How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[poesel]

2 hours ago, Grossman said:

Steve. Biden speculates on Putin's "off ramp", but Putin doesn't have one, unless it means...

Maybe there is an "off plank"?

[stuxneet]

9 hours ago, Taranis said:

"Ukrainian soldiers move their position, on a front line near Toretsk, on October 12, 2022. YASUYOSHI CHIBA / AFP"
* For the first guy with two boxes : bulletproof vest  CIRAS ? MSA parcalete RMV ? Paul Boyé 'Tigre' (looks like the same we had (French '11-'12) in Afghanistan)

Just because I'm too interested in personal gear: Almost 100% the Paul Boye vest, considering we know France has donated armor and I can't think of a country who has used the CIRAS or RMV in substantial numbers in the past 15 years

[dan/california]

8 minutes ago, stuxneet said:

Just because I'm too interested in personal gear: Almost 100% the Paul Boye vest, considering we know France has donated armor and I can't think of a country who has used the CIRAS or RMV in substantial numbers in the past 15 years

What makes that tire worth dragging around? Also, do we need to take up a collection for a couple of truckloads of two inch webbing? These guys are carrying everything the hard way.

Edited October 13, 2022 by dan/california

[Vacillator]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

What makes that tire worth dragging around?

It's a bit funky looking for a military vehicle but who knows.  Could be a recovery from the local RU 'stolen stuff' depot, fridges are even harder to carry.

[Pete Wenman]

Resupply of  a dagger unit/vehicle maybe

P

 

[Splinty]

16 minutes ago, dan/california said:

What makes that tire worth dragging around? Also, do we need to take up a collection for a couple of truckloads of two inch webbing? These guys are carrying everything the hard way.

Maybe he has a Jeep Cherokee at home. lol

[LuckyDog]

Here is my “off the wall” bridge theory, which includes a ‘truck bomb’, special forces, and a missile! I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but I can’t keep up reading all the great posts!

The Ukrainians sent a special forces team in a truck or small van into Russia to the bridge area. The Brimstone missile (Brits again…) was shipped to the launch area using a remote control kayak (a picture was posted of one washed up on a beach). According to Wikipedia, a Brimstone is 110lbs and 5’11’’ – it should fit. The special forces team retrieved the missile and then started to monitor the traffic on the bridge and railway. I assume that Russian security is poor, given their front-line performance and that this is a rear area. This makes it easy to spot and log ammo trucks and fuel train schedules.

Once they figured out the correct time, half the team assembled a launching box from innocuous metal sheets in the van and launched the missile. The other half of the team used a laser designator to light up the chosen truck - maybe from a kayak or the shore. If the train stops or goes in the same direction as the truck, it offers more latitude to hit the truck next to the train. The “air-burst” explosion above is the first stage detonation of the tandem warhead – the second stage was not captured on film due to the almost instantaneous detonation of the truck.

Launching from the Russian side might allow them to exploit a hole in the AA defenses or cause enough extra delay in reacting to the threat to enable the missile to hit. As implausible as this may be, I love that the Russians do all the heavy lifting, bringing most of the explosives and oil to the party!

[JonS]

That tyre carry looks like any number of "carry a bunch of awkward heavy things a long way" exercises/team-building pt things I've been on.

[danfrodo]

4 minutes ago, JonS said:

That tyre carry looks like any number of "carry a bunch of awkward heavy things a long way" exercises/team-building pt things I've been on.

I think is some crossfit thing.  They make us do that kind of stuff.  "run 800m carrying this super awkward heavy thing"

[Splinty]

Or he just pissed off his squad leader

[Vic4]

Considering the UAF trajectory vs. Russian brinkmanship, it seems the most critical question is:

Will "The West" support an aggressive push/attempt to retake Crimea? 

Or is that both the literal and proverbial - bridge too far? 

[JonS]

3 hours ago, LuckyDog said:

Here is my “off the wall” bridge theory,

I think, given the contradictory information available, that the obvious and only answer is that the Ukrainians inadvertently targeted an FSB false-flag operation that was pre-chambered with highly volatile dog-propellant. They - the Ukrainians that is - used a hrim smuggled into and launched fro the Kuban on a life raft recovered from the Moskva. This liferaft later accidentally broke free and drifted under the bridge in the high winds just before impact, almost ruining the operation.

The FSB, meanwhile, were intending to use their truck bomb IED to help dig an anti tank ditch, oriented south, across the neck of the Crimean peninsula to prevent weak willed holiday makers cutting short their summer holiday, thus depriving the FSB of kickbacks from local businesses where the tourists should be spending their assignats. This explains why the Russians were able to so quickly identify it as a truck bomb - it was *their* truck bomb.

The combination of the hrim hitting the top of the truck bomb explains the airburst and the large yet weird explosion and damage patterns.

Both sides are obviously still a bit confused about this inadvertent confluence of two otherwise completely separate operations.

Edited October 14, 2022 by JonS

[JonS]

9 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

crossfit

You know where crossfit came from, right? It's just army pt you pay a lot for.

[chrisl]

40 minutes ago, LuckyDog said:

Here is my “off the wall” bridge theory, which includes a ‘truck bomb’, special forces, and a missile! I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but I can’t keep up reading all the great posts!

