How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

[MURZ] However,... I'm ****ing tired of arguing.... Now I just don't have time for these arguments anymore. You'll see for yourself.

Yeah, well you're not the only one, boychik.

Harking back to one of the very early comments from our esteemed host: 

....Ukrainians merely have to keep killing Russians.

If the UA can't solve for a combined arms offensive and encirclement, the next best option for them is to *sharply* step up the pace of killing and maiming of Russians. Until the invaders simply run out of bodies.

And if the 'volunteers' are indeed the SS formations keeping Russia in this war, they need to be brought to their Cherkassy and Elsenborn Ridge, asap. Screw the vehicles, target men. Bleed them white.

Don't depend on human wave attacks in the fall making it easy. Ukraine and its allies should begin prepping large purpose designed kill zones.  Select places (to quote that old Chinese guy) the enemy is obliged to attack.  I believe brother @Grigblately listed a few in Donbas. 

...The Geneva Convention left this highway several exits ago. Keep the bunkers formidable looking but thinly manned. Fill them, along with every road, track, bush and  house with millions of tiny mines and CBUs. Bombardment won't clear them. Let the Bayraktars and SoF teams prioritise killing their demining vehicles. Snipe and drone their pioneer troops, whatever renders them ineffective.  Keep blowing the legs off their infantry in the hundreds, day after day. They will eventually go home.

None of this gives me any pleasure or satisfaction personally. But it looks to me like the surest path to victory at present.

So there is a long held myth that the Revolutionaries fought like the natives, while the dumb old British stood in their straight lines, and that is why the American's won - this is, of course, not true.

While some elements of that war did fight like an insurgency - there have been elements of Cossacks/partisans etc in every war - they had nothing to do with the decisive battles such as Yorktown.  Light Infantry and axillaries had a recon and infiltration role but they never stood up to major British fighting formations

One of the reasons was technology - the musket rifles were best employed en masse.  Small groups hiding behind fences etc could never muster the firepower.

More importantly, I argue, was that the Americans needed to be recognizable.  They relied a lot on French support and in order to be credible they had to look and fight like a European military, or risk that support drying up.

Ukraine is facing the same problem.  One of their constraints is - look and fight western, or they risk resolve and support splitting.  So while the use of AP landmines is actually not outlawed by the Geneva Conventions (it is restricted in employment) - there is that nasty Ottawa Treaty that Ukraine signed onto, and so did a lot of supporting nations.  Ukraine had, and still has leeway here, particularly from its biggest supporter, the US - who did not sign the Ottawa Treaty; however, they likely want to avoid actions that become political liability.  Ukraine could pull out of the Ottawa Treaty, they have plenty of cause, but it would likely split its support.  US would pressure and call in a lot of chips but it would likely cause problems domestically.

So I am thinking millions of AP mines are off the table, at least for now.  The fact that we have no reports of the UA turning the Donbass into the inner-Korean border with minefields is a good sign that they are not close to desperate yet.   Mines are being use; however, so far they appear to be AT, which are perfectly legal and outside the Ottawa Treaty - so are DPICM, as Ukraine never signed onto the Oslo convention.

Finally AP minefield are not some magic forcefield - they are porous and can be breached by many means.  Covering all those minefields is going to be resource intensive, as will putting them in and I think the UA has higher priorities.  Now what will be interesting is when/if we see massive Russian minefield efforts, that is a clear sign they are going on the defensive. 

Edited August 26, 2022 by The_Capt

[Artkin]

Indeed those MTLB-6BM with the autocannon turret do seem pretty rare in this conflict. I think we have seen way more BMP-1AM. They always were very strange to me, and Galloping Horsefall (IIRC) was a weird scenario to play. 

[Billy Ringo]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Updated theory on Dugina's assassination is as follows:

 

 

Underlying Concerns

1. We've seen a lot of evidence that there's trouble in the DLPR's military and political establishments.  All is not well there and there is ample evidence that the troubles seems to be getting more extreme and more obvious to observers.
2. The political and military importance of DLPR on the overall Russian war effort can not be understated.  Without them the central reason provided to Russians (and the world) for going to war is gone.  Also lost is a huge quantity of motivated fighters and a population base that can be turned into cannon fodder without much objection within Russia itself.
3. If the DLPR revolts, breaks down, or otherwise ceases to be functional it will likely make the military situation in Ukraine's other areas completely untenable, possibly to the point of military collapse.  A military collapse would likely erode the military's influence within the Kremlin to a point never before seen since Putin's time.  And that is the best case.

