategic effects.  Showing the world in near-real time those Russian systems getting hit has paid off well beyond the losses of Russian offensive momentum.  Add to this space-based ISR and "combined arms" starts to stretch.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to describe in my previous post.  I am pretty damned excited to get some confirmation of how sophisticated the Ukrainians are in this regard.

37 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Maybe we are reluctant to recognize it as "combined arms" due to lack of armor

Yes, definitely.  Though not just armor.  The specific combat ops mentioned lacked infantry and heavy weapons too.  But this was a largely defensive sector of front, so it's not like he had a chance to see more involved combined arms activities.

Note that my friend said that he's not sure how well the Battalion would function as a single cohesive fighting force.  They seem to have tailored their skills to fit the situation in front of them right here and now, not necessarily what they need to march into Crimea.

Steve

[Haiduk]

Typical Russian tactic - the tank slowly drives along the street and shot out with main gun each house. But when the tank probably was withdrawing for reloading something hit its engine. Video of 54th mech.brigade and K-2 UAV unit. Somewhere south from Donetsk

 

 

[Huba]

New US support package was announced. 4 more HIMARS and ammo were expected, but the surprise are the patrol/ river boats. I imagine establishing domination on the Dnipro in Kherson will be a valuable capability, but IMO it hints at attempt to recapture Snake Island in not so distant future.

 

[Raptor341]

2 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Ukrainian civil volunteers funds  are coming to new heights

Serhiy Prytula fund, one of largest in Ukraine after Back ad Alive, after successfull gathering money for strike version of PD-2 UAV, now accumulating donates for 3 TB2 Bayraktars. There was an objective to crowdfund 15 millions$ USD within a week, but un first day it's managed to get 10,4 millions $. Most bigger donate - 5 millions UAH (141000 USD), though as Prytula write, most donates is 100-500 UAH

If somebody want to join, here is about international payments to the fund: https://prytulafoundation.org/en/home/support_page

 

Meanwhile, Taras Chmut (on the left in the photo), former marine and now the head of Back-and-Alive fund visited USA and met with congressman (and officer) Adam Kinzinger. It's very interesting, maybe some equipment will go to Ukraine through Back-and-Alive, Chmut made some hints thay this can be even several AH-6 light combat helicopters for SOF.    

So, many people joke that soon we will crowdfund for squadron of F-35 and USA will promote Taras Chmut as future Minister of defense )

Indeed both theese funds turned out in powerful supply hubs with own logistic and storages and works for inceasing effectiveness of whole units on company and battalion level. 

Thanks for the information! 

[acrashb]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The force ratios the Russian are having to employ to do this are crazy - e.g. Severodonetsk - 900 guns to cover a 30 km frontage is just insane...and that got them to inching.

We can reasonably, from an operations perspective, say "crazy" and "insane" but to (mis)quote another famous Russian leader, "Quantity has a quality all its own".

It's only really crazy if it somehow leads to an overall collapse or general failure of the (recast) objectives, which one could see if the concentration was leveraged by UA in counter-battery or the like (resulting in unsustainable losses of the concentrated RA artillery), but it appears that the RA is learning / adapting and that UA drone ops used to support destruction of RA artillery are waning in the main effort area due to more effective / more concentrated Russian air defense.

The arty concentration doesn't appear to be hurting the RA in other areas; they aren't advancing elsewhere but aren't materially losing ground either.

It seems to me that the RA is finally playing to its strengths, one of which is arty, and if inching gets the job done, then Putin gets harder to dislodge, like a tick burrowing in a little at a time.

Not trying to be argumentative, just thinking that when we use descriptions like the above we tend to underestimate how much fight is left in an opponent, leading to complacency.  

 

 

[Haiduk]

Lost Armor talks. Fighter of LDPR forces tells he has seen 4 of 5 Ka-52 sorties only with incendiary rockets. Then he tells LDPR forces have a lack of ATGM missiles, so even too low number of videos of its usage in comparison with Stugna-P (diring position war 2016-2021 they posted much more ATGM launches, than now). Further he says artillery reduced own activity (unknown is he meant Russian or LDPR), D-20 of LDPR still work enough actively, when 2A65 Msta-B either knoked out or shot out own barrels. In comments somebody wrote Msta has 7500 shots resource, but this howitzers in UKR service did 9000 shots during 2014-2015 campagn and many of them had because of this the same accuracy like MLRS (dispersion increased too much)

  

Edited June 23, 2022 by Haiduk

[Huba]

Something to lighten the mood. The Naval Attache didn't behave particularly diplomatically, but the zombie's meltdown caused by it is hilarious, I laughed so hard my wife came to check if I finally went mad.

 

[sburke]

52 minutes ago, BigDog944 said:

Take some time to think about what you just wished for please, for your own sake.

I meant for them to just end their own lives. In thinking about it I still wish they would just end their own lives.

[Beleg85]

44 minutes ago, Huba said:

IIRC, the initial UA feint made RU move deep into Severodonetsk and officially claim it taken, only to be counterattacked and almost pushed out of the city. They made look as if they didn't intend to put any fight, so orcs proceeded to take the area and announced the victory. At this point, the RU options was to either mass everything and take the bloody place no matter what, or be humiliated thoroughly, possibly with UA infantry infiltrating the forests around and getting really close to vulnerable rear areas.

I'm really trying not to give UA more credit that it deserve ( which is plenty anyway) but in this case it was REALLY well played on their end.

Curiosuly, I read some opinions the stand at Severdonetsk started from local Teritorial Defence/permanently located soldiers who refused to leave city and wanted to fight there for at least some time more. So UkrGenSaff added more and more units into the furnace as time go, and in the effect this street battle developed.

Historians will have plenty of work to do sorting this war out, so many '?'s .

15 minutes ago, Huba said:

Something to lighten the mood. The Naval Attache didn't behave particularly diplomatically, but the zombie's meltdown caused by it is hilarious, I laughed so hard my wife came to check if I finally went mad.

With all repulsive personas in Russian state media landscape Skabaieva is one of the worst. She is xenophobic, brutal and burish, but most of all she has terrible hair.

Another video of Russian armoured train, this time longer and with shots from inside. We need those trains in CM...