How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Jr Buck Private]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

It's always a good day when I check this thread and find yet another critical Russian bridge suffering from new structural problems

I get the feeling that Ukraine is repeating what it did last year at Kherson.  If you all recall, they did not immediately put the bridges out of action as soon as they technically could have.  At the time we speculated as to why, with a good argument being made that Ukraine wanted to ensure Russia invested heavily in Kherson before the bridges were put out of action.  Then we saw the operation in Kharkiv which made it even more plausible that was the plan all along.

Again with this counter offensive, Ukraine had the ability to punch holes in key bridges for months now.  Certainly they had plenty of time to plan these sorts of things to coincide with the start of the ground offensive.  Yet they didn't.  I think it is safe to assume this was a conscious choice by Ukraine.

My guess is they once again wanted to ensure Russia had committed itself to the south before getting into logistics problems.  Maybe they think that has happened and therefore the timing is right for large scale interference with logistics.  For sure there's been a large investment in making that happen.

Steve

I wonder if they finally blew up enough ammo dumps in Zaporizhia?   I figure they left those bridges up to encourage  the Russians to spend all those resources getting stuff closer to the front ( before they made it into a pretty mushroom cloud).   I just wonder what percent of the russian ammo has been blown up?   I'm keeping an eye on how much artillery they've lost.   That might be the key factor.   Hearing Russian generals complain about Ukraine's stellar counter battery fire is very telling.   I'm hoping that's why we haven't seen the big push yet.   They're just doing enough to keep those batteries firing at them.   I agree though that once those bridges are totally wasted it probably means a big push is getting close.

[Haiduk]

One of Russian milblogger TG complains that operation of complex strike on Starokostiantyniv airfield failed, because Ukraine substituted real Su-24 on airfield on well-made decoys, which were took for real jets by satellite reconnaissance and local informators also confirmed this is real Su-24. As result all "12 destroyed Su-24" turned out false and huge number of missiles, especially valuable Kinzhals were wasted. Russian milblogger in angry wrote "ineffective informators have to be cleaned"

On other hand Ukraine AF representatives said, that Ukraine has many airfields and highways, which allow to disperse planes and work of intelligence and surveillance allows to react quickly on missile strike threat. 

Some twitter accounts also added, Starokostiantyniv airfield was reinforced in Cold War times, so it can survive even tactical nuke strike, not only Kinzhal missiles. I can't comment true this or not.    

Edited August 6, 2023 by Haiduk

[Ts4EVER]

Not sure a "big push" is possible this war.

[cesmonkey]

 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

19 y.o. Russian sniper, was killed on 11th of June 2023 near Vasylivka town. I wonder, in what unit he served with Mosin rifle... In June there was clashes for Lobkove and Pyatykahtky on Vasylivka direction. There weren't LDPR units as I know... And due to his young age I doubt he was a mobik. 

  

 

Quote

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/06/world/europe/putins-forever-war.html

Still, as far as possible, the war must be invisible, banished to places like Ulan-Ude, near Lake Baikal, not far from the Mongolian border. That is done, in part, by paying recruits about $2,500 a month, a huge sum in a region where a monthly salary of $500 is more typical.

“Money is the main reason people go to fight,” Ms. Rolikova said. “The contracts being offered volunteers are crazy by our standards.”

 

if a not particularly studious nineteen year old, from a part of Russia where hope has never been a thing, can suddenly make multiples of his family's income, some of them are going to volunteer. Not even the entire new section of the towns cemetery for war dead is going to penetrate the conviction that it will be different, for them.

Edit: I felt for months now that one of the single worst things Russia has done for its own war effort is screwing up soldiers pay. When you signed up because the money was enough to really change your family's situation, and your wife is calling you at the front to say the fridge is empty and she can't pay the school fees......that is TRYING to lose the war. I mean they pay these guys in Rubles, why wouldn't they just print them if they had too? Of course this is excellent for Ukraine, so by all means I hope the vampire squid that run Russia keep stealing it all.

Edited August 6, 2023 by dan/california

[Haiduk]

29 minutes ago, dan/california said:

some of them are going to volunteer.

They can enlist on contract service, they can enlist in volunteer BARS units. The latter have own specific, as I know they have some problems with compensations for wounding and with a status of SVO participants. BARS units is a shadow PMC indeed and all financial things maintains not MoD, but some other structure.

Edited August 6, 2023 by Haiduk

[chuckdyke]

7 hours ago, sburke said:

a flaky rich dude.