The Military

1. We've already seen many weeks of Russian military pragmatism at work as Russian forces have been drained out of the Donbas to beef up the south.  The DLPR has been left to fight pretty much on its own to keep up the illusion that the war is still moving along as planned.

 

 

Steve

If Putin is looking for a way out of this mess, could he possibly blame the people of Donetsk and Lukansk as a means of deflecting failure and purpose by basically saying--"we offered them help, but they weren't willing to help themselves  We fought and gave them everything, but in the end they rejected our help.  They failed themselves. "

He can take a few shots at the Russian military and then move to end the special operations.  It may be BS, but it may be enough BS to take the failure off of Putin's back internally and keep him in power.  (Now, Ukraine and the West will have a completely different perspective but that's a different audience.)

I'll stop and wait for incoming....

[riptides]

14 minutes ago, Billy Ringo said:

If Putin is looking for a way out of this mess, could he possibly blame the people of Donetsk and Lukansk as a means of deflecting failure and purpose by basically saying--"we offered them help, but they weren't willing to help themselves  We fought and gave them everything, but in the end they rejected our help.  They failed themselves. "

He can take a few shots at the Russian military and then move to end the special operations.  It may be BS, but it may be enough BS to take the failure off of Putin's back internally and keep him in power.  (Now, Ukraine and the West will have a completely different perspective but that's a different audience.)

I'll stop and wait for incoming....

Putin looks to have that as an out, and the RU Nat issue that is festering as an out.

On papers signed and what to do, what not to do, I think the West is beyond telling the Ukrainians how to liberate their homeland. It's fricking war. And I imagine the worst of it is yet to come or be uncovered.

[chrisl]

5 hours ago, Huba said:

I'm no (bridge) engineer, but how is this supposed to be more resistant to damage than the regular bridge? These sections are floating, right? After being punctured it will just sink, and river flow will break it into pieces and that will be all she wrote. Given GMLRS at non-max distance hit literally vertically, achieving a hit shouldn't be a problem too. Or am I missing something?

I think it's more that we now have evidence that Vlad doesn't do movie nights with Kim.

[Cederic]

5 hours ago, Huba said:

Oh, and I wonder if with the delay fuse set to max, could GMLRS go through the entire barge and explode underneath it? It would be crazily devastating I think...

I'm wondering why you would bother going so high tech?

A rubber dinghy full of TNT floating down the middle of the river would do the trick. 20 of them with sufficient steerage and a hobbyist level remote control could hit every barge.

[Beleg85]

@Battlefront.com made very nice arguments and couple of important points, especially connections between nats and LDPR. I think he may be right, but we need to see and closely observe behaviour of officiall nationalists in forthcoming weeks.

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

It's also important to remember that the Ru Nat movement is pretty much the opposite of a bloc. Some will be fanatical, some will be simply opportunists. Sort of like the Bolsheviks in 1916 when you think about it.

This.

We shouldn't treat nats as one block. It is true some of them are conveniently put together under Malofieiev hand, but not all of them- probably not even majority. There were serious issues between for example people connected to Russian Orthodox Church, narodno-bolsheviks (who have several surprisingly "intellectual" figures, like Prilepin or Limonov) and military nationalists. While they work in broadly similar vector, they have very different visions of Russia's past and future. Parts of the Church, especially those close to Yekaterynurg monasteries, would for example like to literally revitalize tsarist Russia- a thought other find absurd. Btw. church connections give "safer" choice for those few serious Russian figures that would like to flirt with nationalists but are afraid of Kremlin reactions. D.Medvedeev is good example here. Of smaller political personas- no other than Miss Poklonskaya, alls-favourite anime girl:

Edited August 26, 2022 by Beleg85

[Battlefront.com]

23 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

We shouldn't treat nats as one block. It is true some of them are conveniently put together under Malofieiev hand, but not all of them- probably not even majority.

