How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

Helmets! Don't forget the helmets! 

Oh good god... why did you remind me of this?  I had tried so hard to forget it

I did forget to say that it is good of The_Capt to continually point out all the GOOD things that Germany has done for Ukraine.  The most important one is agreeing to kick Russia out of SWIFT.  However, it seems the latter was agreed to by Scholz thinking it would not be necessary and he went along with the crowd.  Germany's willingness to shut off Russian gas is also something that deserves a big round of applause.

It is sad that all the good things Germany does for Ukraine is being undermined by the high profile handling of weapons..  Sad because Scholz could avoid it.

Steve

 

[Artkin]

3 hours ago, DesertFox said:

And some good news here:

 

 

 

How hard is it for reporters to be specific? What snakes. A brigade is usually 40 MBT, with 3 or so battalions of BMP/BTR regular infantry. The rest will be the SPGs.

[The_Capt]

16 minutes ago, billbindc said:

All good points but I don't feel like we really have a handle on why this is so difficult for Scholtz. As you note, Germany's already strongly into the war in a lot of ways and there's not much upside to refusing Leo's. 

Well then we have to be missing something. Politicians do not normally voluntarily toe themselves into knots just for giggles.  I mean having German tanks killing Russians in Ukraine is already pretty loaded given those two nation’s history.  However, we know the “escalation excuse” is getting weaker, so what is the real issue?  Does this guy run a minority or coalition government right now?  Ultimately he is in a position where it is better to dither than commit, I mean based on the back and forth it looks like Germany hopes this war ends before they even need to send the things.  

The export agreements are upside down, but frankly that is also on the nations dumb enough to sign onto the agreement…like Canada.  We literally bought a replacement based on an old fleet we bought when we had a Bde in Europe, because cheaper and “Afghanistan” which was so incredibly dumb, and disingenuous it boggles the mind.  But here we are stuck with a European tank we cannot push on without permissions.  While our closest ally has parks literally filled with M1s (let’s not get into “we can’t look too much like the Americans” debate.

Regardless, I suspect that there is more going on here inside the German political house but it still does not explain why people are getting so hot and bothered.

[Huba]

Back to news. The Dutch are definitely on the roll today:

 

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Nope, and we also don't know how many they have in reserves.  I keep meaning to ask if anybody has seen any of the Polish PT-91?  Supposedly Ukraine has several hundred.  We know the Slovene tanks haven't been committed yet.

Steve

Some of them are almost certainly training in Ukraine, at one of milanalyst accounts even name of the unit that operated them flyed several months ago but I cannot remind myself now. Perhaps Huba will know. There were also speculations they were being used during Kharkiv offensive.

Part of the fleet is still here, and refurbished to useable state- note how much time it takes to repair them and organize (already half a year- and logisticians are reportedly working around the clocks on many pieces of other equipment as well). It's  also quite possible some Ukrainian tankers are conducting exercises on PT-91, but these things are kept very much in silence here.

Overall, they just upgraded T-72's, not something groundbreaking.

1 hour ago, Lethaface said:

I can recommend some books by Adam Tooze about this subject ('crashed'), so I agree that economy, military and political stuff are intertwined. But in this case one subject is geopolitics/macro-economics and national pollitics, the other are the reality of war/the operational/tactical situation at the front. It would indeed be great if the former would cater to the latter, but that's not how it works. 

Yup, Russia benefits from much more holistic approach to warfare in general, even despite its odd internal construction and quirky logic.

Edited January 20, 2023 by Beleg85

[Billy Ringo]

Is it remotely possible that in the midst of all this very public international finger-pointing, give'em this don't give'em that, can/can't absorb multiple variants of weapons, can/can't train on multiple variants of weapons, NATO will/NATO won't, etc. etc. etc......

That Ukraine has and is being trained on some very dangerous and a wide range of weapons which will be delivered in a moderately short window that will absolutely rock the Russian's world?  That all of the bickering and stalemating is nothing more than a smokescreen from which the Ukrainians will step into Spring with the tools they need to, well for lack of a better term--kick the Russian's ***?

