How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[FancyCat]

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SCOOP: The Pentagon has decided to exempt Ukraine operations from a potential shutdown if lawmakers can’t agree on a deal by the end of the month, allowing key training and other activities in support of Kyiv’s forces to move ahead uninterrupted.

 

 

 

[Fenris]

Like my previous posts in the past 24hrs, reading these twitter feeds, the mind really does boggle.

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Russians shooting Ukrainian FPV drones that failed to explode (at point blank range). And they explode.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1704185392428146849

 

And a couple posts down the same feed

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Identities of Russian soldiers who blew themselves up by a grenade during a drinking party in Voronezh region: 
-Major Nikolai Kuznetsov, deputy commander of military unit 11741;
-Major Evgeniy Tkach, commander of the engineer battalion of the same unit;
 -Private Alexander Semenchenko

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1704130430126174315

 

 

[cesmonkey]

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3534283/biden-administration-announces-additional-security-assistance-for-ukraine/
 

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The capabilities in this package, valued at up to $325 million, include:

AIM-9M missiles for air defense;
Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
Avenger air defense systems;
.50 caliber machine guns to counter Unmanned Aerial Systems;
155mm artillery rounds, including DPICM;
105mm artillery rounds;
Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles;
Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems;
Over 3 million rounds of small arms ammunition;
59 light tactical vehicles;
Demolitions munitions for obstacle clearing; and
Spare parts, maintenance, and other field equipment.

 

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/21/2194636/-Ukraine-consolidates-gains-around-Robotyne-and-is-primed-for-more

Ukraine is breaching Russian lines and continues to expand the salient, flattening the front. The biggest question hanging over all of this is the question of reserves—how much, and how fresh, does each side have? The fog of war is thick, and it’s oftentimes hard to sift between reality and wishful thinking. So here’s hoping that Russia truly is running low, and Ukraine truly has multiple brigades ready to spring into action.

 

Daily Kos has a nice daily update, almost all flavors of good news, but the bit above seems like the important part.

[Harmon Rabb]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

 

 

 

 

Was about to ask you for a source but just did a Google search instead. Lara has been a good source before.

Sounds good.

[Vet 0369]

On 9/18/2023 at 3:11 PM, TheVulture said:

Curious article from Russian newspaper Kommersant about how Russian drone manufacturing is having problems because of Chinese restrictions on exports to Russia. Article is paywalled (and in Russian), but the free section auto-translated gives the outline.

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6223010

 

Absolutely looks like a subterfuge smoke screen to me (“Oh, no, we’re absolutely complying with the international restrictions. See how we are restricting the use of sensitive technologies!”) Wink,Wink, Nod, Nod.

[Vet 0369]

On 9/18/2023 at 10:43 PM, Battlefront.com said:

Yup, well aware of this.  International Legion has had bad problems right from the start and it doesn't seem to have gotten any better as the war has worn on.  I've at times been pretty critical of their conduct in this war.  The latest allegations are pretty nasty.  I hope this high profile incident finally gets the Ukrainian MoD to take action.

Sadly, murders happen even in Western armies in both war and peace times.  There's been quite a few scandals in the US military over the years of service personnel murdering each other over sex, drugs, and/or money.

Steve

Not at all surprising as statistically, the percentage of “bad actors” (rape, murder, drug abuse, other types of abuse, etc., in the military, is basically the same as in the “general population” af the Nation.

[Kinophile]

Per ISW yesterday, 

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 The milblogger also claimed that Russian defenses on the adjacent heights in the Andriivka area had collapsed, and it is likely that the Russian military command’s efforts to regain lost positions are preventing Russian forces from preparing new defensive positions on Bakhmut’s southern flank

Which would mean we'll soon be hearing about ZSU interdicting/assaulting towards TO513, perhaps via Odradivka.

