How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_MonkeyKing]

1 minute ago, Zeleban said:

Now the Russians have concentrated significant forces in the east of Ukraine. More than summer or autumn

Same goes for UKR.

Everything depends on reconstitution and recovery of the two sides. This is mostly unknown to us.

[poesel]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

Why are they not in favour of it?

Complex question. I‘ve read once that Germany (as of 1870) has always experienced war as an act of aggression against her neighbours. But never in defense. 
There is no experience with war as a good thing (in this context). Weapons are the means for a war. No weapons, no war.

We are lacking an example for a war in history where we successfully defended ourselves or freed us from occupation. That is different from nearly all other European nations.

[Huba]

4 minutes ago, poesel said:

Complex question. I‘ve read once that Germany (as of 1870) has always experienced war as an act of aggression against her neighbours. But never in defense. 
There is no experience with war as a good thing (in this context). Weapons are the means for a war. No weapons, no war.

We are lacking an example for a war in history where we successfully defended ourselves or freed us from occupation. That is different from nearly all other European nations.

How egocentric! But seriously, this is a very interesting perspective. 

[Battlefront.com]

12 hours ago, fireship4 said:

I cannot agree with this.  People under duress may think on shorter time scales, with the aim of surviving day-to-day, when thinking further ahead and the effort required to sacrifice for tomorrow are too taxing on their limited resources.  Living further from the edge may allow for clearer thinking, and saving up for a decent pair of boots which will cost less in the long run.

Science appears to disagree with you   I was listening to a study that was done with subjects in MRI.  When asked about various things they noted parts of the brain lighting up and how strongly they lit up.  The more the questions were about the future and abstract concepts (e.g. the planet vs. you personally), the more distant and the more abstract the less the brain lit up compared to nearer and more personal topics.

This makes sense if you think about it.  How many people are managing their day to day finances reasonably well compared to planning for retirement?  Government spending is also notoriously short term thinking.  Government's priorities are almost always a fair reflection of people's short term thinking.  Etc.

In a totalitarian system it makes a lot of sense for someone to be more concerned about being arrested tomorrow for something they do today than concern for what may happen a year from now.

Steve

[Huba]

I read some comment today that DE government is seriously preparing the Leopards to be sent (in general, not only the Leo2 but also long awaited Leo1), various gov figures in the media seem to be hinting at that. @poesel do you have that feeling, or is it more a wishful-thinking/ projection in your opinion? The situation seems quite ripe to do it, and of course there seems to be a lot of (I wager mostly international, but perhaps internal too?) political clout to gain here.

An example:

 

Edited January 8, 2023 by Huba

[sburke]

56 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

Now the Russians have concentrated significant forces in the east of Ukraine. More than summer or autumn

forces even less well trained, led, equipped than the previous units.  And with fewer opportunities to steal washing machines and toilets, less motivated.  

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

No, I personally think the latest missile campaign was to show Putin and the Russian people that after suffering two operational defeats last fall that Russia can do something, anything.  It is not “dangerous and effective”, it is desperate.

I agree the impetus of the missile campaign was to do SOMETHING to try and change the status quo (i.e. Russia losing quite badly).  It was also exactly what the Russia nationalist bloggers had been demanding Russia do for many months, so it would seem the strikes are partly to satisfy the nationalists (we've many times discussed why Putin has to do this). 

It appears pretty obvious that this missile/drone campaign is as effective as we expected it to be, which is not effective at all.  Well, other than giving the Western "doom and gloom" people something else to latch onto when pressing for Ukraine to negotiate with Putin.

What I wonder about is what the leadership was thinking when they put the huge resources in motion to carry out all these attacks.  Did they seriously think this had a good chance of altering the war in their favor, or did they resign themselves to doing it simply because they didn't have anything else to do?  We simply do not know, but given how out of touch Russian leadership is with reality I suspect they really did think it could bring Ukraine to the negotiating table at the very least.

I believe that this missile/drone campaign has backfired.  Not only has it made Ukrainians even more resolute to make Russia pay for its actions, it's also been able to take great pride in how much of Russia's efforts have been shot down (literally).  The long range strikes against Russian strategic bombers has also produced a lot of positive PR for Ukraine.  The campaign has also accelerated the transfer of AD systems to Ukraine, including Patriot, that might otherwise arrived slower.  Long term this is not good for Russia at all.

