How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[JonS]

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

What about now?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we killing people yet?

Now?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Why aren't we killing people yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Can I have some more tank porn?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Where is my world class analysis and assessment grounded in years of practical experience and theoretical study?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Why aren't we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

More videos of dead people plz?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Edited May 4, 2023 by JonS

[akd]

Only because JonS whinged and whinged:

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by akd

[The_Capt]

11 minutes ago, JonS said:

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

What about now?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we killing people yet?

Now?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Why aren't we killing people yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Can I have some more tank porn?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Why aren't we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

More videos of dead people plz?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

I think we broke JonS.

[MSBoxer]

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think we broke JonS.

To be fair, he has always been a little brittle.

[NamEndedAllen]

37 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think we broke JonS.

A moment of silence to honor his memory.
This is a sad reminder of the fragility of life.

Edited May 4, 2023 by NamEndedAllen

[chris talpas]

Not to distract too much but interesting interview.  Ukraine does come up in the discussion.

[kevinkin]

5 hours ago, danfrodo said:

But I wonder if we'll have a lot of "is this the big one?" days before we really see 'the big one'

A lot and a lot has been written on the the "Expanding Torrent" System of Attack Against defense distributed in depth. Much of it has shorter rather than longer timeframes. However, the system may apply here over the next months of good weather. It starts with finding the enemy. For the UA that pretty much been completed, maybe with the exception of RA operational reserves (if there are any). Then to touch the enemy to find weak spots without giving away any particular direction. Grab prisoners and other intel to assess the RA moral at that point in the defense. Widen the gaps having established operational meaning. Then allow the built up potential energy to transition into kinetic energy utilizing mass and velocity (velocity having a speed and directional component). Use the kinetic energy to exploit to the depth of the defense. It's only the last step that may be noticeable as an offensive to traditional observers. Prior actions are subtle. The UA wants to keep Russia guessing until the last moment. Perhaps throw in a very noisy diversionary attack. The subtle moves are probably underway.  

http://www.regimentalrogue.com/misc/liddell-hart_man_in_the_dark.html

Edited May 4, 2023 by kevinkin

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, akd said:

Only because JonS whinged and whinged:

 

That was some intensive fighting.  Seems the Russians in the area (VDV) have at least some idea about how to fight.  The YPR and squad took fire from the flank while clearing out the bunker.  Interlocking defensive fire has been one of the things most notably absent from a lot of these assault videos.  Not that I don't think Ukraine has run into it on a regular basis, but we sure have seen quite a lot of isolated positions being tackled without much concern for flanks.

Somewhere around 3:32 we see a wall of vertical camo netting.  Haven't seen that so far.  Looks like they are obscuring a supply route.  Interesting.

Steve

[dan/california]

 

Quote

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/counteroffensive-ukraine-zelensky-crimea/673781/

Quote

 

This spring, this summer, this autumn, Ukraine gets a chance to alter geopolitics for a generation. And so does the United States.

 

So send enough ammo and equipment to get it done.

[dan/california]

 

[Battlefront.com]

ISW weighed in on the drone strike with their May 3rd report:

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-3-2023

Their take on it?  Putin regime trying to gin up support for the war ahead of May 9th by convincing people if they don't fully commit to the war that... and here's where it gets tricky... that Russia itself could be in jeopardy.  Russia has pushed this dual message of Ukraine being a threat to Russia and at the same time inferior to Russia since before the war started.  It is one reason the earlier messaging from the Kremlin didn't appear to get people roused up because, well, they emphasized Ukraine's weakness too much.  Now?  This drone strike could be part of the Kremlin's recent messaging strategy (partially uncovered by Meduza) of switching to portraying Ukraine as super scary.

I still don't know what to think.  If Putin did sign off on this then it would appear to me that things are way worse than even we suspect.  Switching the narrative to portray Russia being under threat of destruction by Ukraine has a not insignificant chance of backfiring if the Russian people start to wonder if maybe Putin hasn't set Russia on a path of destruction.