Absolutely.  Evidence of this goes all the way back to the 2014 "uprisings".  The rough groupings of the nationalist types I saw that would fit were the neonazis, religious (Girkin was in this group), Cossacks (though they were also heavily criminal too), and "patriots".  The order roughly reflects degree of fanaticism.  Individuals within each, of course, can range between batpoop crazy fanatic all the way to passing fad.

There's a lot of cats to be herded, that's for sure!

Steve

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

It's also important to remember that the Ru Nat movement is pretty much the opposite of a bloc. Some will be fanatical, some will be simply opportunists. Sort of like the Bolsheviks in 1916 when you think about it.

 

21 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Absolutely.  Evidence of this goes all the way back to the 2014 "uprisings".  The rough groupings of the nationalist types I saw that would fit were the neonazis, religious (Girkin was in this group), Cossacks (though they were also heavily criminal too), and "patriots".  The order roughly reflects degree of fanaticism.  Individuals within each, of course, can range between batpoop crazy fanatic all the way to passing fad.

There's a lot of cats to be herded, that's for sure!

Steve

All of this closely parallels, or more precisely mirrors 1916-1918. In 1916-18 you had had seething mass of revolutionaries who wanted to depose the Czar and stop the war at any price. Now you have a seething mass of imperial revanchists who want to reinstate a Czar, and in their heart of hearts, declare a holy war and conquer all the way to Paris. I would simply remind everyone that in November 1917 one the the very worst of those revolutionaries seized power and did his level best to wreck the twentieth century. We really need to manage the collapse of the Russian government a little better this time.

As an aside do we have the slightest idea who their candidate/figure head for the actual throne is?

Second aside,  what is the command structure of the military units around Moscow proper? Lenin succeeded by promising the the army units around St Petersburg exactly what they wanted. I am pretty sure Ghirkin knows that rather well.

[womble]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So I am thinking millions of AP mines are off the table, at least for now.  The fact that we have no reports of the UA turning the Donbass into the inner-Korean border with minefields is a good sign that they are not close to desperate yet.

Aye. The other thing about mines (especially AP mines) is that they are completely indiscriminate and would need picking up again once UKR wins. That's a slow, expensive and dangerous job that they've seen far too many other countries have to undertake, so AP minefields on their own territory would, I agree, be a sign of giving up the objective of retaking (or even the aspiration to hold on to) terrain.

To some extent, the same applies to RUS. While the maximalist goal of taking and holding whatever fraction of Ukraine the propagandists can get away with claiming this week remains, belts of AP mines are something of an own goal.

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Grigb said:

The difference is noticeable.

What's if our models of RU army collapse are current in principle but missing crucial details - effect Ru Nats hardcore volunteers are having on the war.  What if RU army already lost it? What if it is actions of RU hardcore volunteers in L-DPR allows to prolong the war and keep RU in the fight?

From where came mid-summer successes that gave RU the general feeling that everything is fine? Severodonets and Lisichansk capture with heavy involvement of RU hardcore units. Late summer sucess? Capture of Pisky, capture outskirts of Bakhmut and Soledar. In terms of psychological impact Kherson, Kharkiv, Zaporojie is just a periphery for RU psyche.

War is not lost for RU psyche while in Donbass is fighting and pushing UKR out.

So, this is where I start disagreeing that Kherson for example is critical for war. It is probably critical for RU command and Putin but for ending this war quickly I believe Donbass front is much more important. RU command might run completely from Kherson but RU Nats will not stop fighting in Donbass. And as long as they are fighting the war will continue.

This is good stuff.  I was pondering this late last night but too tired to do much with it   Let's see how I do now.

I agree with you that for some time now the Kremlin's plans for military operations have rested heavily on DLPR forces.  Both in terms of their fighting abilities (including being motivated!), but also their unique ability to replace losses in a way that doesn't upset Russia's domestic politics.  The Kremlin needs them for practical reasons (fighting) as well as political (Special Military Operation's primary stated purpose).  That gives them a lot of power and influence even if indirectly.