Steve

[Beleg85]

About today's Russian claims, widely repeated by Soloviov and other Kremlin goons, that they killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers at Kramatorsk' strike...

...well it seems most probably rockets fell on some empty, non-useable building. Or rather next to its entrance and somewhere behind.

https://twitter.com/KatarzynaMucha8/status/1612188482713042945

Addendum to discussion about current Russian missile campaign.

1 hour ago, Zeleban said:

Now the Russians have concentrated significant forces in the east of Ukraine. More than summer or autumn

And that should be main thought taken from this Koffman podcast. Ukrainians are far more than the West concerned with possible mass of Russian soldiers- even if barely equiped- pushing or just holding the lines during new year's offensives.

To keep morale, they already advertise what new wave may expect:

Russian Valkyries.

Edited January 8, 2023 by Beleg85

[FancyCat]

I wish nothing but suffering on Russia and all Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Exceedingly war crimey especially in comparison to the "less powerful" Ukrainian military and their campaign to force out Russia from Kherson.

 

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

About today's Russian claims, widely repeated by Soloviov and other Kremlin goons, that they killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers at Kramatorsk' strike...

...well it seems most probably rockets fell on some empty, non-useable building. Or rather next to its entrance and somewhere behind.

https://twitter.com/KatarzynaMucha8/status/1612188482713042945

Addendum to discussion about current Russian missile campaign.

Yeah, this has the usual Russian propaganda stench to it.  Ukraine DEFINITELY killed a large number of Russians sitting around in the rear, so obviously Russia has now done exactly the same thing.  Sure

Steve

[Kinophile]

17 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

I wish nothing but suffering on Russia and all Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Exceedingly war crimey especially in comparison to the "less powerful" Ukrainian military and their campaign to force out Russia from Kherson.

 

In Ireland we have a name for that type of person,  a Knacker. 

The kind of nihilistic, multi-generational low grade Scumbag who is utterly untrustworthy and has no qualms burning down a house they've burgerled.  Try to fight back is pointless,  they've nothing going on in their lives so you just become their newest mission. For them and all their asshole cousins. Cops are the true terror for them,  because they're also cowards. Every country has these people. 

Russian command seems to have drawn exclusively from that class to the point where it absorbed, subsumed and institutionalized that mentality. Now it seems that at all levels and services the AFRF is innately competent at only two things -  Greed and Cruelty, all aspects I would apply to a true Knacker.

Anything more complex, requiring character points beyond those two and they struggle for any success. 

But they are fully able to plan, execute and follow through on any plan thay involves hurting someone who cannot hit back.  They're really ****ing good at that.

Edited January 8, 2023 by Kinophile

[Haiduk]

3 hours ago, dan/california said:

Clearly rotating units is the single hardest thing for Ukraine to do. I don't think that is out of line from the history of previous conflicts. Obviously, anything that can be done to improve the process should be. Perhaps getting more people through NATO training courses will help.

Not always. Rotating of 93rd mech.brigade in this sector passed enough normal. All depends from commanders skills on all levels - from squad leaders to brigade HQ. If brigade command takes care of personnel selection and training, it mostly will not have such mess. For example, 46th air-assault brigade, which resqued situation is almost completely consists of new-mobilized personnel - before a war this was "paper" brigade of reserve, which had only HQ and small number of personnel. When they participated in ATO they just "leased" personnel in other brigades. But in this war brigade command could maintain effective training and we have seen results.

You can ask, but big number of your officers and sergeants passed ATO, so they are should be experienced? Not always. We still have many officers, who studied as far as in USSR or in 90th-2000th by old Soviet principles and command style. Soviet command of worse style are: "initiative is punishable", "if you can shift your task to somebody other - do it and higher chief will not fu...k your brain", "I'm chief - you are fool", "soldiers have to be fu..d out with stupid work", "subordinate officers have to fill out 100500 journals"

So, because since 2015 many retired officers were mobilized, they despite some command experience in ATO still use this Soviet principles in work with personnel to this time. And now we have conditional three classes of commanders:

- real good experienced commanders or young commanders, for which effectiveness if their unit is important and they try to maintain it in any cost and grow up in own command skill.

- good commanders with enough experience, but which don't want to learn. Most of them are ATO veterans, which think their experience in ATO is completely enough for this war. Many of such people are commanders of lower levels.