The Ukrainians sent a special forces team in a truck or small van into Russia to the bridge area. The Brimstone missile (Brits again…) was shipped to the launch area using a remote control kayak (a picture was posted of one washed up on a beach). According to Wikipedia, a Brimstone is 110lbs and 5’11’’ – it should fit. The special forces team retrieved the missile and then started to monitor the traffic on the bridge and railway. I assume that Russian security is poor, given their front-line performance and that this is a rear area. This makes it easy to spot and log ammo trucks and fuel train schedules.

Once they figured out the correct time, half the team assembled a launching box from innocuous metal sheets in the van and launched the missile. The other half of the team used a laser designator to light up the chosen truck - maybe from a kayak or the shore. If the train stops or goes in the same direction as the truck, it offers more latitude to hit the truck next to the train. The “air-burst” explosion above is the first stage detonation of the tandem warhead – the second stage was not captured on film due to the almost instantaneous detonation of the truck.

Launching from the Russian side might allow them to exploit a hole in the AA defenses or cause enough extra delay in reacting to the threat to enable the missile to hit. As implausible as this may be, I love that the Russians do all the heavy lifting, bringing most of the explosives and oil to the party!

We need to take all the theories from here and elsewhere, work them into a movie script, and get it shot and released before the mundane true story gets out.

[danfrodo]

A few goodies here that I hadn't seen on the forum.  Summary of Svatove front mostly.  Adding to already mentioned here effects of mobilization, turns out RU is stripping teachers from classrooms so there's no one to teach the children.  Yeah, heckuva future ahead for RU.

LIBERAL SITE, ENTER AT OWN PERIL

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/13/2128629/-Ukraine-update-Ukraine-approaches-strategic-Svatove-as-Russian-Telegram-invents-phantom-wins

 

[MikeyD]

As opposed to a con site the posts Kremlin disinformation?

[Kinophile]

13 minutes ago, chrisl said:

We need to take all the theories from here and elsewhere, work them into a movie script, and get it shot and released before the mundane true story gets out.

Nick Cage as Putler Stalinovich

[Artkin]

H.I. Sutton just dropped a new video. He didn't reference the Kerch bridge at all but he did recognize those mystery boats we have previously seen as "Explosive Uncrewed Surface Vessels"

Food for thought.

 

[FancyCat]

Russians are operating under some mistaken falsehoods, past Western folding and reluctance to confront Russia means Russia regards the West as weak and easily pushable and dividable. As we can see, their answer to Ukraine moving forward is to escalate and indicate their willingness to go all in and continue esculatory moves in the belief that the West will fold and insist on Ukraine accepting a deal where Russia isn't the total defeated party. 

As long as Russia escalates, the West needs to match. It must be drilled into their skulls that Ukraine will not be abandoned. Russia must learn to respect the West again and understand that the total invasion of Ukraine was a complete red line for relations for between Russia and the West and that breaking that red line means no happy partition of Ukraine, no bribery with Russian oil and gas for Ukrainian blood, none of that. 

The fact that this invasion was undertaken in the first place, underscores that Russian society has lost its moral and ethical compass, and it must be drilled in that invading Ukraine should never occur again, or be a thinkable solution in the future, (and if that means more Russian blood be spilled, so be it) and underscores, how dire the West's perception worldwide has become in reacting to competition by other state actors. 

This invasion should never have reached this point. Putin should not have the lesson that NATO would flood Ukraine with weapons and equipment that would sap the Russian ability to wage war for a decade or more occur in real time, he should have expected it before the invasion. In that sense, the West has failed catastrophically to project a image that informed all parties including Russia of the Western red lines. 

I don't think Putin understands that the red lines for the West were crossed, he still thinks he can get Scholz to break away from Biden, or France to stop supplying Ukraine, etc. He must be rid of that idea before Russia will find a off-ramp, or desire to find one. 

[dan/california]

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Krokhmal'ne,+Kharkiv+Oblast,+Ukraine,+63742/@49.6154695,37.4837432,9.64z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4120e6bca1824865:0x170085de7e4a0480!8m2!3d49.5750146!4d37.9171165

AFU have definitely cut the P 07 north of Svatove if this checks out, and there are geolocated videos. Looks like the AFU wants at least one more chunk before winter.

[akd]

@sburke @Kinophile

Maj. Rishat Izatullin, 228th MRR, 90th TD, was wounded repeatedly in Ukraine, but kept going back until he died:

Lt. Col. Vladimir Tarasov, Head of Troops and Security for the Military Service, 29th Combined Arms Army:

 

[Harmon Rabb]

4 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Nick Cage as Putler Stalinovich

I would cast Matthias Schoenaerts to play Putin in "The Death of Putin" .

 

[dan/california]

12 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

I would cast Matthias Schoenaerts to play Putin in "The Death of Putin" .

 

Far to good looking. You need someone who brings that sense of wrong that wafts off of putin.

[womble]

And Zelensky has to play himself: an actor acting as themselves as an actor who acted the part of a president and then became one and really acted the part*...

 

* To avoid confusion, I'm using the expression "to act the part" in the sense of "stepping up and doing the job well", not in any sense implying that Zelensky is some sort of "face" for shadowy parties using him as some sort of puppet.

[sburke]

48 minutes ago, chrisl said:

We need to take all the theories from here and elsewhere, work them into a movie script, and get it shot and released before the mundane true story gets out.

Hey I'm going with this was really a hit on Sergei Maslov by Kadyrov for messing with his eldest daughter and the bomb on his car went off as it so happens right near a truck loaded with explosives.