How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Chibot Mk IX]

16 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Well, as Galeev pointed out many moons ago (perhaps more credible Russia threat analysts did as well) that, in addition to selling off a lot of the 'warehoused' kit and downsizing divisions to brigades to save money and focus on Chechnya-sized expeditionary wars, Serdyukov and the Kremlin also dismantled, or at least allowed to decay, the Soviet mass social mobilisation system.  So the folks who remember how to do that are all dead or retired, and the general population is out of the habit.  Not totally of course, but it's not a highly functional machine, and Putin can't simply will it back into being.

Reminds me a joke from Suyi控 and other Chinese milbloggers， It's a joke, and hopefully not insult to the people went through the red terror years, but.... 

https://www.zhihu.com/pin/1486064369037991936

Quote

2022-03-12 06:42

It is important to know a matter of common sense. In contrast to the Tsarist-Soviet-era three-tier mobilization system used by the AFU, which was conducive to military mobilization in a full-scale war, Russia has abolished this system after Serdyukov's 2009 reforms, replacing it with a standing army plus a small number of weapons/equipment storage bases that take 3-6 months to mobilize (3-4 bases as I recall, each equivalent to a brigade) The 2009 Serdyukov reforms completely replaced the mobilization army with The standing army + base units on the premise that the Russian army would no longer conduct large-scale wars, but only small-scale , rapid intervention wars/conflicts. In this case, the Russian army should not commit all of its own forces in a war, but should fight in shifts in the form of BTGs. Shoigu's "reforms" (is there really such a reform?) Only expended the size of the standing army, but did not restore the mobilization system . In other words, even if Russia claims to have implemented "general mobilization," it will not be able to effectively mobilize new forces on a war-time scale. Russian troops may not even be equipped to replace their losses. Ukraine is the opposite ......

Another guy replied.

 

Quote

The funniest and most ironic thing : The organization of the Ukrainian Army, the triple layer combination of the standing army as the base , reinforced with local units plus the National Guard, is in fact has no connection with neither the Tsarist one nor the one who abolished the militia back in 1938 and latter officially transformed into the Soviet Army in 1946, but has the root with the real RKKA of the Mikhail Frunze era - the authentic Soviet Workers' and Peasants' Red Army!

 

[Haiduk]

Today's last photoset of "Da Vinchi" - through some time he will be killed. Military photographer Kostiantyn Liberov was with him on positions close to the enemy. The shelling started, "Da Vinchi" orderd to journalists to get cover in the basement, but left himself on surface.

Commander of "Honor" company of his battalion Serhii Filimonov (volunteer unit, established by independent right movement "Honor" and football Ultras of Dynamo Kyiv club):

"Yesterday I am and he again were in 30 m from positions of mother..rs and we only not were killed by enemy ATGM and then by 120 mm mortar bomb. A miracle saved us. I begged him don't roam anywhwere. Yesterday our tank was hit. I told him: "Let in burn, we will capture other yesterday". But he took the bottle with a water and went to extinguish the fire.

Today we had to be together, but he gave me a day for rest on flights [means as drone team controller or operator], because hard work expected us. We fu..ing beaten up many motherf...rs, but now I don't know what I will do with this hard work without you! This loss is unbelieveable, but we will revenge!

"Honor" in composition of "Da Vinchi's" battalion passed Barvinkove, Serebrianka, Bilohorivka, Lysychansk, Soledar, Pisky, we have spent summer in Bakhmut, then Sviatohirsk, Bohorodychne, Balakliya, Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Kremninna... And further will be Donetsk, Luhansk and Sevastopol. And "Da Vinchi" forever will be with us.  

 

 

Edited March 7, 2023 by Haiduk

[Butschi]

Aaaand here we go. "Tagesthemen" (very solid German TV news broadcast) just had a report about pipeline sabotage, saying that latest findings indicate a (pro-)Ukrainian group was did it and probably the German government knows about these finding for some weeks now. There is no evidence the Ukrainian government is involved but if it is this might have severe consequences. Yay, if one of the most reputable news broadcasts doesn't rule it out the Ukraine is behind it there will be an... interesting discussion.

