How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

Two top Russian lawmakers are siding with the people (sorta) about how mobilization is being carried out.  They are so far critical of officials far down in the chain of command.  Typical Russian reaction where there's no criticism aimed at the people who created the problem, just those who have to carry it out.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/3660427-top-russian-lawmakers-slam-excesses-of-putins-war-mobilization/

Steve

[dan/california]

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yesh.  I know someone that is trying to escape Russia, but has already found his path blocked by visa restrictions.  He was thinking of going to Georgia, but even days ago the rumor was people weren't getting through.

Sucks.  He wanted out years ago but stayed because of family and no solid job prospects abroad.  Now he's going to have to ride it out in Russia.

Steve

If you are going to panic, panic early. I hope he comes out ok!

[akd]

1 hour ago, Grigb said:

Soon, very soon, newly formed units and divisions will approach, the enemy will be defeated, humiliated and destroyed. Well, in the meantime, it is they who have been leading continuous battles for 7 months against a superior enemy, who preserve Russia.

The Siberian divisions are coming!

 

[cyrano01]

2 hours ago, Grigb said:

Right now, 144 MR Division is going to immortality. What 488 MR Regiment, 254 MR Regiment, 59 Tank Regiment, 99 SPG Regiment have done and are doing will be written in fiery letters on the pages of the glorious military history of Russia. Sometime after the victory, remember about the glorious Smolensk and Bryansk guys, they deserved it.

I am proud of my friendship with them, I am proud that I have shared and will continue to share a dry meal and a glass [of vodka] with these guys. I am proud that under fire we joked and will joke.

Khokhols are rushing hordes on the Oskol front despite the losses. His equipment is burning, corpses are strewn with settlements and forest plantations. The "thin red line" of the Russian Guards is holding back his advance, fertilizing the already fertile chernozem of Slobozhanshchina by the soldiers of the AFU.

Soon, very soon, newly formed units and divisions will approach, the enemy will be defeated, humiliated and destroyed. Well, in the meantime, it is they who have been leading continuous battles for 7 months against a superior enemy, who preserve Russia.

 

Good grief, the sort of thing likely only to be written by someone not at the sharp end of the 144th MRD! I can feel my inner Flashman coming to the fore.

On which score, I wonder if the author realises just which army the original thin red line ('thin red streak tipped with a line of steel,' says Mr Pedant) was shooting at?

 

[sburke]

41 minutes ago, akd said:

The Siberian divisions are coming!

 

No this is the training camp for new conscripts.   

[LongLeftFlank]

4 hours ago, Grigb said:

Indeed, it seems UKR grouping advancing North turned toward Makiivka.

We have several RU claims to work with

• As @Haiduk said it looks like one of UKR groups turned toward Makiivka
• UKR group in Ridkodub seems to counter attacked and recaptured Nove settlement
• Another UKR group (RU claim it is the same one but i do not believe them) is attacking south. RU claim it is going toward Lyman rear
• There is another unknown UKR group advancing North close to Maliivka and Vyshne Solone (to Northwest from Ridkodub)

I skipped actions at Novoselivka-Drobishevo-Lyman-Yampil line as there are no significant changes there.

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[NamEndedAllen]

I thought we had been beating the nuke policy donkey to a thin bloody but necessarily undecided pulp. Perhaps this USA statement will at least reassure some - and possibly frighten others. Here is Jake Sullivan:

“US national security adviser says: ‘Any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia’

“We have communicated directly, privately and at very high levels to the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia, that the US and our allies will respond decisively, and we have been clear and specific about what that will entail,” Sullivan told CBS’s Face The Nation.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/25/us-russia-ukraine-war-nuclear-weapons-jake-sullivan
And the other major USA news sources including NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, and the internet sites like the Hill, Bloomberg, Newsweek. FOX strangely led by saying Sullivan was unsure about designating Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.