One thing that ISW did speculate on that crossed my mind is about the May 9th parade. We know most of the non-Red Square activities have been cancelled and even the Moscow celebrations reduced.  Reasons of safety were cited by those cancelling events, but it's also been speculated (even by Russians) that the lack of parade ready forces means they can't pull them off.  It takes training and practice to march the way the Russians parade their units.  Does anybody think there's a unit left in the Russian military, not to mention large quantities from all branches. that could pull off such a big event?  Does the equipment exist in polished form?  We've seen at least one example of a parade vehicle destroyed in Ukraine without having been repainted before deployment.  It's probable there's more burnt up that were repainted.

So, what does a dictator do when he has nobody to parade and doesn't want anybody to know about it?  False flag attack that both makes the cancellation seem reasonable and at the same time gets people fired up for revenge.  It does make sense.

Steve

[Offshoot]

25 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

So, what does a dictator do when he has nobody to parade and doesn't want anybody to know about it?  False flag attack that both makes the cancellation seem reasonable and at the same time gets people fired up for revenge.  It does make sense.

Just to add, the Kremlin is claiming it took out the drones, thereby making out that their air defences are not suspect or weak:

"“Two unmanned aerial vehicles were aimed at the Kremlin. As a result of timely actions taken by the military and special services with the use of radar warfare systems, the vehicles were put out of action,” the Kremlin press service said. It said that debris from the drone “fell on the territory of the Kremlin”." - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/03/russia-accuses-ukraine-of-trying-to-kill-vladimir-putin-with-kremlin-drone-strike

Of course, it is the sort of excuse you would expect them to use in the case of either a real or a false flag attack.

[dan/california]

27 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

ISW weighed in on the drone strike with their May 3rd report:

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-3-2023

Their take on it?  Putin regime trying to gin up support for the war ahead of May 9th by convincing people if they don't fully commit to the war that... and here's where it gets tricky... that Russia itself could be in jeopardy.  Russia has pushed this dual message of Ukraine being a threat to Russia and at the same time inferior to Russia since before the war started.  It is one reason the earlier messaging from the Kremlin didn't appear to get people roused up because, well, they emphasized Ukraine's weakness too much.  Now?  This drone strike could be part of the Kremlin's recent messaging strategy (partially uncovered by Meduza) of switching to portraying Ukraine as super scary.

I still don't know what to think.  If Putin did sign off on this then it would appear to me that things are way worse than even we suspect.  Switching the narrative to portray Russia being under threat of destruction by Ukraine has a not insignificant chance of backfiring if the Russian people start to wonder if maybe Putin hasn't set Russia on a path of destruction.

One thing that ISW did speculate on that crossed my mind is about the May 9th parade. We know most of the non-Red Square activities have been cancelled and even the Moscow celebrations reduced.  Reasons of safety were cited by those cancelling events, but it's also been speculated (even by Russians) that the lack of parade ready forces means they can't pull them off.  It takes training and practice to march the way the Russians parade their units.  Does anybody think there's a unit left in the Russian military, not to mention large quantities from all branches. that could pull off such a big event?  Does the equipment exist in polished form?  We've seen at least one example of a parade vehicle destroyed in Ukraine without having been repainted before deployment.  It's probable there's more burnt up that were repainted.

So, what does a dictator do when he has nobody to parade and doesn't want anybody to know about it?  False flag attack that both makes the cancellation seem reasonable and at the same time gets people fired up for revenge.  It does make sense.

Steve

Von Runstedt's excellent advice made since then, and makes sense now.

Quote

A counterattack by the German II SS Panzer Corps failed to dislodge the British Second Army around Caen. When Gerd von Rundstedt phoned Berlin to report the failure, Chief of Staff Wilhelm Keitel purportedly asked, "What shall we do?", to which Rundstedt replied, "Make peace, you fools!

Every single thing Putin has done since last June, If not January 2022, has made no sense at all. He has already put Russia in a hole it will take a generation to climb out of. If he keeps digging for another six months it could wind up taking the better part of a century to recover.

[Fenris]

Not ideal conditions, unless I suppose you're a hippo

 

 

[Fenris]

12 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Possibly false flag.

 

 

 

Brother, what air defence doing??

[Battlefront.com]

25 minutes ago, Offshoot said:

Of course, it is the sort of excuse you would expect them to use in the case of either a real or a false flag attack.

This is the maddening thing about cloak and dagger stuff.  Especially when looking at things from the perspective a genocidal dictatorship that has a proven track record of killing its own people as an excuse to kill more people.