[sross112]

Seen a ton of videos showing ordnance dropped from drones on infantry and vehicles. This one shows the destruction of an ATGM. A few days ago it was thought that some of the close up attacks with vehicles by UA forces may have been proceeded by extensive drone recon showing lack of anti armor systems. Does leave a dilemma for a defending unit: set up your heavy systems and have them exposed to attack or don't and give the attacker however many minutes are needed to set it up free advance on your position. 

If this is common it could account for us not seeing as many ATGMs on the RA side as a lot of us thought there would be. Anyways, found it different from the usual and a little thought provoking so I thought I'd share it.

Edited March 7, 2023 by sross112

[kevinkin]

Pretty good info:

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2023/03/07/which-fighter-jet-is-best-for-ukraine-as-it-fights-off-russia/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dfn-special-report

The country is not lacking for pilots, Bronk said, but the problem is they don’t have enough airworthy jets.

The F-16 “is a lightweight fighter designed for nice runways,” Bronk said. “Most Ukrainian runways are pretty rough. So if they’re moving around like that, the fighter has to be [able to] handle it and not suffer a massive increase in maintenance [needs], and the support equipment and maintenance arrangements have to be able to do it.” A better option for Ukraine might be the Gripen, Bronk said, as its standard maintenance and logistics equipment can be loaded into standard 20-foot shipping containers and easily moved on trucks. (Let's see if US inside the beltway ego gets in the way of this.)

But the status quo, Penney said, is untenable. Without a modernized Ukrainian Air Force, she explained, the conflict has become a war of attrition, echoing the trench warfare of World War I.

That places Ukraine in a dire situation, she added.

“Ukraine only has so many people they can feed into the meat grinder of land warfare,” Penney said. “They need to move this into the third dimension, and you do that with aircraft.”

She said the U.S. could develop a streamlined, accelerated training program for Ukrainian pilots that would last two to two-and-a-half months.

[Jiggathebauce]

31 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Today's last photoset of "Da Vinchi" - through some time he will be killed. Military photographer Kostiantyn Liberov was with him on positions close to the enemy. The shelling started, "Da Vinchi" orderd to journalists to get cover in the basement, but left himself on surface.

Commander of "Honor" company of his battalion Serhii Filimonov (volunteer unit, established by independent right movement "Honor" and football Ultras of Dynamo Kyiv club):

"Yesterday I am and he again were in 30 m from positions of mother..rs and we only not were killed by enemy ATGM and then by 120 mm mortar bomb. A miracle saved us. I begged him don't roam anywhwere. Yesterday our tank was hit. I told him: "Let in burn, we will capture other yesterday". But he took the bottle with a water and went to extinguish the fire.

Today we had to be together, but he gave me a day for rest on flights [means as drone team controller or operator], because hard work expected us. We fu..ing beaten up many motherf...rs, but now I don't know what I will do with this hard work without you! This loss is unbelieveable, but we will revenge!

"Honor" in composition of "Da Vinchi's" battalion passed Barvinkove, Serebrianka, Bilohorivka, Lysychansk, Soledar, Pisky, we have spent summer in Bakhmut, then Sviatohirsk, Bohorodychne, Balakliya, Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Kremninna... And further will be Donetsk, Luhansk and Sevastopol. And "Da Vinchi" forever will be with us.  

 

 

He was in Right Sector as well, as said in your previous post. Was this guy a believer in far right ideology?

[chrisl]

45 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

But it only gives one coverage of one slice of the planet at a time.  You get "global coverage" but only of the same spot once every 12 hours.  Assuming you load that orbit up with enough satellites you get a continuous slice of the planet as it passed beneath.  In order to get real-time continuous, one needs to either load up on geosynchronous, or build multiple solar orbits to get full coverage - I do not even think the US is there yet.