AND:
fhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-25/biden-aide-says-us-has-warned-kremlin-against-using-nuclear-arms

 

President Joe Biden’s administration has privately told the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine would have “catastrophic consequences” for Russia, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin renewed his warnings of a nuclear threat last week as he mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists after Ukrainian forces recaptured a swath of Russian-occupied territory. Those nuclear threats are “a matter that we have to take deadly seriously,” Sullivan said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

Edited September 26, 2022 by NamEndedAllen
Added Bloomberg quote

[chuckdyke]

53 minutes ago, sburke said:

No this is the training camp for new conscripts.

Once you see that the discipline of an army is far below that of civilians who belong to a shooting club you realize that further comments are not necessary. 

[dan/california]

Early report, fantastic if true.

[chuckdyke]

The Professional Russian Army.

 

[BlackMoria]

That is some grade A trolling by the Ukrainians.  

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

I thought we had been beating the nuke policy donkey to a thin bloody but necessarily undecided pulp. Perhaps this USA statement will at least reassure some - and possibly frighten others. Here is Jake Sullivan:

It's all good, but we have to keep in mind that Putin was warned about serious consequences for starting the war in the first place.  That didn't stop him from doing it.

The disaster of this mobilization effort will hopefully get us going towards regime change quicker than he can contemplate hitting the button.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

36 minutes ago, BlackMoria said:

That is some grade A trolling by the Ukrainians.  

These guys have already earned an Advanced Degree In Trolling, but they seem to be over achievers.

Does anybody have any idea how many Buk and Pantsir systems Russia started the war with?  These are big, expensive systems that must be fairly limited in number.  Oryx lists quite a few taken out of service.  Just curious when Russia might find itself coming up short.

Steve

[chuckdyke]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

These guys have already earned an Advanced Degree In Trolling,

PHD aka Pot Hole Diggers.

[Combatintman]

8 hours ago, Cederic said:

The discussions here on psyops are farcical. Political organisations cross the US and the EU have been conducting them for years, on their own populations. The military is about the only group that _don't_ have the capability.

 

Nine months of my life on operations in the role, two years of my life in a PSYOPs unit and three months of my life on courses suggest otherwise ...

[Battlefront.com]

ISW's report for today is a must read for anybody needing to get caught up on Russian mobilization mechanics and recent history.  Lots of great, easy grasp information there.  As well as their opinion of what it all means:

Quote

Russia will mobilize reservists for this conflict. The process will be ugly, the quality of the reservists poor, and their motivation to fight likely even worse. But the systems are sufficiently in place to allow military commissars and other Russian officials to find people and send them to training units and thence to war. But the low quality of the voluntary reserve units produced by the BARS and volunteer battalion efforts is likely a reliable indicator of the net increase in combat power Russia can expect to generate in this way. This mobilization will not affect the course of the conflict in 2022 and may not have a very dramatic impact on Russia’s ability to sustain its current level of effort into 2023. The problems undermining Putin’s effort to mobilize his people to fight, finally, are so deep and fundamental that he cannot likely fix them in the coming months—and possibly for years. Putin is likely coming up against the hard limits of Russia’s ability to fight a large-scale war.

This is one of the reasons I, and others, pushed back against the people saying that Russia could fight, not to mention win, a "long war".  Nope, sorry... Russia is structurally incapable of doing anything of the sort.  It was obvious back then, it's obvious now.

The only thing Russia is capable of doing now is getting a large number of its people killed fairly quickly.

Steve

[JonS]

56 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

Nine months of my life on operations in the role, two years of my life in a PSYOPs unit and three months of my life on courses suggest otherwise ...

Austeyr qual? Is someone looking af a spot of lateral recruitment

Edited September 26, 2022 by JonS

[Battlefront.com]

More reporting on what's going on in Daghestan:

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-war-mobilization-daghestan-protests/32051446.html

So far this seems to be the place that's had the most pushback.  I've seen videos from 3 or 4 distinctly different places, each looking similar to this one.

