How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[DesertFox]

9 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

For me the question is very much complicated by the lack of information on the differential casualty rates. But let's take a swing:

1. Kill RA troops

2. Kill RA troops

3. Kill RA troops

For any given period of time and terrain, ask your subordinates to figure out how to Kill RA troops while minimizing attrition on their force. Use gains in territory to foster 1, 2, and 3. Fall back if you can foster 1, 2, and 3. I would also warn against large encirclement operations unless the risks from RA counterattacks is low i.e. contained. 

Exantly that. Unless they left the country, only dead orcs are good orcs.

[Letter from Prague]

I would put "destroy RA weapons" and "destroy RA logistics" on the list.

Because given how many Russians there are, and just how compliant they are with whatever their government asks of them (whether we're talking about true believers, people who are "apolitical" or convicts, it is obvious they will always just do what the are told to without question), it might be easier for RA to muster 100k or 500k more mobiks than 100 more artillery platforms or 20 helicopters.

[Twisk]

I think the most optimistic (imaginary?) goals for this offensive were the Azov. However, in a more realistic sense Ukraine seems to be targeting Tokmak  ( https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Tokmak,+Zaporizhia+Oblast,+Ukraine/Robotyne,+Zaporizhia+Oblast,+Ukraine,+71720/@47.3700994,35.6279812,11z/data=!4m19!4m18!1m10!1m1!1s0x40dd6bbe8fa0b1e3:0x4a39f9fbf1288f63!2m2!1d35.7098365!2d47.2464085!3m4!1m2!1d35.72089!2d47.2697491!3s0x40dd6b7decaa9303:0x39193b7ff78707a2!1m5!1m1!1s0x40dd0baa226ad385:0xc158531b6376bca0!2m2!1d35.8373394!2d47.4497264!3e2?entry=ttu )

 

They are about 25-30km from the city and with apparently significant forces remaining in reserve this seems reachable during the current offensive. My understanding is that the only major railyway E/W across occupied Ukraine enters this city. So even putting the city under siege would be okay. The importance being that it would limit Russian ability to use internal lines to reinforce itself and put greater strain on their logistics.

So obviously destroying Russian combat potential is valuable but I would guess this is the major goal of the offensive. If Ukraine makes it no farther they will have placed themselves in a stronger position to attack towards Melitopol/occupied W Ukraine during another offensive and placed the Russians on the horns of a logistics dillema.

Edit:

This image gives a good overview of the area's transportation.

Reaching Tokmak would seemingly break contiguous Russian control over the land bridge portion of occupied Ukraine. Forcing them to use the M14 and naval shipping to move laterally across the front. It would also put greater strain of the Crimean supply routes.

2nd edit: While killing Russians is positive for Ukraine Russia seems to be in the position to replace most of its losses. What isn't clear is their ability to replace strategic equipment. So creating logistical dillema that makes sustainment of positions harder is of great importance.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Twisk

[Battlefront.com]

For sure getting to Tokmak is a top priority of this counter offensive., but the real price is Melitopol.  Tokmak disrupts the east/west rail link, but Melitopol cuts off both rail and road.  Russia's "land bridge" to/from Crimea is effectively ended.  As per my assessment months ago, taking Melitopol means Russia will most likely withdraw from everything westward as it won't be defendable long term.

Steve

[Vanir Ausf B]

F-16 training going nowhere fast.

[Twisk]

Melitopol I don't think is a realistic prize for this fighting season. Unless Ukraine is able to induce a total collapse along the front. So far Russia's record is 3 for 4 on pulling out before it gets that bad and I suspect they'll make it 4 for 5 this summer/fall. Reading about Ukraine brings up parallels to Soviet attacks where the initial breakthrough force (9th Corp) becomes bogged down and the exploitation force (10th Corp) is needed to commit.

If Tokmak is seized the Molochna river by default splits the two Russian positions and the M14 over the Molochna seems to be a genuine bridge that could be (or has been, it was apparently hit last winter) taken down. Clearly it would be better to hold the entire distance but in this case I think the constriction might be sufficient to de-facto split the two sides even if its only by intermittent fire.



F16s I firmly believe will be a post-war introduction. Training and logistics for them has taken far too long to even get started. If they do enter the war it will be because Ukraine has failed to eject Russia in a timely manner.

 

 

Edit: Maybe someone can frame an argument that would lead to the fall of Melitopol this summer/fall but I'm just not seeing it. Ukraine's attack forces are apparently well armed but inexperienced. My picture of the fighting is them reaching (not necessarily taking) Tokmak before being expended. However, assuming the west is able to replace material losses this should hopefully lead to more experience on the Ukrainian's part and a refit-rest period over the fall might allow for follow up attacks in the winter.

So 2023 is the year of splitting the Russian forces (either through occupation or fire). This should put Ukraine in a strong position for 2024 to possibly achieve multiple goals

- Retake the western land bridge

- threaten Crimea

- retake the eastern land bridge (mariupol)

- threaten Donbas

 

The key is that once Ukraine splits the land bridge Russia will have to operate on two separate axis rather than one largely contiguous front.

 

- Kharkov/Donbas
- Western land bridge

and

- Eastern land bridge

- Dniper

They will have to choose many weeks (if not months) ahead of time where to position forces and once committed won't be able to shift them easily.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Twisk

[Battlefront.com]

31 minutes ago, Twisk said:

Maybe someone can frame an argument that would lead to the fall of Melitopol this summer/fall but I'm just not seeing it.

For sure it's tough to see it happening as of right now.  We have just about hit the mid point in the campaign weather since the counter offensive started.

