How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[kevinkin]

10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is troubling because it could be quite effective.

Agree. Death by 1000 cuts. NATO/west will have to start allowing long range strike ops onto Russian soil including UA special forces. Hate to use the term safe haven, but we can't allow this (peace on our terms) to slip away with one hand tied behind our backs. Seek and destroy the means by which the RA in Ukraine is being supplied. Might not see this until the RA goes over to a major offensive.

[The_Capt]

7 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

 

Well the problem here is that they really were not "international".  We have no UNSC Resolution or anything else from international bodies (correct me if I am wrong).  So this is not "illegal aid", this is "trade between two nation states, one of which we really don't like and the other who is also on our sh#t list." We have a lot of Western sanctions but other nations such as China and India did not sign on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_the_2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#:~:text=With the commencement of attacks,transfers%2C exports%2C and imports.

[kevinkin]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I don’t know if the tank is really dead, but for the RA at least

I have been thinking about this too and wonder if the key sectors are so impassible now that armor in the hands of little trained RA troops can gain the momentum needed to make their deployment worth the effort? To push through these sectors would require combined arms combat engineering that I don't think the RA has. Even if they could carve out  narrow corridors for movement, they are narrow and easily interdicted.  

Edited February 5, 2023 by kevinkin

[cesmonkey]

3 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well the problem here is that they really were not "international".  We have no UNSC Resolution or anything else from international bodies (correct me if I am wrong).  So this is not "illegal aid", this is "trade between two nation states, one of which we really don't like and the other who is also on our sh#t list." We have a lot of Western sanctions but other nations such as China and India did not sign on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_the_2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#:~:text=With the commencement of attacks,transfers%2C exports%2C and imports.

I don't view it as an issue of international legality, it's about taking a side in  a state-power conflict and the repercussions of doing so.

[The_Capt]

4 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

I have been thinking about this too and wonder if the key sectors are so impassible now that armor in the hands of little trained RA troops can gain the momentum needed to make their deployment worth the effort? To push through these sectors would require combined arms combat engineering that I don't think the RA has. Even if they could carve out  narrow corridors for movement, they are narrow as easily interdicted.  

The other thing that is weird is the smaller lines of attack.  RA doctrine is not that different from ours, overwhelm and then annihilate.  The attacks last summer followed that model of hitting all over the line.  This winter there are a lot fewer lines of attack - feels like really expansive probing, but does not match probing tactics.  One does not normally use human wave assaults to probe.  

[FancyCat]

 

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

I don't view it as an issue of international legality, it's about taking a side in  a state-power conflict and the repercussions of doing so.

Sure, I was pointing to the tone and errors in the twitter post (and WSJ if that is what they are saying).  There are no "international sanctions" on Russia right now.  What we have are a lot of bilateral sanctions, and the EU, which while technically an international body, does not speak for the entire international community.  For that one needs an UNSC Resolution.  Now what we are going to do about India and China's continued trading with Russia is another topic entirely.

[Rokko]

16 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Further what is different about last summer is the lack of Russian artillery superiority.  They used infantry assault then, but only after blasting an area into pulp with WW1 levels of guns.

From what I've seen and read in terms of estimates, we're still talking about a discrepancy of 5:1 of incoming to outgoing shells around Bakhmut. So the artillery superiority is not as crushing as last summer but still really bad. What's also different from summer is that now there is at least the possibility the Ukrainians may be deliberately holding back in favor of building up stockpiles for their own planned offensives.

Also, it looks like the ISW assessment of the Bakhmut offensive having culminated in December were premature. Serious cracks in the defense have been appearing since January and now, after almost eight months, I wouldn't be surprised too if the city itself falls by the end of February. I don't want to overstate the importance of this in the grand scheme of things, but to me it looks like the Ukrainians are in risk of having fought a months-long defensive battle with an ultimately unfavorable casualty ratio, if they stay in this particular fight too long now and risk their defense collapsing.

In other news, has this been covered here before? Russian "Marker" UGV being sent into Donbas for combat testing, basically an unmanned ATGM carrier by the looks of it.