Or is this just wishful thinking on my part?

From my humble and poorly informed perspective, there seems to be a LOT of public discourse about what the Ukrainians will receive that would be better served to be held and discussed behind close doors.  Maybe all this BS is an intentional diversion.

[Harmon Rabb]

This guy better stay away from windows for a while.

[Zeleban]

 

[Huba]

3 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Some of them are definitelly training in Ukraine, at one of milanalyst accounts even name of the unit that operated them flyed several months ago but I cannot remind myself now. Perhaps Huba will know. There were also speculations they were being used during Kharkiv offensive.

Part of the fleet is still here, and refurbished to useable state- note how much time it takes to repair them and organize (already half a year). There are also quite possible some Ukrainian tankers are conducting exercises on PT-91, but these things are kept very much in silence here.

Overall, they just upgraded T-72's, not something groundbreaking.

What we know about PT91s:

- Yermak thanked Poland on Twitter for sending some
- At the same time, there were some photos of these on a train
- Rumors that 30 -60 were sent

And to my best recollection that is it. There were no pictures of them in combat, or even in Ukraine. Reasonable assumptions is that there's some training going on, perhaps UA might field a combat-ready battalion now, but more likely they are training more tankers anticipating transfer of the whole PL fleet. I doubt though that this will happen now, more likely the new brigade Poland is funding will operate freshly refurbished T-72s, there should be a hundred or two left, though in very poor condition.
The accompanying IFVs will obviously be BMP-1, there is still a lot more of these around.
The guns might be 2S1, but there might be another Krab battalion ready as well. 
Also I guess that we'll be transferring the whole brigade equipment with support vehicles, trucks etc, basically everything the Ukrainians were training with.
 

Btw, one guy from the twitter military community gathered all the available info about Polish donations up to this point:

https://twitter.com/sjanus_pl/status/1616431410121961474

[FancyCat]

55 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Germany's willingness to shut off Russian gas is also something that deserves a big round of applause.

 

Not really. Germany sought to get as much gas as possible from Russia before winter, then had to stop once Nord Stream 1 blew up, which I still believe happened as a round about way of Russia cutting off Germany's supply without violating contracts.

Throughout the time before NS1 blew up, Germany was insisting on Russia fulfilling it's gas contracts with Russia giving excuses for why it couldn't.

Now, I've said it before, I'm not too annoyed with states taking Russian gas, but it's was particularly annoying having Germany urge no heavy equipment for Ukraine while paying money for Russian gas insisting on "fulfillment of contracts".

[Beleg85]

Thanks @Huba, a lot of info. If I find these discussions with possible name of the unit I will post them.

19 minutes ago, Huba said:

The guns might be 2S1, but there might be another Krab battalion ready as well. 

Interesting, I thought Ukrainians prefer to gather Krabs in separate units not organic battalions.

 

Anyway, let's sharpen our fruit knives. Just in case of Luka's attacks.

 

Updated: a thrad trying to enumerate  what we know about stated deliveries from 1-20 of January. In PL but you can get what is written:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1616530733413322752.html

Edited January 20, 2023 by Beleg85

[FancyCat]

And sure if the objective was to hedge for time to fill up gas storage and trick Russia to keep sending gas in return for less heavy equipment to Ukraine, the pipeline blew up in September so continued German delays on heavy equipment in 2023 signifies it wasn't that reason either.

[Haiduk]

6 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Can Poland produce all the ammunition and spare parts for those Leopards?

Since Poland is buying Abrams and K2, I think, this question will not priority in the future. Also I read several years ago an article (it was from Russian side) that as if Poland encountered with enough expencive cost of exploitation of Leos in comparison with T-72/PT-91, so most of German tanks as if were moved to reserve. If this true, it becomes clear Poland wants to get rig of unnecessary tanks, which will not have a place in future of Polish tank forces. 

