How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Kraft]

34 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

On the photo we can see 50 officers. In green circles 19 of those who were wounded (and some of them several times), red circles 10 of them, who were killed. 

Its a small sample but ratio of wounded/dead is lower than expected.

I guess leaving soldiers in the mud to die alone with drones above does not incease survival rates

Edited January 14, 2023 by Kraft

[Haiduk]

2 minutes ago, Kraft said:

Its a small sample but ratio of wounded/dead is lower than expected.

They are officers, soldiers and sergeants can have other ratio.

[Kraft]

11 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

They are officers, soldiers and sergeants can have other ratio.

Out of curiosity can you please send me the source on the picture 

[The_Capt]

18 hours ago, Khalerick said:

How does Ukraine ever win this war militarily absent of NATO putting boots on the ground and tempting WWIII?

 

Wow took a day off and missed all this.  Well this is basically the question we have been mulling since about 26 Feb last year.  To try and summarize my conclusions to date:

Russia has already “lost”, and Ukraine has already “won”.  This was largely decided last March-Apr, all the churn, suffering and sacrifice since has been negotiating the end-sates of those two conditions.  Without a major strategic shift the war could end right now and Russia would still be looking at a defeat and a Ukraine a victory.  Defeat and victory are not binary conditions. The definition of what those two conditions for all parties is largely what this has all been about. Russia has failed to achieve its political and strategic goals, in fact in many ways they have made things much worse. Ukraine has survived as a sovereign independent nation, now with the full attention and support of the western world (even as weird as it is to keep buying Russian gas…seriously, agree with you on that one, c’mon Europe who signed off on this?).  The west has demonstrated unity and resolve to actually stop bickering and unify in defence of the global order it created.  And that is as of today 14 Jan 23.

We often muddle political and military victory/defeat…you kind of did it with the original question.  The two concepts are interlinked but not intrinsically.  One can have military defeat but political victory (losing well), and vice versa.  The trick is understanding there alignment and interactions.  Russia has gotten its *** handed to it for about 11 months now, but if Putin can somehow hold onto some blasted land and survive…well in the low bar the Russians have set, that could be a political victory.  Ukraine, and the west by extension, by not retaking that lost ground, despite a string of military victory could be staring a level political defeat in the face.  But these do not change the actual outcomes of the war.  The realities of the end-state are coloured by these issues but not determined.

Ok, so what?  As I said many times before (and the guys must be sick of it by now): all war is certainty, communication, negotiation, and sacrifice.  Those are the four essential components that define its progress and outcomes.  So “how does Ukraine win this war”.  Well it negotiates with the concept of victory, while Russia negotiates with the concept of defeat.  This will mean altering their certainties; however, to what extent?  These components interact continually.  What was an acceptable negotiated certainty last Nov will be unacceptable in Jan because one side has invested sacrifice.  The violence we see is all communication and both sides are more than capable of continuing this, although Russian communication is straining.

But you asked “how”, which is jumping over a lot of the real questions of “why” and “what”.  I am not sure if that is because you think you already know the why and what, if so then you have also already kind of boxed in “how”.  Regardless, the “how to win…enough” for Ukraine is to continue to develop and exploit what looks like some new version of attritional warfare that has been dubbed “corrosive warfare”.  It essentially is rapid, precise attrition along the entire length of an opponents operational system in order to encourage it to collapse under its own weight.  We have seen this phenomenon three times now at the operational level.  A lot of unknowns going forward, such as, can the RA be eroded to the point that a good hard conventional manoeuvre approach work?  Has the RA dug in and devolved its operational system to the point it is becoming rust-proof.  All unknown at this point.

What we do know is that neither Ukraine or Russia are done yet. The UA still has offensive initiative, while the RA culminated last summer - this tactical noise over the winter is costly and useless leg humping in military terms.  Now where the needle lands in the next 6 months will be key,  At some point Ukraine may simply run out of gas.  Or, more likely, the entire RA may collapse - it is in pretty bad shape.  

The simple answer to your question is “to keep doing what it has been doing and incrementally chewing the RA to bits via corrosive warfare while regaining lost territory”.  But this only describes the military “how” while skipping a lot of the important bits. Russia, for example, needs a hard fall but soft landing.  It is not a Ukrainian nor western win if the state of Russia collapses entirely, quite the opposite.  You seem to think this is impossible, and I heartily hope so.  A collapsed Russia is very bad news.  Now Putin and his gang, they must go. There is no real way for anyone to win if he stays in power.  I mean he and his cronies will win but everyone else, including Russia will lose, which is kind of what this war is really about at this point.  A Western win is demonstrating the western global order still works; reconstruction and integration of Ukraine into our sphere, and a punished Russia back in line and on the road to renormalization…very tall order, we will likely have to live with less.