 

[Beleg85]

Interesting development in internal UA affairs...rochades connected with corruption scandals seem to reach Rheznikov:

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/02/5/7387980/#ldrfyohmjm2sj2848nl

He himself is probably clean, but is politically responsible for his subordinates. So perhaps painful anti-corruption moves enforced by the West will finally make a difference even at this level of power? Some even speculate "fear of looming Russian offensive" may may be (partially) artificially blow up to serve  political plans of this or other player. Of course- caution is advised when approaching this topic, as notoriously murky Ukrainian internal politics is always prone to subjective biases.

 

Short thread about Vuhledar axis:

 

[billbindc]

32 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Forget the past, the New Yorker and the CS lack of science Monitor, what do you think of his present assessment today? That's what is at issue here. A broken clock is right twice a day you know. 

His initial framing is bad.

Ukraine doesn't need to *take* Crimea to send Russia into a likely final tailspin in this war. It can cut it off at Perekop and drop the Kerch bridge. Russia is then stuck in a Kherson-but-far-worse situation that is likely not sustainable and it would be impossible for Russia to claim Ukraine was "escalating" the war if it had to pull out of Crimea itself.

He also seems to believe the very unlikely scenario that it's possible for Prigozhin to succeed Putin. That's a very unlikely scenario for reasons I've stated before in this thread. And he also ignores a fairly obvious point that it's going to take a hardliner to end the war. That's who will have the credibility to make it happen.

Finally, I think the Capt and others have pointed out the "ARMOUR NOW!" problems before. That Gates jumps on that bandwagon is pretty much the Gates specialty...seeing what is popular and promoting it.

[The_Capt]

7 minutes ago, Rokko said:

From what I've seen and read in terms of estimates, we're still talking about a discrepancy of 5:1 of incoming to outgoing shells around Bakhmut. So the artillery superiority is not as crushing as last summer but still really bad. What's also different from summer is that now there is at least the possibility the Ukrainians may be deliberately holding back in favor of building up stockpiles for their own planned offensives.

Also, it looks like the ISW assessment of the Bakhmut offensive having culminated in December were premature. Serious cracks in the defense have been appearing since January and now, after almost eight months, I wouldn't be surprised too if the city itself falls by the end of February. I don't want to overstate the importance of this in the grand scheme of things, but to me it looks like the Ukrainians are in risk of having fought a months-long defensive battle with an ultimately unfavorable casualty ratio, if they stay in this particular fight too long now and risk their defense collapsing.

In other news, has this been covered here before? Russian "Marker" UGV being sent into Donbas for combat testing, basically an unmanned ATGM carrier by the looks of it.

 

Ya matches what we have been hearing.  Bakhmut is a meat grinder, no way around it.  The attrition calculus is still not clear. The UA has been losing but how much and what is the impact?  If that is the Cost, what has been the Gain?  Pulling in the RA and forcing them to increase troops density in one area at the cost of others, we have seen this UA tactic before.  One could argue, although much deeper analysis needs to be conducted, that the bleeding at Severdonetsk allowed for the collapse of the line at Kharkiv.  So there is more going on here.

UGVs. Oh man, here we go.  The Ukraine War is really starting to turn into the US Civil War or Franco-Prussian War as far as emergence of next generation warfare.

Edited February 5, 2023 by The_Capt

[Aragorn2002]

On 2/4/2023 at 4:37 PM, The_MonkeyKing said:

How is this so hard for the europeans?

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/waffenhilfe-fuer-die-ukraine-kanzler-olaf-scholz-redet-den-panzer-partnern-ins-gewissen-a-9a1da89b-0b76-4c2d-a93a-d7116dca071f

Here is a free to read paper in finnish (translate works): https://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000009371956.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=toimitus-dlvr

THE EXPORT OF LEOPARD 2 battle tanks to Ukraine is in trouble, says the German newspaper Der Spiegel . According to the magazine, only very few countries have committed to give their tanks to Ukraine.

With these prospects, Ukraine will not receive enough Leopard 2 tanks to arm two Ukrainian tank battalions. The strength of one battalion is 31 tanks.

