How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

414 separate UAV battalion "Birds of Magyar" issued own video summary for March in Krynky and other locations of left bank of Dnipro: 292 targets hit (among them 99 destroyed), 1155 enemy drones detected (among them 844 supressed)

"Magyar" writes, for about six months of bridghead holding, UKR units with drone terror and fast atrillery calling forced Russians to reject from assault with vehicles, because this was one way ticket for crews and most of infantry. So now Russians are making only infantry probes, actively use FPVs (sometime about 100 for a day) and artillery. Their armor mostly moved out of UKR FPVs range. Their infantry digs deeper and deeper in the forest, but has troubles with logistic and evacuation, because UKR UAVs almost continuously watching over (though UKR troops in Krynky has the same problems, but number of UKR troops doesn't to go in any comparison with number of Russian groupment, so our logistic need much more humble)   

 

Edited April 4 by Haiduk

[cesmonkey]

While the delay in approving further American aid for Ukraine is regrettable and has likely resulting in Ukraine losing more ground and infrastructure lately, does any else feel that a positive outcome of all of this is that it has spurred Europe to act more decisively in bringing forward their own aid and future commitments?

In the long run, that seems to be a very positive development.

[Haiduk]

Russian troops captured UKR strongpoint on outskirt of Chasiv Yar town

PS. Russian claims based on the video of UKR 67th mech.brigade, where Russians disembark infantry from armor in the forest on eastern ouskirt of the town. I can't find this video in twitter, probably it may be in TG and there also may be a strike on Russian infantry. 

So, it's need to track further information. Russians despite huge losses pushe very strong and their coming on Chasiv Yar eastern outskirt betwen Bohdanivka and Ivanivske it too dangerous for our defense line

PPS. Looks like GirkinGirkin hurry up to throw "hype" unverified information. Here is a video of 67th brigade "VUC Right Sector" where they claimed Chasiv Yar was attacked by Russian armored column of 36 vehicles, 19 of them were destroyed/disabled. Also Russian Su-25s (on the video we can see four aircrafts simultainously) mistakingly hit own column. According their information assault was repeleld, Russians couldn't hold ground. 

Video of other episode - Russians try to advance to NE outskirt of Chasiv Yar, but took fire

 

Edited April 4 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Updated picture of UKR long-range drones with new model A-22 Foxbat, striking targets in Tatarstan Repuplic in 1200 km

And here is allegedly new extra-long range drone E-300 Enterprise of our "AeroDrone" company. It capable to carry 300 kg of HE and has a range 3100 km. Though it's unknown how much HE it can deliver on such range. This drone was presented in first time aboput year ago and developer have been searching a factory to manufacturing presumably in Poland. Maybe all tests already completed and soon we can see it in action

 

Edited April 4 by Haiduk

[Endyamon]

22 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Updated picture of UKR long-range drones with new model A-22 Foxbat, striking targets in Tatarstan Repuplic in 1200 km

And here is allegedly new extra-long range drone E-300 Enterprise of our "AeroDrone" company. It capable to carry 300 kg of HE and has a range 3100 km. Though it's unknown how much HE it can deliver on such range. This drone was presented in first time aboput year ago and developer have been searching a factory to manufacturing presumably in Poland. Maybe all tests already completed and soon we can see it in action

 

Wouldn't these drones like the Foxbat and the E-300 be too big and slow not to be seen well before hitting a target? I mean, days ago, one of them exploded in Russia, but would they be really good to use frequently?

Edited April 4 by Endyamon

[Haiduk]

3 minutes ago, Endyamon said:

I mean, days ago, one of them exploded in Russia, but would they be really good to use frequently?

Two. The second hit refinery in Tatarstan. Declared speed of E-300 is 150 km/h. Shahed-136 has 150-170 km/h. Russian AD hasn't total control - if our drone manage to overcome Russian borders with AD systems it will reach a target in the depth of Russia with big probability, because further is free space mostly. 

[Haiduk]

Diversion? Drone? Technical failure?

[Haiduk]

 

[Haiduk]

What the hell going on with "leader of democracy world" ? Decrepit Pax Romana 2.0? 

In Russian is good proverb "Na ovets - molodyets, a kak na molodtsa, tak sam ovtsa", meaning some sort "A brave fellow one if against sheeps, but a sheep himself if against the brave fellow one"

 

 

Edited April 4 by Haiduk

[Endyamon]

18 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Two. The second hit refinery in Tatarstan. Declared speed of E-300 is 150 km/h. Shahed-136 has 150-170 km/h. Russian AD hasn't total control - if our drone manage to overcome Russian borders with AD systems it will reach a target in the depth of Russia with big probability, because further is free space mostly. 

