How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[chuckdyke]

11 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

https://www.euronews.com/2022/08/29/dutch-commando-soldier-dies-after-shooting-outside-us-hotel

Godverdomme.

Probably told by some drunks to speak English. It doesn't take much there.

[Aragorn2002]

10 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Probably told by some drunks to speak English. It doesn't take much there.

Hope they hang them.

[Taranis]

"Death of the chairman of the board of directors of Loukoil
Ravil Maganov, chairman of the board of Lukoil oil company, has died. “He fell out of the window of a Moscow hospital”, report the Interfax and TASS agencies, the latter referring to a “suicide”. In a first dispatch, the TASS agency mentioned a “fall from the sixth floor”. Lukoil, a private group, called in early March, a week after Russian forces entered Ukraine and as the West stepped up sanctions, to quickly halt the Russian offensive there."
 

 

[chuckdyke]

Just now, Aragorn2002 said:

Hope they hang them.

Standard excuse we faced three burley men and feared for our lives. Will be drilled into their subconsciousness by some lawyer supported by the NRA. We had an Australian woman called the police officers because an altercation near her house. Naturally she behaved like an Australian woman addressed the police and got shot by the officer who feared for his life. He has been released from prison recently. Better stick to the Ukraine here. 

[Taranis]

Tanks on the streets of Enerhodar  (so in the area of Zaporizhzhia NPP)

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Taranis

[Aragorn2002]

12 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Standard excuse we faced three burley men and feared for our lives. Will be drilled into their subconsciousness by some lawyer supported by the NRA. We had an Australian woman called the police officers because an altercation near her house. Naturally she behaved like an Australian woman addressed the police and got shot by the officer who feared for his life. He has been released from prison recently. Better stick to the Ukraine here. 

Yeah, you're right. Better to leave it at that.

[Grigb]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

This video belonged to volunteer Chehen battalion, at the end of video cameraman said "28th of August". 

Thank you, did not watch it till the end. So, most likely UKR attacked Arckahgelske simultaneously ith other settlements but RU admitted it when they were defeated and ran away.   

 

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

About other news, here is RUMINT from Russian TG channel, among usual statements "UKR offensive is exhausting, VDV and Rosgvardia are eliminating the enemy", most interesting this - "AFU are in Davydiv Brid settlement"

On balance of probabilities I would say UKR troops pushed to the outskirts of Brid and fighting there but the majority of settlement is still under RU control. It looks like UKR made surprise crossing to the west of Brid and hit RU defenses from the side.  

 

[Grigb]

1 hour ago, Taranis said:

"Moscow accuses Ukraine of sending a team of "saboteurs" near the Zaporizhia power plant
While Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), announces his intention to go and inspect the Zaporizh plant, Moscow accuses the Ukrainian army of having led a landing of "saboteurs" near the central. “Around 6 a.m. [5 a.m. in Paris], two groups of Ukrainian army saboteurs, up to sixty people, landed aboard seven boats (…) 3 kilometers northeast of the nuclear power plant of Zaporizhia", announced the Russian Ministry of Defense in a press release, adding that it had taken "measures to annihilate the enemy".

On Telegram, the head of the military-civilian administration of Enerhodar (pro-Russian), quoted by the Russian official agency Interfax, published the images of a correspondent of the Russian newspaper Izvestia showing what is supposed to be the bombardment of Enerhodar by the Ukrainian army."

Warning propaganda (links) :
https://t.me/mod_russia_en/3873
https://ria.ru/20220901/vsu-1813618159.html

Yes, I know it but i do not believe these UKR forces.

[Grigb]

1 hour ago, Taranis said:

"Moscow accuses Ukraine of sending a team of "saboteurs" near the Zaporizhia power plant
While Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), announces his intention to go and inspect the Zaporizh plant, Moscow accuses the Ukrainian army of having led a landing of "saboteurs" near the central. “Around 6 a.m. [5 a.m. in Paris], two groups of Ukrainian army saboteurs, up to sixty people, landed aboard seven boats (…) 3 kilometers northeast of the nuclear power plant of Zaporizhia", announced the Russian Ministry of Defense in a press release, adding that it had taken "measures to annihilate the enemy".

On Telegram, the head of the military-civilian administration of Enerhodar (pro-Russian), quoted by the Russian official agency Interfax, published the images of a correspondent of the Russian newspaper Izvestia showing what is supposed to be the bombardment of Enerhodar by the Ukrainian army."

Warning propaganda (links) :
https://t.me/mod_russia_en/3873
https://ria.ru/20220901/vsu-1813618159.html

Yes, I know it but i do not believe these UKR forces.