So in order for China to be able to get ISR on Ukraine, it will get a snap shot every 12 hours with those solar orbits, but a lot can happen in 12 hours.  I would bet all the peanuts in the bar the US has got eyes on that part of the world 24/7 using a bunch of platforms, including geosynchronous.

China also has most of its assets pointed regionally so in order to build up a full picture, we are still talking re-vectoring assets away.  So how much does China really love Russia in all this because even trying for half decent parity over the AO is going to cost them.  We know this is not happening, or at least there is no evidence it is - such as Russians suddenly getting a lot better at targeting.   

Yeah- so they fly a bunch, and it gives them frequent coverage across the planet. If you can cover anyplace at one latitude at high frequency then you cover everything at that latitude at the same frequency. No propulsion required. It’s really not possible to restrict your observations to a region in longitude, and you get anything you want within the latitude you cover.  The nature of orbit means that you don’t ever really do continuous high res of anything (even the US can’t), but you can do very frequent, especially if you’re ok with a mix of instruments and can integrate their data. 
 

Revisit time also depends on your satellite design- side looking capability can get you more frequent observations with a single satellite. It’s shockingly cheap (in national budget kind of money) now to put up something that can give you revisit times in hours at decent resolutions.  Even with Maxar’s relatively small set of birds you can get multiple views per day of anywhere.  I looked at the start of this at what it would cost to build hourly coverage of every point on earth, and it’s pretty affordable. Just hand over your amex card… 

Geo actually kind of sucks for ground observation (except maybe for elint).  It’s good for big wide field of view weather and telecom, but it’s way cheaper and easier to fly more stuff lower to get high res than it is to try to put something ginormous in Geo to get the same performance.  A telescope has to be 70x bigger in diameter at geo to get the same resolution as at 500 km LEO.  That kind of thing is very easy to spot from the ground - amateur astronomers take pictures of JWST out at L2 and it’s only 3x the diameter of a KH-11.  And god help you if a little sunlight gets into your 150 meter telescope…

[Battlefront.com]

16 minutes ago, sross112 said:

Seen a ton of videos showing ordnance dropped from drones on infantry and vehicles. This one shows the destruction of an ATGM. A few days ago it was thought that some of the close up attacks with vehicles by UA forces may have been proceeded by extensive drone recon showing lack of anti armor systems. Does leave a dilemma for a defending unit: set up your heavy systems and have them exposed to attack or don't and give the attacker however many minutes are needed to set it up free advance on your position. 

If this is common it could account for us not seeing as many ATGMs on the RA side as a lot of us thought there would be. Anyways, found it different from the usual and a little thought provoking so I thought I'd share it.

Interesting thoughts.  It could be, though for me I'm still most puzzled by the lack of light AT weapons evidenced in the battles with light infantry.

In any case, these guys saw the drone and knew they were spotted.  That has got to be a bad feeling.  One thing they could have done was have someone "flank" the drone and try shooting it when it was stationary for a bomb drop.  When the drone is hovering you're safe as long as you're not directly underneath it.  They also have to be relatively close to the ground for reasons of accuracy, so you'd think in such an environment it would be possible to hit the drone with small arms fire.  I mean, if you're not hiding that is.

Steve

[kevinkin]

9 minutes ago, sross112 said:

found it different from the usual and a little thought provoking so I thought I'd share it.

Unusual camera angle (ground level almost) and the soldier gave the world the finger as if he saw it coming. One thing, foxholes need to be shaped to avoid funneling those bombs into the position. Reserve lobster trap. 

[chrisl]

12 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Interesting thoughts.  It could be, though for me I'm still most puzzled by the lack of light AT weapons evidenced in the battles with light infantry.

In any case, these guys saw the drone and knew they were spotted.  That has got to be a bad feeling.  One thing they could have done was have someone "flank" the drone and try shooting it when it was stationary for a bomb drop.  When the drone is hovering you're safe as long as you're not directly underneath it.  They also have to be relatively close to the ground for reasons of accuracy, so you'd think in such an environment it would be possible to hit the drone with small arms fire.  I mean, if you're not hiding that is.