Then, I hope for the best. I will have  a little holidays in these days, and I hope to read more about these kind of strikes when I'm back

[Haiduk]

The strike on Kursk. Something like jet sound is heard and then two explosions. The city officials claim three UKR UAVs were shot down, but their debrises hit the building of youth center of creativity, causing a fire

 

[Haiduk]

Alas, Russia has many meat, which can't understand that it is a meat....

Russians who just signed contracts has only 1,5 weeks of training and then they turned out on frontline with minimal knowledges. 

Exactly them more trained regulars or "survived veterans" use as first echelones of attacks.  

 

433rd MRR of 127th MRD (in the TG post mistakingly pointed out 27th division), operating on Velyka Novosilka direction (Urozhayne - Staromayorske) - assault detachemnt in 80 men on 23rd of March went into combat, only 10 survived, rest KIA/MIA. Relatives search information about this guy, who MIA

Edited April 4 by Haiduk

[Battlefront.com]

55 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Russians who just signed contracts has only 1,5 weeks of training and then they turned out on frontline with minimal knowledges. 

My sense is that training time had improved late last year into early this year, but once again Russia ran down it's available manpower faster than it could replace it.  Since Russia wants to keep up the attack, they went with their long standing tradition of shortening training time.

And my wife wondered why a Russian soldier would push a doorbell on a tree.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

What the hell going on with "leader of democracy world" ? Decrepit Pax Romana 2.0? 

In Russian is good proverb "Na ovets - molodyets, a kak na molodtsa, tak sam ovtsa", meaning some sort "A brave fellow one if against sheeps, but a sheep himself if against the brave fellow one"

 

 

We know Sullivan is in the "let's be cautious" camp.  Nothing new there, though obviously his theory is more out of touch with reality today than it was last year or the year before that.

What Kirby said is the standard US policy towards Taiwan since the 1970s.  As Kirby said, there's no change.  He also said that the US is opposed to a use of force and that part was conveniently omitted from the click bait X post.

And the situation with Israel and Gaza is extremely complicated.  Israel just killed a US citizen and 6 other aid workers, so it's not like Biden can just say "go ahead Israel, you do whatever you want even though it's killing civilians and even some of our citizens".  According to some poles a majority of Americans do not favor giving Israel full support to continue it's campaign in Gaza.

Steve

[Beleg85]

https://kyivindependent.com/russian-officials-report-massive-drone-attack-on-military-airfield-in-rostov-oblast/

 

Big Ukrainian drone strike on Russian military airfield near Morozovsk, Rostov. This Russian claim 40 drones, there were telegrams claiming even more. Clips show much less engaged by air defences.

 

[Battlefront.com]

 

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-4-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov claimed that NATO and Russia are in “direct confrontation,” likely as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to intensify existing information operations meant to force the West into self-deterrence.
• Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov appealed to Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS) members to increase cooperation against perceived Western threats as part of the effort to posture against the West.
• The Kremlin leveraged this overall information operation about escalation with NATO to target France specifically, following French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent calls for the West to expand the level and types of security assistance it sends to Ukraine.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also promoted information operations feigning interest in negotiations, and Lavrov’s and Shoigu’s likely coordinated informational efforts may signal a new round of intensified Russian rhetoric about negotiations.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin continues attempts to balance the Kremlin’s opposing efforts to set social expectations for a protracted Russian war effort and to assuage Russian society’s concerns about the economic consequences of the war and labor migration.
• Russian forces conducted a roughly reinforced company-sized mechanized assault towards Chasiv Yar (west of Bakhmut) on April 4 and advanced up to the eastern outskirts of the settlement.
• Russian forces also recently made confirmed advances near Bakhmut and Donetsk City.
• An unspecified senior NATO official reportedly told Russian opposition news outlet Vazhnye Istorii that NATO intelligence agencies have not observed indications that Russia is preparing for a large-scale partial mobilization wave.

 

 

Russia is pushing propaganda and disinformation on every possible channel. Indeed I think the ritual suicide charges they keep doing on the actual battlefield have more to do with propaganda than any meaningful military goal.

 

•  

Edited April 5 by dan/california

[G.I. Joe]

19 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

For an army in the time of peace, that reasoning makes a lot of sense. However I do not think that a country fighting an existential war would be so picky, if the nationalists actually follow their ideology and volunteer for service. And values such as machismo and hatred for the foreign enemy may actually translate into high combat morale, being more valuable than the ability to easily get along with women or sexual minorities. There is a lot of literature about people becoming good soldiers in war often being poor soldier material for a regular peacetime army.

All fair points. I certainly agree that an army in an existential conflict cannot afford to be as picky as its peacetime counterpart. We can probably largely reconcile the two viewpoints by saying that in wartime the goalposts don't go away, but they may be moved quite a bit. I wouldn't set those concerns aside completely, but the bar for "as long as they don't cause trouble within the ranks" might look a bit different for the duration.

