How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[LongLeftFlank]

19 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

They are that stupid and they are also that delusional.  This is the problem with fanatics... they are mentally unbalanced and that means rejecting things that challenge their view, accepting anything that supports it (conspiracy theories and lies in particular).  The more objective observations and facts contradict their world view, the more desperate they are to search for a way to preserve it. 

Things are going very, very, very badly for the RU Nats and they increasingly know it.  As things have worsened they have put more emphasis on powers that Russia doesn't have because the ones they do have are clearly not working.  This includes everything from the superior fighting qualities of the Russian soldier to relations with China.  Nukes are one of those things.  Theoretically it is a tool available for Russia to use, but it has no realistic chance of achieving what they desperately want to believe it can do.

The most interesting part of the fanatical mindset is that they seem incapable of comprehending that their proposed solutions to a problem clearly indicate that their core belief system is false.  In the case of RU Nats, they say they believe that Russia is superior to everybody else economically, politically, militarily, and culturally/racially.  Yet they see no contradiction between this and their calls to use nuclear weapons against a supposedly inferior group of people backed up by yet more inferior people.  Logically, advocating for the use of nukes indicates an understanding that all other options have failed.

Steve

I dunno, these are not the faces of men preparing for Armageddon....

But as I looked at this video I was hoping for Jason Isaacs to show up in his Zhukov role....

 

[Grigb]

Back to Kherson - Girkin regarding Kherson Bridgeheads situation

Quote

In the area of the enemy's bridgehead on the Ingulets River, the enemy continues to slowly but surely push our units. For the first half of the day , the situation looked as follows:

The UKR occupied:
Sukhoi Stavok, Bezymenne, Kostromka, Schastlyve (Karl-Marx). Attempts to knock them off the bridgehead and regain their positions [to positions] before the start of the offensive failed.

Such a deep advance of the enemy in the future threatens to break through the front to Chkalove (already practically on the front line) and further to Berislav with the dissection [in half] of our grouping in this area.

[Grigb]

UKR posts photo from 65th Arsenal hangar - it means they control road toward Kupyansk. 

[danfrodo]

10 minutes ago, Grigb said:

UKR posts photo from 65th Arsenal hangar - it means they control road toward Kupyansk. 

OMG .  This is what a sector collapse looks like, perhaps?

[AlsatianFelix]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

There isn't any historical precedent at al for the riot police being absolutely abysmal in actual warfare, is there? 

Yes. The original Planet of the Apes (1968) movie.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I think this whole Kharkiv/Izyum thing is designed to pin down RA forces while main effort is Kherson based on the shaping operations efforts; however, it could be the other way round as well.

Yeah, I think it's time we all sit down and have a think on this!

Kherson is definitely larger scale than Kharkiv, and for good reasons.  Kherson offers Ukraine the opportunity to bag a huge number of Russia's best forces, retake a large amount of terrain, shorten the front, and put Crimea in play far more than it already is.  Kharkiv offers none of that potential.  Furthermore, there's really nothing Russia can do about Kherson and that's not necessarily true for Kharkiv.  Quite wisely, Ukraine focused its resources on Kherson.

What I think we're clearly seeing now is that Ukraine determined it had sufficient forces to achieve victory in Kherson *and* launch a significant offensive in the Kharkiv/Izyum area.  This may even be one of the reasons Ukraine is not attempting dramatic blitzkrieg style attacks in Kherson; it voluntarily gave up that ability in favor of ensuring a Kharkiv option's success.

It's pretty clear now that the Kharkiv activity is a planned offensive operation, not an improvised opportunistic move based on some good early probing actions.  If Ukraine wanted to do something a month ago on a small scale, it absolutely could have and it likely would have had initial and lasting success.  However, it wouldn't have done nearly what it can do today. 