How do we avoid WW3? Well escalation control is important but Russia has never demonstrated an inclination to be a suicide state.  If this was North Korea, I would be very worried.  But Russia is still a rational - albeit relatively rational, actor at this point.  There are lines we need to worry about but frankly if Putin had the backing for tactical WMDs he would have used them by now.  Russia is clearly aware of and deterred by western response in these areas.  Within Russia this whole thing has taken on the look of flailing regime survival, and an order to start launching nukes is more likely to get Putin tossed out a window…who are we kidding “a sudden and tragic stroke”, than anything else.

Anyway, hope this helps with your question, you may want to revisit the answers to other ones that got you to it.  Finally, this is not a Reddit thread and you will never win an argument here and feel better about it.  The only way to “win” any debate in this thing is for events on the ground to unfold in support of your position.  We can - and have - yell at each other all day and fill pages of back and forth but the actual deciding factor has to unfold.  If say you position is “they cannot, the conflict will be frozen into a forever war bounded by nuclear deterrence”, ok we can go back and forth on that but until it actually happens on the ground no one is right or wrong.  We can have bad assumptions, poor logic and all sorts of stuff but it really doesn’t matter until the facts on the ground support them.  People thought we were nuts back in Feb-Mar pointing out that Russia was losing - and then it happened.  We were off mainstream when we said Donbas round 1 would go nowhere.  HIMARs were a game changer.  The Fall offensive would see Kherson fall through corrosive warfare - Kharkiv was a shock to me.  And now here we are winter 23, all sorts of futures floating out there…we will see.

 

[Haiduk]

2 minutes ago, Kraft said:

Out of curiosity can you please send me the source on the picture 

https://t.me/stranamoy/852

[The_Capt]

37 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Maybe I wrong, but sounds like you read this like describing of situation in UKR regiment, but this about Russians ) 

One soldier, fighting in Bakhmut trench mud told he prefers old good AK, than AR, because:

1. AR will not survive endless shooting and he hasn't time to clean it all time, when AK can shoot much longer between cleanings. 

2. AK is more suitable for maintenance and fast disassembling and more resistive to mud 

I did!  My bad. If this is an RA outfit, well same metrics apply; however, it is disconcerting that their situation is not much worse.  Then the good-bad news needs to be reversed and we should target the vulnerability and strengths - logistics, UAS and artillery.  Their training system seems already in bad shape.

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Haiduk said:

LostArmor forum about new-formed Russian motor-rifle regiment - very interesting about combat capabilities, training and supply level:

Translation:

Imaginations about mobilized. I personally have met today with these people.

1. NNN motor-rifle regiment completely consists of moibilized.

2. Officers also all moibilized. There are no cadre officers at all.

3. They have food a fat lot. They even are supplied with a beer.

4. The regiment has 100 % of personnel

5. They at the very least supplied with personal protective combat clothings. Many "Syrian" body armor in poisonous desert coloration.

6. With clothes and footwear they are supplied too, but they don't get fat with this

7. Main part of personnel are armed with different AK versions of 7.62 caliber

8. Each company got per two thermal sights. Happy owners of thermals have AK-74 in 5.45 caliber, how can you guess.

9. But there are no barckets for mounting thermals on the weapon. You can just watch through them and this is all. 

10. The unit, which was substituted by this regiment, set mines all fu...g around, but didn't leave minefield maps for own changers. Though plates "mines!" stick out anywhere. After one liuteneant-idiot lost own foot , all other understood that there are really mines and don't go there anymore.

11. But there are also good news - on these minefields have blown up at least two groups of "khinzirs" /Arabic word "pigs", usual name of Ukrainians on LostArmor, likely have origins from soldiers or merceneries,  who served in Syria/

12. They have "quadrics" (civil drones), but few. 

13. Company commanders are in first line with soldiers.

14. Other chiefs, starting from battalion commanders - in the rear. And than bigger bosses, they the further. Regimental HQ in 4 km from frontline.

15. Very big problems with building materials and tools. Already almost have been overcame by different ways.

16. There was a lack of shooting practice on the range.

17. AGS team commander became a man, who shot with them three times. 

18. Many weapon weren't zeroed, when they arrived to frontline, but now it's already has fixed.

19. SVD rifles they got in two times more than by "shtat"

20. Group and heavy infantry weapon is a lot, but almost no properly trained crews for it.

21. The artillery is working in interests of regiment and working good.

22. They havn't seen aviation - neother own, nor enemy   

There's nothing surprising here, but the details are very interesting indeed!