It is interesting to read that ISW's take on the Russian response is that it was too smooth and consistent compared to past embarrassments.  Others, however, think there was about a 12 hour delay between when the drone hit and when the message came out, possibly indicating that they had to think up a narrative because they were surprised.

Another way to look at this is to examine coincidences.  Let's see...

1. evidence exists that the Kremlin has recently and deliberately shifted its narrative to portray Ukraine as a threat that Russia is struggling to effectively combat.
2. Russia has conducted several recent actions where it claims it has broken up Ukrainian "terrorist" cells within Russia.
3. The Kremlin knows that it can't pull off a big parade this year, which would underscore how badly this war is going in a very visceral way.  Especially given how much the celebrations of May 9th have been increasingly transformed into a core messaging event for the regime.
4. Ukraine is going to conduct a major counter offensive and the Kremlin likely has some idea of how badly prepared it is to meet it.  Once the attack gets underway it should be presumed Russian forces will suffer heavy casualties, as it did last year, and will have nothing to reconstitute the lines, as also happened last year.  To stave off defeat, a major mobilization is needed, but strong opposition is likely unless the population shifts its thinking. 
5. Similar to #4 is the pending collapse, or at least significant obvious contraction, of the Russian economy due to the costs associated with the war (including sanctions).  This risks opposition from the people because it is a violation of the social contract they made with Putin after the 1990s horrors.  To avoid trouble Putin needs to convince people that they need to put aside their personal ire and focus on national salvation.
6. Pretty much nothing Putin has done so far has had any meaningful impact on Western support for Ukraine. Using the drones as an excuse to escalate tensions and lay the blame on Ukraine's feet could theoretically chip away at that support.  Even if doing nothing more than laying the groundwork for something else that might have a more tangible impact, such as pushing nukes into Belarus or even Kaliningrad.

There's probably some more, but I think these are the big ones.

A false flag attack designed to reframe the war for both domestic and global audiences could, theoretically. address all of these significant problems.  So is it a coincidence that such an attack appears to have happened?

Steve

[kevinkin]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

does make sense.

Steve

What puzzles me is the actual target itself. The Kremlin. You could pull off a Putin directed or wink of the eye attack on many other sites and still use that or those as an excuse to do anything against Ukraine. Put yourself in the place of the Russian he is trying to manipulate. "How does a slow moving piece of garbage low cost UAV get any where near the symbolic site of our glorious and would be empire?" Is Putin trying to replicate 9-11 emotions in Russia? Terrorist attack; they don't play fair. This one has a lot of fodder for all sort of speculation and maybe the Razor remains the best way to understand it right now. Which means we need to wait for Russia's response. 

Edited May 4, 2023 by kevinkin

[Taranis]

8 hours ago, Huba said:

Unsurprisingly, the baddest tanks in UA disposal were used to equip the baddest armored formation:

 

There is also a M109 in the background !

[Holien]

6 hours ago, akd said:

JonS whinged and whinged

BTW he was not whining but just giving a pithy summary of the thread so far...

Poms whinge 

Kiwis are pithy...

P.S thanks for the videos 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Holien said:

BTW he was not whining but just giving a pithy summary of the thread so far...

Poms whinge 

Kiwis are pithy...

P.S thanks for the videos 

He forgot “world class analysis and assessment grounded in years of practical experience and theoretical study given away for free” - which was hurtful.

Not entirely surprising that the guy with the flaming-eyes-skull thing above his handle would snap first, the pretty ones always do.

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is the maddening thing about cloak and dagger stuff. 

Follow the uncertainty, and who it benefits.  In the end it almost does not matter what really happened, it only matters how the phenomenon was employed.  The uncertainty created in the security of Moscow, Kremlin to be specific is the core here and who the sponsor was is almost a side show at this point.  

Russia is clearly spinning this 1) their mighty defence defeated the dastardly attack = certainty we can defend ourselves, 2) but those under handed and weak Ukrainians are employing the tactics of losers that we have suffered before = uncertainty, but good uncertainties if one is running a dictatorship.  The attack was highly visible but did no real dramatic damage, nor resulted in loss of life…and it created certainty and uncertainty where the Russian regime needed it.

In the end it was either a Russian BS op and staged, or a poorly executed and thought out terror attack that may or may not have been sponsored by Ukraine.  My money is on the first one.  If it had been a terror attack it likely would have been an incendiary designed to start a big fire that makes the Russian narrative very hard to work.

