How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[THH149]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

My point is that sometimes we see something in a video that is not representational of the whole.  But there's also the chance that we see something in a video that under represents the whole.  I think a video like the above bridge crossing is more likely to be the tip of an iceberg than it is a floating chunk of ice.

Yep, its viewers choice whether they see something and think on the one hand its a systemic issue or on the other hand a non-systemic issue. However its extremely difficult to look at a single piece of evidence and conclude objectively that its one or the other. 

As in, one swallow doesnt make a summer, but it could.

One needs to see the whole context and many more facts to be certain. Sadly, facts are incomplete since we don't sit in Zelensky or Putin's chairs.

And of course, facts don't care about feelings, but feelings don't care about facts either.

Edited October 11, 2023 by THH149

[THH149]

Just heard that the Ukr 110th Mech was destroyed around Avdiivka.

Also, Russ knocked out a Ukr Su-25 about 70km from the front line via drone. 

Edited October 11, 2023 by THH149

[THH149]

As to the cost of the war in Ukr, it needs about US$4bn aid a month to sustain the expenditure - both military and all the civilian costs to go with it. Ukr GDP has fallen 20-30% and tax takes are obv well down, and the Hyrvnia has been devalued recently in a move that will make imports especially non-essential non military imports and foreign debt more expensive (unless they're gifted). But it will make Ukr exports more competitive, foreign currency more valuable.

Every day Donbas is occupied (coal and gas) or out of action and Ukr ports (eg for grain) put out of action is a day when foreign currency isn't being earned. They should float the currency, but anyway ...

The US pays for what 3/4 or 1/2 of this cost?

Anyway, I'm not an expert on US congress but if there's no Reps speaker, can the House pass laws to fund the US gov (and Ukr with it) without a Speaker? Is that why Biden is thinking of a one off $100bn gift to finance Ukr for 2+ more years to kind of firewall Ukr war finances?

Edited October 11, 2023 by THH149

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, THH149 said:

Just heard that the Ukr 110th Mech was destroyed around Avdiivka.

Also, Russ knocked out a Ukr Su-25 about 70km from the front line via drone. 

You should not post things like this without citing a source so it can be looked into.  I doubt 110th was destroyed.  Sounds like Russians being Russians.

1 hour ago, THH149 said:

Every day Donbas is occupied (coal and gas) or out of action and Ukr ports (eg for grain) put out of action is a day when foreign currency isn't being earned.

I doubt meaningful coal production will ever happen in Ukraine again.  The cost of getting it started again will be astronomical, it wasn't good quality to begin with (from what I remember), and everybody is moving away from it as a source of energy.  Doesn't seem like a good investment for anybody to be making on a grand scale.

1 hour ago, THH149 said:

Anyway, I'm not an expert on US congress but if there's no Reps speaker, can the House pass laws to fund the US gov (and Ukr with it) without a Speaker? Is that why Biden is thinking of a one off $100bn gift to finance Ukr for 2+ more years to kind of firewall Ukr war finances?

Reps are free to line things up, of course, but nothing can be voted on or passed until there is a Speaker.

The idea of a large package is coming out of the Senate.  A bipartisan group recognizes that the House is irresponsible to an extreme and elections only make that worse.  Whether the new Speaker will allow such a bill to come up for a vote in the House is an unknown, but the House will need to pass it for it to become law.  Biden can't do squat on his own.

Steve

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, THH149 said:

Every day Donbas is occupied (coal and gas) or out of action and Ukr ports (eg for grain) put out of action is a day when foreign currency isn't being earned. They should float the currency, but anyway ...

Not entirely disagreeing with your economic points but before we go down the “Donbas and Crimea are the economic heartland of Ukraine”…they aren’t:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_subdivisions_by_GDP_per_capita

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_subdivisions_by_GRP

As for coal…well it was kinda on the way out anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_Ukraine

As for the rest, see Reconstruction.  Winning will mean rebuilding and re-wiring Ukrainian industries.  Changing transportation of goods towards the west and that will take new infrastructure.  We can prop Ukraine up but the end goal is self-sustainment.  But your point is not lost.  This war did no good things for the Ukrainian economy.

[cesmonkey]

Ukrainian telegrammer on Avdiivka:
https://t.me/DeepStateUA/17797
 

Quote

Today was one of the most difficult days at the Avdiiv district

The enemy left in several columns, which were also packed with landing forces. As we said in the afternoon, it was all accompanied by artillery, aviation and rockets. Columns advanced from Krasnohorivka, Novoselivka Drugoi, Vodyanyi, Pisky and Vesely. Of course, the poda**m managed to capture certain positions, but considering the number of personnel and equipment that was involved, the results are simply deplorable for the enemy.

Katsap hoped for a blitzkrieg. Losses of equipment are colossal, analysts will soon be counting. Hundreds of infantrymen were disembarked and are still roaming the gray area. The fighting continues. Indeed, everything could have been much worse, but the coordinated work of the Defense Forces produced results. Of course, it was not without losses.

Statements about the entry of katsaps into Berdych were circulating on the Internet - this is just another sick wet fantasy of propagandists. Of course, not everything is rosy near Avdiivka, but the first attack of the real Soviet army was repelled.

🖼Photos of the Luftwaffe Air Force and our friends from the 53rd OMBr.

MapBlogWrite to us ZSUHelpShopDonat
t.me/DeepStateUA
/17797

 

 

[kimbosbread]

35 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This war did no good things for the Ukrainian economy.