- commanders of "old style" or just young carrirists. Effectiveness? What is a sh...t? l "All good, troops have all what they need, tasks are acomplishing" (not), journals are filled out - MoD commitee have to be satisfied! Mostly becaise this category we have problems. Mostly this category send own troops in stupid attacks like on several videos, which I posted. Alas, I afraid we have many and many in this category. 

Now we have several volunteer initiatives, which organized special trainings for squad and platoon leaders, for drone operators, for artillery spotters and these "self-organized" courses (of course with full support from General Staff) gives more effect than similar courses in MoD training centers, where teach mostly formulaic and "students" not always interested in own growing up as commanders.     

Edited January 8, 2023 by Haiduk

[poesel]

46 minutes ago, Huba said:

I read some comment today that DE government is seriously preparing the Leopards to be sent (in general, not only the Leo2 but also long awaited Leo1), various gov figures in the media seem to be hinting at that. @poesel do you have that feeling, or is it more a wishful-thinking/ projection in your opinion?

Not more is known than this interview. The further delivery of tanks (no type mentioned) has not been ruled out. That came from the vice-chancellor and Green party member, Habeck. The Greens have always been pro-weapon delivery. So not much news here.

But 'seriously preparing' mentioned together with 'weapons delivery'? That would be a first...

 

[Harmon Rabb]

54 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

I wish nothing but suffering on Russia and all Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Exceedingly war crimey especially in comparison to the "less powerful" Ukrainian military and their campaign to force out Russia from Kherson.

 

Terrible that this is happening but good that we have evidence of these war crimes committed.

Hopefully all these war crimes are being meticulously recorded. When this war ends whoever is in charge in the Kremlin after Putin's gang is gone, needs to be pressured to extradite those accused of committing these acts to face justice.

Edit: Here is an interesting BBC article I recently read about the subject of war crimes in this war.

Ukraine war: Putin should face trial this year, says top lawyer

Edited January 8, 2023 by Harmon Rabb
Added BBC article.

[Bulletpoint]

44 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

I wish nothing but suffering on Russia and all Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Exceedingly war crimey especially in comparison to the "less powerful" Ukrainian military and their campaign to force out Russia from Kherson.

 

The average Russian soldier has no say on whether to use incendiary ammunition against a city or not.

Hundreds of thousands of them were literally rounded up and forced to fight. This war is a tragedy to them and their families too.

Russia needs to lose this war, and that unfortunately means there has to be thousands of Russian casualties, but I don't want to start celebrating that they die or suffer.

In fact I find it concerning that people are now speaking of "mobiks" as if they are somehow subhuman and that it's funny they get massacred.

Especially when it comes to Ukrainian propaganda videos where they add clown music to gruesome videos of Russians getting blown to pieces.

Every time I watch a video like that, I find myself thinking "Are these really the people we are supporting? Maybe we should just let leave them to enjoy this war that they seem to find so funny".

Edited January 8, 2023 by Bulletpoint

[Zeleban]

1 hour ago, sburke said:

forces even less well trained, led, equipped than the previous units.  And with fewer opportunities to steal washing machines and toilets, less motivated.  

 

It is widely believed that the pre-war Russian army was an army of professionals. The testimonies of prisoners at the beginning of the war directly contradict this. All as one declare that instead of combat training they were engaged in complete nonsense and eyewash and held weapons at best several times in their entire service. Many generally state that their position in peacetime was completely different than during the war. Their commanders knew perfectly well that with such meager training they would be equally ineffective in both the old and the new position. 

Everyone remembers very well that at the beginning of the war, the clothes and ammunition of the soldiers were of terrible quality, many types of equipment were missing, as they were stolen. The equipment was in poor technical condition and was constantly out of order.

And vice versa, after 8 years of war in the Donbas, the DPR/LPR fighters were much better prepared and equipped than their Russian counterparts. Civilian volunteers supplied them with everything they needed, they made extensive use of quadcopters.

After half a year of the war, the Russians deployed several plants for commissioning equipment after conservation, and their equipment has since been in good condition. They also learned how to use quadrocopters. Many soldiers and officers received combat experience. Contrary to our expectations, Putin did not throw all the conscripts into battle at once. Instead, they were trained on the territory of Russia and Belarus for 4 months. And today they were transferred to the Donbass. I am ABSOLUTELY sure that this training is much better than what the Russian "professionals" had before the war. I'm sure they were able to find soldiers with combat experience to teach their mobilized something.