We have seen what are very likely Ukrainian (or western) sponsored asymmetric attacks in this war and they are normally aimed at big explosive stuff or really undeniable targets like airfields and bridges.  Russian normally tries to deny - call them an accident (re establish certainty).  In this case Russia is not denying, they are leveraging.

So what?  Well create a counter-spin to re assert uncertainty.  Insert into the Russian info sphere that it was really Wagner or a regionally based break away military inside job…but hey we are just a bunch of guys sitting around chatting…

Are we there yet?

[Thomm]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

…we are just a bunch of guys sitting around procrastinating…

Fixed!

[billbindc]

10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

ISW weighed in on the drone strike with their May 3rd report:

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-3-2023

Their take on it?  Putin regime trying to gin up support for the war ahead of May 9th by convincing people if they don't fully commit to the war that... and here's where it gets tricky... that Russia itself could be in jeopardy.  Russia has pushed this dual message of Ukraine being a threat to Russia and at the same time inferior to Russia since before the war started.  It is one reason the earlier messaging from the Kremlin didn't appear to get people roused up because, well, they emphasized Ukraine's weakness too much.  Now?  This drone strike could be part of the Kremlin's recent messaging strategy (partially uncovered by Meduza) of switching to portraying Ukraine as super scary.

I still don't know what to think.  If Putin did sign off on this then it would appear to me that things are way worse than even we suspect.  Switching the narrative to portray Russia being under threat of destruction by Ukraine has a not insignificant chance of backfiring if the Russian people start to wonder if maybe Putin hasn't set Russia on a path of destruction.

One thing that ISW did speculate on that crossed my mind is about the May 9th parade. We know most of the non-Red Square activities have been cancelled and even the Moscow celebrations reduced.  Reasons of safety were cited by those cancelling events, but it's also been speculated (even by Russians) that the lack of parade ready forces means they can't pull them off.  It takes training and practice to march the way the Russians parade their units.  Does anybody think there's a unit left in the Russian military, not to mention large quantities from all branches. that could pull off such a big event?  Does the equipment exist in polished form?  We've seen at least one example of a parade vehicle destroyed in Ukraine without having been repainted before deployment.  It's probable there's more burnt up that were repainted.

So, what does a dictator do when he has nobody to parade and doesn't want anybody to know about it?  False flag attack that both makes the cancellation seem reasonable and at the same time gets people fired up for revenge.  It does make sense.

Steve

Hearing some pretty stiff critique of ISW for this update from Nathan Rupar publicly and privately from some pretty solid analysts.

ISW is making a determination based from what I'm hearing essentially on a hunch without any analysis or evidence to back it up. The May Day parade claim is a particularly strange take. Russia has already shown that it can put on big stadium events during the war. The Kremlin has a large, well funded and savvy events/propaganda team. If it lacked enough modern equipment for a normal May Day parade there's nothing stopping them from giving it a Great Patriotic War theme and rolling out whatever's floating around from 1945. Russia is a big state with plenty of internal security forces to parade for an hour or two. It wouldn't be in the top 50 of May Day parades but if they wanted a reasonably staffed/equipped parade it is doable.  

What can it not do? Apparently security. And the compact Putin made with Russians was that it was a "special military operation" that wouldn't seriously affect the lives of core empire people. What does it say to them that a May Day parade *in Moscow* is maybe too dangerous to hold? It would have been far easier to simply say "the boys are at the front and we are going to hold a day of quiet contemplation and church attendance instead". The idea that a big explosion at the Kremlin was the solution to that problem is preposterous. 

Edited May 4, 2023 by billbindc

[billbindc]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is the maddening thing about cloak and dagger stuff.  Especially when looking at things from the perspective a genocidal dictatorship that has a proven track record of killing its own people as an excuse to kill more people.

It is interesting to read that ISW's take on the Russian response is that it was too smooth and consistent compared to past embarrassments.  Others, however, think there was about a 12 hour delay between when the drone hit and when the message came out, possibly indicating that they had to think up a narrative because they were surprised.

Another way to look at this is to examine coincidences.  Let's see...