Conversely, Russia's military is barely keeping itself together in terms of numbers and motivation to fight.  Units are seemingly capable and willing to hold defensive positions, but the ability to mount more than small scale attacks seems to be over.  They are exhausted and are, unlike DLPR, fighting on 100% foreign soil for the benefit of someone other than themselves.

Russia's primary challenge at the moment is one of troop density.  They've experienced first hand since March that Ukraine is capable of achieving favorable attack ratios at a respectable scale.  Russia's ability to find replacements is problematic, to say the least.  This left Russia with no option other than to shorten the front, first with the north, then with Kharkiv (not by their choice), and now the Donbas.

The question before us, I think, is what is going on with the politics of the DLPR.  Three major possibilities:

1. Bird In The Hand: they realize Russia isn't capable/willing to invest what is needed to take significant amounts of new territory and they lack the resources to do more than unsustainable and slow advances.  Bleeding themselves white trying to take something that isn't likely achievable puts them at risk of being too weak to counter a Ukrainian offensive.  They decide it is better to call what they have "good enough", dig in, rebuild forces, and hope Ukraine loses interest in taking back the Donbas.
2. Two In The Bush: try to force Russia into recommitting significant forces to keep the advance going.  Since Russia is obviously not pursuing this path now, the DLPR leadership would have to do something pretty ballsy to get Putin to shift things around.  If Russia loses control of Kherson as a result, well that's Russia's problem.
3. Time For A Divorce: DLPR has different goals from this war than Russia does, yet Russia's goals are what is determining when and how the war ends.  On the flip side, Ukraine is more interested in defeating Russia (including Crimea) than it is retaking the Donbas.  I'd be shocked if DLPR and Kyiv haven't been keeping such lines of communications open throughout this war.  It is possible that DLPR and Kyiv could work out something that would be beneficial to both and leave Russia totally screwed.

I have absolutely no way of knowing what is going on, but I'm sure the DLPR leadership is thinking about their options and is coming up with similar scenarios.  Personally, I favor Time For A Divorce as it would inflict the most damage on Russia and probably end the war sooner than the other two options.  For those reasons I think Ukrainian's people would go along with a "cease fire" with DLPR with the details to be worked out later (i.e. still keeping future options open).

Steve

[LongLeftFlank]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

More importantly, I argue, was that the Americans needed to be recognizable.  They relied a lot on French support and in order to be credible they had to look and fight like a European military, or risk that support drying up.

Ukraine is facing the same problem.  One of their constraints is - look and fight western, or they risk resolve and support splitting.  So while the use of AP landmines is actually not outlawed by the Geneva Conventions (it is restricted in employment) - there is that nasty Ottawa Treaty that Ukraine signed onto, and so did a lot of supporting nations.  Ukraine had, and still has leeway here, particularly from its biggest supporter, the US - who did not sign the Ottawa Treaty; however, they likely want to avoid actions that become political liability.  Ukraine could pull out of the Ottawa Treaty, they have plenty of cause, but it would likely split its support.  US would pressure and call in a lot of chips but it would likely cause problems domestically.

So I am thinking millions of AP mines are off the table, at least for now.  The fact that we have no reports of the UA turning the Donbass into the inner-Korean border with minefields is a good sign that they are not close to desperate yet.   Mines are being use; however, so far they appear to be AT, which are perfectly legal and outside the Ottawa Treaty - so are DPICM, as Ukraine never signed onto the Oslo convention.

Finally AP minefield are not some magic forcefield - they are porous and can be breached by many means.  Covering all those minefields is going to be resource intensive, as will putting them in and I think the UA has higher priorities.  Now what will be interesting is when/if we see massive Russian minefield efforts, that is a clear sign they are going on the defensive. 

Yes, yes, well noted ahem, yes, well that advice is One Hundred Percent ESG and Equator Principles compliant. Not to mention Queensberry Rules. And no doubt the properly constituted authorities will take those boundaries fully into account in their audit processes.

****

...Meanwhile, Ukraine's "Western acting and appearing" army urgently needs to get the Russians (who still outnumber them 3.5 to 1) the f++k out of their lands. Because, make no mistake, Ukraine's best and brightest are paying a hellish blood price 6 months in. Their emerging economy is fully harnessed to the war effort, but that can't last forever.