This tracks with what we've been seeing for months now.  The unit is basically full strength going into Ukraine, but it is lacking nearly all training.  In this case it doesn't even have qualified, not to mention experienced, leadership.  Soldiers don't know how to operate their own weaponry, not to mention how to integrate it into military doctrine.

The comment about the rifles is yet more evidence that they have run out of more recent production AKs and instead are digging deeply (by this point) into their mothballed stocks.

I wonder what their 7.62x39 stocks are like and how extensive production capacity is.

Steve

[danfrodo]

xxx

 

Edited January 14, 2023 by danfrodo
removed

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I assume the caption is an accurate description of what transpired (interesting also that it was released), but more interesting is that Putin shows no visible signs of (a) dying of some wasting illness (b)  mental illness. But fine, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. FWIW.

It is significant that Putin is putting this spat out into the public sphere.  It almost certainly means the FSB is warning him that people are grumbling and that he needs to be seen as doing something about it.  His humiliating a senior government official is a standard go-to move.  It is a part of the Tzar's Handbook, in fact.

As for his health, I am sure he has something very bad going on.  Too much observable evidence to dismiss that, rumors aside.  But many serious physical health issues have cycles, especially cancer.  As a group I am sure most of us here have seen this personally with a friend or family member going through treatments.  Horrible while being treated, then seemingly normal afterwards.  Sometimes even when it's still short term terminal.  Therefore, I think for the near term his health issues are likely under control, not that they were only rumor.

Steve

[kevinkin]

Main stream media catching on to the titration approach to support the war effort;

The line of what systems are “too escalatory” to send to Ukraine has constantly been moving in Ukraine’s favor, with weapons thought to be too escalatory at the start of the war now either on their way or on the table. The U.S. and other countries have sent artillery to Ukraine throughout the conflict, but non-Soviet tanks and infantry fighting vehicles—IFVs for short—were an informal red line until just recently.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/epic-arsenal-western-guns-coming-010759481.html

All else is old news.

More about why Russia has lost already even with this horrible status quo at the front:

"My view is he's in trouble, no matter what. The outcome in Ukraine, even if Russia 'wins' in the Kremlin's current war goals, deals Russia a devastating strategic setback," Reno said. "Russia's exports of natural resources have become problematic. No one will want its weaponry. They chased off the most productive parts of their own population. Their economy will struggle as neighbors' economies grow...Even in an authoritarian state, its hard for a leadership that screwed up so bad to survive."

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-biggest-weak-spot-exposed-ukraine-ambition-grows-1773741

 

Edited January 14, 2023 by kevinkin

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

On the photo we can see 50 officers. In green circles 19 of those who were wounded (and some of them several times), red circles 10 of them, who were killed.

50% casualties with at least 20% "unrecoverable".  This despite officers trying their best to not be at the frontlines, according to the milbloggers and Russian soldier intercepts.  It's anecdotal, of course, but it's definitely what we've been seeing for months now in terms of casualty rates.

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

Recently there were many reports that part of Russian prisoners go not only to PMC Wagner, but also directed to LDPR units. Since LDPR Corpses are now Russian army, its can be officially reinforced by Russian mobilized. Mobilized resource of Donbas is almost exhausted. 

Funny you should post this!  Just yesterday I was wondering where DLPR were getting their replacements because even last Spring they had to resort to rounding up replacements by force.  I'm sure we all remember the father who was going to pick up his kids from school getting grabbed.  Yet these DLPR units are still fighting and fighting hard many months later.  Prisoners and Russian mobiks make sense.

I wonder how this will change the motivation levels of the 1st and 2nd Corps as they are increasingly manned by Russians.  For most of the war the DLPR units were amongst the better motivated and skilled, so I would expect that has or will soon change.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

If there was a realistic option I'm certain Ukraine would be under way more pressure not the least coming from Germany. But even Macron, who initially prided himself in regularly talking to Putin on the phone seems to have given up on that idea.

Yeah, Macron in particular made himself look foolish very recently (December?), so it seems the West has collectively given up thinking they can get Putin to be serious about negotiations.

That said, there does seem to be something going on behind the scenes right now.  In December Putin said, publicly, that he was ready to negotiate even though he then made it clear he wasn't.  However, it appears that *maybe* in private he is finally signalling that he is willing to change his stance.

Here is something to consider...