[Taranis]

11 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Yes, I know it but i do not believe these UKR forces.

I agree. I would not understand the Ukrainian interest in taking the Central with a special force lightning strike if there is no immediate possibility of sending regular troops there to hold the gains (Market Garden, Varsity etc in mind).

Not to mention an action of sabotage which would not be in the Ukrainian interest because it would cut them off from the power supply.

Edited September 1, 2022 by Taranis

[LongLeftFlank]

1 hour ago, chuckdyke said:

Probably told by some drunks to speak English. It doesn't take much there.

EDIT/ Removed as off topic and nobody wants to go here. Figure it out.

Edited September 1, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Grigb]

Just now, Taranis said:

I agree. I would not understand the Ukrainian interest in taking the Central with a special force lightning strike if there is no immediate possibility of sending regular troops there to hold the gains (Market Garden, Varsity etc in mind)

120 men in boats to take on full RU grouping. It is BS for internal audience. 

[LongLeftFlank]

22 minutes ago, Grigb said:

120 men in boats to take on full RU grouping. It is BS for internal audience. 

No doubt some corpses will be conveniently found. Perhaps garbed as sinister British commandos!

....And in the pocket of one will be found a droll note from Lord Mountbatten: "He might bring some sardines with him - they are 'on points' here!"

Jolly good!

[Battlefront.com]

Yeah, let's keep the American gun violence stuff out of this discussion.  It is as relevant as talking about who their favorite Kardashian is, only slightly less divisive.

Steve

[kevinkin]

Not sure I would send funds off to never-never land. But anyway. 

https://signmyrocket.com/#about

[JonS]

4 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

aside:  that's either 'snow that eats fog' or 'fog that eats snow', or maybe both, I dunno). Punctuated equilibria or sumfink.

As I understand it: the fog is doing the eating, the snow is being eaten. It refers to a particular and real meteorological phenomenon in which fog rolls in over a heavily snow covered piece of terrain, then when the fog lifts the snow is just ... gone.

In otherwords, speaking metaphorically; something insubstantial and ephemeral (the fog/Ukranian army) erases something hard and tangible (snow/Russian army) in a way that is mysterious and can't be observed or easily explained.

Edited September 1, 2022 by JonS

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

Certainly getting the feeling that the offensive has some tactical successes but might be grinding to a halt. Then again, hard to tell and basically a total arm chair take on the whole thing.

It's too early and we have too little information to tell what is going on.  We also don't know what the intent of the Ukrainians is with any certainty.

A classic reminder about fog of war is the Battle of Khafji in the First Gulf War.  Small US force was hit by a concentrated Iraqi recon group.  The US initially go the worst of it, until artillery and airpower came in to stabilize the situation.  It shook a lot of people's nerve.  Until it was known that it was a large scale Iraqi attack that was completely laid waste by a comparatively tiny force.  Things looked very different from that perspective

In the situation we're in now the Russians have had time to dig in.  It seems most of their best forces are available for this fight.  They have known the Ukrainians are coming for them for months now and generally where and from what direction.  We should expect the fighting to be difficult and even slow to start with.  It would be unusual for the situation to be otherwise, historically speaking.  Even the Germans in Normandy and Bagration initially put up a pretty tough fight more often than not.

If the front seems stable it might be only a temporary illusion.  The point we're looking for is probably a couple of days away.  This is where, typically, a successful attacker has worn out the defender's ability to hold its ground.  It usually comes quite suddenly and often initially only in a spot or two, but then quickly expands because the rest of the defending force is not all that different.

On the other hand, if the front largely holds for a couple of days there could be trouble for Ukraine.  Here is where attacker reserves and determination become critically important.  If Ukraine runs out of either, the attack stalls and the front temporarily freezes, possibly with minor tactical position shifting.  Assuming, of course, the Russians are also exhausted, otherwise we could see a counter attack that either ends the offensive definitively or (worse) pushes Ukraine back.

This is just typical behavior and not necessarily a predictor of how things might go.  The front could stabilize for many days or even weeks and yet Ukraine retains initiative because it plays this ultra conservatively.  Personally, I doubt it.  While Ukraine has shown an ability to fight war very differently than expectations, there are reasons that a deliberate attack is unlikely to benefit from behavior cautious enough to produce no noticeable gains over time.

