How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[billbindc]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

That is a very good question   There's still some amount of forces that Russia moved out of the north to reinforce the Zaporizhia and to (probably) set up for more pressure south of Donetsk City.  There are also the 3rd Army Corps units that were definitely seen deploying in and around Melitopol.  Since we haven't seen them show up anywhere else, nor heard reports of them being re-entrained to head back north, I think we should assume they are still there.  I'm sure Ukraine has a very good idea where they are right now even though we don't.

If there aren't any meaningful reserves there, so much the better.  But if there are, I don't think they'll do much of anything other than give Ukraine more bragging rights and Oryx a migraine.

In fact, it should be a goal of Ukraine's go somehow get the 3rd Army Corps into the fight somewhere.  The sooner they start getting chewed up the better.

Steve

The @wartranslated guy was saying that parts of the 3rd Army Corps tried to intervene at Kupyansk and was defeated. Not sure how good the provenance is on that.

[dan/california]

Just now, billbindc said:

The @wartranslated guy was saying that parts of the 3rd Army Corps tried to intervene at Kupyansk and was defeated. Not sure how good the provenance is on that.

Hard to be sure when the Russian army is so bleeped the Russian General Staff isn't sure either. Parts of it may have surrendered somewhere else.

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

And from my homefront we have a clear demonstration of the problem with pundits:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/ukraine-shows-military-capabilities-but-russia-can-still-hit-back-hard-military-analyst-1.6064197

I know Walter Dorn, he was a prof when I was back in staff college - his expertise is peacekeeping (look it up).  And now one of our mainstream media channels (one of two really) is pulling him out as a military expert.  He is way outside his lane here but let’s slap him on the front page.

Oh, it wasn't as bad as I expected, though I would give him a "Understatement Of The Month" nomination when he was quoted as saying this:

Quote

"I think Russia can still hit back very hard and regain some of that territory that it lost, but it's certainly an indication that there are all kinds of problems with the Russian military," Dorn said.

If he's only seeing indications that Russia sucks at war?  Yikes

As for Russia's ability to hit back, if Ukraine over extends itself it is inviting a bloody nose.  I don't think it would be much of one, but it could happen.  But "very hard" is not something I think Russia is capable of.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

3 minutes ago, billbindc said:

The @wartranslated guy was saying that parts of the 3rd Army Corps tried to intervene at Kupyansk and was defeated. Not sure how good the provenance is on that.

Yeah, I saw that.  The amount of forces that were deployed to south of Donetsk City and Melitopol were substantial.  Lots of trains of BMP-3s and T-90s.   I don't think they could have been redeployed so quickly.  More likely this was the rump end of the 3rd Army Corps that was rumored to still be in the Belgorod area.  Either that or a small amount of them were deployed to Kharkiv from the start, they just weren't picked up on by OSINT.

Steve

[FancyCat]

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Send out feelers to LPR and get an "understanding" of some sort, covert or overt, that establishes a cease fire.  Luhansk must be both very tired and also very afraid.  They see how hard Russia is going to fight for them already, so why not throw them a bone?  Give them certain guarrantees ahead of post-war talks if need be, just get them effectively out of the war.  Doing that will be the worst thing to happen for Russia since they started the war.  It's worth concessions.

Did not Russia get rid of those pesky warlords exactly to prevent any funny business or unexpected surprises from the separatists occurring? So how likely is it that the people who make peace with Russia aren't Russian? Or even if they are Ukrainian, there's a pretty good chance they get right to prison or war crime trialed, and of course Russia is off limits if they run.

[Battlefront.com]

I have to give the FSB 1/2 credit on their assessment that Ukrainians in the east would welcome military forces as liberators.  They got that part right.  What they got wrong is that they would really only welcome Ukrainian forces as liberators

I've seen a dozen of these videos already, many of which have been posted here.  They are inspiring.  I've also seen the ones Russian propagandists posted that showed Ukrainians welcoming them.  They didn't look anything like this.  A few people very shyly, for the most part, greeting Russian soldiers.  I'm sure they posted they BEST they had, whereas Ukraine's is probably average.

Says a lot.

Steve

[danfrodo]

48 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Send out feelers to LPR and get an "understanding" of some sort, covert or overt, that establishes a cease fire.  Luhansk must be both very tired and also very afraid.  They see how hard Russia is going to fight for them already, so why not throw them a bone?  Give them certain guarrantees ahead of post-war talks if need be, just get them effectively out of the war.  Doing that will be the worst thing to happen for Russia since they started the war.  It's worth concessions.

 

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Did not Russia get rid of those pesky warlords exactly to prevent any funny business or unexpected surprises from the separatists occurring? So how likely is it that the people who make peace with Russia aren't Russian? Or even if they are Ukrainian, there's a pretty good chance they get right to prison or war crime trialed, and of course Russia is off limits if they run.