Edited January 20, 2023 by Haiduk

[The_Capt]

46 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

 

Now I will be interested to see if the UA holds as it has done in the Donbas, or if they give ground and let the RA string itself out and then go to work on them as they did earlier in the war.  Considering that the UA would be able to see the preparations of a major RA offensive from space, there will be no surprise.

Any rumours of civilians being evacuated?  

[Huba]

23 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Interesting, I thought Ukrainians prefer to gather Krabs in separate units not organic battalions.

That is a very good point and you're probably right. I meant that there was no official info about what guns are these going to be.

25 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Anyway, let's sharpen our fruit knives. Just in case of Luka's attacks.

And harsh words, that we have a plenty  

3 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Since Poland is buying Abrams and K2, I think, this question will not priority in the future. Also I read several years ago an article (it was from Russian side) that as if Poland encountered with enough expencive cost of exploitation of Leos in comparison with T-72/PT-91, so most of German tanks as if were moved to reserve. If this true, it becomes clear Poland wants to get rig of unnecessary tanks, which will not have a place in future of Polish tank forces. 

Up to this point the (semi-)official plan was to retain the Leo2 for another decade. Apart from one "Mini US Army" division, there are 4 more to fill with equipment, and only then the Leo2 could be retired. This seems to be already changing, and M1s are also to be operated by another division, the new one that is to be freshly raised. This implies that there's intent to obtain more M1s than the already purchased 316. The Dutch announced that they will be willing to pay for the Leo2 sent to Ukraine - so the opportunity presents itself. It would mean gutting our two best armored brigades, and I guess dislocation of additional NATO troops in Poland would be in order, but might happen IMO.
 

[Butschi]

48 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Not really. Germany sought to get as much gas as possible from Russia before winter, then had to stop once Nord Stream 1 blew up, which I still believe happened as a round about way of Russia cutting off Germany's supply without violating contracts.

Throughout the time before NS1 blew up, Germany was insisting on Russia fulfilling it's gas contracts with Russia giving excuses for why it couldn't.

Now, I've said it before, I'm not too annoyed with states taking Russian gas, but it's was particularly annoying having Germany urge no heavy equipment for Ukraine while paying money for Russian gas insisting on "fulfillment of contracts".

What do you suggest Germany should have done? How would you have gone from 55% Russian gas to 0%? Germany was frantically trying to get replacements from other sources but such things take time. We didn't even have LNG terminals back then. Of course we tried to load our gas storages as much as possible before the winter. And we supplied France with power when they had trouble with their nuclear power plants. Generated from Russian gas. Btw. Germany instantly agreed to quit NS2 when the war started.

Edited January 20, 2023 by Butschi

[Zeleban]

9 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Now I will be interested to see if the UA holds as it has done in the Donbas, or if they give ground and let the RA string itself out and then go to work on them as they did earlier in the war.  Considering that the UA would be able to see the preparations of a major RA offensive from space, there will be no surprise.

Any rumours of civilians being evacuated?  

so far no rumors

[Haiduk]

59 minutes ago, Huba said:

 

S-200? What? This complex was decomissioned already long time ago. I doubt specialists remained, who can operate with it...

Edited January 20, 2023 by Haiduk

[DesertFox]

Something seems to be in the making...

"Regarding the Leopard-2 tanks, he noted that according to Ramstein's results, "we have an optimistic breakthrough." The Minister explained that today the participants of the meeting agreed that countries armed with Leopard-2 can start training courses for Ukrainian tank crews.

Of course, so far the decision of the German side is important, and we have gained an understanding that there are no obstacles to the training of our crews for partner countries, to train our military at Leopards," Reznikov said."

 

 

 

[Haiduk]

55 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

I thought Ukrainians prefer to gather Krabs in separate units not organic battalions.

As I know Krabs are mostly for artilery brigades level. Though I have seen and Krabs in some mech.brigade composition.   