Do you seriously think that the Russians will not be able to provide their mobilized soldiers with equipment? Any equipment can be easily bought in a variety of online stores. Our volunteers provide the Ukrainian army with everything necessary in this way. So why can't the Russians buy all of this?

I am sure that the Russian army today is much more combat-ready than it was before the war.

There will be a time of hard and exhausting battles ahead.

Edited January 8, 2023 by Zeleban

[Fernando]

2 hours ago, poesel said:

We are lacking an example for a war in history where we successfully defended ourselves or freed us from occupation. That is different from nearly all other European nations.

Perhaps the Befreiungskriege, the 1813 campaign)?

[poesel]

16 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Perhaps the Befreiungskriege, the 1813 campaign)?

That was after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and before the creation of the Kaiserreich in 1871. That was a phase where technically there was no Germany. Also, a bit too far in the past and more of a Prussian thing.

[Beleg85]

Reportedly village of Lantranovka was visited by Himars after some mobiks put their clips on social media from camping in local public buildings. There were victims, but we don't know how many. However, many main channels are silent about this event fo some reason so perhaps it is minor.

Edited January 8, 2023 by Beleg85

[Fernando]

21 minutes ago, poesel said:

That was after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and before the creation of the Kaiserreich in 1871. That was a phase where technically there was no Germany. Also, a bit too far in the past and more of a Prussian thing.

1. Germany was not unified in 1813, but it did exist indeed.
2. AFAIK the feeling of the Germans in 1813 was that they were freeing themselves from the French yoke. In the end ALL German states turned against Napoleon, even Bavaria, that had been a French ally more often than not.
3. The HRE was not unified before 1806. It had not been unified for centuries in fact. 
4. Counting from 1871 onward is not fair. That's just one century and a half. 

Anyway we are going too far from the purpose of this thread

Edited January 8, 2023 by Fernando

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, JonS said:

Do I think the Russians will be able to deliver with this campaign? Well, my Binford Predicto2000(tm) puts it at 37.51% so probably not. But that's not a 'no'.

I think your Predicto is having a decimal problem by a couple positions.  My point is that if the bar is low for the Russians than it is clearly also low for mainstream experts.  Saying something like "the latest Russian strategic missile campaign is ONE OF THE most effective and dangerous" is weasel wording and essentially useless in assessment of the progress of the war.  This is not about predicting outcomes it is about assessing something that already happened or is currently happening.  Here I am in @NamEndedAllen's camp, when one is assessing events as they unfold, one does need to employ stronger metrics than "One of the most...probably."  I mean I do not expect exact percentages here either but before a pundit tosses out that statement they should probably prove it somewhat and define what they mean by "dangerous and effective". 

In a few posts we have established that the rail infra is running normally.  Ukrainian morale appears high, with no signs of pressuring the Ukrainian government to sue for peace.  Recruitment and force generation seem to escalating.  If there are some behind the curtain indicators or evidence, let's hear it.  I agree that everything is not going to happen in a day but if cracks are forming then where are they?  And here I do not mean you or any posters on this board but the people doing podcasts and selling this in the first place. 

[kuri]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

In fact I find it concerning that people are now speaking of "mobiks" as if they are somehow subhuman and that it's funny they get massacred.

Especially when it comes to Ukrainian propaganda videos where they add clown music to gruesome videos of Russians getting blown to pieces.

Every time I watch a video like that, I find myself thinking "Are these really the people we are supporting? Maybe we should just let leave them to enjoy this war that they seem to find so funny".

How is the view from that high horse? Against their will or not, the mobiks are still invading Ukraine as a part of an army that has been shelling civilians and committing crimes left and right. I imagine the average Ukrainian serviceman is far too desensitized at this point to care about the feelings of their enemy.

[sburke]

7 minutes ago, kuri said:

How is the view from that high horse? Against their will or not, the mobiks are still invading Ukraine as a part of an army that has been shelling civilians and committing crimes left and right. I imagine the average Ukrainian serviceman is far too desensitized at this point to care about the feelings of their enemy.

yeah as long as Ukraine adheres to humanitarian treatment of POWs etc I could really care less about how they portray smashing the Russian army.  Those murderous a-holes have another choice to not be in Ukraine and they should have opted to stay home.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I agree the impetus of the missile campaign was to do SOMETHING to try and change the status quo (i.e. Russia losing quite badly).  It was also exactly what the Russia nationalist bloggers had been demanding Russia do for many months, so it would seem the strikes are partly to satisfy the nationalists (we've many times discussed why Putin has to do this). 

