How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Zeleban]

First. The entire rear of the Russian troops in the operational-tactical mode is objectively tied to the railways. After all, the ENTIRE volume must be transported by echelons, because it is almost impossible to do this with trucks.

Second. Distribution and transshipment warehouses and storage facilities are needed. In this regard, the problem is that to accumulate those volumes of logistics items that the Russians really need, for example, in order to prepare for any more or less significant offensive (meaning the operational-tactical scale) only with the help of the Crimean railway trains and the Kerch bridge is also very difficult (long and expensive ...). This is also true for defense, if it is accompanied by active hostilities on a sufficiently wide front (and, apparently, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are unlikely to give the Russians the opportunity to “calmly” defend themselves this autumn and winter).

 

Third. In this sense, the Russians urgently need some kind of communication, which, if not an alternative, would at least significantly complement the “Crimean” one. And they have such communication with the given parameters ... this is a railway line connecting Debaltseve - Volnovakha - Kamysh-Zorya - Fedorovka - Kakhovka ... Now they are very actively restoring (including bridges and crossings), repairing and strengthening the railway track, joints, according to certain information, even they are trying to equip separate sections with electric traction.

Fourth... But there is one nuance that makes it very difficult for Russians to further use this communication. Yeah, you understood correctly… Ukrainian troops, which are just in the area of Ugledar and Pavlovka, as well as south of Novomikhailovka, are at such a distance from this communication that allows them to use a fairly wide range of weapons along it and at a number of its key points. For example, from the Dolya junction station to the forward positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Novomikhailovka area, less than 18 km, and from the forward positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Ugledar area to the Volnovakha railway station, approximately 25-26 km. Which, in turn, almost excludes its rhythmic and full-fledged functioning in the future...

That is why the Russian command was forced to plan, prepare and launch this offensive in the Ugledar direction in order to at least move the Armed Forces of Ukraine away from this railway line ... to such a distance that would be able to protect it from the fire impact of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, or reduce the list means of destruction of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, capable of reaching it in range.

As of this morning, the command of the enemy troops not only failed to complete this task, it is not even close to the beginning of its implementation. Both attack tactical groups of the enemy (quite heavily replenished with “chmobiks”), I mean Ugledarskaya and Novomikhailovskaya, simply “were erased”, trying to ram the defenses of two Ukrainian brigades (I won’t say which ones, but you already know who we are talking about). Even the introduction of an additional BTGr of the 40th Separate Marine Brigade on the far left flank of the Ugledar group in the direction of Prechistovka did not help ...

But I don't think it's going to end this way. Obviously, having in the tactical reserve another 2.5 BTGr (also "fresh", replenished mainly with the same "chmobiks"), the command of the enemy troops will try to bring them into battle in order to "increase efforts" in order to achieve the goal.

Although, of course, in terms of information ... the story of the "capture of Pavlovka" clearly does not smell good for the enemy.

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

At some point we should get into the role of military power within micro-social contexts, and just how bad an idea it is for anything but very specialized forces.

Can you elaborate on this a bit?  I am not quite sure what meant, but I am pretty sure it was significant.

[Battlefront.com]

9 hours ago, Grossman said:

"Kherson is a gateway to Crimea," says Marina Miron, researcher in defence studies at Kings College London. "Recapturing it would pave the way to reconquering Crimea, which Ukraine aims to do in this war.”

I don't get this view that Kherson is critical to Ukraine's ability to take back Crimea.  The Dnepr is a significant obstacle that Ukraine will struggle to cross because even an incompetent defense of the left (eastern) bank puts it at risk of failure.  Even if Ukraine does make it over the river, then what?  Constrained supplies will make expansion difficult.

A FAR better plan is to attack southward from positions that are already on the left (eastern) bank.  That area needs to be cleared out for its own reasons, but it is also critical that any attack into Crimea not have a vulnerable flank.  So the south has to be cleared out before going into Crimea anyway.

Taking Kherson, of course, does provide a bunch of benefits for sure, but not much of that has any direct relationship to taking back Crimea.

HOWEVER, Kherson *is* important to Russian fantasy of taking Odessa.  They aren't across the river anywhere else, so kicking them out of Kherson ensures Russia won't ever be able to move westward from its current positions even if it should happen to reconstitute its forces.

Therefore, the biggest military advantage to taking Kherson is not making Crimea vulnerable to Ukrainian attack, but to make Russian attacks further westward completely and utterly off the table.

Steve

[Blazing 88's]

In February, Russians attempted to cut off Ukrainian forces at Volnovakha in Donetsk Oblast but were stopped by Ukrainian tankmen. One of them, Vasyl, who has been fighting since 2015, tells his story.