 

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

 

Daily Kos has a nice daily update, almost all flavors of good news, but the bit above seems like the important part.

just read that summary.  Was great, until that story at the end.  War criminal Putin regime must somehow be held accountable, it ever it is possible -- and I get that it very much might never be possible.  Hopefully he'll at least get lamppost justice.

UKR making some inroads.  Hopefully the NKorean shells won't have enough barrels.  Or maybe the quality will be horrific and these shells lead to even less barrels.  Nice thing about that is it knocks out the crew also.

Rains coming.....soon?  2 weeks?  4 weeks?  6 weeks?  For now, Robotyne area looks warm, dry and sunny.  

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, JonS said:

Quite right. When you cherry pick a subset of a subset, you can get a quick-and-dirty rule of thumb to fail. I'm not sure anyone has quite realised this devastating insight previously.

Well done you.

And thanks for an inane and completely useless commentary.  Well done you.

I posted what I posted to refute the usefulness of the theory that casualties act as some indicator of global impact.  If you think taking relevant facts and using them to create a counter point is unnecessary when it's obvious to someone where it's headed, then I suppose I should just shut down this entire Forum as it apparently serves no purpose.

3 hours ago, JonS said:

I have a slightly different objection to the model; it doesn't appear to take into account global population growth. 1-10,000 casualties in the early 21st century is a tragedy, especially for those casualties and their families, but eh, it's going to drop off the front page pretty quickly. 10,000 casualties 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 500 years ago, 2000 years ago - that's pretty big news. We still hear about the Teutoberger Wald, and that was 20k, tops, although granted it was a battle rather than a war. Anyhoo, the point being that when global populations were smaller, smaller casualty counts had a higher proportional impact (exception: China? Over the last several millennia they seemed to routinely kill 100k - 1M in various conflicts and ... no one really cares?)

Cripes man, that is even more obvious and even less devastatingly insightful as my point.  Well done you again?

On a serious note, any number that is plucked out of thin air is questionable to start with.  A number that is not adjusted for the influence of time is utterly pointless.  My grandmother used to love pointing out that milk used to be $0.25 a gallon and Gas only $0.05 a gallon.  Shocking grandma... and what was the average salary at the time?  $8,000 a year?  Well Grandma, I earned $30k a year (at the time she was alive) so what's your point?

3 hours ago, JonS said:

Nevertheless, I still get the point, and I think it's a useful one: if all you know about a war is the name of it and the casualty count, how do you assess it's impact. The order of magnitude scaling gives you a pretty good place to start. But, like using wikipedia for research, it's only a start. For some purposes that could be enough. But if you really want to assess the specific impact of the Anglo-Zanzibar War (1896), or the Pig War (1859), or the Football War (1969), or the Chaco War (1930s) you're probably going to need to - surprise! - look beyond just the casualty count.

You were apparently too busy being needlessly snarky to realize the salient point I was making... casualties, even adjusted for the passage of time, is a terrible way to assess the impact of conflict.  As I stated above, Russia merely rolling into Ukraine with a casualty count in the hundreds or low thousands was already more impactful than the 10+ years of civil war in Syria with hundreds of thousands of casualties.  It's like trying to measure injury in pints of blood.  Some injuries result in low blood loss, but life long debilitation where as others can drain buckets of blood and have no long lasting ramifications.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

45 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Per ISW yesterday, 

Which would mean we'll soon be hearing about ZSU interdicting/assaulting towards TO513, perhaps via Odradivka.

 

This is exactly the sort of thing I've mentioned many times before about Russia's manpower situation.  What they need is three tiers of forces at the front; actively fighting, being ready to fight/relieve, and preparing positions for further fighting.  Russia seems to have the manpower to do only one of these things at a time and, in the case of the Andriivka area, apparently not even that.

The concept that Russia can constantly dig new lines of defenses is predicated on the ridiculous notion that it can.  Heck, it might not even want to because expending resources to create new defenses well behind the lines seems rather defeatist.