To draw a non-political comparison / example: Flight safety doesn't go out the window in wartime, it is as important as ever, but operating minima and procedures have to be adjusted for operational necessity. Much of the extreme low flying by the Ukrainian Air Force we've seen videos of in this thread would be unacceptable in peacetime even on an approved low level practice route. Down the side of a highway with oncoming civilian vehicle traffic, it would be a court martial waiting to happen. But right now it's presumably preventing more losses from enemy fire than it's causing from controlled flight into terrain, so the tradeoff is acceptable.

[G.I. Joe]

41 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

+1

Oh, how I wish we could like your posts right now...

[Battlefront.com]

39 minutes ago, G.I. Joe said:

All fair points. I certainly agree that an army in an existential conflict cannot afford to be as picky as its peacetime counterpart.

Also not picky in peacetime.  Germany disbanded an elite unit because they were, as it turns out, were a bunch of genuine Nazis:

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/886458028/germany-disbands-elite-military-unit-following-reports-of-right-wing-extremism

The US has its fair share of problems like this.  Heck, we just saw one of them in a Russian propaganda video saying how great it is to be able to go to Ukraine to kill on behalf of Putin.  Do you think this guy just got like that AFTER leaving the service, or is it a pretty good chance he was like that while he was in?  Certainly this became an issue after several ex and serving military personnel stormed Congress:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/us/politics/military-capitol-riot-inauguration.html

Sooo... I'd say it looks to me like the recruiters don't look too hard at who they are recruiting and the system tends to protect them once they are in.  They only act on them when there's an issue that can't be ignored even by military standards.

In other words, we should be careful about casting stones and what not.

Steve

[Kinophile]

Major (c. 90) drone strike against Russian Su-34 airfield. 

Possibly more than 1 airfield, there's mention of 3, but not confident. 

[G.I. Joe]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Also not picky in peacetime.  Germany disbanded an elite unit because they were, as it turns out, were a bunch of genuine Nazis:

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/886458028/germany-disbands-elite-military-unit-following-reports-of-right-wing-extremism

The US has its fair share of problems like this.  Heck, we just saw one of them in a Russian propaganda video saying how great it is to be able to go to Ukraine to kill on behalf of Putin.  Do you think this guy just got like that AFTER leaving the service, or is it a pretty good chance he was like that while he was in?  Certainly this became an issue after several ex and serving military personnel stormed Congress:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/us/politics/military-capitol-riot-inauguration.html

Sooo... I'd say it looks to me like the recruiters don't look too hard at who they are recruiting and the system tends to protect them once they are in.  They only act on them when there's an issue that can't be ignored even by military standards.

In other words, we should be careful about casting stones and what not.

Steve

Agreed. I certainly had no intention of casting stones, which is precisely why I used the issues Canada had with the Airborne Regiment as an example in my original post yesterday.

I also did not mean to imply that NATO and allied armed services don't still have a lot of room for improvement on screening out extremism within the ranks, as both your examples demonstrate, just that it is a goal worth striving for...

[Maciej Zwolinski]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

And my wife wondered why a Russian soldier would push a doorbell on a tree.

He was hoping for a door to Narnia, where no barrier detachments or sellers of polonium tee would find him.

[Butschi]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Also not picky in peacetime.  Germany disbanded an elite unit because they were, as it turns out, were a bunch of genuine Nazis:

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/886458028/germany-disbands-elite-military-unit-following-reports-of-right-wing-extremism

The US has its fair share of problems like this.  Heck, we just saw one of them in a Russian propaganda video saying how great it is to be able to go to Ukraine to kill on behalf of Putin.  Do you think this guy just got like that AFTER leaving the service, or is it a pretty good chance he was like that while he was in?  Certainly this became an issue after several ex and serving military personnel stormed Congress:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/us/politics/military-capitol-riot-inauguration.html

Sooo... I'd say it looks to me like the recruiters don't look too hard at who they are recruiting and the system tends to protect them once they are in.  They only act on them when there's an issue that can't be ignored even by military standards.

In other words, we should be careful about casting stones and what not.

Steve

All very true.

Frankly, though, I never got the "joke" in Ukrainians or any other Eastern Europeans using Nazi symbolism. Of course I understand them actually being Nazis even less. Because if they were consistent they would have to construct some concentration camps where they would work themselves to death. That's what the real Nazis would have done to them.

Edit: I mean, it's like Afro Americans running around with a Confederate Flag, I guess. Is that a thing?

Edited April 5 by Butschi

[Offshoot]

2 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Major (c. 90) drone strike against Russian Su-34 airfield. 

Possibly more than 1 airfield, there's mention of 3, but not confident. 

Claims of 6 destroyed and 8 damaged aircraft

Recent satellite pictures of the airfield

 

Edited April 5 by Offshoot