31 minutes ago, Twisk said:

Maybe someone can frame an argument that would lead to the fall of Melitopol this summer/fall but I'm just not seeing it.

Short of a major Russian collapse, I don't see it happening either.  The point I made above is that I believe that is what Ukraine was hoping to achieve with this counter offensive, not Tokmak.  I also believe the various claims of reaching the coastline of Azov or Crimea were just psyops to rattle Russians and psyche up Ukrainians.

Steve

[akd]

Harrowing medevac:

 

[The_Capt]

10 hours ago, Tux said:

From a biological/naturalistic point of view (since we’re going there) I think you can boil it down even further into a question of resources, whether physical (food, water, money, etc.), emotional (in large part linked to nutrition/food and other physical resources) or intellectual (knowledge and understanding or cultural substitutes for understanding, e.g. dogma).  And then even these resource types can be reduced to a question of energy (e.g. rational thinking being energy-intensive, well-fed people being able to ‘afford’ it, etc.).

The more basal parts of our brain ensure that, when we don’t have the energy or resources to support complex rationalisations and investment in the greater good, we revert to angry/fearful/aggressive states which at least work to ensure the individual’s survival, perhaps alongside immediate family and a few others.

When we do have the resources required to ensure that survival and comfort are not in doubt (or, at large scale and in a democracy, when enough of us do), we start to invest in relative luxuries like longer term thinking/actions and the greater good.  And when we do that we make slow, very irregular progress towards greater overall well-being.

 

Work to eliminate all types of poverty and watch humanity thrive. Trivial, no?

So there have been wars sparked by lack of resources or competition for resources; however, the idea that all wars or conflict can be reduced to this cause is a myth.  Many wars were about social uncertainties or in some cases downright fantasy (e.g. The Crusades).  Lack of resources can be a powerful driver but a lot of time the most uncertain thing is what another group of people may or may not do, if we do not know/trust them.

Take this war.  This was not about resources in the least.  It was about power, social power.  Russia wanted to demonstrate power, Ukraine did not want to give its own up.  Neither side could live with the uncertainty of the loss of power and were driven to act in response.  We have gone to war over the dumbest and most irrational things.  We have gone to war when it was going to make things much worse resource-wise (see Pre-WW1).  We go to war over ideals and identity, grudges and vengeance, rumours and fears.  In many ways humans are always afraid, we just need a reason to let it out.

Sometime we just hate the other guy for no rational reason and will kill our selves just to take them with us - two people stabbing each other as they both fall off a building.  And that animal has the bomb and AI, what could possibly go wrong?

[DesertFox]

Better be in a Bradley than in a BMP. See why:

 

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1686857481828352005?s=20

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Better be in a Bradley than in a BMP. See why:

 

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1686857481828352005?s=20

Yeah, those Lancets don't have tandem warheads, so it make sense if one strikes ERA in a non sensitive area (like not around the turret!) that the vehicle should be all good to go.

Steve

[CAZmaj]

Economist

1843 magazine | Ukraine
How Ukraine’s virtually non-existent navy sank Russia’s flagship
The Moskva was the most advanced vessel in the Black Sea. But the Ukrainians had a secret weapon, reports Wendell Steavenson with Marta Rodionova

July 27th 2023

On the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, a flotilla of warships from the Russian Black Sea Fleet steamed out of its base in Sevastopol in occupied Crimea towards a small island 120km (75 miles) south of Odessa. This solitary speck of land, known as Snake Island, had strategic value beyond its size. If it were captured, the Russian navy would dominate the west of the Black Sea and threaten Ukraine’s coast. Snake Island housed a radar station and was garrisoned by a few dozen Ukrainian marines and border guards – no match for Russian ships.
Russian jets screamed overhead. A patrol boat began shelling the island, and smaller vessels full of Russian marines approached the jetty. The Ukrainian defenders knew they had little hope of resisting. They were armed only with rifles and a few rocket-propelled grenades. Over the horizon appeared the great shadowing hulk of the Moskva, the Russian flagship, 186 metres long and bristling with missiles. It demanded over the radio that the garrison surrender.
“Snake Island! I, a Russian warship, repeat our offer. Lay down your arms and surrender or you will be bombed. Have you understood? Do you copy?” On a recording of the exchange, one Ukrainian border guard can be heard remarking to another: “Well, that’s it then – or should we reply that they should **** off?” “Might as well,” said the second border guard. The first then uttered the riposte that would become a clarion call of Ukrainian resistance: “Russian warship, go **** yourself!” The Russians stormed the island and all communications with the defenders were lost.
The following day, a medical team set off to the island to retrieve the bodies of the Ukrainian soldiers, all of whom they presumed were dead. As they approached, their rescue vessel was hailed by a Russian ship and ordered to stop. Soon, a dozen members of the Russian special forces boarded their boat and detained those on board. A Russian officer pointed over his shoulder at the dark grey outline of the Moskva in the distance. “Do you see her?” he said. “You see how large she is, how powerful? She can destroy not only Snake Island but all of Ukraine!”
“Do you see her?” he said. “You see how large she is, how powerful? She can destroy not only Snake Island but all of Ukraine!”
Meanwhile the Russian army advanced from Crimea westwards along Ukraine’s southern coast. Everyone expected that the Russian navy would support it with an amphibious landing, either in Mykolaiv, a naval base and shipyard that was now on the front line, or – the great prize – Odessa, which housed the headquarters of the Ukrainian navy. The navy mined possible landing zones. In Odessa volunteers filled sandbags and strung bales of barbed wire to defend the beaches. Russian warships appeared so close that people could see them on the horizon.
In Berdiansk, farther to the east, the Russians had captured a dozen Ukrainian ships. The Ukrainians didn’t want to risk any more falling into the hands of the enemy. With a heavy heart, Oleksiy Neizhpapa, the head of the Ukrainian navy, ordered the scuttling in Mykolaiv harbour of his two largest ships, including his flagship. “This is a difficult decision for any commander,” he told me. The Ukrainian navy was now reduced to around three dozen vessels, mostly patrol and supply boats.