Steve

You’re safe from small grenades if you’re not directly underneath, but you could get a little drone-directed 155 instead.  I don’t think we’ve seen Russians surrender to a drone yet, but it’s probably just a matter of time.

 

[Battlefront.com]

Found this from back in April.  Note the ratio...

 

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, chrisl said:

You’re safe from small grenades if you’re not directly underneath, but you could get a little drone-directed 155 instead.  I don’t think we’ve seen Russians surrender to a drone yet, but it’s probably just a matter of time.

 

Nobody keeps their drones that close to the target area.  So if you have a drone that close it's either on an ISR mission or it's going to bomb you.  Either way, if the drone hovers you should be shooting at it not laying prone.  Prone doesn't do much anyway.

Steve

[chrisl]

Just now, Battlefront.com said:

Nobody keeps their drones that close to the target area.  So if you have a drone that close it's either on an ISR mission or it's going to bomb you.  Either way, if the drone hovers you should be shooting at it not laying prone.  Prone doesn't do much anyway.

Steve

And if it zooms away, you probably should, too!

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I think it is actually more simple than this.  If I could boil down the problem for the defender it is to become unsolvable.  Every defence is a military puzzle whose biggest problem is human learning.  If attacked, poked and probed enough, even the most vigorous defence can be solved given enough time.  The game is to make the cost of solving it beyond the bank account of the attacker. 

Even back in WWI the extensive trench systems, communications, rapid firing artillery and railways all conspired to make trench warfare unsolvable.  Sides adapted, inventing airpower, tanks, tunneling and storm troops, all as way to solve for this defensive warfare.  In the end one side simply was exhausted but someone would have solved for that type of defence eventually - we know this because the Germans did in 1940.

So in order to become unsolvable, a defence must become non-linear, adaptive and dynamic.  Big problem in land warfare is that terrain does not work that way.  Problem in air and maritime is that the physics of fluids work that way too well.  I strongly suspect that unmanned systems, particularly ground systems could change this.  Defence/Offence on land may start to look more like that in the sea - at best one can gain temporary control.  Land warfare may be evolving towards denial of ground, the trick will be the right peice of ground at the right time.

Within small wars we see this sort of thing "amongst the people", similarities between people and oceans are interesting.  But unlike oceans, people appear to be able to suddenly freeze from the inside out as opposed to external factors. But this is another topic entirely.

As to Bakhmut, well currently the UA defence is still not solved.  It is solvable, however, the question is how long and at what cost. The RA bizarre inability to learn is very much helping the UA right now, but no party last forever.

There is a fundamental similarity between between stocks, and given piece of ground. It is always possible to overpay. Bunker Hill is the canonical example, "I wish we could sell them another hill at that price".

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

Aaaand here we go. "Tagesthemen" (very solid German TV news broadcast) just had a report about pipeline sabotage, saying that latest findings indicate a (pro-)Ukrainian group was did it and probably the German government knows about these finding for some weeks now. There is no evidence the Ukrainian government is involved but if it is this might have severe consequences. Yay, if one of the most reputable news broadcasts doesn't rule it out the Ukraine is behind it there will be an... interesting discussion.

But it is still all utterly non-specific hand waving. That seems rather inadequate for an issue as big as this one. And I also really wouldn't rule out some sort of FSB false flag. They need to put the actual findings out, or drop this until are ready to do that. What is released is already more than enough to warn the people who did it, but utterly uninformative to the rest of us.

 

Edited March 7, 2023 by dan/california

[Butschi]

6 minutes ago, dan/california said:

But it is still all utterly non-specific hand waving. That seems rather inadequate for an issue as big as this one. And I also really wouldn't rule out some sort of FSB false flag. They need to put the actual findings out, or drop this until are ready to do that. What is released is already more than enough to warn the people who did it, but utterly uninformative to the rest of us.