1. evidence exists that the Kremlin has recently and deliberately shifted its narrative to portray Ukraine as a threat that Russia is struggling to effectively combat.
2. Russia has conducted several recent actions where it claims it has broken up Ukrainian "terrorist" cells within Russia.
3. The Kremlin knows that it can't pull off a big parade this year, which would underscore how badly this war is going in a very visceral way.  Especially given how much the celebrations of May 9th have been increasingly transformed into a core messaging event for the regime.
4. Ukraine is going to conduct a major counter offensive and the Kremlin likely has some idea of how badly prepared it is to meet it.  Once the attack gets underway it should be presumed Russian forces will suffer heavy casualties, as it did last year, and will have nothing to reconstitute the lines, as also happened last year.  To stave off defeat, a major mobilization is needed, but strong opposition is likely unless the population shifts its thinking. 
5. Similar to #4 is the pending collapse, or at least significant obvious contraction, of the Russian economy due to the costs associated with the war (including sanctions).  This risks opposition from the people because it is a violation of the social contract they made with Putin after the 1990s horrors.  To avoid trouble Putin needs to convince people that they need to put aside their personal ire and focus on national salvation.
6. Pretty much nothing Putin has done so far has had any meaningful impact on Western support for Ukraine. Using the drones as an excuse to escalate tensions and lay the blame on Ukraine's feet could theoretically chip away at that support.  Even if doing nothing more than laying the groundwork for something else that might have a more tangible impact, such as pushing nukes into Belarus or even Kaliningrad.

There's probably some more, but I think these are the big ones.

A false flag attack designed to reframe the war for both domestic and global audiences could, theoretically. address all of these significant problems.  So is it a coincidence that such an attack appears to have happened?

Steve

You make the best argument that I've seen on this. My takes: 

1. This shift happened with the collapse of the front around Kharkiv and accelerated after Kherson's fall. It's not coordinated with the latest event. 

2. It's been doing that since the beginning as well (remember the absurd cornucopia of evidence bust last year?). 

3. See my answer above. There were far less humiliating ways to accomplish the same goal.

4. If this were the case, the simplest path would be to declare war on Ukraine and open up full conscription. Russia hasn't gone there and isn't signaling it will. Why not? Because it's political dynamite and because the state lacks the capacity to effectively process and arm another large wave absent significant aid from outside (i.e. Xi). That hasn't happened.

5. Agreed. But absence of options doesn't create new ones. Putin made a deal with Russians and he's breaking it. Any Russians who care to can simply turn on their tv and watch Solovyev catalogue the disaster. It also contradicts the essential logic of the regime. Putin's Russia has always been based on de-mobilizing political action. It's not a movement government and...as we've seen...it has been careful to trim the sales of would be mobilizers like Girkin/Dugin/etc. 

6. I think the reality on US/EU aid is that the only real limiting factors have been initial fears of nuclear/regional escalation in the beginning and subsequent needs to curb what China feels like it would be justified in providing to Moscow. A couple of Mavic drones conducting a demonstration attack over the Kremlin simply won't affect any of that. In fact, China isn't particularly well known for putting good money in after bad. 

The far simpler explanation is that Putin isn't a guy who intentionally embarrasses himself and his regime for nebulous and perhaps unrealizable gains and that Ukraine just showed quite clearly to the Russian population that it actually holds escalation dominance in their arena of the war.

As with Nordstream, we'll know soon enough.

[billbindc]

8 hours ago, kevinkin said:

What puzzles me is the actual target itself. The Kremlin. You could pull off a Putin directed or wink of the eye attack on many other sites and still use that or those as an excuse to do anything against Ukraine. Put yourself in the place of the Russian he is trying to manipulate. "How does a slow moving piece of garbage low cost UAV get any where near the symbolic site of our glorious and would be empire?" Is Putin trying to replicate 9-11 emotions in Russia? Terrorist attack; they don't play fair. This one has a lot of fodder for all sort of speculation and maybe the Razor remains the best way to understand it right now. Which means we need to wait for Russia's response. 

This. We know how utterly cold blooded the Kremlin is on a daily basis. Why show how feckless Moscow's defenses might be rather than hit a grammar school and/or nursery in Belgorod or Kursk? 

[dan/california]

This however is the Ukrainians. I have been slightly disappointed that they have derailed two fuel trains, but not had the extra charge or two to set them on fire. And if I was the guy in charge of air defense at the Kerch bridge i wouldn't be sleeping all that well.