Russian warships manoeuvred close to the coast, seeking to draw fire in order to make the Ukrainians reveal their artillery positions. Then they retreated out of range and targeted Ukrainian defences and command posts with missiles. The Moskva, the largest vessel of the Russian attack force, provided air cover which allowed the other ships to operate unmolested. Commercial shipping was throttled by the presence of Russia’s ships and mines. Ukraine, the fifth-largest exporter of wheat in the world, was unable to transport any grain.
Neizhpapa lost a number of officers and men in those perilous days. Crucially, though, radar installations, which allowed the Ukrainians to identify the position of Russian ships, escaped unharmed. Neizhpapa realised that he had one, untested weapon that might drive the Russian threat away from the coast. “We were counting on this being a factor of surprise for the enemy,” he said. “I was very worried that the enemy would know about it. After all, the enemy had a lot of agents on the territory of Ukraine. I was concerned about keeping it as secret as possible – and then, of course, using it.”
The Moskva, launched in 1983 under the name Slava, was one of three warships in her class to enter service. They were built in Mykolaiv in the last decade of the Soviet Union and designed to sink the ships of us navy carrier strike groups. Its American equivalent has a wider array of weapons but the Slava-class has missiles with a greater range, rendering her potentially more dangerous in a duel. The Soviet navy was proud of the Slava-class ships and sailors vied to serve on them. The cabins were comparatively large and there was a swimming pool in which the crew could decompress during the months at sea.
A messy process of disentangling naval assets began after Ukrainian independence. Russia and Ukraine divided the Soviet Black Sea Fleet between them. Russia got 80% of the ships, Ukraine 20%
The Soviet Black Sea Fleet, which welcomed the Moskva, also employed Neizhpapa’s father, who served as an officer on a rescue vessel. Neizhpapa himself was born in 1975 and grew up in Sevastopol. As a child, he drew pictures of warships and dreamed of becoming a sailor too. The Soviet Union was collapsing as Neizhpapa entered adulthood. He chose to stay in Sevastopol for naval school, rather than go to St Petersburg to study. Neizhpapa means “Don’t-eat-bread” in Cossack dialect. The name identified him as Ukrainian at a time when national identities were re-emerging. Ukraine became independent in 1991, and Neizhpapa was certain where his loyalties lay. “I realised that I did not want to serve Russia,” he said.
During Neizhpapa’s first year at naval school, Russians and Ukrainians studied together, but when the cadets were required to take an oath of allegiance, those who chose Russia left for training in St Petersburg. A messy process of disentangling naval assets also began after Ukrainian independence. Russia and Ukraine divided the Soviet Black Sea Fleet between them. Russia got 80% of the ships, Ukraine 20%. The two countries continued to share naval bases and there were even cases of brothers serving on different sides. Relations between the cohabiting fleets shifted according to the politics of the day, becoming more strained in the aftermath of Ukraine’s Orange revolution in 2004 and warmer when Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian president, came to power in 2010. There were tensions over money – salaries in the Russian navy were much higher – and sometimes with the local authorities. (The Ukrainian police would let off Ukrainians for traffic violations but fine the Russians.)

In 2012 Neizhpapa, by then a captain, was invited on board the Moskva, which had become the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. He remembers the imposing size of the vessel, its foredeck canted upwards to attack. It was armed with 16 huge missile-launchers, as large as aircraft fuselages. The command tower was flanked with the domes, curved dishes and antennae of several radar systems, and the deck swooped towards a helicopter pad overhanging the stern.
When he stepped aboard, Neizhpapa “felt pride and tradition and also a certain power in the cruiser. I would have never guessed that within a couple of years my naval forces would sink it.”
On April 13th 2022, Neizhpapa received information that the Moskva had been located 115km off the coast. The vice admiral is tall and imposing with steel close-cut hair and bright blue eyes that seem to reflect some distant, sunny sea. Mild-mannered but military-correct, he would not be drawn on how the Ukrainians found the Moskva. “I can’t answer your question in much detail, but I can tell you that it was identified specifically by the Ukrainian naval forces,” he said.
It’s difficult to find warships at sea, not least because they are designed to hide. A ship can go quiet – turning off communications equipment so broadcasts cannot be intercepted – or use camouflage to make it difficult to see from above. Satellites can spot a ship only when their orbit passes overhead and most of them cannot penetrate cloud cover. Even when skies are clear, large warships are mere mites of grey on a vast grey ocean.
Most radar is limited to a range of 20-30km. It can transmit and receive electromagnetic pulses from objects only in its direct line of sight. Anything below the horizon remains invisible, in the radar’s so-called shadow. The Moskva remained on the other side of Snake Island, over 100km away.
Neizhpapa and other naval sources were understandably reluctant to furnish details on when and how they found the Moskva. According to their version of the story, low cloud cover that day meant that radar pulses were reflected in such a way that extended their reach far beyond their normal range. “The warship was found by two radar stations on the coast,” an insider told us. “We were so lucky.”
But Chris Carlson, a retired captain in the us navy and one of the designers of the naval-war game, “Harpoon V”, which is used to train armed forces around the world, believes that other methods were employed. “I have a hard time attributing it to just plain old luck,” he told me. He suggested that, even if a coastal radar station managed to ping the Moskva, the information relayed by the echo over such a distance would have been insufficient to identify the ship or target it effectively. Carlson pointed out that in 2021 Ukraine had announced that its advanced over-the-horizon radar system, called the Mineral-U, had completed factory testing. It’s possible that the navy rushed it into active service, even though the Ukrainians – given the need for wartime secrecy – have never admitted that they possess this capability. Neizhpapa said that this was not the first time the Ukrainians had spotted the Moskva and other warships.