We have a lot of evidence that a part of the reason for Putin launching this war is because the long term effects of sanctions, corruption, incompetence, and reduced personal freedoms were making Putin's domestic situation riskier than we in the West could see.  Putin decided he needed to do something to distract from this mounting problem, so he turned to his personal passion... destroying Ukraine... as a solution.

If this is correct, and to the degree this is correct, it could be that Putin's read on his domestic security is once again worse than what we see in the West.  Maybe, just maybe, he feels his options for keeping things under control have all been tried to the extreme and yet things continue to get worse.  If this is true, then he is basically left with nuking Ukraine or negotiating with it.  Negotiations are clearly sane, nuking insane.  Putin seems to be sane, so engaging in negotiations seems plausible.

Steve

[kevinkin]

31 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

The fact that we have been continually challenging ourselves w actual events and continually re-thinking our beliefs based on evidence is completely lost to him.

You can't find a forum on this subject that is so well sourced and the sources challenged like a recruit in boot camp. If this thread could indexed in detail, it would be a great start on the history of this god awful conflict. 

No numbers cited, but here is one for us old timers:

https://www.wearethemighty.com/intel/the-united-states-is-dusting-off-cold-war-era-weapons-for-use-in-ukraine/

Edited January 14, 2023 by kevinkin

[The_Capt]

35 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

There's nothing surprising here, but the details are very interesting indeed!

This tracks with what we've been seeing for months now.  The unit is basically full strength going into Ukraine, but it is lacking nearly all training.  In this case it doesn't even have qualified, not to mention experienced, leadership.  Soldiers don't know how to operate their own weaponry, not to mention how to integrate it into military doctrine.

The comment about the rifles is yet more evidence that they have run out of more recent production AKs and instead are digging deeply (by this point) into their mothballed stocks.

I wonder what their 7.62x39 stocks are like and how extensive production capacity is.

Steve

What surprised me was the “Coy commanders with line units”, we have had a lot of reports of officers basically missing from the tactical equation in the RA.  Now this is a mobilized unit, not one actually in combat yet, so stuff like leadership and logistics could shift dramatically.

When I first misread (Syrian desert body armor was an obvious give away: The_Capt was chagrined at his error as a result) is as the UA my initial reaction to the training was “damn I thought they were doing better then that”.

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

You can't find a forum on this subject that is so well sourced and the sources challenged like a recruit in boot camp. If this thread could indexed in detail, it would be a great start on the history of this god awful conflict. 

Yeah, I think someone could write an entire book on the war just from this thread alone.  The amount and diversity of information posted here every few hours is impressive.  The discussions that derive from it even better

I was wondering how many hours our group has invested in documenting and discussing this war.  10s and 10s of thousands of hours minimum.  I conservatively estimate my own investment at at least 1500 hours.  That is the equivalent of a full time job for 9 months.  Fortunately for me, this is part of my job

Steve

[Haiduk]

20 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I wonder how this will change the motivation levels of the 1st and 2nd Corps as they are increasingly manned by Russians.  For most of the war the DLPR units were amongst the better motivated and skilled, so I would expect that has or will soon change

As I know, prisoners, who were captured, were from different LDPR units, but mostly from rifle regiments of reserve, some were from territorial defense of LPR and some from 7th motor-rifle brigade of LPR and some "cadre" unit of DPR. Most of captured were from LPR 2nd Corps

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

What surprised me was the “Coy commanders with line units”, we have had a lot of reports of officers basically missing from the tactical equation in the RA.  Now this is a mobilized unit, not one actually in combat yet, so stuff like leadership and logistics could shift dramatically.

There's a couple of details we don't know.  Due to the shortage of officers, it could be the company commander is the *ONLY* officer for the company.  Given the Russian reliance on low level officers to do all the day-to-day stuff, if this is the case then he'd have to be up front because there's nobody to delegate to.

Even if there are some more junior officers (or equivalents, as it doesn't seem they are qualified officers), the lack of communications equipment could mean the company command has to be at the front.

And then there is what you mentioned about who knows how long this "at the front" situation will last under combat stress.

Something I forgot to point out in my previous post is I'd love to have this same guy visit the same regiment in a couple of weeks and see what the manpower is like.  From past wars and from this war it would seem that losses will be higher than replacements.  So while the unit moved into Ukraine full strength, that likely won't be the situation for very long.

Steve

[Butschi]

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

That is the equivalent of a full time job for 9 months.  Fortunately for me, this is part of my job

Lucky you. If my boss knew how much more interesting this thread was at times than yet another one of those meeting we all love so much...