Well, as I said before, we don't know, there are many who potentially profit and therefore I wouldn't rule out anything. They actually mentioned a possible FSB false flag although apparently the investigators think it less likely. Anyway, there is blood in the water, the suspicion alone may be enough to get another discussion about weapons deliveries going in Germany.

[The_Capt]

46 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Yeah- so they fly a bunch, and it gives them frequent coverage across the planet. If you can cover anyplace at one latitude at high frequency then you cover everything at that latitude at the same frequency. No propulsion required. It’s really not possible to restrict your observations to a region in longitude, and you get anything you want within the latitude you cover.  The nature of orbit means that you don’t ever really do continuous high res of anything (even the US can’t), but you can do very frequent, especially if you’re ok with a mix of instruments and can integrate their data. 
 

Revisit time also depends on your satellite design- side looking capability can get you more frequent observations with a single satellite. It’s shockingly cheap (in national budget kind of money) now to put up something that can give you revisit times in hours at decent resolutions.  Even with Maxar’s relatively small set of birds you can get multiple views per day of anywhere.  I looked at the start of this at what it would cost to build hourly coverage of every point on earth, and it’s pretty affordable. Just hand over your amex card… 

Geo actually kind of sucks for ground observation (except maybe for elint).  It’s good for big wide field of view weather and telecom, but it’s way cheaper and easier to fly more stuff lower to get high res than it is to try to put something ginormous in Geo to get the same performance.  A telescope has to be 70x bigger in diameter at geo to get the same resolution as at 500 km LEO.  That kind of thing is very easy to spot from the ground - amateur astronomers take pictures of JWST out at L2 and it’s only 3x the diameter of a KH-11.  And god help you if a little sunlight gets into your 150 meter telescope…

I have to wonder if this is so cheap why Russia did not invest in it.  I mean UA ISR is a column from the ground to space, while the RA are foundering. The few notes we have gotten from RA space capability has been extremely low refresh times - they would do better buying the data from commercial systems (but whoops, sanctions).

I suspect the Geo stuff is for Sig and ELINT, which is probably more important than visual.  Some of the US stuff is extremely classified so hard to say what they can see or detect but based on the UA targeting of deep strikes, it appears pretty damned good.

Now as I have said before, I am not worried about fighting Russia, I am worried about fighting someone enabled like the Ukraine.

[billbindc]

5 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Well, as I said before, we don't know, there are many who potentially profit and therefore I wouldn't rule out anything. They actually mentioned a possible FSB false flag although apparently the investigators think it less likely. Anyway, there is blood in the water, the suspicion alone may be enough to get another discussion about weapons deliveries going in Germany.

Not sure I agree. At this point, Germany is committed and what would the argument be? That Germany should let Ukraine fall to Putin because a rogue group of Ukrainians and Russians killed Nordstream? If Germany wants to avoid this sort of thing, isn’t it better to get the war won asap?

[cyrano01]

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

Pretty good info:

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2023/03/07/which-fighter-jet-is-best-for-ukraine-as-it-fights-off-russia/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dfn-special-report

The country is not lacking for pilots, Bronk said, but the problem is they don’t have enough airworthy jets.

The F-16 “is a lightweight fighter designed for nice runways,” Bronk said. “Most Ukrainian runways are pretty rough. So if they’re moving around like that, the fighter has to be [able to] handle it and not suffer a massive increase in maintenance [needs], and the support equipment and maintenance arrangements have to be able to do it.” A better option for Ukraine might be the Gripen, Bronk said, as its standard maintenance and logistics equipment can be loaded into standard 20-foot shipping containers and easily moved on trucks. (Let's see if US inside the beltway ego gets in the way of this.)

But the status quo, Penney said, is untenable. Without a modernized Ukrainian Air Force, she explained, the conflict has become a war of attrition, echoing the trench warfare of World War I.

That places Ukraine in a dire situation, she added.

“Ukraine only has so many people they can feed into the meat grinder of land warfare,” Penney said. “They need to move this into the third dimension, and you do that with aircraft.”