The Ukrainians had also deployed Bayraktars – Turkish-made drones that became cult icons in the early months of the war – against the Russian fleet for observation, distraction and attack. It’s possible that a drone may have spotted the Moskva. In private, Western military sources have hinted that the Ukrainians had more help in locating the Moskva than they like to admit. American military sources have confirmed that they were asked to verify Ukraine’s sighting of the Moskva, which they probably did through a maritime-surveillance aircraft. It was clear, however, from the predictable changes of position made by the Moskva, that her crew believed she was invisible.
The Ukrainian navy went into the war with a depleted force. After the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia seized much of the Ukrainian fleet, including 12 of the 17 ships moored in Sevastopol at the time. Training schools, artillery batteries and munition stores were claimed by the Russians. A cohort of Ukrainian naval officers, including three admirals, defected. Neizhpapa, who was at home in Sevastopol, was recalled to Odessa. He made it across the new de-facto border crammed into a car with his wife, two sons, the Ukrainian navy’s head of military communications and all the belongings they could fit. As they crossed to safety, Neizhpapa had a “feeling that I had been in captivity and was free at home”.
The Russians began to modernise their newly strengthened Black Sea Fleet; the Moskva was upgraded and ship-to-ship Vulkan missiles installed. These had a range of over 500km, which allowed them to target cities too. The Ukrainian fleet had been reduced to a handful of ships: one frigate and a few dozen smaller craft. The war in Donbas between the Ukrainian army and Russian-backed separatists stagnated into a stalemate and sucked up much of the armed forces’ attention and resources. When Neizhpapa was made commander of the navy in 2020 by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had been elected the previous year, there was no money or time to build new ships. Neizhpapa decided that what he needed most of all were radar systems for surveillance, minefields for coastal defence and long-range missiles, which Ukraine had also lost in Crimea.
The Luch Design Bureau in Kyiv, a state-owned munitions developer since Soviet times, had begun work on the Neptune, a subsonic shore-to-ship missile system, shortly after the loss of Crimea. Based on an old Soviet design, the Neptune would have a range of over 200km. It was ready to be tested around the time Neizhpapa assumed command. A technical expert involved in the design, who didn’t want to be identified, showed me a video on his phone of one of the first live-fire tests. An old rusty tanker had been towed out to sea as a target and a small crowd of engineers and naval officers gathered in a field close to the launcher to await the results. When the news came that the tanker had been successfully hit, they clapped and hugged each other.
Yet the government dragged its feet on funding production and it took an intervention by Zelensky himself for manufacturing to begin. “I was in this meeting,” said the technical expert. “He was intelligent, he understood that we had only three or four [operationally effective] ships in the Ukrainian navy and that it was not enough to protect the coastline.”
Production began in early 2021. The first battery – comprising two command vehicles and four launch vehicles, each able to transport and fire four missiles – had been built in time to join the annual military parade in Kyiv on August 24th, Ukrainian Independence Day. That December, Neizhpapa announced that six batteries would be deployed to the southern coast the following spring.

On the morning of February 24th 2022, the technical expert woke to the sound of “shooting everywhere, helicopter attacks everywhere”. Russia had invaded and the Neptune batteries were still parked near Kyiv; they were in jeopardy from seizure by Russian soldiers. The technical expert’s superiors told him to transport the missile systems to the south of the country. It took three days for the launch vehicles to reach the coast. “We were worried because they were very visibly military vehicles,” said the expert. The missiles themselves were sent later, hidden in trucks.
The Neptunes were first fired in March 2022 at Russian landing craft. In April, they probably targeted a Russian frigate called the Admiral Essen – that month she was retired from service for a few weeks, suggesting that the damage sustained was slight – and at smaller ships threatening Mykolaiv. A number of sources suggested the Neptunes were not wholly successful. The system was untested in combat and there were teething problems: with the radar, with parts failing, with the software for identifying targets. The technical expert told us that the missiles had been launched from the west of Odessa at a high altitude, which would have made them more easily detectable by Russian radar. “We don’t know exactly what happened,” he said, “but it seems the missiles were intercepted.” Engineers were dispatched to fix the problems.
Once the location of the Moskva had been confirmed on April 13th, Neizhpapa ordered two Neptune missiles to be fired at it. The technical expert showed me a video on his phone of what he claimed was the launch of the missiles that day. The launcher truck was parked in a thin line of trees with bare branches. At ignition, the cap of the launching tube, which looks like the lid of a rubbish bin, was dispelled from the barrel and crashed into a field of green spring wheat. A fiery roar and a trail of black smoke followed. Then the second missile was launched.
A fiery roar and a trail of black smoke followed. Then the second missile was launched.
Silence reigned in Neizhpapa’s command centre. The Neptune, which is five metres long, flies at 900km per hour and is designed to skim ten metres above the surface of the sea in order to avoid detection. Neizhpapa watched the clock tick through the six minutes that it was supposed to take to reach the target. For a long time nothing seemed to happen. Then Russian radio channels erupted in chatter. It was apparent that smaller ships were hurrying towards the Moskva. The radio traffic was garbled and panicked. Neizhpapa inferred that the ship had been hit.
It didn’t take long for news to spread. “People started calling me from all over Ukraine,” Neizhpapa said. “There was only one question: ‘Did it sink or not?’ I said, ‘I can’t answer that!’ Hours passed. I was constantly asked the same thing. I joked I wanted to get on a boat myself and go and look. I said, ‘Do you realise that this is a very big ship? Even if it was hit by both missiles, it wouldn’t sink immediately.’”