It appears pretty obvious that this missile/drone campaign is as effective as we expected it to be, which is not effective at all.  Well, other than giving the Western "doom and gloom" people something else to latch onto when pressing for Ukraine to negotiate with Putin.

What I wonder about is what the leadership was thinking when they put the huge resources in motion to carry out all these attacks.  Did they seriously think this had a good chance of altering the war in their favor, or did they resign themselves to doing it simply because they didn't have anything else to do?  We simply do not know, but given how out of touch Russian leadership is with reality I suspect they really did think it could bring Ukraine to the negotiating table at the very least.

I believe that this missile/drone campaign has backfired.  Not only has it made Ukrainians even more resolute to make Russia pay for its actions, it's also been able to take great pride in how much of Russia's efforts have been shot down (literally).  The long range strikes against Russian strategic bombers has also produced a lot of positive PR for Ukraine.  The campaign has also accelerated the transfer of AD systems to Ukraine, including Patriot, that might otherwise arrived slower.  Long term this is not good for Russia at all.

Steve

This is what confounds me - what is the Russian game plan here?  We have had debates at the tactical and operational levels of warfare, and to me the jury is still out on just how much was Russia sucking and how much was warfare evolving away from them, largely driven by the UA.  However at the strategic and political level the Russian prosecution of this war has simply been baffling.  

Ok, so you had a weak plan going in.  The entire thing hinged on Ukraine collapsing and the West staying out of the whole thing.  Ok so they did not red team this thing and had no Plan B at the start line; not the first time in history of a great power doing this and won’t be the last.  

So they made lemonade out of gasoline and blood and shifted the narrative to “liberate the Donbas” for all Russian-kind.  Little unspecific but at least it looked like an exit strategy.  And then the proceeded to pull out of the Northern offensives, “we were only feinting at your capital”, classic strategy.  But then they proceed to try and hold onto everything else along almost 1000kms of frontage…like seriously W.T.F?  

The RA runs out of gas in the Donbas, the UA takes back an embarrassing amount of territory…and the answer is “take the Donbas!”  They then execute a bunch of disconnected missile campaigns while crap keeps blowing up in their backfield and keep attacking - now in what is starting to look like human wave assaults - and their strategy is “mobilize some more and keep going!”  While on the political level the plan was to Annex a bunch of stuff only to lose it, and then “attack the Donbas!”

No other axis to draw away the UA, looks like they may have tried to get something on up in Belarus but it failed.  “Just keep running up that hill!”  No possible exit plan for renormalization with the West because every warcrime just keeps pushing that boat further over the horizon. 

And now more conscripts, lobbing the bottom of the missile fleet all over the place, and “Attack the Donbas”.  Seriously if someone had written a novel before the war with the Russians doing what they are actually doing they would have been laughed out of the room.  The longer this war goes on it is becoming clear that there is no Russian strategy.  No master plan or deep thinking.  Just reacting day to day all up and down the chain of command all the way to the top.

[Battlefront.com]

9 minutes ago, sburke said:

yeah as long as Ukraine adheres to humanitarian treatment of POWs etc I could really care less about how they portray smashing the Russian army.  Those murderous a-holes have another choice to not be in Ukraine and they should have opted to stay home.

I had a lot of sympathy for the first month when the Russian soldiers had very little idea what was going on.  Many, way too many from Russia's perspective, refused to fight.  But now?  I have no sympathy at all.  These guys being mobilized have the information they need to decide if they are going to go to Ukraine and murder innocent people or take a different course of action.  They have a choice, even if they've convinced themselves they do not.

The other thing that has eroded my sympathy for Russian mobiks is all the videos and intercepted calls that are available to us.  They are not angry that they are going to Ukraine to commit warcrimes, they are angry they aren't getting the training they need to do them effectively.

The only way this war ends is with Russia defeated.  The only way to defeat Russia is to kill Russian soldiers.  The faster they are killed, the faster this war ends.  When I see a video of dead Russians I think "good, the war is a little closer to being over".

As for demeaning Russian soldiers... I have no problem with that either.  Russians who are for this war view themselves as Übermensch and Ukrainians as Untermensch.  They deserve to be mocked, because not only are they not superior to Ukrainians, their behavior shows them to be decidedly inferior by any Western standard.  It is good to remind everybody of this fact.

Steve