She said the U.S. could develop a streamlined, accelerated training program for Ukrainian pilots that would last two to two-and-a-half months.

Hmm. If it is turning into WW1 attritional warfare (and I am not sure that it is, on the Ukrainian side at least) I am not convinced that it is the absence of a modernised  Ukraininan Air Force that has made it so. I am also not convinced that providing even a decent number of Grippens or F-16s would alter that.  Absent the full range of SEAD bells and whistles that the US possesses then you are still going to be severely limited by Russian air defences. I guess there might be some hope of reducing those with drones and long range ground fires but even so. Grippens/F16s would help with UKR air defence but the Ukrainians seem to be managing pretty well anyway, more so as more modern western SAMs become available.

 

Sure, better to have some modern aircraft than not but not convinced this is really a game changer absent a SEAD solution.

Edited March 7, 2023 by cyrano01

[Battlefront.com]

ISW's report from yesterday (March 6th) focused on Bakhmut and Russia's probable acceleration of recruitment efforts.  Given our recent discussion about Bakhmut, I wanted to post this particular section here:

Quote

The Battle of Bakhmut may, in fact, severely degrade the Wagner Group’s best forces, depriving Russia of some of its most effective and most difficult-to-replace shock troops. The Wagner attacks already culminated once, causing the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to commit some of its elite airborne troops to the fight. It may well culminate again before taking the city, once more forcing the Russian military to choose between abandoning the effort or throwing more high-quality troops into the battle. The opportunity to damage the Wagner Group’s elite elements, along with other elite units if they are committed, in a defensive urban warfare setting where the attrition gradient strongly favors Ukraine is an attractive one.

It is interesting that ISW is portraying the fighting in Bakhmut in a strategically favorable light.  It also mentioned the heavy losses on the Russian side as being decidedly in Ukraine's favor.  Definitely not a group that thinks Ukraine is suffering 1:1 losses in the process.

Steve

[sross112]

51 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Interesting thoughts.  It could be, though for me I'm still most puzzled by the lack of light AT weapons evidenced in the battles with light infantry.

In any case, these guys saw the drone and knew they were spotted.  That has got to be a bad feeling.  One thing they could have done was have someone "flank" the drone and try shooting it when it was stationary for a bomb drop.  When the drone is hovering you're safe as long as you're not directly underneath it.  They also have to be relatively close to the ground for reasons of accuracy, so you'd think in such an environment it would be possible to hit the drone with small arms fire.  I mean, if you're not hiding that is.

Steve

I am surprised that each squad doesn't have an AA gunner with a shotgun by now. Especially with all the videos of drones dropping ordnance. Sure won't help against the spotter drones and 155's but we do see a lot of closer ones dropping grenades or doing fairly close in recon work. Guys and gals with experience shooting sporting clays and trap should be able to knock them down on the move from a pretty good distance. Shotguns are also a good trench weapon so it wouldn't be a one trick pony adding extra weight for no other purpose than drones. Body armor? That is what the 3 1/2 inch rifled slugs are for. They really don't care if you are wearing armor or not.  

[chrisl]

21 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I have to wonder if this is so cheap why Russia did not invest in it.  I mean UA ISR is a column from the ground to space, while the RA are foundering. The few notes we have gotten from RA space capability has been extremely low refresh times - they would do better buying the data from commercial systems (but whoops, sanctions).

I suspect the Geo stuff is for Sig and ELINT, which is probably more important than visual.  Some of the US stuff is extremely classified so hard to say what they can see or detect but based on the UA targeting of deep strikes, it appears pretty damned good.

Now as I have said before, I am not worried about fighting Russia, I am worried about fighting someone enabled like the Ukraine.