...And I doubt they're betting the kolkhoz on Marshall Plan Part Deux. As you yourself have said (wisely), banking on the enduring gratitude of Team USA, still less the Euroweasels, is an "I'll totally call you in the morning" bet that only valiant but desperate historical have-nots like the Kurds, Hmong and Khampa make.

...So if I'm Ukraine, unleashing my inner Viking, I am going to adopt what works and is within my capabilities (and mine warfare sure as hell is!), and make my excuses to the pearl clutching set later. 

Also, as you know even better than I, a looooong list of Western proxies, most notably a certain Middle Eastern state beloved of Congress, have brazened their way through worse behaviour.

*****

And as for mines, sure, of course they can be breached. Oh goody gumdrops, here's another square kilometer of pockmarked wasteland. That isn't the point. The point is to blow off a bunch of people's legs. If there's a better way to do that, go for it.

Sorry about the snark. Actually, no I'm not.... 

Do you want to kill im, or not? 

Edited August 26, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Haiduk]

Nova Kakhovka bridge after today's strike. Russian military truck turned out in wrong place and in wrong time. Cameraman says about 8 KIA.

The section of the bridge lools like completely impassable

Graphic video!

 

Edited August 26, 2022 by Haiduk

[Grigb]

There is one interesting development under RU separatism tag.

This is Yevgeny Roizman

You probably have heard something about him. He can be considered an opposition politician and liberal. But he is not a classical RU liberal aka Moscow/Petersburg soft type. He is a street type politician. Tough sort of liberal from tough sort of liberal Ural city. He is famous for his fight against drug abuser and the drug mafia in Yekaterinburg in late 90s. There were rumors (I did not dig deeper as I was not interested in RU local stuff) that they used physical force fighting narcs and healing drug users. Given the tough region and dirty ways of narcs I believe it is true. However, it is not important.

What is important is that he is well known and popular in Yekaterinburg (a region with a strong separatist mood). And he is an outspoken critic of war. He was supposed to get jailed a long time ago but due to his popularity it was a difficult case for the Kremlin. But a couple of days ago his time has come:

As Yevgeny Roizman was being led out of his flat by police this morning, a waiting journalist asked him why he was being charged. "Just for one phrase," said Mr Roizman, 59, "'The invasion of Ukraine.'" He has had a serious criminal case opened against him for "discrediting the Russian armed forces".

Nesmyan aka civilian Girkin believes that Kremlin planned to create conflict between locals and local authorities to drive the edge between them forcing authorities closer to Kremlin.

But - and it is important for us - something went wrong on the part of the local authorities. He was supposed to be transferred to Moscow. Yet, according to claims the governor fought Moscow and won. Roizman was left at Yekaterinburg. He had trial with local judges who instead of tough measures assigned just some inconvenient ones and freed him immediately. Compare that with Gorinov who got 7 years in Moscow. 

In my humble opinion it is the first noticeable separatist crack in an otherwise strong RU pressure cooker.

[LongLeftFlank]

5 minutes ago, Grigb said:

There is one interesting development under RU separatism tag.

This is Yevgeny Roizman

You probably have heard something about him. He can be considered an opposition politician and liberal. But he is not a classical RU liberal aka Moscow/Petersburg soft type. He is a street type politician. Tough sort of liberal from tough sort of liberal Ural city. He is famous for his fight against drug abuser and the drug mafia in Yekaterinburg in late 90s. There were rumors (I did not dig deeper as I was not interested in RU local stuff) that they used physical force fighting narcs and healing drug users. Given the tough region and dirty ways of narcs I believe it is true. However, it is not important.

What is important is that he is well known and popular in Yekaterinburg (a region with a strong separatist mood). And he is an outspoken critic of war. He was supposed to get jailed a long time ago but due to his popularity it was a difficult case for the Kremlin. But a couple of days ago his time has come:

As Yevgeny Roizman was being led out of his flat by police this morning, a waiting journalist asked him why he was being charged. "Just for one phrase," said Mr Roizman, 59, "'The invasion of Ukraine.'" He has had a serious criminal case opened against him for "discrediting the Russian armed forces".