According to Der Spiegel, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius organized a video conference last week, where no EU country committed to concrete promises regarding the number of 2A6 tanks.

Even Holland, which promised carriages in public, did not promise anything.

The German Chancellor's Office still hopes that, with the cooperation of the countries, wagons for the needs of the two battalions will be gathered by the end of March. The lack of commitments has still caused German officials to hesitate.

"The only Leopards that will really be ready with trained crews at the end of March are the Bundeswehr [German Armed Forces] tanks," one expert told Der Spiegel.

 

Holland itself has no Leopards at the moment, except 18 German lease Leopards for training purposes (I'm pretty sure we will raise a tank batallion again soon) but the dutch government is investigating whether it can buy Leopards from another country and send them to our Ukrainian allies. So no panic please, we're doing what we can to make the Russians bleed and so are most other European countries. Ukraine will get the 300+ tanks it needs, of that I'm certain.

Edited February 5, 2023 by Aragorn2002

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

A problem I am seeing here is that we have dehumanized the Russians to the point that we are no longer considering the impact losing 1000 people a day is going to have on their home front.  I am not convinced in the least that Russia as a society is some sort of homogeneous zombie mass, even if their troops are starting to act like it.  Russia has a willpower breaking point and tactics like this are pushing towards it.  Disinformation will only go so far.  Everyone is talking about Ukrainian exhaustion but what about Russian exhaustion?

I'm in this camp.  Have been since the war started.  Russia is a strange society that is more rooted in pre-18th Century mentality and yet has still evolved in some ways to think more 20th Century.  It has allowed the Putin regime to exist for as long as it has on the one hand, informed the people enough to at least grumble about it on the other hand.  The massive number of people that left Russia at the start of this war demonstrates the latter while the millions that stayed put demonstrates the former.

The current body chewing experiments in Bakhmut are being done with people that Russian society doesn't care about.  At the very least the majority were already removed from daily society and now that they are dead it's formalized.  Rounding up hundreds of thousands of mobiks is going to present difficulties all on its own (the last round wasn't without problems), which will decrease society's tolerance for more pain.  Losing 100,000 mobiks in a a month or two using Wagner tactics could be enough to push things over the edge.  And yes, adding another 100,000 in a couple of months is exactly what would happen if Russia scales up Bakhmut.  That will likely put the total casualties at around 325,000.

Steve

[Aragorn2002]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'm in this camp.  Have been since the war started.  Russia is a strange society that is more rooted in pre-18th Century mentality and yet has still evolved in some ways to think more 20th Century.  It has allowed the Putin regime to exist for as long as it has on the one hand, informed the people enough to at least grumble about it on the other hand.  The massive number of people that left Russia at the start of this war demonstrates the latter while the millions that stayed put demonstrates the former.

The current body chewing experiments in Bakhmut are being done with people that Russian society doesn't care about.  At the very least the majority were already removed from daily society and now that they are dead it's formalized.  Rounding up hundreds of thousands of mobiks is going to present difficulties all on its own (the last round wasn't without problems), which will decrease society's tolerance for more pain.  Losing 100,000 mobiks in a a month or two using Wagner tactics could be enough to push things over the edge.  And yes, adding another 100,000 in a couple of months is exactly what would happen if Russia scales up Bakhmut.  That will likely put the total casualties at around 325,000.

Steve

But what a great way to get rid of one's criminals

[kevinkin]

19 minutes ago, billbindc said:

That Gates jumps on that bandwagon is pretty much the Gates specialty...seeing what is popular and promoting it.

Not sure we can gauge his opinions now since we don't know a lot about his prior thinking on this war and NATO support including armor. Maybe he has changed like a chameleon, maybe not. Maybe he is overthinking Crimea - but from last April:

“I think he (Putin) wants not only to gain land in Eastern Europe, but in the Southeast as well,” Gates said. “Using the area around the Black Sea as a land bridge to Crimea, I think he wants to leave Ukraine a landlocked country. He’s not done with Eastern Europe, he wants to change Eastern Europe, and Zelenskyy cannot give up.”