What I see is that way back in July Ukraine looked at the possibilities for this sector and decided to NOT take the "bird in the hand" and instead prepared to take "the two in the bush".  Here's why this made a lot of sense:

No Expiration Date

Since there is no immediate threat posed by this sector of front (Izyum offensive ops long since spent) there was no harm in letting it sit for a while.  The opportunity for Ukraine to attack in July and August was not likely to diminish because Russian resources are on the decline and its attention focused on other areas.  In fact, the more time that went by the more likely Russia would further thin resources from the Kharkiv area in order to aid operations elsewhere.

Scale of Operations

This sector of the front has been weak for a long time and in particular for the last 1-2 month after Russia has repeatedly stripped forces/resources away to retake the rest of the Donbas (Russia's primary military and political goal).  Ukraine could have made small scale shock attacks on specific areas and probably caused Russia a lot of grief.  But the chances of making a significant change in the overall operational picture (i.e. Izyum's viability) were quite low.  Russia could have moved enough forces back into the area quickly enough to contain a local counter attack scaled operation.

To do more required some time and resources that weren't immediately available.  It also would benefit greatly from being synchronized with Kherson (see below).

Weather

The opportunity to make good progress in the area, however, has a natural time limit.  Mud season will likely stop any advance in its tracks and winter requires some time to settle down before operations can continue.  January is typically the earliest that an offensive can be reliably started without risk of a mud season relapse.

Attacking sooner than September with a smaller force meant making limited gains before being obligated to return to a defensive posture sooner rather than later.  This would allow Russian an opportunity to counter attack during ideal campaign weather.  Any progress Russia made would likely remain until at least the winter campaign season.

On the other hand, if Ukraine attacked in September with a larger force it would mean significant gains that would be more easily held for the next 4+ months until the weather settles down.

Kherson Synchronization

Everybody has been expecting a large Kherson offensive for months now.  Ukraine has made sure of that!  Russia has, as expected, been tailoring its resources for this and possibly a broader southern offensive.  This included removing resources from Kharkiv area.

Waiting until after Kherson's ground phase made some gains before launching Kharkiv made a lot of sense.  Russia has more reasons than every before to shift resources south and could be fooled into thinking all other Ukrainian actions would be nothing more than diversionary attacks.  Once launched, the Kharkiv offensive would be not only a shock but a shock that would not be easily recovered from.  If the attack happened before Kherson's ground phase then Russia would have more options.

Now Russia is really screwed.  It has two disasters on its hands and not enough resources to address either one.  At the same time it's own offensive activities have long since ground to a halt, which means Ukraine isn't under pressure from Russia anywhere.

 

All very sound thinking.  Ukraine deserves more than a polite golf clap for this.

Steve

[billbindc]

Steve, 

To sum up..."operational art".

[Grigb]

17 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

OMG .  This is what a sector collapse looks like, perhaps?

Well, it looks like it -  got first RU reports of RU retreat from Balaklya.

Quote

Russian units leave Balakleya. The city will probably be handed over [to enemy]. In this context, the fate of arsenal is interesting.

[UPDATE] RU changed text of the post on the fly. New one:

Quote

Russian units leave Balakleya. The city will probably be handed over [to enemy]. Heroic SOBRets are taken out [of Balaklya] almost without losses.
In this context, the fate of arsenal is interesting.

 

Edited September 7, 2022 by Grigb

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

The most interesting part of the fanatical mindset is that they seem incapable of comprehending that their proposed solutions to a problem clearly indicate that their core belief system is false.  In the case of RU Nats, they say they believe that Russia is superior to everybody else economically, politically, militarily, and culturally/racially.  Yet they see no contradiction between this and their calls to use nuclear weapons against a supposedly inferior group of people backed up by yet more inferior people.  Logically, advocating for the use of nukes indicates an understanding that all other options have failed.

Steve

Note the way out of this logical paradox is "heinous Westerners" narrative. They don't believe Ukrainains would hold without Western help, which most of all is technical.