Russia got rid of the really bad actors long ago, but what they left in place seems to have transformed into a reasonably functional government in the 6 or 7 years since.  Still corrupt, inept, etc., but they do seem to think of themselves in charge of their day-to-day lives.  They are also mostly Ukrainians instead of Russian citizens, which means their loyalties are to Luhansk first.  Quite a few of them, maybe the majority, do think their cause is just.

Up until recently they jumped when Russia said to.  But at times Luhansk has pushed back, refusing to send units to fight outside of their territory, complaining bitterly on Telegram about how the Russians were using them as cannon fodder, the recent video of the mutiny, etc.  They've suffered a lot of casualties and things are looking to be getting worse by the day.  I don't know if Ukraine could do to LPR as the Soviets did to Romania, but if I were Zelensky I absolutely would explore that option before discounting it.

Luhansk dropping out of the war could collapse Russia's entire war effort even if DPR did not follow suit.

Steve

[danfrodo]

dang it, edit issue.  To the  above:  I like this, some nice out of the box thinking.  Let's put ourselves in shoes of folks in LPR.  RU has shown it thinks you are nothing but cannon fodder, have sent most of your men off to die.  Once the war is over, if you are part of russia or some independent oblast, you will be under sanctions w no prospect for economic and infrastructure recovery.

But let's say you decide to ally w Ukraine and turn against RU.  As part of Ukraine you are facing a future as a western facing and (over time) prosperous nation that doesn't send you off to die.  It's not a bad bet for LPR to make.  All the hard core RU nats would flee to RU and Ukrainians who had fled LPR could come back.  Which I think is a big win, politically.  Less zealots, more normal people.

[billbindc]

1 minute ago, danfrodo said:

dang it, edit issue.  To the  above:  I like this, some nice out of the box thinking.  Let's put ourselves in shoes of folks in LPR.  RU has shown it thinks you are nothing but cannon fodder, have sent most of your men off to die.  Once the war is over, if you are part of russia or some independent oblast, you will be under sanctions w no prospect for economic and infrastructure recovery.

But let's say you decide to ally w Ukraine and turn against RU.  As part of Ukraine you are facing a future as a western facing and (over time) prosperous nation that doesn't send you off to die.  It's not a bad bet for LPR to make.  All the hard core RU nats would flee to RU and Ukrainians who had fled LPR could come back.  Which I think is a big win, politically.  Less zealots, more normal people.

There are huge risks for the LPR leadership if they try to make that deal...or rather if they try to make that deal too early. They will not unless and until it looks like Ukraine is on the cusp of conquering the territory anyway.

[Battlefront.com]

Hmm... timing of the attacks on Ukraine's electrical grid coincides with this report that the Zaporizhzhia power plant was taken fully offline today:

https://www.brusselstimes.com/world-all-news/287544/zaporizhzhia-power-plant-has-been-shutdown-says-operator

I do not think the two are unrelated.  Russia obviously knew the plant would be disconnected and when, so why not time the strikes to maximize the strain on Ukraine's power grid?

Steve

[billbindc]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Hmm... timing of the attacks on Ukraine's electrical grid coincides with this report that the Zaporizhzhia power plant was taken fully offline today:

https://www.brusselstimes.com/world-all-news/287544/zaporizhzhia-power-plant-has-been-shutdown-says-operator

I do not think the two are unrelated.  Russia obviously knew the plant would be disconnected and when, so why not time the strikes to maximize the strain on Ukraine's power grid?

Steve

That strike is almost a perfect illustration of the Russian effort: something like $75 million dollars worth of missiles to take out part of the Ukrainian grid for...four hours?

[sburke]

2 minutes ago, billbindc said:

That strike is almost a perfect illustration of the Russian effort: something like $75 million dollars worth of missiles to take out part of the Ukrainian grid for...four hours?

LOL we had a worse outage when some vacant building a few blocks over caught fire.

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, sross112 said:

But what if their Mars lander is just made up like the US moon landing?

 

Just playing. Go easy.  

So a question for the ISR smart guys and gals. How much of the ISR stuff fed to Ukraine do you think is space based vs aerial platforms? I really have no idea on the capabilities of aerial recon platforms nowadays but I assume they are able to gather a lot more than just still photos. Any thoughts?

We would have had humans on mars by the late 70s...

But really, it's cheaper to send a rover to Mars than to make a really bad movie about global warming.

I suspect most of what the west is providing in the way of imagery is from space.  The political risk of having a NATO plane go down over Ukraine is probably way beyond anybody's tolerance.  And there's plenty of USG owned and contracted capability for both frequent high and medium res imagery and high res SAR.  And I suspect that in most cases the US buys exclusive rights to the commercial data they're tasking.  There's probably not much realtime because you're dependent on orbit passes, but the frequency of revisits is high and data can be downloaded from many systems in realtime.