Maybe we all been overthinking Crimea since The Charge of the Light Brigade. Think not. Here is a tidbit of his thinking from May:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-gates-nato-expansion-sweden-finland-face-the-nation/

While not a hawk, definingly not a dove. An inside the belt way measured hawkish approach. Although mentioning an airlift is surprising. With Crimea having obvious strategic value, Gates does not say to assault it at all. Nor does he offer other tactics to minimize its value to Russia. OK fine, its a short article. If you asked him, he might very well recommend isolating Crimea while re-taking Donbass. Sounds familiar.  

 

 

[pintere]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

So forget my stuff about mines or starvation. How does UA best defeat this scheme, or accelerate the point at which Russia can't find more meat (women? Norks? Africans? Muscovite IT majors?) to toss into it?

It’s gonna require a few elements. Obviously the Ukrainians will experiment and figure out how to best deal with these tactics, but we can still speculate for what would work best:

1) If the Russians now only use small groups in attack, the Ukrainians should use even smaller groups in defense. 8 men can easily be held up by just 2-3 with an LMG, especially if the former stops for artillery support as soon as contact is made.

2) The attacking groups won’t have cover immediately, now matter how fast they dig. To exploit this the forward Ukrainian units should be lavishly supplied with comms equipment so that any attacking Russian group gets plastered by artillery whenever they stop for more than a few minutes. In other words, they need the ability to effectively call in fire all the way down to squad level.

3) Ukraine has to learn how to effectively launch local counterattacks. If they can have effective reserve forces (ideally equipped with night fighting gear) then they should retake lost terrain as soon as possible. By all accounts the Russians aren’t the best at rapidly calling in artillery fire, so if they can avoid getting pinned down they could be very effective.

In summary, more so than MBTs in my opinion, Ukraine should focus on getting as many of their infantry equipped and trained to NATO standard as possible, and couple them with US-level godlike artillery that is flexible, responsive and lethal. Then we‘ll see how long Russia can keep up their human wave tactics against qualitatively superior infantry that can call in annihilation upon any exposed hostile infantry that stay in the same place for more than a few minutes…

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'm in this camp.  Have been since the war started.  Russia is a strange society that is more rooted in pre-18th Century mentality and yet has still evolved in some ways to think more 20th Century.  It has allowed the Putin regime to exist for as long as it has on the one hand, informed the people enough to at least grumble about it on the other hand.  The massive number of people that left Russia at the start of this war demonstrates the latter while the millions that stayed put demonstrates the former.

The current body chewing experiments in Bakhmut are being done with people that Russian society doesn't care about.  At the very least the majority were already removed from daily society and now that they are dead it's formalized.  Rounding up hundreds of thousands of mobiks is going to present difficulties all on its own (the last round wasn't without problems), which will decrease society's tolerance for more pain.  Losing 100,000 mobiks in a a month or two using Wagner tactics could be enough to push things over the edge.  And yes, adding another 100,000 in a couple of months is exactly what would happen if Russia scales up Bakhmut.  That will likely put the total casualties at around 325,000.

Steve

Just to add to the topic of Russian resistance to casualties- a lot of it depends on two factors that may be even more important than numbers themselves: tempo of receiving them and status of the infosphere.

We already see "silent mobilization" on Putin's part, that is in fact taking place every day. Probably not some very high numbers in the scale of things, but perhaps several dozens/several hundreds cases each day. Most people are aware of it, but barely anybody noticed if it is not them. Note, we are talking about society that tanked almost 1mln Covid deaths (some claims even more), and barely anyone cared as well- in fact many Russians even boasted desease took "weakest" and unlike sissy, scarred Westerners Russians did walk over it without serious restrictions. View of war as "harsh but just purifier" seems to be getting along with more and more Russians. Ofc. how genuine is is is extreemely difficult to assess...but as long as they don't rebell, Putin has basically free hands. I wouldn't count on any groundbreaking event in this regard.