And high tech unavailable to Russians (like Himars and ISR) is like magic- you can do nothing against it, even if you are strongest, most valiant warrior. It's not your fault enemy somehow has access to it.

That is how part of Russian nationalists see it- Ukrainains are cheating it. Playing on codes.  And how we punish cheaters? With weapons from outside official arsenal as well - like nukes.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Beleg85

[Battlefront.com]

32 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I dunno, these are not the faces of men preparing for Armageddon....

Yup, but then again they aren't RU Nats

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Steve, 

To sum up..."operational art".

Yup!  And for those wondering if Ukraine has the ability to perform it on the offense, well... I think the answer is a definite YES!

Steve

[The_Capt]

19 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

If the attack happened before Kherson's ground phase then Russia would have more options.

So this is interesting - we are now talking operational options.  Russian offensive options have pretty much condensed to what we saw in the Donbas over the summer.  But UA does not appear interested in compressing Russian offensive option space any further, because it really does not have to.  They are now working on compressing defensive options space though projection of dilemma.

What is interesting is that if you look at the whole war so far it has been one long dying of Russian options:

- Phase I saw strategic option spaces collapse from quick win-to-siege urban areas-to-'Donbas' while terrorizing as best can everywhere. 

- Phase II saw operational offensive options reduced to basically zero and all that has been left is "stalemate/long war and hope the west loses interest", particularly once they went into the operational pause that never ended.

- Now in Phase III we are seeing Ukraine attack and compress operational defensive options spaces, which of course can break stalemate and counter western ennui - because we love a winner.  Russia is having to chose where to defend because they simply do not have enough forces to cover an 850km frontage, so UA hits them at both ends at the same time.

It is a steady consistent trend of collapsing Russian options space, which is why I am not sure why there are still commentators in the main stream that see this any other way.  Unless the Russians can open up other options spaces - beyond the insanity of calling for WMDs - then this war will continue to go in the direction it has been since about 27 Feb.

People can talk kit, stuff and training all day but until we see Russian options spaces either turn around, or they are able to compress Ukraine's options spaces, this whole thing has the same feel it has had since the beginning, watching Russia lose in slow motion...until it isn't slow anymore.

Edited September 7, 2022 by The_Capt

[billbindc]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup!  And for those wondering if Ukraine has the ability to perform it on the offense, well... I think the answer is a definite YES!

Steve

Is there anything on where the 3rd AC is now? Reports had it at around 15k in personnel, then maybe 10k-12k and the latest I heard was more like 5k without any clear idea of where what Kofman called a "serious accession of force" was ending up. Inquiring minds, etc.

[Beleg85]

10 minutes ago, Grigb said:

[UPDATE] RU changed text of the post on the fly. New one:

Quote

Russian units leave Balakleya. The city will probably be handed over [to enemy]. Heroic SOBRets are taken out [of Balaklya] almost without losses.
In this context, the fate of arsenal is interesting.

 

Edited 8 minutes ago by Grigb

Fascinating. I expected them to turn SOBR guys into martyrs a la 28th panfilovtsy, yet they themselves seem to think otherwise...

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Note the way out of this logical paradox is "heinous Westerners" narrative. They don't believe Ukrainains would hold without Western help, which most of all is technical. And high tech unavailable to us (like Himars and ISR) is like magic- you can do nothing against it, even if you are strongest, most valiant warrior. It's not your fault enemy somehow has access to it.

That is how part of Russian nationalists see it- Ukrainains are chaetning it. Playing on codes.  And how we punish cheaters? With nukes.

Yeah, except the RU Nats also once held the belief that they could go up against NATO militarily and the EU+USA economically.  Switching the narrative to "Ukraine is winning because it is cheating" is more of what I am talking about... they don't seem to grasp that by adopting this line of argument they are effectively admitting that their world view is false even though they doggedly maintain it.

"I am bigger and stronger than anybody" says the 1.5m tall out of shape weakling.