Link: Veteran of the Tank Battle for Volnovakha describes how it was

Sorry if posted previously, didn't see it though.

 

[danfrodo]

Adding  on to Zeleban's posts above:  RU is very railroad dependent.  As far as I can tell there's currently only two lines serving the western theater.  

1.  rail line running near the fighting at Pavlivka

2.  Kerch bridge.  This line still has to get from Crimea to the area north of perekop, which looks to have only two lines.  

So UKR can significantly interdict RU western theater supplies by hitting only 2 rail lines.  And if they can't hit Kerch, they can hit the two lines coming north out of Crimea.  Russia is very vulnerable and hopefully the huge amount of forces in the western theater will start having serious shortages soon.

[Huba]

2 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Adding  on to Zeleban's posts above:  RU is very railroad dependent.  As far as I can tell there's currently only two lines serving the western theater.  

1.  rail line running near the fighting at Pavlivka

2.  Kerch bridge.  This line still has to get from Crimea to the area north of perekop, which looks to have only two lines.  

So UKR can significantly interdict RU western theater supplies by hitting only 2 rail lines.  And if they can't hit Kerch, they can hit the two lines coming north out of Crimea.  Russia is very vulnerable and hopefully the huge amount of forces in the western theater will start having serious shortages soon.

I'll add one more thing: ATACMS goddammit! Or at least ER-GMLRS or equivalent. Apart from the Crimean bridge, there is a number of targets along the very Azov shore that UA can't hit now, including the railroad bridges on the Crimea - Melitopol line. Extend their PGM range by 50km and the situation down south changes dramatically.
 

In other news, Italy is doing the exact opposite of what was expected after the last elections:

 

[Beleg85]

Guru of "pure realists"...

 

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Or 3.  You and the analyst were (are) basing your conclusions on incomplete understanding - both parties saw what they wanted to see - and when the coin landed, your predictions turned out to be more correct. 

Sure, that is possible, but as you say that's not a good endorsement of professional analysts.  They are not supposed to be doing confirmation biased research.

Here's my thinking and check me on the soundless of its logic.

The general consensus, including by the Russians, is that the two Chechen Wars were disasters from a military standpoint.  The previous war in Afghanistan was also not a shining endorsement of Russian military capabilities, but they did hang on for a prolonged period of time before giving up.  Therefore, it seems that Russia in the 1990s had, if anything, lost its edge in terms of being able to prosecute large scale military actions.

Do you agree with this assessment?

The Russians recognized this deficiency and took steps in the early 2000s to improve their military capabilities.  This was first put to the test against Georgia.  They won that war mostly due to mass and huge mistakes made by the Georgians, yet the signs of improvement over Chechnya was there to see.  People took note of both the improvements and remaining deficiencies of Russia's ability to wage war.  The Russians themselves had a pretty harsh assessment and concluded, as did many others, that it could have gone a lot better than it did and there was a risk that it could have gone much worse.  Many of the things identified by the Russians as being deficient are the ones they have struggled with since the Soviet days, therefore not much of a surprise.  The performance in Georgia directly resulted in large, loudly announced reforms of the late 2000s.

Still with me so far?

OK, so we've got well known Russian deficiencies that reforms were supposed to address, but the reforms had only just started when they were abandoned.  We can speculate as to why, but funding, domestic production limitations, and institutional resistance to change are definitely in the mix.  At the same time we're watching Russia go through some pretty significant political turmoil and increasingly authoritarian responses.  Corruption, a traditional Russian problem, is getting worse.  This was being observed at the time by people keeping an eye on Russia.

Any disagreement here?

Now we're at 2014, the first opportunity to see how well Russia's new military performs (Syria came the next year).  The Crimea operation was VERY impressive, but so too are the staged annual exercises.  Because the Ukrainians deliberately did not fight and the local population was highly predisposed to Russian rule, there was no stress placed on the Russian forces.  Mass, in this case, was unchallenged in any significant way.  Even stress on logistics wasn't in play because anything that went wrong was likely never going to be obvious to the observer.

Some concluded that Russia had fixed everything that was wrong with its ability to wage war.  I was not so sure because this wasn't really a stress test of the new Russian armed forces.  It was just a large exercise.  However, things looked pretty good overall, but still needed to see it under stress before concluding that Russia had fixed its basic problems.