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

As I know, prisoners, who were captured, were from different LDPR units, but mostly from rifle regiments of reserve, some were from territorial defense of LPR and some from 7th motor-rifle brigade of LPR and some "cadre" unit of DPR. Most of captured were from LPR 2nd Corps

That makes sense.  Luhansk has a smaller population to start with, has always had the smaller force, and lost a huge chunk of its captured territory to raid for manpower.  It is amazing these units are still functional.

Steve

[Beleg85]

Latest toll in Dnipro  is 5 killed, 39 wounded including 7 children, 3-year old being youngest.

So yeah, one week to Rammstein and Moskals are still throwing missiles at civilians like crazy.

[The_Capt]

Just now, Battlefront.com said:

Something I forgot to point out in my previous post is I'd love to have this same guy visit the same regiment in a couple of weeks and see what the manpower is like.  From past wars and from this war it would seem that losses will be higher than replacements.  So while the unit moved into Ukraine full strength, that likely won't be the situation for very long.

That is exactly the kind of thing the intel guys focus on.  We know the start state of this outfit (or at least as best we can - they would look for corroboration) and then track it over time. 

[Grossman]

47 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

50% casualties with at least 20% "unrecoverable".  This despite officers trying their best to not be at the frontlines, according to the milbloggers and Russian soldier intercepts.  It's anecdotal, of course, but it's definitely what we've been seeing for months now in terms of casualty rates.

Funny you should post this!  Just yesterday I was wondering where DLPR were getting their replacements because even last Spring they had to resort to rounding up replacements by force.  I'm sure we all remember the father who was going to pick up his kids from school getting grabbed.  Yet these DLPR units are still fighting and fighting hard many months later.  Prisoners and Russian mobiks make sense.

I wonder how this will change the motivation levels of the 1st and 2nd Corps as they are increasingly manned by Russians.  For most of the war the DLPR units were amongst the better motivated and skilled, so I would expect that has or will soon change.

Steve

50 officers in the unit 10 KIA, 19 wounded. So 20% death rate, 58% casualty rate in one year. This is not sustainable. WW1 KIA was 25% in the trenches, RAF Bomber Command WW2 was 25% KIA. The French Army mutinied in WW1. 

[Grossman]

By the way the German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht is poised to be stepping down (fired) after her calamitous hold on office. Perhaps Schulz will appoint someone who knows what they are doing.

Also the Brits have confirmed they are sending Challenger 2 tanks to Ukriane, a dozen apparently. It could be the start heavy armour arriving.   

[Butschi]

52 minutes ago, Grossman said:

By the way the German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht is poised to be stepping down (fired) after her calamitous hold on office. Perhaps Schulz will appoint someone who knows what they are doing.

Also the Brits have confirmed they are sending Challenger 2 tanks to Ukriane, a dozen apparently. It could be the start heavy armour arriving.   

And good riddance. Though whether she was fired (I've read nothing in that direction) or steps down because she just no longer wants to do the job (she never wanted it in the first place) is anyone's guess.

Her successor will likely be more competent just because it will be hard to find someone less suited for the job. Apart from that, competency is unlikely to be among the requirements in the job description.

[Huba]

3 hours ago, Butschi said:

We have discussed this over and over and I guess I won't add anything new but I have to say, again, that this sounds illogic to me:

1. The fact that we (obviously) haven't crossed the threshold yet doesn't prove there is none.

2. We can actually be fairly certain there is a threshold, although a trivial one. Nuclear escalation by NATO. That is an upper limit to where that threshold is.

3. So it follows that the threshold is somewhere in the interval between where we are now and this upper limit.

4. It is possible that Putin would send some kind of message before the West reaches that threshold but only if he thinks he can make us back down. If he, for whatever reason exists in his mind, comes to the conclusion that nuclear war is inevitable, it would be illogical to give us advance warning.

That said, what we actually make of this is an entirely different matter. Of course we can't just go "Oh, you have nukes, here, take Ukraine. Want another country? Sure!"

But finding out how far we can actually go  is the tricky part and that's the obvious reason why the West is boiling the frog soooo slowly.

I agfee with everything except point 4. Of course he could do an all out counter- value attack out of the blue, but this isn't worth considering, theres nothing anyone can do about it, except striking first. Madness.

Meanwhile the whole Cold War history shows  us the how the nuclear brinksmanship works - and at the moment there's nothing going on on this front. Note that Putin's words I quoted about no first use are from December 2022. I'm not saying that nuclear escalation can bexompletely  ruled out, but that this angle seems to be played quite safe by both sides. Therefore, we can relatively safely proceed to kill each other by conventional means, without worrying about nukes more than we do already.