Some hours later, satellites spotted a large red thermal image in the middle of the sea. Officials from nato phoned Neizhpapa, he recalled, “to say that they saw something burning beautifully”.
The only publicly available film taken of the Moskva after she was hit is three seconds long. The sea is calm, the sky pale grey. The full length of the ship is visible as she lists sharply to one side, thick black smoke billowing from the foredeck. Her life rafts are gone, suggesting that surviving crew members had been evacuated. The camera falls away sharply as a voice is heard saying, in Russian, “What the **** are you doing?”
It’s apparent from the film that the two Neptune missiles struck the Moskva near the foredeck on her port side, just above the waterline. The fire may have been caused by the missiles themselves, or fuel tanks or ammunition magazines in that part of the ship which ignited. We may never know exactly what happened but the attack clearly caused the Moskva to lose power and propulsion. Sometime in the early hours of April 14th she rolled over and sank.
Why had the Moskva, which had capable radar and surface-to-air missiles, failed to detect and intercept the incoming Neptunes? Carlson, the naval expert, has dug into the possible reasons. The ship was in dry dock for repairs several times over the past decade but upgrades to her weapons and operating systems seem to have been delayed or done piecemeal. A readiness report, briefly posted online in early 2022 before being removed from the internet, showed that many systems were broken or not fully functional. “All her major weapons systems had gripes,” said Carlson on a podcast last year. Moreover, the Moskva’s radar and targeting tools were not entirely automated and relied heavily on well-trained operators. But over half the ship’s crew, which numbered 500, were conscripts who served only a year. In consequence, the sailors “had extremely limited training which would be considered woefully insufficient by Western standards,” said Carlson. “The Moskva was not properly prepared to be doing combat operations.” This was yet another example of complacency by the Russian armed forces that has been evident throughout the war. Even so, Carlson was astonished that none of her radars appeared to have spotted the incoming missiles.
Officials from NATO phoned Neizhpapa, he recalled, “to say that they saw something burning beautifully
Once the Neptunes struck, the crew seems, in a panic, to have left watertight doors unsecured. Studying a screenshot of the Moskva on fire, Carlson observed that “you can see smoke coming out of the shutter doors for the torpedo tubes...That tells me that the smoke had a clear path, and if the smoke had a clear path so did water and so [did] flame.”
The Russians have never admitted that Neptune missiles were responsible for sinking the Moskva; they claimed she suffered an accidental fire at sea. But only a few days later, they bombed a Luch Design Bureau facility in Kyiv in apparent retaliation. The Russian authorities have also never been open about the number of casualties, but up to 250 sailors may have died. On November 4th 2022, more than six months after the sinking, a court in Sevastopol declared 17 of the missing dead.

Despite the reports of their heroic deaths, the defenders of Snake Island were in fact alive. They were taken captive and held in prison in Crimea before being transferred to a prison in Belograd, a city near the border with Ukraine. Conditions were brutal. Temperatures fell to -20°C, yet the prisoners were housed in tents for the first few days. Frequently, they were interrogated, beaten and electrocuted. They had no news of the outside world, beyond the names of the cities captured by the Russians, with which the guards taunted them.
One day, the prisoners overheard a news report on the guards’ radio saying that the Moskva “was not floating properly”. The expression puzzled them for a while, before they realised that it was a euphemism for “sunk”. They began to cheer. “The Russians increased our torture,” said one of them, who was later returned in a prisoner exchange, “but this was a great moment of happiness.”
The sinking of the Moskva was a turning point in the war. Neizhpapa said that “our fleet, which was considered non-existent a year ago, is now winning against the larger force, thought to be unbeatable.” nato allies began to take the Ukrainian navy seriously. Ukraine has limited stocks of Neptunes but the Danes and Americans are supplying Harpoon missiles, which are similar to the Neptune but carry a bigger warhead. Previously, Neizhpapa admitted, this kind of weapon and support would have been a “dream”.
Sometime in the early hours of April 14th she rolled over and sank.
Having destroyed the air-defence umbrella that the Moskva provided, the Ukrainian navy was able to harass the Russian navy in the west of the Black Sea with drones and missiles, damaging and sinking supply ships, and destroying air defences and radar stations installed on gas platforms. In June 2022 Ukraine retook Snake Island and the Russian Black Sea Fleet withdrew towards Crimea, leaving the Ukrainian coast safe from amphibious assault. Turkey and the United Nations were able to broker a deal to allow ships into Ukrainian ports to export grain. “Now,” said Neizhpapa, “they keep their ships outside of the range of our cruise missiles” – even state-of-the-art frigates that are armed up to the gunwales.
The Ukrainian coast has been secured. Neizhpapa pointed out an area of 25,000 square kilometres where neither the Russians nor Ukrainians can now operate freely. “There’s a certain kind of status quo that we need to take over,” he said. Neizhpapa maintains that the only way to secure peace in the Black Sea is to throw the Russians out of Crimea. “In imperial times, all of the emperors always said that whoever controls Crimea controls the Black Sea. In Soviet times, they called Crimea the aircraft-carrier that cannot be sunk. Nothing has changed since then.”
I asked Neizhpapa what he missed about his home. He gazed upwards for a moment. “Honestly, I miss the sea near Crimea the most. It’s not the same as here. It’s brighter, more transparent.” 
Wendell Steavenson has reported on post-Soviet Georgia, the Iraq war and the Egyptian revolution. You can read her previous dispatches from the war in Ukraine for 1843 magazine, and the rest of our coverage here. Marta Rodionova has worked as a television journalist and creative producer.
 

https://www.economist.com/interactive/1843/2023/07/27/how-ukraines-virtually-non-existent-navy-sank-russias-flagship

 

 

[Twisk]

4 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Better be in a Bradley than in a BMP. See why:

 

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1686857481828352005?s=20

Within the next 6 months or so I think this will be one of the biggest additives of western armor to Ukraine. While the frontline troops and command make mistakes they won't pay for it with as much blood as they would using Russian vehicles.