Now that Russia THINKS it knows what the Ukrainians are up to, I do expect the fighting to get tougher and Ukraine's advances less noticeable.  However, I have faith that Ukraine didn't launch a half arsed offensive and I also don't have faith in Russia's ability to slog it out in Kherson.  This should be a tough won victory for Ukraine in the end.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, JonS said:

As I understand it: the fog is doing the eating, the snow is being eaten. It refers to a particular and real meteorological phenomenon in which fog rolls in over a heavily snow covered piece of terrain, and when the fog lifts the snow is gone.

Yup, though where I live the snow is just less deep afterwards   There's another concept that nobody has made a metaphor for.  And that is what rain does to deep snow.

Every spring the air temps and rain reduces snow cover, sometimes a little at a time sometimes substantially.  Because everybody is used to the snow being deep (often 1m or more) the loss of some snow isn't really noticeable.  At first it doesn't look like the snow is going away at all because the terrain under it is still invisible.  Then you look out the window one day and see grass poking through in places, with the rest still white as ever.  The day after that it's the reverse, with grass nearly everywhere and snow hardly to be seen.

The point of this nature lesson is that even when you know what is going on (i.e. no fog) it is very difficult to gauge progress until certain indicators show up later on.  Then things become clearer and predictions of what is about to happen much easier.

6 minutes ago, JonS said:

In otherwords, speaking metaphorically; something insubstantial and ephemeral (the fog/Ukranian army) erases something hard and tangible (snow/Russian army) in a way that is mysterious and can't be observed or easily explained.

Obviously, spot on. 

Steve

[Grigb]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

No doubt some corpses will be conveniently found. Perhaps garbed as sinister British commandos!

....And in the pocket of one will be found a droll note from Lord Mountbatten: "He might bring some sardines with him - they are 'on points' here!"

Jolly good!

RU Nats already spreading this BS

• it was Boris Johnson who brought the plan of operation to Kiev
• It was sort of last his deed as UK PM
• But in case of success he planned to declare major international crisis with global consequences and refuse to hand over the position of PM
•  He also brought with him military trainers
• British MI-6 officers coordinated the operation from villa near Kiev
• 6-8 British officer were killed

[akd]

Reality: no small arms fire at all. Shells arriving 3 seconds after gun report. Hmm…

 

[Grigb]

The level of RU Nat madness is well... see it yourself:

Quote

...Judging by the scale, the offensive on the Russian Kherson was indeed a distraction, as many rightly believed. Only they weren't distracting from the Kharkov offensive or something like that. They were distraction from the attempt to capture the NPP by the Ukrainian-British special forces.

To the credit of our intelligence and special forces, the enemy at NPP was completely destroyed, and Kiev is now plunging into a very deep zrada [defeatist mode], from which it will try to invent at least some kind of peremoga [UKR victory]. I would expect some kind of sneaky missile strike on civilian infrastructure from Kiev, or something.

In this battle, the score is 3-0 in our favor...

How about that, Elon Musk?!

[kraze]

At one point they will be bombing Kremlin and saying that "look - Ukrainian forces at Kursk were only a distraction - the real attack was done by the Nibiru-Dalek spacial forces. The score is 1000-0 in our favor"

[Grigb]

catching up with Mashkovets posts

map for reference

Quote

I think the Russian command has made a decision as far as the South is concerned... in the area of Volchanskoye (Zaporozhye region), as well as east of Melitopol, the BTGrs of the 37th msbr and the 5th otbr of the 36th CAA of the Eastern Military District began to concentrate (in general, 3 "relatively fresh" BTGrs, of which at least 1 is tank)... So, in my opinion, it becomes clear that the command of the enemy troops "did not fully believe" in the Ukrainian offensive on Kherson...

Good evening, we are from Ukraine...!!!

1. Over the past day, the enemy has carried out a certain regrouping of its forces and weapons in the Kherson direction. In the area southwest of Snihirevka, they moved  2 somewhat hit BTGrs from the Kherson Curtain [most likely Curtain here is synonym of Screen - they were used as sort of screen for Kherson] (they probably belong to the 20th 8th CAA of the Southern Military District). Apparently, the enemy command is trying to mitigate the threat of "cutting from Ingulets" [RU]  grouping on the right bank of the Dnieper, given the fact that the bridge in Dariivka remains [in mode of]"low-traffic"...

Another BTGr (most likely from the 126th obr BO of the 22nd AK Black Sea Fleet), was dragged to the left bank ... because of its "limited combat capability".