Steve

[dan/california]

The most interesting thing about that video, and there are a lot of interesting things about that video, is the racial make up of the women. There are some some very Russian looking ones, and some very not Russian looking ones. They seem very, and equally unenthusiastic about Putin's plans.

[Battlefront.com]

Someone did an updated animation of all of ISW's battle maps:

 

[LongLeftFlank]

4 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

 

 

 

From WarMonitor3, situation dated 13 Sept, but topo map shows how if Yampil -- in the center of that map -- falls (it's been under attack for 3 days or more and UA seems to have a foothold in town), Lyman is cut off and the UA is through the forests and onto the Kreminna road.

The whole front line moves from the Oskil to the Zherebets river (that long blue reservoir), but Torske (south end of reservoir) is already flanked....  

So Kreminna, with its key rail line supplying Luhansk, could well be under threat in as soon as a couple of weeks, assuming the UA can keep punching holes and flanking RU towns.

 

 

Edited September 26, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[LongLeftFlank]

Exiled Russian economists see very dark days ahead for the Rodina.

It won't be the first time in their history though that there are demographic 'missing millions'....

"Our cursed capacity for suffering"

Oh, and Galeev not bullish on draft riots leading to regional insurrection leading to his 'National Divorce', at least not in the near term.

....He could be wrong though, particularly about the Caucasus. And the West has at least one client (Georgia) able to stir the pot there.

Edited September 26, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Combatintman]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

Austeyr qual? Is someone looking af a spot of lateral recruitment

It is my advanced Microsoft Word skills that are the most valuable of that lot to me now

[Grigb]

It seems Commissar is becoming a very dangerous job

Quote

The Siberian opened fire at the military enlistment office and wounded the head of the draft commission
In the morning of September 26 in Ust-Ilimsk, Irkutsk region, a man opened fire inside the military enlistment office, Babr Mash reports.

The network published a video in which the guy shot at the head of the draft commission Alexander Eliseev. The victim survived, but is in serious condition. He was operated and transferred to the intensive care unit.

According to eyewitnesses, before the shooting, the young man said the phrase: "Now we will all go home." Presumably, on September 26, the man was supposed to be mobilized, writes Baza.

Currently, the shooter has been detained. It turned out to be 25-year-old Ruslan Zinin. Now investigators are finding out why he started firing from a sawn-off shotgun and how he got into the military enlistment office with a weapon.

 

[NamEndedAllen]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

It's all good, but we have to keep in mind that Putin was warned about serious consequences for starting the war in the first place.  That didn't stop him from doing it.

The disaster of this mobilization effort will hopefully get us going towards regime change quicker than he can contemplate hitting the button.

Steve

Yes, agreed. He was warned. About conventionally invading a non-NATO country. However those warnings were about sanctions and sending modern *defensive* weapons to Ukraine. Light years away from warning about “catastrophic” consequences that can in no way be assumed not just by Putin, but by his military and civilian leadership that this time they would not face the full force of the military arrayed against Russia. And I imagine the private and back channel communications we know have taken place to have been much less diplomatic.  And couched in the context of crossing the one single red line that *all * the powers that be have insisted not be crossed. 
 

Here in the cheap seats, we cannot know the final decision policy of Washington or the Allies. But I would bet on general agreement that the punishment for using a nuclear weapon in anger today must be so clearly “catastrophic” for the attacker that other nations watching with interest have zero doubt about just how very very bad an idea that would be. In fact, one could imagine the core message to Russia:being just that: We are so sorry. This isn’t a civilized, gentlemanly proportional response situation. Understand, this is nothing personal. It’s just not good for business. Which you won’t be in any longer. Because this will not stand. 
 

Here in the cheap seats, I realize this is just an opinion, one without the weight and responsibility that weigh on those who must make such a monumental decision. 

Edited September 26, 2022 by NamEndedAllen