I watched the way Russia fought in 2014 and 2015 as it happened using open source information, the same way we're doing in this thread.  There's a record of this in the Beta Forums as proof of that.  I might even dig into those threads and see if I can pull out some examples.  However, for now I'm going to ask you to trust me

What I saw in 2014 and 2015 was a mixed bag from my perspective.  Indeed, I did not see Russia falling apart or being unable to fight.  However, what I saw was the same sorts of pros and cons of Russia's way of fighting that I've seen in previous conflicts.  I did not see overt superiority, I saw something that worked mostly because of mass.  I also saw hints that core problems that Russia has suffered from for 100+ years were still evident.  Even if anecdotally, which of course means I could have been wrong (though it wasn't).  More importantly, I saw how Ukraine's forces were able to thwart superior Russian forces enough that Russia scaled down its expectations for what it could achieve within the constraints of a limited military investment (precursor to the now famous Special Military Operation).

Confirmation bias?  In a way it was.  I had the hypothesis that Russia still had major deficiencies in how it waged war because Russia admitted to such problems in 2008 and yet shelved its reforms before completion.  I looked to the fighting to see evidence proving or disproving that hypothesis.  What I saw did not convince me I was wrong.

The later operations in Syria and the continuing decline of Russia as a state made me think the flaws I saw in 2014 weren't going to be fixed, and in fact some improvements might lapse.  8 years of data led me to think Russia's forces in 2022 would not fight significantly better than they traditionally have.

On the other hand, what I saw of Ukrainian forces went the complete opposite direction.  I saw a force that had the ingredients for giving the Russians a hard time in 2014/2015 using 8 years to get much, much better.

This is why I concluded Russia would lose against Ukraine.

I'll get to the rest in a later post. Hunger wins my attention at the moment

Steve

 

[Endyamon]

19 minutes ago, Huba said:

I'll add one more thing: ATACMS goddammit! Or at least ER-GMLRS or equivalent. Apart from the Crimean bridge, there is a number of targets along the very Azov shore that UA can't hit now, including the railroad bridges on the Crimea - Melitopol line. Extend their PGM range by 50km and the situation down south changes dramatically.
 

In other news, Italy is doing the exact opposite of what was expected after the last elections:

 

Honestly, were there really people thinking that Meloni would have "betrayed" the west/Nato?
Just before/after (I can't remember) the italian vote, I wrote that Meloni and her party are everything but Putin's friends. Those were Berlusconi and Salvini (who took a lot of money from Vlad). Meloni didn't have anything to do with Russia, and as I wrote, she and her party still fight the communism, and in the italian population point of view, Russia is still a communist state (like if the URSS never disappeared at all).
Whaterver foreign politician/journalists will say, with Meloni, Italy will never "betray" Nato or any sort of military intervention

[dan/california]

Good thread!

[Huba]

18 minutes ago, Endyamon said:

Honestly, were there really people thinking that Meloni would have "betrayed" the west/Nato?
Just before/after (I can't remember) the italian vote, I wrote that Meloni and her party are everything but Putin's friends. Those were Berlusconi and Salvini (who took a lot of money from Vlad). Meloni didn't have anything to do with Russia, and as I wrote, she and her party still fight the communism, and in the italian population point of view, Russia is still a communist state (like if the URSS never disappeared at all).
Whaterver foreign politician/journalists will say, with Meloni, Italy will never "betray" Nato or any sort of military intervention

"Betraying" is one thing, but she is doing way more than the previous government, and that is rather unexpected, at least to a clueless foreigners  with the SAMP/T pledge, Italy has just taken the lead regarding the high-tech weapon deliveries. One can hope that Macron will follow suit with the SAMP/T, and later we'll finally some fighters.

On an related note, Poland has recently issued a LoR for 90 AH-64s. There are some news that before we buy any, there will be some temporary solution (meaning used US choppers), and that perhaps will allow us to get rid of the remaining Mi-24s. Some announcements regarding this are expected in the upcoming weeks.

Edited November 8, 2022 by Huba

[Huba]

"Russian sources" being WarGonzo:

 

[danfrodo]

Kherson falling is important for a lot of reasons.  A huge one is that while UKR forces are tied up there we will see no push toward Tokmak/Melitopol, which is my most fervent fantasy.  And we can't get to the Feb22 borders, let alone Crimea, w/o getting moving on this front.  

I saw above knucklehead wrote that Kherson is gateway to Crimea.  This person has never seen a map of Ukraine?  Or did they mean that taking Kherson frees up UKR forces?

[akd]

Trucks and, I think, a battalion CP vehicle, so not a failed Russian attack:

 

[Taranis]

Lest we forget

"A woman in front of the wall of memory of defenders of Ukraine who fell during the Russian-Ukrainian war, in downtown kyiv, Monday, November 7, 2022. BERNAT ARMANGUE / AP"

[Yet]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

Kherson falling is important for a lot of reasons.  A huge one is that while UKR forces are tied up there we will see no push toward Tokmak/Melitopol, which is my most fervent fantasy.  And we can't get to the Feb22 borders, let alone Crimea, w/o getting moving on this front.  