Moreover, the command of the enemy troops continues to "hold back" from putting into battle the forces and means of the 106th PDD [Parashute Airborne Division] and the 5th CAA (except for the 2 BTGr 127th msd, which were transferred to the bridgehead last week to "strengthen counter-attacks" in the Mykolaiv direction). This is a clear side sign that the enemy command is not particularly concerned about the actions of the AFU on the Kherson bridgehead... and he believes that it is able to cope with the situation with the forces of its "mobile reserve" - BTGrs of  76th and 7th DSHD [Non parachute Assault Airborne Divisions]... reinforced by separate tank companies.

2. The command of the enemy troops is actively looking for a place to make another [jump] airfield [temporal airfield close to frontline] for its Army Aviation in the zones of responsibility of its groups "South" and "Zaporozhye", due to the fact that the use of appropriate sites on the territory of the peninsula of Crimea significantly complicates possibility to increase the intensity of AA use (primarily, in terms of limiting the time that the enemy's AA can use directly to hit targets on the battlefield).

In this way, the command of the enemy forces seeks to increase the intensity of the use of helicopters for fire support of troops without radically increasing their number in this direction... After all, with the help of "jump" airfields closer to the front line and the relocation of a certain number of tactical aviation strike groups to them, it is much easier to do this by reducing the "flight time"... than to mechanically increase its number on stationary Crimean AB, from which it is necessary to fly far enough to the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions to the front line...

3. There was information that "part of the 3rd AK" is being thrown by the enemy into the combat zone in the north-western and western environs of Donetsk." Naturally, it still needs to be checked... however, the fact of overturning at least 2 Russian BTGRS through Chistyakovo and Makeyevka to Donetsk... there is, and it needs to be understood.

 

[LongLeftFlank]

39 minutes ago, kraze said:

At one point they will be bombing Kremlin and saying that "look - Ukrainian forces at Kursk were only a distraction - the real attack was done by the Nibiru-Dalek spacial forces. The score is 1000-0 in our favor"

"If Putin invaded the Dalek Empire, I would belt out at least one Ex-TERRRRR- mi-NATE!!!! in the Citadel of Gallifrey." -- The Eighth Doctor

Edited September 1, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, JonS said:

As I understand it: the fog is doing the eating, the snow is being eaten. It refers to a particular and real meteorological phenomenon in which fog rolls in over a heavily snow covered piece of terrain, then when the fog lifts the snow is just ... gone.

In otherwords, speaking metaphorically; something insubstantial and ephemeral (the fog/Ukranian army) erases something hard and tangible (snow/Russian army) in a way that is mysterious and can't be observed or easily explained.

Lemme clarify a bit here as it looks like we are at the point of the concept being tested.  First off @LongLeftFlank has said he is a Canadian expat; however, it is clear he does not hail from Atlantic Canada or he would know the term by heart - "fog eats the snow"  (in fact I get a whole central-Canada urban vibe off him, for which I may be totally off as we are a country of a rich and diverse cultural tapestry which we get very good at hiding - I, for example, hail from the far North originally but I have buried the hints of my somewhat 'wildling' roots quite well, I even use cutlery on occasion)

So what is this fog-snow thingy?  Not quite as JonS outlines but I kinda like the imagery.  So this idea was one we came up with way back as a possible method for offensive operations given the context of the overall conflict - peer forces, no air superiority, defensive-centric thanks to ubiquitous ISR and smart weapon systems.  It was an attempt to answer the question of: "how the hell is anyone supposed to attack in this environment when the other side can see you form up from space?"

In reality as far as I can tell fog-snow is the third step in an operational approach, which I am sure someone will (or has) turned into a flowchart and checklist:

1.  Establish pre-conditions.  Gain ISR/cognitive superiority - know better and faster than your opponent.  Neutralize enemy air superiority - this whole party is over if they can own the sky.  Logistics - build a system that can be put in place without getting hammered before you can even get into place, here lighter is better than iron mountains.  I am sure there is more here with respect to force generation, psychology and a bunch of higher level stuff but you get the idea.  I think it is fair to say that the UA spent the summer getting these in place over the Kherson area while holding off whatever that leg-humping the RA was doing in the Donbas..."just eating snow" maybe.

2.  Project friction.  This was where the RA completely failed in the Donbas.  They slammed fields and fields with HE -  careless in their affairs and focused on causing stress but not really projecting friction.  "What do you mean by that The_Capt?" - well friction is a Clausewitzian concept (I am pretty sure the Chinese masters also speak to it) that "war is a very large human organizational problem, and once you collect us in a group larger than about four we become horny cats to organization.  So friction is the "badness" that got in the way of order and formation.  Here Uncle C and myself diverge a bit as I do not see friction as the product of order rubbing up against order - an unfortunate byproduct.  I see it as an actual force on the battlefield that can be applied as projected uncertainty, or chaos; those deep strikes into the Crimea are a classic example. 