[kevinkin]

Does anyone know it the UA has access to something as large as the NTC at Fort Irwin? And if so to what degree are they training for combined arms warfare (with UAVs and deep strikes) using that type of facility? A quick look online has not found any major efforts. But there are training grounds in NATO countries that might be used.  One idea would to get high level UA commanders trained in specific tactics related to this war even though they might be commanding stand-ins provided by other countries. 

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2022/04/16/us-army-using-lessons-from-ukraine-war-to-aid-own-training/

[Battlefront.com]

Misc. stuff:

1.  Here's something clever to defend Starlink (and other sat based services) against EW that theoretically should work, at least to some extent:

https://en.defence-ua.com/news/how_russia_hinders_starlink_and_how_ukrainians_can_deal_with_it_by_using_a_shovel-7487.html

The short of this is that in order to jam a Starlink dish the Russian EW has to bounce electronic disruption directly at the dish.  So what to do?  Dig out a pit, reinforce it with metal, then put the dish at the bottom.  This creates a kinda Faraday Cage which is open at the top.  Starlink looks directly up, so no problem there.  But the Russian EW energy waves are no longer able to hit the dish even if they are positioned high up on tall towers.

Pretty slick.

2.  More pretty video of Russian heavy artillery going boom:

3.  I would never condone civilian on civilian violence, but it is hard to see Russians abroad behaving as if everything is normal.  If they want things to be normal, then they should spend some more time at home changing the regime before thinking of going on vacation:

4.  Observations of why it is so difficult to knock out Russian air power:

 

5.  Mick Ryan takes a look at where the counter offensive stands compared to his analysis just as it started.  It's a good read:

6.  US Army fast tracking a purpose built tactical drone bomber.  Hopefully this will not be yet another high priced system for US soldiers that doesn't to much more than a Ukrainian low cost solution:

https://www.militarytimes.com/unmanned/uas/2023/07/31/us-army-developing-lasso-tank-killing-drone-for-infantry/

 

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Lots of good stuff in ISW's August 2nd report about Russian information control issues, but I found this to be more interesting:

Quote

The Russian MoD officially provided weapons and vehicles to the Belgorod and Kursk Oblast Territorial Defense forces on August 2, reallocating conventional military assets as a part of the Kremlin’s efforts to steadily expand Russia’s internal security capabilities following the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion on June 24. Russian media reported that the Russian MoD provided machine guns, anti-drone guns, and UAZ vehicles to the Belgorod and Kursk Oblast Territorial Defense forces.[20] Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov stated that Russian authorities provided each of the Belgorod Oblast Territorial Defense‘s eight battalions with five UAZ vehicles, additional car radios, quadcopters, and anti-drone guns.[21] Kursk Oblast Governor Roman Starovoit also announced that the first batch of weapons arrived in Kursk Oblast and that more weapons will arrive “in the near future.”[22] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reportedly stated that the Kremlin issued the weapons to the Belgorod and Kursk Oblast Territorial Defense forces against the backdrop of attacks from the territory of Ukraine.[23]

The repeated allocation of additional military assets to Belgorod and Kursk oblasts indicates that the Kremlin is growing increasingly concerned about continued attacks on Russia's border with Ukraine. Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov claimed on June 15 that he deployed Chechen “Akhmat” special forces to Belgorod Oblast to protect the border from raids into Russian territory.[24] Ukrainian officials reported on June 22 that Russian forces transferred several GRU Spetsnaz units to Kursk Oblast to fight pro-Ukrainian Russian partisans.[25] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed that Russian authorities will store the weapons provided to the Belgorod and Kursk Oblast Territorial Defense forces in a centralized location and noted that it is unclear how the territorial defense forces will be able to access the weapons in an emergency if they are stored in a locked storage facility.[26] The claim that Russian authorities will lock up the weapons provided to the Belgorod and Kursk Territorial Defense forces, if true, indicates that the Kremlin is attempting to balance the need for increased border security with the need to avoid empowering decentralized military formations that might one day be able to launch an armed rebellion similar to Wagner’s actions on June 24.[27] Moscow might also fear the results of large numbers of small arms getting into the hands of poorly trained territorial forces or the general population.

Three things to take away from this:

1. MoD is diverting badly needed military resources from the front to the rear for use by Territorial Defense units in Kursk and Belgorod Oblasts.
2. They are doing this because the realized that the Russian Liberation incursions and mutinying Russian forces marching from the front are not just past threats, but possibly increasing threats.
3. Yet they aren't really all that sure the Territorial Defense units can be trusted, so the equipment will be kept under lock and key under MoD control.

I like that a lot

Also, ISW and other sources are reporting Ukraine made small, but significant, gains in several areas that indicate Ukraine continues to hold the initiative.  South of Bakmut and south of Vhuledar the UA made tactically significant advances. 