Imagine a Russian senior commander telling Putin he needs more resources to create further defensive lines.  What do you think Putin's first reaction is going to be?  "That sounds sensible" or "you are not to retreat, therefore you don't need to prepare for losing ground".

We might be at the stage where field commanders are at the end of their abilities to make do with what they have.  Which is why I think blowing out Bakhmut is so important as it will likely force Putin to do another hasty and poorly executed mobilization.  Since Putin obviously doesn't want to do that, Ukraine should do everything it can to force the issue.

Steve

[danfrodo]

10 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Imagine a Russian senior commander telling Putin he needs more resources to create further defensive lines.  What do you think Putin's first reaction is going to be?  "That sounds sensible" or "you are not to retreat, therefore you don't need to prepare for losing ground".

This is one of my great hopes.  That Putler is behaving like Hitler or early war Stalin.

[Vet 0369]

7 hours ago, billbindc said:

Pelosi and McConnell ran/run a very tight ship. Not likeable people, to be sure, but they delivered tough votes routinely. McCarthy is simply not of that caliber and it's likely that aid to Ukraine suffers for it.

Congress will pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the Government running while the true negotiators get together to hammer out a new Budget in which BOTH parties lose some of what they want. Both extreme ends will kick and scream, and complain that it’s “the other party” that’s ruining the negotiations by stonewalling, but will be told behind the scenes that their party will not be the one to be blamed for the shutdown. I went through ALL the U.S.Government shutdowns from Clinton to the end of 2016, and I can tell you that they all shared the same pattern whether they were a Democrat or a Republican administration, especially those leading up to a General election.

 

[danfrodo]

deleted

Edited September 22, 2023 by danfrodo

[MikeyD]

The threatened government shutdown is a hostage situation where the hostage takers don't have a clue what their backmail demands actually are. Its a performative farce. If the House is going to put on an annual pantomime they should be obliged to dress up as Punch.

[alison]

1 hour ago, Vet 0369 said:

Not at all surprising as statistically, the percentage of “bad actors” (rape, murder, drug abuse, other types of abuse, etc., in the military, is basically the same as in the “general population” af the Nation.

While I don't doubt that this is true, I would hope that military leadership are aiming to have a fighting force that is comprised of people better than the average person off the street. After all, these guys are equipped with much more deadly weapons than civilians have access to, and they are not just on the battlefield to kill the enemy, but also to defend and uphold the ideals that civil society is structured around. Just like police, soldiers should be held to a higher standard than the rest of society. From my perspective, it's part of the job to be better.

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is exactly the sort of thing I've mentioned many times before about Russia's manpower situation.  What they need is three tiers of forces at the front; actively fighting, being ready to fight/relieve, and preparing positions for further fighting.  Russia seems to have the manpower to do only one of these things at a time and, in the case of the Andriivka area, apparently not even that.

The concept that Russia can constantly dig new lines of defenses is predicated on the ridiculous notion that it can.  Heck, it might not even want to because expending resources to create new defenses well behind the lines seems rather defeatist.

Imagine a Russian senior commander telling Putin he needs more resources to create further defensive lines.  What do you think Putin's first reaction is going to be?  "That sounds sensible" or "you are not to retreat, therefore you don't need to prepare for losing ground".

We might be at the stage where field commanders are at the end of their abilities to make do with what they have.  Which is why I think blowing out Bakhmut is so important as it will likely force Putin to do another hasty and poorly executed mobilization.  Since Putin obviously doesn't want to do that, Ukraine should do everything it can to force the issue.

Steve

The MoD will possibly do the usual bad decision and throw yet even more into the Kupiansk-Lyman theatre, hoping to force UKR to divert forces. If there's one thing Gerasimov is the king of, it's doubling down on failure.

One thing I'd like to note, after all the critique of western-trained UKR units initially failing. A lot of those units have been back in the fight and performing well. They've almost all passed through some kind of combat, and almost always heavy-duty assault.