"Well, how about that guy over there?" pointing to the 2m tall muscular guy with a black belt in karate.

"Nope, I'm still bigger and stronger.  That other guy cheated through better genetics, steroids, and motivation to learn how to fight" says the weakling without any sense of how absolutely moronic he appears to others.

Steve

[womble]

5 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Note the way out of this logical paradox is "heinous Westerners" narrative. They don't believe Ukrainains would hold without Western help, which most of all is technical. And high tech unavailable to us (like Himars and ISR) is like magic- you can do nothing against it, even if you are strongest, most valiant warrior. It's not your fault enemy somehow has access to it.

That is how part of Russian nationalists see it- Ukrainains are chaetning it. Playing on codes.  And how we punish cheaters? With nukes.

And still this excuse negates their previous claims of military-technical "unique weapon that only we have that no one can defend against" supremacy-fantasy. It's the first layer of their delusions that was stripped away, when the first probable Kindjahl "strike video" was against an obvious chicken farm (not the high value ordnance storage, or whatever it was they claimed it was aimed at). Along with their lack of SEAD capability with their "modern, powerful air force" and the absence of any T14-family/grade platforms (apart from half a dozen "Terminators").

It's pure narcissistic delusion. There's no logic to it, merely an ever-changing tapestry of half-baked justifications for their craziness and socio/psychopathy. And this general condition applies to Putin, too, judging from his latest attempt to "spin the narrative". 

[Grigb]

1 minute ago, Beleg85 said:

Fascinating. I expected them to turn SOBR guys into martyrs a la 28th panfilovtsy, yet they themselves seem to think otherwise...

RU public is not in the mood for another 28 panfilovtsyv. So, it is better for RU command to take them out quickly and safely.

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, Beleg85 said:

Fascinating. I expected them to turn SOBR guys into martyrs a la 28th panfilovtsy, yet they themselves seem to think otherwise...

Hehe.  I meant to respond to the post a few pages ago where the SOBR guys said they would fight to the death.  I was going to say something snarky like "with their track record they'll fight to the death only if it isn't theirs".

Those guys are not trained combat infantry and THEY KNOW IT.  They are not motivated enough to become martyrs.  Can't beat up defenseless people and shake them down for money if you're dead.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Is there anything on where the 3rd AC is now? Reports had it at around 15k in personnel, then maybe 10k-12k and the latest I heard was more like 5k without any clear idea of where what Kofman called a "serious accession of force" was ending up. Inquiring minds, etc.

I've not seen any solid evidence of them being committed to battle in any major way, only that they are likely split up in the Donetsk city area and somewhere north of Crimea.  That and some portion of their supposedly ready force isn't ready yet.

We speculated earlier that Ukraine wanted to see where these forces wound up.  It seems Russia put them where they would do the least amount of good vs. Ukraine's plans.  Typical Russians

If Russia had parked significant portions of these forces in the Kharkiv/Izyum area I think Ukraine would have adjusted their operations there to be more cautious and probing.  But nope, they had confirmation Russia didn't do that and so Plan A went into effect instead of Plan B.

Steve

[Kinophile]

2 hours ago, paxromana said:

I get they're delusional but that requires a level of magical thinking that is downright insane.

Welcome to Russia. There's 1,279 pages of delusional, cruel lunacy in this thread to remind you. 

Edited September 7, 2022 by Kinophile

[Grigb]

11 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Is there anything on where the 3rd AC is now? Reports had it at around 15k in personnel, then maybe 10k-12k and the latest I heard was more like 5k without any clear idea of where what Kofman called a "serious accession of force" was ending up. Inquiring minds, etc.

3 AK definitely contains around 12k but it looks like RU command decided to separate it in to at least two pieces. Probably that's why you see reports about lower strength.

It is unclear where it's units are but most likely somewhere in the south and south-east direction. 