There are a few areas where there's a lot of airborne intel - there are a lot of ELINT and SIGINT aircraft that have been hanging around the NATO side of the Ukraine border, presumably hoovering up signals and processing them.  Some of the aircraft also have sidelooking radar that goes all the way to the ground.  They'll lose some resolution at long distance, but given that anything flying over Ukraine belongs to either Russia and Ukraine, and Ukraine presumably knows where their stuff is, you don't necessarily need to resolve things to know there's something that needs to be addressed. There are a couple small ones (a Guardrail RC-12 and another Beech of unknown capability) that have been on the Kaliningrad border almost daily, usually flying together.  Presumably one imaging and the other SIGINT.  And the Globalhawks have spent a lot of time over the Black Sea, but I think always in international or NATO airspace.  And those are all just what you can see on ADS-B because they want you to.

And Ukraine has the advantage that they can use Babushkanet to ground-truth all the information.

Edited September 12, 2022 by chrisl

[danfrodo]

15 minutes ago, billbindc said:

There are huge risks for the LPR leadership if they try to make that deal...or rather if they try to make that deal too early. They will not unless and until it looks like Ukraine is on the cusp of conquering the territory anyway.

Oh, for sure.  Very dangerous and must be timed right.  But there's gotta be a lot of folks there who are wishing they weren't chained in a sinking raft to a rabid dog.

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, billbindc said:

There are huge risks for the LPR leadership if they try to make that deal...or rather if they try to make that deal too early. They will not unless and until it looks like Ukraine is on the cusp of conquering the territory anyway.

Correct that LPR guys would have to believe their options are all pretty grim.  Having a large Ukrainian force, flush with massive successes, developing along their LONG and undefended northern flank should definitely get them worried that they need to give their option a good rethink.

If I were a LPR guy, and I didn't think resisting Ukraine's offensive to be viable even with Russian help, I would be at least open to hearing what Ukraine might have to offer.  If it sounded better than the perceived alternative (i.e. Ukraine recapturing Luhansk by force), then the offer might be worth exploring.

If I were a smart LPR guy I would think that Russia couldn't afford to try a military takeover of LPR in retaliation.  It's got too many problems already without starting a fresh fight.  Especially because it seems LPR forces could ravage Russia's pretty good.  And if LPR doesn't have to worry about fighting Ukrainians, then they'd be available to fight against Russia.

LPR pulling out of the war would likely cause the Russian war to collapse at home and in the field.  That takes some of the threat of retaliation off the table.

The big thing here is long term thinking.  LPR is totally dependent upon Russia for everything.  But if the LPR is already largely cut off from resources (due to sanctions and/or the war), then maybe Russia isn't as attractive as a patron?  Certainly the LPR citizens have been very disappointed with Russia's distant relationship with them over the past 8 years.  The treatment of the LPR during this war can't possibly have made perceptions of Russia more positive than they were before.

Well, in the end I don't know if any of this is plausible.  I just get the feeling that it might be.  History has plenty of examples of this happening.  Nazi Germany lost Italy, Finland, and Romania for similar reasons.  Hungary switched sides as well, but fascinatingly was switched back by Skorzeny's bold move.

Steve

[Offshoot]

48 minutes ago, billbindc said:

The @wartranslated guy was saying that parts of the 3rd Army Corps tried to intervene at Kupyansk and was defeated. Not sure how good the provenance is on that.

There was this video. A Russian reporter talks about reinforcements coming to Kupyansk (one vehicle of which bears the 3rd army corps marking?). Later the same vehicle is shown abandoned/destroyed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/xaznhu/russian_state_tv_war_reporter_talking_about_how/

 

[Battlefront.com]

The other reason for Ukraine to cut some sort of deal with LPR is that taking it over means Kyiv is now responsible for the utter shambles that is Luhansk.  As Colin Powell once warned... "you break it, you own it".  If Ukraine reconquers LPR by force, it's going to be messy and Ukraine will be blamed for everything that happens now and in the future.  Instead, if the LPR is allowed to continue existing for some time, at least, then guess whose mess it is?  LPRs.

Things get more complicated as time goes on. but this is war and sometimes immediacy is more important than long term.  Especially if making a deal with LPR causes the rest of the war to end MUCH sooner.

I don't have an excellent read on Ukrainian public opinion, but I think they would accept some sort of temporary accord that cut Russia out and allowed Ukraine and Luhansk to settle things directly.  Especially if the war ended sooner because of it.  LONG term, I don't know.  It could be a major headache that wrecks future Ukrainian governments (the politicians, I mean), but for now that might not be an important thought.