I saw above knucklehead wrote that Kherson is gateway to Crimea.  This person has never seen a map of Ukraine?  Or did they mean that taking Kherson frees up UKR forces?

How much army will be freed up? you guys think that if Kherson is taken, there will be no action from Kherson till Burchak? I agree that rivercrossing will be hard, but i also cant imagine that both sides will de-militarise the Dnjepr banks. The 40 riverine boats that USA and NL are sending are not for fishing.

What would UAFs options be along the river when Kherson is liberated?

[Battlefront.com]

38 minutes ago, akd said:

Trucks and, I think, a battalion CP vehicle, so not a failed Russian attack:

 

The driver is presumably coming from the UA direction (fires are still burning) and is oohing-and-awing as if this is his first time seeing it.  Given the trucks are in the same direction, possibly they were retreating.  Hopefully this is what it is and not a Ukrainian convoy that was busted up on the way to the front.

Whatever happened, whomever fired on this sector of road scored big.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, Yet said:

How much army will be freed up? you guys think that if Kherson is taken, there will be no action from Kherson till Burchak? I agree that rivercrossing will be hard, but i also cant imagine that both sides will de-militarise the Dnjepr banks. The 40 riverine boats that USA and NL are sending are not for fishing.

What would UAFs options be along the river when Kherson is liberated?

I think the Russians are going to be on the short end of the stick for this one.  Russia will have to be concerned about Ukraine crossing, but I don't think Ukraine has any realistic concerns about Russia crossing back over.  Therefore, Ukraine can keep some TD units along the river to make sure sabotage groups stay out and all will be good.  The TDs don't come at the expense of Ukraine frontline forces, but even mobiks come at the expense of Russian frontline forces.

Both sides will keep artillery in the game, though.

The most realistic scenario for Ukraine crossing the river is in conjunction with an offensive southward from the line of contact between Dnepr and Donetsk City.  Those sorts of attacks can be relatively small and yet have a much larger impact than if they were the sole point of attack.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, Taranis said:

Lest we forget

"A woman in front of the wall of memory of defenders of Ukraine who fell during the Russian-Ukrainian war, in downtown kyiv, Monday, November 7, 2022. BERNAT ARMANGUE / AP"

Respects to those who have fallen and to the nation that honors them.

Contrast this with Russia.  "Casualties?  What casualties?".  Imagine if Russia built a similar wall in Moscow.  I think they'd have to make it a lot taller to fit it within the confines of the city limits.

Steve

[akd]

17 minutes ago, Taranis said:

Lest we forget

"A woman in front of the wall of memory of defenders of Ukraine who fell during the Russian-Ukrainian war, in downtown kyiv, Monday, November 7, 2022. BERNAT ARMANGUE / AP"

AFAIK, these are mostly (or exclusively?) losses from 2014-2021.

[Splinty]

Til Valhalla!

[womble]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

At some point we should get into the role of military power within micro-social contexts, and just how bad an idea it is for anything but very specialized forces.

Well, there were riot police and other "specialised" forces mixed in with the initial bum rush that Russia tried to pull. So it does look like they were at least somewhat aware that elements equipped and trained to kill people and break things aren't the best tools for maintaining control of a civilian population.

[Huba]

Rybar seems to be saying that Sniherivka is taken (or at least heavily contested, including UA columns breaking across the entire city). He even made a map

Edited November 8, 2022 by Huba

[Haiduk]

2 hours ago, danfrodo said:

Adding  on to Zeleban's posts above:  RU is very railroad dependent.  As far as I can tell there's currently only two lines serving the western theater.  

1.  rail line running near the fighting at Pavlivka

2.  Kerch bridge.  This line still has to get from Crimea to the area north of perekop, which looks to have only two lines.  

So UKR can significantly interdict RU western theater supplies by hitting only 2 rail lines.  And if they can't hit Kerch, they can hit the two lines coming north out of Crimea.  Russia is very vulnerable and hopefully the huge amount of forces in the western theater will start having serious shortages soon.

In context of this and post of Mashovets it's became clear a sense of yesterday UKR hit the building of Donetsk Railway Directorate in Donetsk, completely destroying dispatcher center

  

 

[Haiduk]

20 minutes ago, akd said:

AFAIK, these are mostly (or exclusively?) losses from 2014-2021.

Yes, this wall is for fallen in ATO/JFO before big war