Nesmyan aka civilian Girkin believes that Kremlin planned to create conflict between locals and local authorities to drive the edge between them forcing authorities closer to Kremlin.

But - and it is important for us - something went wrong on the part of the local authorities. He was supposed to be transferred to Moscow. Yet, according to claims the governor fought Moscow and won. Roizman was left at Yekaterinburg. He had trial with local judges who instead of tough measures assigned just some inconvenient ones and freed him immediately. Compare that with Gorinov who got 7 years in Moscow. 

In my humble opinion it is the first noticeable separatist crack in an otherwise strong RU pressure cooker.

Russia's own Rodrigo Duterte?

[Grigb]

1 minute ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Russia's own Rodrigo Duterte?

Not that bloody. I do not think they resorted to direct murders (otherwise Kremlin would get him to prison a long time ago), but I suspect they literally beat a lot of people to push drugs of the streets. Tough place, tough times, tough liberal. 

[Grigb]

25 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The question before us, I think, is what is going on with the politics of the DLPR.  Three major possibilities:

1. Bird In The Hand: they realize Russia isn't capable/willing to invest what is needed to take significant amounts of new territory and they lack the resources to do more than unsustainable and slow advances.  Bleeding themselves white trying to take something that isn't likely achievable puts them at risk of being too weak to counter a Ukrainian offensive.  They decide it is better to call what they have "good enough", dig in, rebuild forces, and hope Ukraine loses interest in taking back the Donbas.
2. Two In The Bush: try to force Russia into recommitting significant forces to keep the advance going.  Since Russia is obviously not pursuing this path now, the DLPR leadership would have to do something pretty ballsy to get Putin to shift things around.  If Russia loses control of Kherson as a result, well that's Russia's problem.
3. Time For A Divorce: DLPR has different goals from this war than Russia does, yet Russia's goals are what is determining when and how the war ends.  On the flip side, Ukraine is more interested in defeating Russia (including Crimea) than it is retaking the Donbas.  I'd be shocked if DLPR and Kyiv haven't been keeping such lines of communications open throughout this war.  It is possible that DLPR and Kyiv could work out something that would be beneficial to both and leave Russia totally screwed.

I have absolutely no way of knowing what is going on, but I'm sure the DLPR leadership is thinking about their options and is coming up with similar scenarios.  Personally, I favor Time For A Divorce as it would inflict the most damage on Russia and probably end the war sooner than the other two options.  For those reasons I think Ukrainian's people would go along with a "cease fire" with DLPR with the details to be worked out later (i.e. still keeping future options open).

Steve

We need to consider the Kremlin realized these possibilities some time ago and made a move. Because they started to replace L-DPR political cadre with RU men several months ago. I am not sure but I believe L-DPR leadership now is mostly RU. I believe locals are irrelevant regarding top political decisions now. The Kremlin might be military and politically incompetent, but they do know how to fight against coups. 

That means kremlin continue to bleed L-DPR unabated but there will be unofficial cease fires arranged on the local level or outright local mutinies against authorities who push to continue to fight. Or both - unofficial cease fires > mutinies. And then it might be 1917 scenario but on small L-DPR scale. Probably hardcore volunteers will try to move in to fill the vacuum (filling the vacuum after Kremlin losing control is what they are discussing for years).  

As a complication I remember some years ago Murz said to other RU nats that the republics are curated by different RU organizations like one is curated by FSB and other GRU. That is why he chose Luhansk. But I do not remember which is which. 

[The_Capt]

54 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

And as for mines, sure, of course they can be breached. Oh goody gumdrops, here's another square kilometer of pockmarked wasteland. That isn't the point. The point is to blow off a bunch of people's legs. If there's a better way to do that, go for it.

Sorry about the snark. Actually, no I'm not....

Really specific complaints there.  I am pretty sure the UA has the whole "leg blowing off" part covered based on even a modest take on casualty figures.  I mean we could always push more indirect fire and, of course ammo.  Of course if the sole driving logic is "kill more Russians!  Damn the consequences!!" A combination of chemical weapons and a deep biostrike would pay fantastic dividends in that department - a little bit 'o' sarin at the front door, a dash of anthrax in the back.  