The situation in Luhansk seems unchanged with Russians pushing hard and gaining little for it.  And even then, this is coming from Russian sources so it's not entirely trustworthy.  Unfortunately for us, Ukraine's embargo on information from the frontlines makes it difficult to know how much of the Russian claims are real and how much imagined.  In the past, however, when the Russians are conducting an offensive and proudly claim marginal gains, it's a good sign that their offensive isn't doing very well.

Steve

 

[Bulletpoint]

14 hours ago, Carolus said:

I wondered if the people here who have more military knowledge and maybe experience would be willing to share their thoughts on what they would do next if they were in the shoes of a Ukrainian high-ranking commander, someone in the general staff.

Not assess how the conflict might end or what the peace conditions will look like. But if you had the job of doing the best you can for your country, what would you do or tell with regard to the officer under you, or what would you tell Zaluzhny or the the ministry of Defense as advice, based on the limited information that is available to the ones in this thread.

Would you continue the counter-offensive? Would you ask the political representatives to campaign for more Western support? Would you tell your men to be careful or tell them that now is the time when Ukraine has the political pressure to show some sort of success to continue Western aid and win public opinion no matter the cost? Would you advocate for forming some seperate Western trained brigades that will be available in 2-3 years and bide your time until then? Would you advice more deep strikes against Russian infrastructure and industrial complexes?

We are analyzing a lot in this thread about the available information. I wondered what the sleuths and grognards here would do if they speculatively insert some agency into the situation. Make 3 decisions you would do in their shoes.

I'm no military man, so I wasn't going to comment, but since you didn't get many replies to this one, why not.

From my very limited perspective, I think that at this point, it might be worth abandoning the original goal of penetrating to Azov, which would have been a real military success, and instead go all in on retaking Bakhmut. This would be meaningless militarily but it would have a lot of symbolic and political value.

As I see it, Ukraine's biggest problem right now is that if no real progress is made on the ground before autumn, Western backers (political leaders and voters) might start to conclude that the war is unwinnable. The end goal then shifts and the overall strategy changes. Fewer weapons and supplies are sent. Political pressure ramps up for negotiations. And a Ukrainian defeat could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, better a smaller attainable victory now than grinding on to gain a bigger but not realistic victory.

Please note that I am not saying the offensive is definitely lost at the moment. There's a lot we don't know. Hopefully things look better from Zaluzhny's desk than from mine.

 

Edited August 3, 2023 by Bulletpoint

[Big Boss]

Here's a reportage from Swedish state television dealing with a Russian POW camp in Ukr. Also interviewed is a Ukr serviceman after 7 months in a Russian Pow camp. The text is only in Swedish but there may be some tools for translating subs for those interested.

Korrespondenterna: De ryska krigsfångarna

https://www.svtplay.se/video/KMyvm56/de-ryska-krigsfangarna?position=197&id=KMyvm56

[Letter from Prague]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

3.  I would never condone civilian on civilian violence, but it is hard to see Russians abroad behaving as if everything is normal.  If they want things to be normal, then they should spend some more time at home changing the regime before thinking of going on vacation:

At least for the one with the chair, I heard the background story that this was in a smaller town where the Russians behaved arrogantly (as they do) and attacked a waiter. So the whole street went after them. With chairs.

And they say professional wrestling is fake!

[kevinkin]

Been thinking long term related to this war and that has me thinking about training. See my question above about the NTC. Would it be crazy for Ukraine to take a serious look at the way US Marines are preparing to fight in the western Pacific? There is no intent to occupy China; sort of similar to the current war with Russian. Long range fires have been validated combined with UAVs. The Marines have economy of force in their DNA - well at least deploying in small foot prints. Elite, small, and hard hitting. Not everything is applicable since this is a continental war. However, training on the marine's application of force could result in discontinuities vs the traditional mechanized force the RA has. Not thinking about fire bases other they would fire and move fire and move. The marine's are embracing a Distributed Lethality concept that might help defend Ukraine into the immediate future. 

https://www.sandboxx.us/news/the-marines-new-drone-truck-can-take-out-enemy-ships-from-1000-miles-out/

 

[poesel]

12 hours ago, akd said:

Harrowing medevac:

 

Indeed, a harrowing video.

What I'm a bit surprised about is that the US soldier in the video, for all his professionalism as a soldier, seems not to be able to speak some basic Ukrainian. Words like 'wound', 'artillery', 'take', 'drive' etc... would have been tremendously helpful for him. A few words plus sign language gets you very far. Yet, he continues to speak English with the driver, who quite obviously doesn't understand a word of it.

 

 

[Fenris]

The guy in the humvee turret speaks some UKR when he's commanding the vehicle. The wounded soldier (Ari?) has less Ukrainian from what I've seen of his vids.

If you watch more of the clips from Civ Div you'll see that once away from their unit comms btwn the legion guys and most Ukrainians really breaks down. For all everyone is trying it's often painful to watch.

[Tux]

10 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So there have been wars sparked by lack of resources or competition for resources; however, the idea that all wars or conflict can be reduced to this cause is a myth.  Many wars were about social uncertainties or in some cases downright fantasy (e.g. The Crusades).  Lack of resources can be a powerful driver but a lot of time the most uncertain thing is what another group of people may or may not do, if we do not know/trust them.

Take this war.  This was not about resources in the least.  It was about power, social power.  Russia wanted to demonstrate power, Ukraine did not want to give its own up.  Neither side could live with the uncertainty of the loss of power and were driven to act in response.  We have gone to war over the dumbest and most irrational things.  We have gone to war when it was going to make things much worse resource-wise (see Pre-WW1).  We go to war over ideals and identity, grudges and vengeance, rumours and fears.  In many ways humans are always afraid, we just need a reason to let it out.