About propaganda part...well, I am trying to keep an eye of this segment and various shapes in took during this year, and I am rather concerned- especially by what is going with minors. Perhaps out of necessity caused by tsar blunder, but state heavily militarized and nationalized almost every public message, and a lot of private communications too. Now there is still enough opportunistic Russians to not believe in it, but as time will go by (would expected like 5-10 years) new, genuinly fascisized generation will eventually grow up. These will collectivelly be idealists of worst kind, quite similar to hitlerjugend. They will not have occassion to fight in this war, but will remain revanchist for years/decades to come. Perhaps Putin even already envisions this "long-term solution" for Ukraine; if not this war, there will be next over the corner.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/12/21/putins-idealization-of-death-reflects-russias-growing-nazification-a79763

Also, 100k KIA/serious WIA mobiks a month would be very high figure. More probable is much lower, but steady influx of casualties that will remain largely hidden or "inevitable part of war". But even if muscovites take such losses, if Ukrainians manage to keep (very optimistic except specific areas) 1:3 ratio, it means they loose 30k of their mostly experienced fighters within month as well. It will not break them, but may make things nasty enough to soften Ukrainian resolve. At least that is Kremlin calculus now. Even if he manage to morph this war into something akin to Iran-Iraq endless war, it will be his personal victory.

But this is just another speculation, since we don't know how Putin view this war... fed by reports, he may be genuinly convinced he is winning now. Or if not now, he will be on another occassion.

So yeah, anyway, a pile of bodies awaits us. 2023 may be even worse than previous year in this regard.

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

 

China is not our friend, the attempt to get them to join the modern world on decent terms failed. We just need to systematically act on this conclusion.

[poesel]

Does Ukraine still let POWs call their relatives?
I always thought that this is a very, very good way to bring the war 'home'.

Apart from that, I guess it is difficult to get through to the ordinary Russians. Those who wanted to know, know already. Those who have fallen for the propaganda are unreachable.

[FlemFire]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Sure, I was pointing to the tone and errors in the twitter post (and WSJ if that is what they are saying).  There are no "international sanctions" on Russia right now.  What we have are a lot of bilateral sanctions, and the EU, which while technically an international body, does not speak for the entire international community.  For that one needs an UNSC Resolution.  Now what we are going to do about India and China's continued trading with Russia is another topic entirely.

 

They're one and the same topic, really. Russia's ability wage war is entirely dependent on its economy and safeguarding its population from hits against said economy. But Russia's economy is not suffering. It has barely contracted and the IMF even foresees it growing in 2023. All the lost slack of trade with Europe was simply picked up by everyone else. We already know what economic rifts and disasters look like with Russia because we saw it in 2014 but we are not seeing it now. Now we are also seeing a coalescing of non-West economic powers in increasing antagonism toward the West itself.

 

[Taranis]

"The 43rd heavy artillery brigade of the Ukrainian army fires a German Panzerhaubitze 2000 howitzer, near Bakhmout, in the Donetsk region, on February 5, 2023. MARKO DJURICA / REUTERS"

[womble]

25 minutes ago, pintere said:

3) Ukraine has to learn how to effectively launch local counterattacks. If they can have effective reserve forces (ideally equipped with night fighting gear) then they should retake lost terrain as soon as possible. By all accounts the Russians aren’t the best at rapidly calling in artillery fire, so if they can avoid getting pinned down they could be very effective.

They also need to be able to deposit "welcome gifts" for the next "wave" of assault troops who will be aiming to employ and expand whatever hasty entrenchments the first, now-eliminated wave had begun to develop before the mortars and AGL rounds stopped their diggin'.

They need to be able to stop any given probe axis from more than one location, and only use one of those to do the stopping, so that any follow-on will not know where all the UKR defensive positions are. They'll call their support fires on the one that stopped them (which should probably be vacated once the RUS have been made to go to ground), wasting ammo and time on an empty position, only to be dialled in by another defensive location once they decide it's safe to move on again.

Local, small-scale counterattacks to change the shape of the front line faster than the assault waves can adapt to.

Perhaps too nuanced for full-on battlefield tactics in the ISR environment that the UKR find themselves in.

[Zeleban]

New Mashovets

1. The command of the enemy troops continues the process of strengthening the combat strength of their "West" and "Center" groupings. In particular, there are significant changes in the enemy grouping in the Kupyansk and Liman directions.