So now, after the last 4 months of offensive, the ZSU has a wide corpus of combat experienced, well trained, motivated and very, very angry soldiers. They're kicking *** in Zaporizhia and Bakhmut. Their effectiveness is only going to increase in direct opposite track to the Russian forces and at some point, and it feels soon, they will slide past that indeterminate point where their combat power severely overmatches anything put in front of them.

Personally, many pages ago I guesstimated august-sept as when Rus would start to crack. I think that still tracks, and Oct-Nov will be the definitive crumbling of the Russian position in southern Ukraine.

I don't expect breakthroughs, more like constant hard shoves that Russia cannot stall for very long. And I'd be very surprised if the ZSU went in for any large-scale dense-urban fighting. Tokmak is not as important as the roads that go in and out of Tokmak.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Kinophile

[Aragorn2002]

On 9/20/2023 at 9:06 PM, Harmon Rabb said:

Hopefully Ukraine and Poland work it out. So far the Ukrainian-Polish relationship during this war has been nothing short of incredible.

 

Poland used this war to get rid of it's old military junk, get compensated for it by the EU and order new stuff for it's armed forces. As simple as that.

[dan/california]

27 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Poland used this war to get rid of it's old military junk, get compensated for it by the EU and order new stuff for it's armed forces. As simple as that.

I don't think think they consider the near obliteration of the Russian army to be a negative. You have to give the Poles a lot of credit for the first three months, when they had ten percent or more of Ukraines population at least pass through, and it went as well as it possibly could have done. They sent a lot of stuff early as well, when a lot of other countries wee dithering rather badly. Having said all of that, the Polish Government has certainly tried to manage the war as whole to their advantage where possible. Obviously they like E.U. money, and they have certainly gotten quite a bit of it. They wanted U.S. forces based in Poland, they got that too. All in all I still think the balance sheet of the Polish Government is nicely in the black in regard to how they have handled Ukraine, although the grain tiff certainly hasn't impressed anybody.

The problem with the the current Polish Government is, well, everything else. Their domestic policy on any number of matters, their relations with the EU on everything except Ukraine, The whole mess with the independence of the courts, and on, and on. 

I just happen to think that the best way to deal with them is to do everything possible to help Ukraine, and reinforce NATO's eastern flank. Once the Russian Bear is firmly back in its cage perhaps they will discover how grateful voters can be, sort like Churchill did.

Edited September 22, 2023 by dan/california

[Mindestens]

 

59 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Poland used this war to get rid of it's old military junk, get compensated for it by the EU and order new stuff for it's armed forces. As simple as that.

I'm sure our old worthless tanks, armored personnel carriers, self-propelled guns and airframes weren't as much help to Ukrainians as your amazing helmets that you magnificently offered them when we were sending whatever junk we could.

 

[Battlefront.com]

ISW's ability to explain the greater significance of seemingly small events in a sea of perhaps similar looking situations is really something I admire.  This is an example related to the videos coming out of Verbove sector:

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This is the first observed instance of Ukrainian forces operating armored vehicles beyond the Russian tri-layer defense.[2] The presence of Ukrainian armored vehicles beyond the final line of the current Russian defensive layer indicates that the Ukrainians have secured their breach of the first two lines of this layer sufficiently to operate vehicles through the breach. Ukrainian forces have likely suppressed Russian artillery and other anti-tank systems in the area enough to bring their vehicles forward.[3] The Ukrainian ability to bring armored vehicles to and through the most formidable Russian defenses intended to stop them and to operate these vehicles near prepared Russian defensive positions are important signs of progress in the Ukrainian counteroffensive.[4] 

For us military minded types, especially those who have spent a lot of time studying strategic and operational warfare, as opposed to CM's tactical, recognize a breakthrough when we see one.  Whether this is a meaningful breakthrough is, as ISW is quick to point out, unknown.  However, that is fairly normal for tough fights and it's a theme which we've repeated over and over and over again... breakthroughs often look impossible until suddenly they don't.

