How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[LongLeftFlank]

48 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

LIBERAL SITE, ENTER AT OWN PERIL (I see complaints about this, but still I think it's a nice gesture.  I could change my mind, but haven't yet)

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/14/2129010/-Ukraine-update-Ukraine-inches-closer-to-Svatove-as-Russia-shells-its-own-city-Belgorod-twice

 

Wot, behind the rabbit?

'STARLINK DEMONSTRATES THE NEED TO REIN IN CAPITAL'

Lol (and no, I'm not going there)

[Kinophile]

I'm still a Missile  Boi

[danfrodo]

14 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Wot, behind the rabbit?

'STARLINK DEMONSTRATES THE NEED TO REIN IN CAPITAL'

Lol (and no, I'm not going there)

was that in a side thread link?  Or did I miss that in the UKR thread?  I didn't notice that  -- Dude don't stray of the path!  Keep your eyes on the UKR stuff   I done warned you!

Edited October 15, 2022 by danfrodo
addition

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, paxromana said:

I am noit entirely sure that your reading of IHL on this is entirely correct ... 

Say a civilian truck with a civilian driver was carrying a military cargo (even military issue toothpicks) - then it would be 100% legitimate to plant a bomb in said truck and blow it to kingdom come. Arguably, since it was transiting a military target (the bridge) it became a legitimate target simply by doing so ... so a GPS trigger set to go off only on the bridge would probably be legitimate(ish)

True.  But that's not a likely scenario.  The more likely scenario is that Ukraine built the bomb and either had someone willing to commit suicide or they arranged for an unknowing person to transport it knowing that he would be killed in the process.  The latter runs afoul of all sorts of laws.

3 hours ago, paxromana said:

IHL (well, the Geneva & Hague Conventions, at least) can be remarkably brutal when push comes to shove - for example, in a siege it is legitimate for the besieging force to shoot and and kill any civilians attempting to leave the besieged locality on the basis that it could be a ruse by the besieged forces to get rid of useless mouths and therefore extend the period they can feed themselves.

And, in general, while the deliberate targeting of civilians and purely civilian infrastructure is prohibited IHL acknowledges that even 'smart' weapons are not 100% accurate and may therefore, regrettably, hit civilian targets which are close by (and that dumb weapons are even less accurate) ... and also allow as how many items of mostly civilian infrastructure are dual use ... power plants, for example, provide power to civilian and military users which makes them legitimate targets despite all the hand wringing about 'war crimes'

Also true, but not applicable to the truck driver if he was an "innocent".  What it does apply to is the people in the car riding next to it that were all killed.

The laws say that the nation must take reasonable care to avoid killing civilians.  With the possible exception of the driver, this attack was highly targeted towards a piece of infrastructure that servers a definite military purpose, they've given Russian citizens ample warning that the bridge is considered a target, and they chose a time of the day when the bridge was unlikely to have many people on it.  They're on very firm ground from what I can see.  Contrast that with Russia's blowing stuff up during the busiest time of day with weapons that have an extremely low probability of hitting what they were aimed at.  They, unlike Ukraine, are firmly in war crime territory.

3 hours ago, paxromana said:

(As an aside, the whole of the war is a War Crime ... planning and waging a war of aggression ... but not all of the individual events are crimes in and of themselves).

Yup, but the laws are quite clear that just because the other side behaves like scum doesn't give you a legal defense to also behave like scum.  Ukraine has been extremely careful about this on the whole, though of course we know crimes are being committed here and there.  Ukrainians would not be Human if they could restrain 100% of their people 100% of the time given the magnitude of Russia's ongoing war crimes and genocide.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Sojourner said:

A lot of unanswered questions hinge on how the bomb was detonated - driver, timer, GPS, remote observer, .. ?
Not sure how good Russian forensics are and whether they would be able to find the "smoking gun", and if they did announce it could it be believed?

The thing is, I don't think Russia bothers looking for difficult to find evidence.  Once they have "solved" the crime, it's "solved".