Thanks to him I have internet. We don't all live in fancy big cities. Well, the infrastructure is gone. I am not surprised the rich dude is polite to the Russians. 

[Fenris]

Nice - Motherland monument now with the UKR trident.

 

Not nice - Niger locals (paid shills?) waving "Wagner+Russia=Freedom" sign

 

[Fenris]

Posting this just because it's not something you see everyday - HEAT round stuck in a tree trunk.

 

[Fenris]

Another mildly interesting tweet.  Abandoned T-55 with some sort of projectile stuck in it's cage armour

 

[dan/california]

8 minutes ago, Fenris said:

Not nice - Niger locals (paid shills?) waving "Wagner+Russia=Freedom" sign

Karma for this one will be epic. Their best case scenario now is being run by a Wagner backed dictator that will squeeze the life out of the entire country to pay Wagner's invoices. From there the possibilities step down to various variations of ruinous civil war.

[Fenris]

Lastly a bit of comedy from Belarus

 

Edited August 6, 2023 by Fenris

[dan/california]

15 minutes ago, Fenris said:

Lastly a bit of comedy from Belarus

 

They don't have one running plane or helicopter someone can break themselves jumping out of?

[Offshoot]

Half of Russia’s Elite Paratroopers Killed or Wounded in Ukraine – British MoD - https://www.kyivpost.com/post/20254

Quote

 

"Addressing his troops on the Day of Airborne Forces earlier this month, General Colonel Mikhail Teplinsky said that over the last 17 months “more than 5,000 wounded paratroopers returned to the front after treatment, and over 3,500 of our wounded refused to leave the front line at all."

"However, extrapolating Teplinksy’s figures endorses the assessment that at least 50 per cent of the 30,000 paratroopers who deployed to Ukraine in 2022 have been killed or wounded."

 

 

[Kinophile]

Would be nice if true... 

 

[dan/california]

9 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Would be nice if true... 

 

Too good to check.

[Kinophile]

 

 

[Fenris]

Wonder if this is related, I think supposed to be from comments.  Is it a Leo?  (NB - posted from pro RU account)

 

[sburke]

8 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Thanks to him I have internet. We don't all live in fancy big cities. Well, the infrastructure is gone. I am not surprised the rich dude is polite to the Russians. 

fancy big cities?  and why does Musk need to be nice to Russia?

[sburke]

7 hours ago, Fenris said:

Posting this just because it's not something you see everyday - HEAT round stuck in a tree trunk.

 

not every day but many times in CM   

[poesel]

8 hours ago, Fenris said:

Not nice - Niger locals (paid shills?) waving "Wagner+Russia=Freedom" sign

 

These guys got 30-50 Euros each.

I'm starting to wonder if it weren't a good thing if the West would just do the same. Openly, of course - just to show the public that this is possible.

[chuckdyke]

30 minutes ago, sburke said:

Musk need to be nice to Russia?

He is pretty neutral and has a bet on two horses. 

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, poesel said:

These guys got 30-50 Euros each.

I'm starting to wonder if it weren't a good thing if the West would just do the same. Openly, of course - just to show the public that this is possible.

Been there, done that.

Back in 2007, a Danish artist paid each person in an African village a pig to change their names.

 

The pig is a gift from a Danish artist. In return, George Sabadu changed his last name to Hornsleth -- after Kristian von Hornsleth, the artist who gave him the pig.

Hornsleth, who on his Web site sometimes spells his name Horn$leth, says the scheme -- offering villagers here aid in the form of a pig or goat if they take on his name -- is a commentary on the hypocrisies of society.

Its slogan: “We want to help you, but we want to own you.”

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/uganda-hornsleth-idUKNOA14640720061211

[Maciej Zwolinski]

1 hour ago, poesel said:

These guys got 30-50 Euros each.

I'm starting to wonder if it weren't a good thing if the West would just do the same. Openly, of course - just to show the public that this is possible.

Judging by the frequency of that kind of scenes appearing on the TV, it looks like it is very easy to get public displays of support in Africa, no matter the cause. It seems people there are generally bored and will do a lot just to generate some excitement. A few EUR will help, but I honestly think some are there just for a lark. During the battle of Mogadishu, many US soldiers who fought there reported with astonishment civilians flocking to the sound of the guns to see what was going on.

[kevinkin]

They are becoming unhinged:

https://www.barrons.com/news/russia-to-launch-lunar-mission-friday-first-in-nearly-50-years-e99f353d