The most important point about Verbove is that the totality of Russia's capabilities designed to compensate for its long list of shortcomings (absolute and comparative) have collapsed.  Although this is a very small sector of front, it seems that Ukraine has achieved a decisive advance in the area.  And as anybody who has spent time watching this war in detail, Russia has no track record of recovering anything it has decisively lost.

The importance of these two realizations (Russia's equalizing defenses have failed and it likely won't recover from it) is hopeful. Because it is possible, maybe even probable, that this one small sector is not a fluke but rather the first to fail.  If that is the case then we might see the sort of cascading breakthrough we've been hoping to see.

Exploitation... well, that's a whole different thing.  I'm with those who think that exploitation will likely be more limited than we'd like at this point.  Ukraine still has fresh forces, but I don't think they have them at the scale needed to roll up the south in a decisive way.  Taking or isolating Tokmak is realistic and that is important if it can be achieved.

Steve

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, Mindestens said:

 

I'm sure our old worthless tanks, armored personnel carriers, self-propelled guns and airframes weren't as much help to Ukrainians as your amazing helmets that you magnificently offered them when we were sending whatever junk we could.

 

You know Aragorn isn't the government of his country, right? Like,  he's not even an elected official. Or a thinktank professor with some mild input on policy. He's hoi polloi,  just like all of us here.

[Battlefront.com]

Some information that Ukraine Special Forces have indeed tried, but so far failed, to take a foothold near the ZNPP with (no doubt) the intention of retaking the plant:

Steve

[The_Capt]

8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

And thanks for an inane and completely useless commentary.  Well done you.

I posted what I posted to refute the usefulness of the theory that casualties act as some indicator of global impact.  If you think taking relevant facts and using them to create a counter point is unnecessary when it's obvious to someone where it's headed, then I suppose I should just shut down this entire Forum as it apparently serves no purpose.

Cripes man, that is even more obvious and even less devastatingly insightful as my point.  Well done you again?

On a serious note, any number that is plucked out of thin air is questionable to start with.  A number that is not adjusted for the influence of time is utterly pointless.  My grandmother used to love pointing out that milk used to be $0.25 a gallon and Gas only $0.05 a gallon.  Shocking grandma... and what was the average salary at the time?  $8,000 a year?  Well Grandma, I earned $30k a year (at the time she was alive) so what's your point?

You were apparently too busy being needlessly snarky to realize the salient point I was making... casualties, even adjusted for the passage of time, is a terrible way to assess the impact of conflict.  As I stated above, Russia merely rolling into Ukraine with a casualty count in the hundreds or low thousands was already more impactful than the 10+ years of civil war in Syria with hundreds of thousands of casualties.  It's like trying to measure injury in pints of blood.  Some injuries result in low blood loss, but life long debilitation where as others can drain buckets of blood and have no long lasting ramifications.

Steve

When the pandemic started I was tasked with a team to go off and do a quick and dirty study of the impact trends of pandemics across history and  then translate that into potential risks coming out of COVID.  We took about three months and I read more about pandemics than I ever wanted to know.  In the end we came up with a long list of repeated observable trends and then translated them into modern context.

The one thing I pulled from that experience is that every pandemic is the same, and every pandemic is unique.  They all follow similar impact patterns and trends, yet they all were unique in the context of the event and what followed was highly shaped by their context.  To my mind wars are exactly the same.  They are all the same, and they are all unique at the same time.  So while universal metrics exist they miss the context of the war in the time it happens and context matters very much.  So if you want to measure the impact of a war…study the damn war in detail and in context.  

[Beleg85]

2 hours ago, Kinophile said:

You know Aragorn isn't the government of his country, right? Like,  he's not even an elected official. Or a thinktank professor with some mild input on policy. He's hoi polloi,  just like all of us here.