3 hours ago, Sojourner said:

I'm entertaining a theory that it might have been an inside job to provoke Putin into getting more aggressive, or to just make him look bad. They probably didn't expect to cause as much damage - either miscalculated the amount of explosive or didn't account for the flimsy nature of the bridge, and the proximity of the fuel train was an unlucky accident (or lucky depending on your point of view).

I don't think Ukraine would have claimed responsibility if it was someone else.  In fact, it would have been pretty interesting if Zelensky went on TV and emphatically denied it was Ukraine and said something to the effect of "I wish it was us, but we don't have the ability to build and detonated a bomb deep in Russian territory.  Maybe Putin needs to be a little more careful where he sleeps because it looks like someone is out for his job".

That would have been awesome, but it would have meant lying and I don't see Ukraine doing that.  Therefore, if they took credit then they did it unless there's some strong evidence to suggest something different.

That said, it is entirely possible that Ukraine had some assistance inside of Russia that would make Putin very grumpy if he found out about it.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Anybody find it "cute" that little Russian Nats want to be like Ukraine when they are all grown up?  Big Ukraine has HIMARS and Javelin, including T-Shirts and memes celebrating the fact.  Russia has piles of dead mobiks who are barely armed and not even trained, tanks with turrets that reach for the skies, a sunken ship, a lost island, a blown up bridge, and any number of other things that aren't so good for morale.  But now Russia has suicide drones made by a third world country that is considered by most of the world to be a terrorist state!  Hooray, finally something for the RU Nats to cheer about!

Steve

[chuckdyke]

6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

suicide drones

Suicide drones, suicide tanks, suicide APCs, suicide IFVs. 

[LongLeftFlank]

Bakhmut tactical situation (most of our discussion has been about Wagnerites and symbolic (un)importance. I am sticking here to the frontline situation).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63261600

Col Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukraine's Eastern Command, still doubts the Russians have the numbers or equipment to take Bakhmut - which he says is now the concentration of its military efforts....

It is still possible that the Russian forces may be able to capture Bakhmut. But what then?  "When we retreated from Lysychansk we exhausted the enemy," said Col Cherevatyi. His expectation is that Bakhmut might do the same. 

Maps. The longggggg topo map.....

(miladviser is a RU source....)

4 minute clip, no combat footage but a look at the ground (ruins) and some discussion of the grunt level tactical situation (subtitles).

"Every second level building has been leveled."

you can see the terrain feature in the left centre (red zone) of that RU Google map above.

...Jawin's feed has a lot of these overhead kill sequences, for those into that kind of thing. I'm more interested in the field fortifications (and I read Hefner's mag for the articles too).

Edited October 15, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[LongLeftFlank]

Future UKR President?

And ok, the backdrop of high detail maps are pretty cool. Sign of a real hands-on administrator!

[sburke]

Blow Up Russian Trains, Liberate The Coast: Ukraine Has A Plan To Win The War (msn.com)

[The_MonkeyKing]

best fast summary of types of 155mm ammo.

AT mines:

[LongLeftFlank]

2 hours ago, sburke said:

Blow Up Russian Trains, Liberate The Coast: Ukraine Has A Plan To Win The War (msn.com)

Dang, that either sounds like a headline from  @danfrodo 's 'Perilous Liberal Site' or something concocted by the Okhrana (evidently their Learned Elders of Zion had this fetish for derailing trains).

Edited October 15, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Zeleban]

 

[The_MonkeyKing]

information starting to arrive. 

Kherson offensive starting up again.

Too bad RUS milblogger got shot down so it is going to be harder to follow this real time.

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

information starting to arrive. 

Kherson offensive starting up again.

Too bad RUS milblogger got shot down so it is going to be harder to follow this real time.

Commander of L118 howitzer from 46th air-assault brigade has posted tweets about 2 hours ago: "It's a real assault. We never shot so much - our barrel is red-hot. I've never seen so much forces, attacking simultainously, including aviation. Four villages left before Beryslav". But now theese tweets already deleted. 