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

It is a steady consistent trend of collapsing Russian options space, which is why I am not sure why there are still commentators in the main stream that see this any other way.  Unless the Russians can open up other options spaces - beyond the insanity of calling for WMDs - then this war will continue to go in the direction it has been since about 27 Feb.

And yet, continued pessimism of Ukraine's options and/or optimism for Russia's continues even through today.  Amazing.

I've said something like the following since BEFORE the war started...

The end is a foregone conclusion -> Russia will lose the war.  The path to that end, however, is not certain and can contain a lot of seemingly terrible setbacks for Ukraine.  Including losing the conventional war and eventually winning through unconventional means.

The path, it seems, has been more favorable to Ukraine than most thought.  I'm fine with people miscalculating Ukraine's pros and Russia's cons.  I count myself amongst them, even though my expectations were closer to reality than most.  What I'm not fine with is people not understanding the fundamental direction of this conflict always winds up with a Russian defeat (and then regime change in Russia ).

I always envisioned Russia's options would be continually constricted in a nearly one way direction.  That's because I never thought they had many options to start with.  Those who thought Russia had more options to start with are, obviously, have to first grapple with their perception problem before they can see reality for what it is.

Steve

[dan/california]

27 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Is there anything on where the 3rd AC is now? Reports had it at around 15k in personnel, then maybe 10k-12k and the latest I heard was more like 5k without any clear idea of where what Kofman called a "serious accession of force" was ending up. Inquiring minds, etc.

At this point they have probably been turned around for the third time as the Russian command panics. Given the units nonexistent experience and training I expect them to get so spread out, and have so many maintenance problems we might never notice as they are committed in penny packets to little or no effect.

[dan/california]

28 minutes ago, Grigb said:

RU public is not in the mood for another 28 panfilovtsyv. So, it is better for RU command to take them out quickly and safely.

Or at least say they did...

Edited September 7, 2022 by dan/california

[The_Capt]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

And yet, continued pessimism of Ukraine's options and/or optimism for Russia's continues even through today.  Amazing.

I've said something like the following since BEFORE the war started...

The end is a foregone conclusion -> Russia will lose the war.  The path to that end, however, is not certain and can contain a lot of seemingly terrible setbacks for Ukraine.  Including losing the conventional war and eventually winning through unconventional means.

The path, it seems, has been more favorable to Ukraine than most thought.  I'm fine with people miscalculating Ukraine's pros and Russia's cons.  I count myself amongst them, even though my expectations were closer to reality than most.  What I'm not fine with is people not understanding the fundamental direction of this conflict always winds up with a Russian defeat (and then regime change in Russia ).

I always envisioned Russia's options would be continually constricted in a nearly one way direction.  That's because I never thought they had many options to start with.  Those who thought Russia had more options to start with are, obviously, have to first grapple with their perception problem before they can see reality for what it is.

Steve

Should caveat "options" as "effective options", or simply good ones - you always have a near infinite set of bad options, which Russia also seems to often view as good ones (see: war crimes).

Ultimately, at this progression trend Russia will be down it its last effective option, negotiate and/or withdraw, particularly as it defensive options collapse.  If those in power continue to choose the bad ones, hoping they will somehow turn out as 'good' then the regime change theory starts to take on more weight. 

I have heard a lot on how "Putin will never go", "regime change in Russia is impossible".  Well first of all it is definitely 'possible', history backs that one up, the question is probability.  If Putin and cronies decide to end this, then regime change is less likely, at least right away.  If the Russian people decide the war is over, well that is a different story.  Not many governments who lose a war where the people decide in the end survive - Franco-Prussian France, WW1 Germany, Vietnam etc.  Then the issue is how that power is redistributed and things don't look good for a peaceful transition in Putin's Russia. 

To the 'Putin never-fall" circle, I can only look at history and point to governments and regimes failing for a lot less than the gaping maw of political and strategic failure forming up on this one.   Well one second to midnight at a time.