True, but since we strive on this board to put something better than common misconceptions, his obvious silly post-Prussian biases he showed numerous times demand some reply. Since he likes to use very categorical judgments regarding nations of Central Europe (and anybody else too he considers untereuropeans) let's unpack "EU funded Polish armaments and that's all" argument:

 

-Budget assets in PL for 2023 are 97 bln of zl. It raised dramatically compared to previous year where it was ca.65 bln. Obviously domestic assets.

-Another ca.50 bln comes from Fund For Support of Military- a new entity outside of budget constrains created as consequence of Russian agression, including bank investments with state capital, obligations, off-sets with foreign contractors and similar. Significance of this entity will raise in next years. So it is chiefly financed due to debt on various state assets that Polish citizens will be paying off for decades; one may think of it as morgage on giant scale.

https://defence24.pl/przemysl/rosnie-zadluzenie-funduszu-wsparcia-sil-zbrojnych

- European Peace Facility alias EPF (which itself is made of various European assets and debts, including its Eastern members- there are dozens of initiatives there, like helping Nigerian Forces, that do not correspond to situation in UA too) is chief fund here; up to 3.6 bln of euro in 7 tranches were used to refurbish member's states assets given to Ukraine, and that includes ammo, trainings of UA soldiers and other things that directly do not increase our combat capabilities.

https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2023-07-10/eu-war-chest-success-and-uncertain-future-european-peace

Note: time was of essence then even more than money itself during crucial first year of the war; many western states behind the curtain put cross on Ukraine, so were clearly unwilling to give up their assets due to various subjective and objective reasons. Countries of Eastern Flank- chiefly Balts and PL- gave up up to 30% of their stuff. I is also not true it was all post-Soviet:we have new weapon systems given or sold on credit, like Krabs, Topaz, Piorun, Bohdana  etc. that blow Russians pretty nciely until today. This process left us (mind you- frontier countries) almost bare in various areas like artillery ammo in the face of revanchist Russia, that threatened daily and used hybrid warfare against PL and Lithuania. This situation should last up to circa 2027-30 when new assets should be here in appropriate numbers.

So how much compensation PL gained from this fund? By march 2023  it was 300 mlns euro, with expectation for another 5-600 mlns according to PM words; let's believe him (I wouldn't and he almost surely infated this, but skip it for sake of argument), it should gave us 900 mln euro, or ca. 4,5 blns of zloty according to recent course*. In other words, EU help consist of maximum something like 3-4% of country total yearly military expeditures. Behold terrying Red Dragon!

Overall entire argument "we give money so shut up" is, like everything that our dear @Aragorn2002 writes: a mix of power phantasies, personal biases, and lack of basic understanding of economy.

*Note, that this includes training, ammo and accomodating UA soldiers (various estimates, but probably more than brigade size at any given time from late 2022) as well as running training grounds with allied soldiers, not solely new equipment. We can be sure there are also various long-term military deals being made in this extraordinary situation, but their overall quota is unknown for now.

Now it is true that countries of Eastern Flank are main beneficiaries of the help- but it is also true they were main benefactors for UA in crucial time and hold the line against Russia, apart from UK and USA ofc. About other issues curcial to UA survival- like diplomatic offensive vs. doom and gloom of some western partners, only embassy working in Kyiv during hardest time, milions of refugees taken care off, unrelentless moral support for UA (still important and showed on the streets by people most interested here- Ukrainian civilians and veterans), chief hub for this entire tragedy and various other things I will not even speak of. But hey: Morawiecki provoked by Zelensky in UN said something stupid, over long-time difficult issue, in the middle of elections he soon nuanced anyway, western media outlets raised histeria to absurd levels and out of a sudden PL is "not reliable ally thinking only about themselves" versus Russia. I could punch curent government by hours if you like, but  let's try to keep proportions here, gentlemen.

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by Beleg85