[FancyCat]

8 minutes ago, Butschi said:

What do you suggest Germany should have done? How would you have gone from 55% Russian gas to 0%? Germany was frantically trying to get replacements from other sources but such things take time. We didn't even have LNG terminals back then. Of course we tried to load our gas storages as much as possible before the winter. And we supplied France with power when they had trouble with their nuclear power plants. Generated from Russian gas. Btw. Germany instantly agreed to quit NS2 when the war started.

"Now, I've said it before, I'm not too annoyed with states taking Russian gas, but it's was particularly annoying having Germany urge no heavy equipment for Ukraine while paying money for Russian gas insisting on "fulfillment of contracts".

if training is being given, then pretty given that tanks are incoming. maybe a attempt at pretending pressure did not cause the decision to be made.

 

 

[Huba]

12 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

S-200? What? This complex was decomissioned already long time ago. I doubt specialists remained, who can operate with it...

Poland still has (had) one battery in service and it reportedly was sent too. I asked about it specifically and it seems that there's a consensus about it being given away . I'd think that in time of mobilization you guys might've found these specialist, even if they are a bit on the older side now. Still would be useful as an area denial weapon vs potential high altitude intrusions; just turning on the radar should put a fear of god in these A-50s hanging near the border.

Edited January 20, 2023 by Huba

[Huba]

11 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Something seems to be in the making...

"Regarding the Leopard-2 tanks, he noted that according to Ramstein's results, "we have an optimistic breakthrough." The Minister explained that today the participants of the meeting agreed that countries armed with Leopard-2 can start training courses for Ukrainian tank crews.

Of course, so far the decision of the German side is important, and we have gained an understanding that there are no obstacles to the training of our crews for partner countries, to train our military at Leopards," Reznikov said."

 

 

 

So my take on all of this:

- Scholz got his "win" - no Leopards are declared now, but..
- Germany started doing inventory and checking what can be sent (meaning actually starting preparations)
- countries participating in Ringtausch agreed to send their new Leo2 and delay deliveries
- training on Leo2 is officially starting
- talk of PL donating more vehicles to be replaced with M1s
- Scholz will announce his final decision sometimes in near future

In my opinion it means that the decision to send Leopards was already made. All the preparations are starting. Official announcement will be made later - it allows Scholz to have his little "victory", while in the same time it does not slow down the progress on delivery very much.

Reportedly Ukrainians are also about to start training on the Chally2 - I bet that when it comes to actually sending them, there will be already more pledged, to form a fully functional battalion or two.

Basically the frog is still being slowly boiled, we are just pretending Germany is not participating in it yet.

 

[danfrodo]

Anyone have any more news on alleged RU offensive actions on Zaporizhe front?  Where is this happening?  I am hoping RU manages to take big losses and expend lots of artillery w/o hurting UKR.  Easier to kill when they come out of their holes and hopefully will make some more sectors open to counterattacks.  I am still hoping for UKR to advance to Polohy and/or Tokmak.  That would mess up RU supply lines quite a bit.

[Haiduk]

From negative news, which I heard today execpt no Leos and GLSDB, I point next:

- "Spiegel" has thrown a news as German intelligence deeply concerned with enormous UKR losses around Bakhmut of "three-digits number for a day" (new cause don't send Leos, because they will be uselessly destroyed)

- Mark Milley made a statement that despite Russia lsot more 100000 of troops, they are substituting own losses, UKR losses also very significant, Russia destroyed power infrastructure, have been killing civilians. He doubts UKR will be able to expel Russians up to the end of year. And sooner or later both sides will be forced to end this war on the negotiation table to avoid further losses. (hello Korean scenario?)

- As if US strongly recommends to UKR to shift terms of new offensive until all Western military aid arrive and troops will be trained. (PsyOps?)

Though, Mark Milley is that guy who predicted  "72 hours for Kyiv falling with 15000 UKR loses and 4000 Russian losses"