Regardless, the next operational phase is to project that friction upon your opponents operational system, and here the UA has done a breathtakingly good job over the last two months - on par with what they did during Phase 1 of this war.  They have hit Russian logistics, infrastructure as well as the morale and conative centers of the Russian military thru strikes on leadership and C2.  We have talked a lot about indicators and a big one has been the fact that the RA was never able to get out of that "operational pause" back in Jul.  My theory is this was because the UA hit them so well and created so much friction that the RA was only able to do disconnected symbolic pushes and never really got their operational feet back under themselves.  Hitting the bridges is an example of just how much they stressed the RA system, and now that system is theoretically fragile, or at least not anti-fragile. 

So once the UA had those first two where they needed them - and that is a sign of a military that knows what it is doing btw - they moved onto to step 3.

3.   Add Pressure - "Fog Eating Snow".  A square kilometer of fluffy cloud weighs about a half a million kilograms (https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/how-much-does-cloud-weigh) which is not a bad analogue for fog.  It is not weightless by any stretch, it is how that weight is distributed and holds/exchanges its energy that makes it different, same goes for warfare...again, theoretically.  Once you have done steps 1 & 2, your opponents system is vulnerable but you have not changed the context enough for traditional manoeuvre warfare, this approach may work.  We saw hints of it on the UA defence at the battle of Kyiv.  Essentially the idea states that one employs highly distributed mass to:

Infiltrate your opponents defensive lines - you have already mapped out where the enemy is in detail as part of Step 1.  Further here it is best that your opponent is employing traditional conventional mass defence, which the Russians appear to be obliging.  ("Fog on fog" is a really interesting concept and could be the future of peer-to-peer warfare but lets leave that one.)  You use your ISR advantage to infiltrate in and around your opponents conventional mass concentrations, essentially filling in the 'gaps and seams'.  We know the RA has lots of these because they simply do not have the force density to create a uniform defensive line.  So UA has made a multi-prong set of advances along broad areas, which are looking "infiltration-y" - fog is not in one place, it is everywhere and gets into everything.

Isolate tactical "bites" - A few maps done by Grigb are showing what suspiciously like tactical isolation of some forward pockets of RA strongpoints.  Isolation means the removal of mutual support between positions.  If you can do that, particularly by eroding artillery support, you are in business.  Further this obviously has a significant psychological effects along with logistical implications. Once the enemies tactical positions are fully isolated....

Finish.  Pretty self explanatory but you want to quickly remove these tactical positions from the field either by surrender or annihilation, preferably by precision weapons systems as they are faster.  Rinse and repeat - Fog eating Snow. 

The whole "Adding Pressure" step is cyclical and the idea is that by repeating this process enough times, fast enough, the entire enemy operational system will collapse - this is the essence of attrition-to-manoeuvre, which is the opposite of what our doctrine says.  Key here is tempo.  This is weird as one is now employing attritional tempo instead of positional, but the rule still applies, one has to Finish faster than an opponents operational system can recover - which is why you did Steps 1 & 2.

And here we come to more questions than answers:

- Will it work on the offensive?

- Can you Finish fast enough, and how does one rationalize the fact that as you advance deeper this gets harder?

- When can traditional manoeuvre/annihilation take over?

- Have you gauged the enemies system correctly?  If it is more resilient than you thought you can bog down very quickly.

- Do you exploit success and go for a spearpoint, or do you keep doing broad system pressure?

I have no idea, these we can only observe and watch for indicators. The UA does look like they are trying a version of the idea, which explains all the "this won't look like a 'normal' offensive" and why we have suspected that the offence actually started back when we saw clear evidence of Step 2 over a month ago.  I suspect if this works that it won't look like much, and even bogging down...until it does.  If they have done this correctly, or if it will even work at all, the RA operational system north of the Dnipro will likely collapse suddenly after continuous pressure - think jiujitsu not boxing.  So I would not get too excited if the UA is not in Sevastopol by the weekend, that is not how this kind of warfare works.  We are way too biased by our western experiences on this one - this is system based warfare and the metrics are different. 

Anyway, sit back and keep eyes and ears open.  If this works like I can envision it, it may break modern military doctrine as we know it.  If it fails, the UA may not get too many more chances and this may turn into frozen conflict because the Left Hand of Mars (Defence) is back in charge...we shall see.

    

Edited September 1, 2022 by The_Capt