See some of my earliest posts here.  Russia has the launch capability to do it but they’re literally more than 40 years behind in instrument capability.  They were still launching telescopes that dropped film capsules around 2015.  The US launched its first electro-optical satellite in the mid 1970s.  The Hubble design was derived from it.  It’s cheap to do if you live in the US, Europe, or Japan.  It’s doable at lower performance if you’re China (who are rapidly catching up), and basically impossible if you’re Russia because you can’t get the electronics.  Planet Labs is on a path to do it commercially in the optical, as are some other commercial companies doing SAR.

Physics works the same in the classified world as out of it.  You can estimate that if someone moves a bicycle in Ukraine, a computer in the US will notice within a few hours.  There’s higher resolution than that available at lower revisit rates.  

Edited March 7, 2023 by chrisl

[Butschi]

28 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Not sure I agree. At this point, Germany is committed and what would the argument be? That Germany should let Ukraine fall to Putin because a rogue group of Ukrainians and Russians killed Nordstream? If Germany wants to avoid this sort of thing, isn’t it better to get the war won asap?

Um, would you please (re-)read what I wrote? It wasn't my opinion about what happened or what Germany should do about it but about what was reported and what I think will happen.

There was a report in one of Germany's most reputable news broadcasts that did not say that it was done by "a rogue group of Ukrainians and Russians". It said that investigators believe it was a group of Ukrainins. They said there is no evidence that the Ukrainian government involved or even ordered it but they also didn't rule it out. That will at least leave the shadow of doubt.

Germany is much less committed than you may think. The latest "pro-peace", "start negociations now!", "no more weapons for Ukraine" protests were all over the media during the last days. I don't think this will immediately stop support for Ukraine, because benefit of the doubt and all that. But it will re-kindle the discussion and make supporting Ukraine a little more difficult for politicians. And should evidence be found then, yes, it is perfectly within the realm of possibilities that Germany will stop at least the military support.

Oh well, fortunately we aren't there yet.

EDIT: Sorry, they did say "Ukrainians and Russians".

Edited March 7, 2023 by Butschi

[The_Capt]

Just now, Battlefront.com said:

ISW's report from yesterday (March 6th) focused on Bakhmut and Russia's probable acceleration of recruitment efforts.  Given our recent discussion about Bakhmut, I wanted to post this particular section here:

It is interesting that ISW is portraying the fighting in Bakhmut in a strategically favorable light.  It also mentioned the heavy losses on the Russian side as being decidedly in Ukraine's favor.  Definitely not a group that thinks Ukraine is suffering 1:1 losses in the process.

Steve

Damn forgot the urban angle.  So Kofman and those guys are taking the position that the RA who:

- Have been seen using human wave attacks with poorly trained and equipped troops

- Lacking artillery support, which has been noted as burning out and faltering by Russian troops.

- Combined arms integration

- Lacking ISR (or at least any notable improvements)

- Have been essentially doing frontals into an urban defence against a prepared defender who has owned the terrain for months

And pulled off a 1:1 attrition ratio....?....!

Ok, well first off they are going to have to prove that beyond "we went to Bakhmut".  And if it is true something very odd is happening, which we definitely want to keep an eye on.

 

[Battlefront.com]

32 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Well, as I said before, we don't know, there are many who potentially profit and therefore I wouldn't rule out anything. They actually mentioned a possible FSB false flag although apparently the investigators think it less likely. Anyway, there is blood in the water, the suspicion alone may be enough to get another discussion about weapons deliveries going in Germany.

The estimate is 1000 pounds of explosives.  I wonder how a land locked country at war and thousands of KMs away from the pipeline managed to get all those explosives and personnel into position without anybody intercepting it?  Which is to say that if Ukraine was behind this, they had the help of someone that has Baltic coastline, access to explosives, and no fear of being intercepted.  That puts Germany in the mix more than it does Ukraine.

Steve

[sburke]

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

And pulled off a 1:1 attrition ratio....?....!

Ok, well first off they are going to have to prove that beyond "we went to Bakhmut".  And if it is true something very odd is happening, which we definitely want to keep an eye on.

 

it's true!  1 to 1.  1 squad for 1 soldier.