Notice I'm not saying anything about DPR.  It would be beneficial for Ukraine to get them to go neutral as well, but I don't think they have the immediate pressure to do so.  Luhansk does.  However, if Luhansk got some sort of deal with Ukraine and Russia collapses, I think Zelensky's phone would start ringing pretty quickly.

Again... this is all speculation based on a decent, but still superficial understanding of the dynamics at play.

Steve

[akd]

2 hours ago, Elmar Bijlsma said:

Remember that video of 2 BMP-2s turning onto and going down a road with raised berm, with the front most dismounts getting a beating.

Turns out todays video of the guy clearing the dugout was the same event, from the rearmost of the two BMPs.

Compare:

with:

I thought it looked similar but didn't expect it to actually be the very same event.

Absolutely the same event. There are two vertical poles that provide the best points of reference. But second team is on a BMP-1.

Edited September 12, 2022 by akd

[Battlefront.com]

This was posted a couple of pages ago.  Reposting it because it's yet another tea leaf to add to our growing pile that stability in Moscow is already in flux:

His final Tweet says this:

Quote

The evening TV 'shock jocks' will still rant, but they matter less than many believe. When even core state propagandists like RG are at a loss, despite their closeness to the administration, then this is a sign of political pressure, maybe even crisis. 12/end

Amen to that!

Steve

[Grigb]

5 hours ago, FancyCat said:

Part of a longer thread, some of these non-subordinated units have more infantry but no access to Russian MoD artillery and other support. Interesting, they have infantry, but their coordination and command is such that they cannot easily combine them for combined arms maneuvers. I wonder if the effort will be made at this point or not? Sounds like these are partly conscripts, or the more experienced raised separatists units maybe? 

 

 

 

These are internal (sort of police swat) troops of L-DPR. Every ministry in RU-based government always like to create various speznas-swat units. The more the better. 

They are individually trained sort of light infantry force with almost zero heavy weapons and under completely different chain of command. 

In theory it would be beneficial for RU to reorganize them under RU MOD but anyone who is familiar with RU MOD tries to avoid it at all cost and to keep the freedom.

[Battlefront.com]

ISW released the September 11 report.  Anybody who has read these knows that the folks at ISW tend to be very neutral in their tone, though sometimes snark comes through.  This statement, at the top of the report, however is a bit different:

Quote

Ukrainian forces have inflicted a major operational defeat on Russia, recapturing almost all Kharkiv Oblast in a rapid counter-offensive. The Ukrainian success resulted from skillful campaign design and execution that included efforts to maximize the impact of Western weapons systems such as HIMARS. Kyiv’s long discussion and then an announcement of a counter-offensive operation aimed at Kherson Oblast drew substantial Russian troops away from the sectors on which Ukrainian forces have conducted decisive attacks in the past several days. Ukraine’s armed forces employed HIMARS and other Western systems to attack Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts, setting conditions for the success of this operation. Ukrainian leaders discussed the strikes in the south much more ostentatiously, however, successfully confusing the Russians about their intentions in Kharkiv Oblast. Western weapons systems were necessary but not sufficient to secure success for Ukraine. The Ukrainian employment of those systems in a well-designed and well-executed campaign has generated the remarkable success of the counter-offensive operations in Kharkiv Oblast.

This is outright praise at the end. 

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-11

Steve

[Grigb]

Agent Murz reports that RU strike at electrical stations was dumb because RU did not prepared for it - majority of RU C2 notes in Donbass gets electricity from L-DPR grid and has no generators.

Given there are no more other targets left for HIMARS RU again managed to shoot itself in the leg.

This is something some western experts are missing - RU decision making is not always rational. Often, during severe psychological stress, RU tend make hysterical decisions without thinking it through.

[Battlefront.com]

Oh, I missed this one in the news.  It was at the bottom of the Sept 11 ISW report:

Quote

Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai stated that occupation authorities are fleeing from occupied territories, including those that Russian proxy authorities have held since 2014.[42] Ukrainian Mayor of Enerhodar Dmytro Orlov posted a screenshot of a Telegram post made by an unspecified occupation authority that called on civilian collaborators to leave occupied territories for Russia.[43]

Interesting that the offensive is having an impact inside DLPR's core areas, not just the recently taken territory.  I hope it's true, and knowing the spines of collaborators... I don't think i have to hope too hard!

Steve

[dan/california]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Oh, I missed this one in the news.  It was at the bottom of the Sept 11 ISW report:

Interesting that the offensive is having an impact inside DLPR's core areas, not just the recently taken territory.  I hope it's true, and knowing the spines of collaborators... I don't think i have to hope too hard!

Steve

Winter in a shack outside of Rostov on Don is less than they deserve but should still be quite unpleasant...