Some Russian TG channels reported about 5-hour prelimunary bombardments and huge offensive, but this channel denied that this is main axis of offensive: 

"One more. Calm down, telegrammers and military correspondents. What are you all f..d up? "All-night arty strikes, mass offensive..." Come to your senses! There are about two AFU battalions per 200 men and 40-50 of vehicles against our two full-strength brigades!

We should expect khokhols not here and not this time"

 

[LongLeftFlank]

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

Some Russian TG channels reported about 5-hour prelimunary bombardments and huge offensive, but this channel denied that this is main axis of offensive: 

"One more. Calm down, telegrammers and military correspondents. What are you all f..d up? "All-night arty strikes, mass offensive..." Come to your senses! There are about two AFU battalions per 200 men and 40-50 of vehicles against our two full-strength brigades!

We should expect khokhols not here and not this time"

It is interesting to see that the Russia thinking seems to be that mass still matters.  This is not the first time we have seen Russia tout mass as a key metric of the situation from the very beginning.  Yet repeatedly we have seen the UA with less mass achieve the greater result.  I think it is a fundamental flaw in the Russian theory of war and has driven so much of their thinking - “if only we could get more X, we could then win”.  This echoes WW1 thinking which took years and millions of lives to shift.  We shifted from mass to mobile mass to synchronized mobile mass, and now face smart synchronize dispersed mass.  This is a trend that an extra 300k troops will not solve. 

[Probus]

4 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

best fast summary of types of 155mm ammo.

AT mines:

Thanks @The_MonkeyKing,  I was wondering what they were.  Look nasty.

[Bulletpoint]

Some more speculation on the bridge attack:

• The truck was detonated remotely - probably not a coincidence that it was a white truck, as it's more visible especially at low light.
   
• The driver did not know what was in the truck - notice the truck was driving in the outer lane when it went off. If the driver had been a suicide bomber, he would likely have chosen the innermost lane to bring the explosion closer to the centre of both road bridges, for a better chance the they'd both get destroyed.
   
• Despite being seen as a big win for Ukraine, the attack was not a full success. They were hoping both road bridges would be taken out.
   
• The train might have been a random target of opportunity. Originally, the bomb might have been intended to go off on the elevated part of the bridge to make it more difficult to repair the damage. But then on the eve of the attack, they noticed a train had stopped there for some reason, and they decided to explode the truck next to the train instead, probably hoping that it carried ammunition that could have been detonated.

Edited October 15, 2022 by Bulletpoint

[FancyCat]

You know before it happened, I was under impression that troops along the right bank of the Dnipro river would not advance along the river since it is only 5 miles from one bank to the other, but seems to not be enough for Russian fire control to lock down the other side of the river.

Does not bold well for a successful defense once Ukraine attempts a crossing once Ukraine retakes all of the right bank at least to me.

 

[Billy Ringo]

Stumbled across the following while looking at another site, thought it might be worth sharing.  Of all the things to be learned from this war, how to amass, filter and take advantage of real-time open sourced information may be one of the most important.

 

OSINT in Ukraine: civilians in the kill chain and information space

OSINT shifted geopolitical sentiment toward Ukraine. Now members of the community are prosecuting the war through target acquisition.

 

https://defence.nridigital.com/global_defence_technology_oct22/osint_in_ukraine

[Beleg85]

Still not confirmed if I read correctly, but quite likely he is training volunteers now.

[The_MonkeyKing]

13 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Still not confirmed if I read correctly, but quite likely he is training volunteers now.

I see this as likely as the Kadyrov "combat footage"

[A Canadian Cat]

19 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Still not confirmed if I read correctly, but quite likely he is training volunteers now.

Sorry who is that? Am I supposed know?

[panzermartin]

1 minute ago, IanL said:

Sorry who is that? Am I supposed know?

Former chief commander of  DPR https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Girkin