- the deployment of units of the 2nd Motor Rifle Division of the 1st Guards Tank Army in the Kupyansk direction (Novaya Tarasovka area) is ending. The enemy also concentrates in this direction at least 2 TBn and 2 MRbn additionally from the composition of 26 TR 47 TD 1 Guards TA.

- In the area of Kremennaya, the enemy additionally moved the forces and means of two paratrooper regiments (331st and 217th 98th paratrooper divisions, up to 4 battalions in total, one of which is already deployed in the area of the village of Dibrova ). Thus, the command of the enemy troops brought the total number of its grouping in the southeast, in the Liman direction, to 8.5 -8.7 thousand military personnel, consisting of:

1) 104th Airborne Assault Regiment (without one battalion), 234th and 237th Airborne Assault Regiments of the 76th Airborne Assault Division

 

2) the 217th Airborne Regiment (without one battalion) and the 331st Airborne Regiment of the 98th Airborne Division.

3) in reserve, in the area of the city of Lugansk, the 31st separate airborne assault brigade is deployed.

- In addition, the command of the enemy troops continues to implement a set of measures to form two motorized rifle brigades (85th and 88th motorized rifle brigade, 2.3 - 2.5 thousand military personnel in each of them) as part of the 2nd Army Corps of the 8th CAA of the Southern Military District . The recruitment of both brigades occurs at the expense of units and subunits of the mobilization reserve (290th, 293rd, 259th, 294th, 302nd, 314th, 315th rifle battalions of the mobilization reserve and the 202nd rifle regiment of the mobilization reserve of the 2nd AK). Brigades are being formed and deployed, respectively, in the districts of Novoaydar and Starobelsk.

 

[Zeleban]

2. In order to carry out high-quality regrouping of troops, rotation of personnel, its rest, replenishment and concentration of reserves, the command of the enemy troops is taking measures to equip and deploy the so-called "basic" (rear) areas of the army - division - brigade / regiment level beyond effective the range of long-range weapons of destruction of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The minimum distance from the contact line is 90 km.

To date, the enemy has already equipped 12 such areas ...

 

It is interesting that the process of deploying the so-called "base areas" is personally controlled by the commander of the Western Military District (he is also the commander of the "West" group of forces), Lieutenant General E. Nikiforov ... who personally visited 3 of these last week ...

 

- the area of the village of Tanyushevka (the base area of the 47th TD of the 1st Guards TA)

- area of Novoposkov (base area of the 20th CAA)

- district  Pisarevka (base area of the 27th brigade of the 1st guards TA)

In this context, the creation of an almost "personal" reserve of the commander of the "West" group of forces near the village of Ilyinka in the amount of 2 tbn + 1 mrc just from the composition of the 1st TR of the 2nd MRD of the 1st Guards Tank Army looks quite relevant Lieutenant Nikiforov clearly feels for the troops and forces of the 1st Guards. TA some special feelings ... or he is somehow very "specially" met there.

We will talk about "promising" directions and areas of a quite probable enemy offensive in the Kupyansky and Limansky directions in a separate post next week ...

[Zeleban]

 

3. In the area north of Bakhmut, the enemy concentrated on encircling our units in the area of the villages of Krasnaya Gora and Paraskoveevka. To this end, he tried to advance in the direction of high. 177.5 - high. 190 and further in the direction of high. 204.8 on the E40 highway. The main goal is the complete encirclement of our units in the area of Krasnaya Gora and Paraskoveevka.

Obviously, there are currently 2 main key issues in the defense of Bakhmut:

- Ensuring a stable retention of the Yagodnoye - Berkhovka - Zheleznyanskoye - Vasyukovka line, this is essentially a question - will Bakhmut be kept by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, or not ...

- And also, the Ivanovskoye - Stupochki line, along the T-0504 road ...

Moreover, the hypothetical encirclement of Ukrainian forces in the Krasnaya Gora region will have very little effect on the situation directly in Bakhmut itself. But if the enemy directly crosses the T-0504 road and starts fighting for Chasov Yar, and also breaks through to the Berkhovsky reservoir ... then Bakhmut will definitely have to be abandoned ...