Sometime we just hate the other guy for no rational reason and will kill our selves just to take them with us - two people stabbing each other as they both fall off a building.  And that animal has the bomb and AI, what could possibly go wrong?

I don't think I disagree with any of this; we might just be talking about different strata of behavioural patterns.  My comment was referring to the absolutely fundamental drivers behind emotional states, capacity for rational thinking and altruism, etc. at the level of individual human beings (and many other animals, no doubt).  I think that everything you describe is accurate but also that it is ultimately emergent of the underlying, resource-based dynamic which operates within and around each individual.

When someone is tired and hungry, they are inclined to feel anxious and irritable.  We know this.  Now ask that person to answer a moderately complicated problem which they don't already know the answer to and they will likely snap and tell you where to shove it.  They lack the energy to react in a more sophisticated manner or to solve your problem.  You could get the same reaction from someone whose abundant energy reserves are being drained due to a sense of accute social/emotional insecurity.  Their basal brain, as it has done successffully for billions of this person's ancestors, is in overdrive to heighten their alertness and 'keep them safe' and there is therefore not much energy to spare.

The above are trite examples, I know, but I'm convinced that the reality of the larger scale situations which you accurately decribe is that they emerge from a possibly indissoluble substrate of behavioural cause-effect scenarios that are just as mundane.

Take your example of this war being about social power.  I would very much agree and would argue that the root of the need for that social power lies in a sense of insecurity in its absence.  If we're talking about insecurity on the part of an entire population of people even that is driven and shaped by the cocktail of individual physiological states which comprise the whole.

So, yeah, when I spoke about resources I didn't mean iron mines, wheat fields and oil wells; I meant the biochemical constituents of a human being in rude health, all being in the right place, in the right quantity, at the right time.

The link between the two is fascinating but I only intended the above to articulate why our comments may have appeared to be at odds.  So, while this is the kind of conversation I'd happily dive deeper into in a different forum, I will once again cede the floor to Ukraine war talk.

[The_Capt]

18 hours ago, Carolus said:

I wondered if the people here who have more military knowledge and maybe experience would be willing to share their thoughts on what they would do next if they were in the shoes of a Ukrainian high-ranking commander, someone in the general staff.

Not assess how the conflict might end or what the peace conditions will look like. But if you had the job of doing the best you can for your country, what would you do or tell with regard to the officer under you, or what would you tell Zaluzhny or the the ministry of Defense as advice, based on the limited information that is available to the ones in this thread.

Would you continue the counter-offensive? Would you ask the political representatives to campaign for more Western support? Would you tell your men to be careful or tell them that now is the time when Ukraine has the political pressure to show some sort of success to continue Western aid and win public opinion no matter the cost? Would you advocate for forming some seperate Western trained brigades that will be available in 2-3 years and bide your time until then? Would you advice more deep strikes against Russian infrastructure and industrial complexes?

We are analyzing a lot in this thread about the available information. I wondered what the sleuths and grognards here would do if they speculatively insert some agency into the situation. Make 3 decisions you would do in their shoes.

Any professional worth their salt would 1) not have access to enough information to outline recommendations in any detail, or 2) if they did have access to enough information would not say anything as it would likely violate security.

So what that major caveat up front; generally (and not pulling on anything but open sources/unclass) I would recommend:

1.  Continue shaping until major RA cracks form.

2.  Widen those cracks with pressure to the point the RA are forced into dilemma.

3.  Exploit that dilemma into a collapse and take enough ground to keep the West happy without over extending.  While at the same time pushing hard enough to put RA back into a position where you can repeat the process.

More simply put: Corrosion - Cracking - Concussion.  Do not stop until you hit a point where you cannot sustain defensive superiority against extant RA capability (which is a pretty low bar) as this would also be over extension.

Tactically I would recommend to continue with what works - Infiltration, Isolation, Annihilation, Exploitation, along the entire RA operational system.

Last point - when do we know when to stop?  If nothing is working we likely have to admit Defensive Primacy and either wait for a development to break that, or start thinking about a frozen conflict.  If massive C4ISR superiority, deep strike and infantry are not enough to break the RA defence - then admit we are in a new ballgame and start playing it.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Last point - when do we know when to stop?  If nothing is working we likely have to admit Defensive Primacy and either wait for a development to break that, or start thinking about a frozen conflict.  If massive C4ISR superiority, deep strike and infantry are not enough to break the RA defence - then admit we are in a new ballgame and start playing it.

WW1 was undoubtedly a period of defensive primacy in the context of the Western Front yet it cracked. It took 4 years of economic blockade, 2 years of very unscientific attritional warfare, 6 months of somewhat more intelligent attritional warfare and some technical development (I would argue it was the least important element) and the Germans were finally forced to make an all-out effort to revert to manoeuvre warfare, which finally did them in.

I think that (at least for armies incapable of obtaining massive air superiority) the era of defensive primacy has indeed returned, but Ukrainians are already fairly well advanced in the intelligent attritional warfare stage, to borrow your quote - they are already playing it. At the same time Russians are extremely wasteful with their assets, so it should not take as long this time around. 

PS. On a slightly related note, regarding the Zaporozhe offensive, there seems now a consensus among the commentators that the UKR have started with an attempt to make a NATO-style mechanised breakthrough, once that did not work out they had to come up with  plan B which turned out to be their tried and true attack-by-artillery with limited objectives . However, it was a very quick and smooth transition, to me surprisingly so.  I am wondering if the original mechanised push was not something which the the Ukrainians did mostly to appease their Western advisors, while all along they were preparing for the attritional, Kherson style slog,  having always seen it as the more realistic approach.