Here is a crazy idea, modern militaries have forgotten more ways to blow off legs and kill people than you can imagine; however, at some point they become totally counter-productive - like getting into a barfight and pulling out the other guys eye and eating it, it sounds cool and definitely has an effect but your friends are not going to share a cab ride home with you.

My point on AP landmines is pretty simple: the political cost will not be offset by the battlefield gains.  If you find that frustrating, well try fighting an insurgency with a hand and three fingers tied behind you back and come back to me.

Edited August 26, 2022 by The_Capt

[Grigb]

Fun fact from Roizman case -  Malofeev and his goons wrote denunciation on Roizman.

Quote

Konstantin Malofeev said that the criminal case against Yevgeny Roizman is "largely" connected with the denunciation from the Tsargrad society

Konstantin Malofeev, the founder of the Tsargrad channel, said that the criminal case against the politician Yevgeny Roizman is "largely" connected with the activities of the Tsargrad society. Malofeev wrote about this in VKontakte on August 24, Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev drew attention to his post.

"There is no doubt that the detention is largely connected with the initiative of the Human Rights Center of the Tsargrad Society to verify the Roizman case. The special operation is doing its job: not only liberates Russian lands in Ukraine, but also cleanses Russia itself," Malofeev's post says.

On the page of the Tsargrad society itself in Vkontakte, it is claimed that it is "the main initiator of checking the Roizman case, initiating a criminal case and creating a wide resonance in the information field."

"The Human Rights Center of the Tsargrad Society has already sent an appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation. The first time he was able to get off with a fine of 50 thousand rubles, then he continued to publicly discredit our armed forces, and for the second time there will be no warning, he will receive a real term," the post says.

 

[Haiduk]

Assasinations of collaborants by resistance groups

1. Berdiansk, Zaporizhzhia oblast

IED with striking elements was set on the tree - deputy chief of road police Alexandr Lokesnikov was deadly wounded and died in hospital after explosion.

2. Starobil'sk, Luhansk oblast (occupied after 24th Feb)

The car of Askyar Laishev, the chief of MREO service (registring of cars and permissions for driving) LPR police  was blew up on 11th Aug and died in hospital through two days. The video was issued only now. 

3. Mykhaylivka settlement, Zaporizhzhia oblast

Local "gauleiter", the "head of settlement council" Ivan Sushko was eliminated with car bomb on 24th Aug. 

Edited August 26, 2022 by Haiduk

[cesmonkey]

Short video showing the various weapons ships the US and UK will soon be sending to Ukraine:

 

 

[Haiduk]

Russian Bashkiria Republic volunteer battalion named after Dostovalov before department to Ukraine, likely on Izium or Kharkiv direction.

Likely all or most of "regional" volunteer battalions will be included in 3rd Reserve Army Corps. Theese units will get proper equipment - for example this battalion got BMP-3. Interesting, reserve units are receiving BMP-3, when for regular units, which lost the same vehicles, Russian command gives stored BMP-1 and BMP-2

In present time structure of this 3rd Army Corps is unknown. I also can't say will include this Corps already formed BARS-battalions (of reservists) or not and BARS will remain as light (or semi-light) infantry units 

 

Edited August 26, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

UKR YPR-765 somewhere close to frontline

[Grigb]

Map time  - Slavyansk-Siversk direction.

[pavel.k]

57 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Russian Bashkiria Republic volunteer battalion named after Dostovalov before department to Ukraine, likely on Izium or Kharkiv direction.

Likely all or most of "regional" volunteer battalions will be included in 3rd Reserve Army Corps. Theese units will get proper equipment - for example this battalion got BMP-3. Interesting, reserve units are receiving BMP-3, when for regular units, which lost the same vehicles, Russian command gives stored BMP-1 and BMP-2

In present time structure of this 3rd Army Corps is unknown. I also can't say will include this Corps already formed BARS-battalions (of reservists) or not and BARS will remain as light (or semi-light) infantry units 

 

I have noticed from videos through the war that BMP-3 often explode in very spectacular way. Maybe it the reason why they are giving them to volunteers now?