Yes, and no. Ukraine was basically #3 in the world for software engineering before this conflict, after US and China. A lot of that talent has been channeled into armaments, ISR, drones etc., and Ukraine will have the world’s best dataset on small drone usage. There is a significant amount of money in this as the US gear up for the war with China. We are fortunate that god loves us so much that he gives us a practice war for warmup where we get to test out all the small drone stuff we suck at and that our enemies are good better at than us.

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Not entirely disagreeing with your economic points but before we go down the “Donbas and Crimea are the economic heartland of Ukraine”…they aren’t:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_subdivisions_by_GDP_per_capita

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_subdivisions_by_GRP

As for coal…well it was kinda on the way out anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_Ukraine

As for the rest, see Reconstruction.  Winning will mean rebuilding and re-wiring Ukrainian industries.  Changing transportation of goods towards the west and that will take new infrastructure.  We can prop Ukraine up but the end goal is self-sustainment.  But your point is not lost.  This war did no good things for the Ukrainian economy.

The reconstruction has a high potential for strong feedback loops, either positive or negative. If it old companies come roaring back to life, new ones are being founded left and right, and the feeling takes hold that Ukraine is biggest opportunity zone in Eurasia? Then almost all of the refugees will return, and hopefully Ukraines rise will resemble South Korea's. It can very much NOT go that way, it is going to require an enormous amount money, skillful management, prolonged Western attention, and a reasonably stable peace. The upside is there though.

[dan/california]

 

Quote

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-proceedings-podcast/id1333127700?i=1000630865281

A Marine Corps officer discussing air defense lessons from Ukraine, and how they apply to both doctrine and procurement.

[Battlefront.com]

8 hours ago, Carolus said:

Strange that the attack seems to consist of mobiks and DPR (which are either the better volunteer units or even worsely treated mobiks which were attached to them), since a lot of people expressed that only Russia's more elite troops could do effective offensive movement.

Not strange at all.  VDV forces are pretty much committed to holding Bakhmut's flanks and blocking progress towards Tokmak.  The independent battalions (BARS in particular) that were worth anything have also been long since committed.  On top of committed, these forces are highly banged up from many months of fighting (including the idiotic winter offensive).

When Russia has a sector in trouble, where even the local counter attacks are barely doing anything, the standard behavior is to attack somewhere else with whatever forces happen to be there.  We've seen this in the north (Kupyansk and Lyman) even after the VDV forces were reallocated south.  These attacks did little locally and nothing strategically.

Russia also tried to counter attack with significant forces to the south of Bakhmut.  This also didn't go well and caused enormous problems because, unlike Luhansk, the Ukrainian units there were able to take advantage of Russia over extending itself.

The attack in the Donetsk City sector is really just about the only other place they haven't hit hard since the Summer, which means (presumably) the local forces there are better off than elsewhere.  Or should I say WERE better off.  Seems they got slaughtered.

8 hours ago, Carolus said:

I think Ukraine can defend better than Russia.

Oh for sure Ukraine can defend better than Russia.  This has been more-or-less true since March 2022.  Even when Russia still had military advantages (in particular artillery) it still couldn't do more than slowly roll the Ukrainian forces back.  Even when maximum and sustained pressure was applied at Bakhmut, Ukraine gave a better account of themselves without millions of mines than Russia has with them.

8 hours ago, Carolus said:

If the artillery hellfire doesnt hold on, these sort of attacks can help reduce the Russian force generation.

Most definitely.  We saw this with Kyiv, Kharkiv, the confluence of Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson, Bakhmut, Kupyansk, Lyman, the Donetsk City sector, and a dozen other places.  Time and time again Ukraine has come away from the battlefield with significantly, sometimes vastly, lower casualties and often retaining the ground or retaking it in short order.

This is why it is important to keep in mind that if Ukraine is obligated to go over to the defense, that doesn't mean Russia wins because to do that Russia would have to successfully attack.  That just doesn't seem to be within Russia's capabilities, not then and not now.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Checking in with ISW shows some commentary about the Avdiivka attack.  Not surprisingly, it wasn't too optimistic about Russia's chances of achieving something:

Quote

A successful encirclement of Avdiivka, one of the most heavily fortified areas of the Donetsk Oblast front line, would very likely require more forces than Russia has currently dedicated to the Avdiivka-Donetsk City effort. Russian forces have largely deployed irregular forces along this frontline, primarily elements of the 1st Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Army Corps and additional volunteer formations that have largely suffered from poor and abusive command culture and tensions with regular Russian units.[5] ISW has observed no recent Russian deployments to this line. Russian forces have also conducted grinding offensive operations for relatively minimal territorial gains near Avdiivka for the past year and a half of the war, and the Russian military command is likely aware that an effort to capture Avdiivka would require more and higher-quality units than those currently deployed in the area.[6]

The one thing I find interesting about the Avdiivka action yesterday is the scale.  It definitely is unusual for Russia to do something on this scale at all because it hasn't usually ended well (Vuhledar comes to mind).  But it's more than that in this case.  This is the first time in a very long time that Russia has committed large amounts of armor, air, and artillery to accompany bottom of the barrel troops.  My sense is this is important.

My guess is that Russia realizes that the quality of their infantry forces is so bad that even their very low bar for "success" can't be achieved.  Maybe they have learned from the recent failed counter attacks of the 72nd MRB that a badly planned and resourced operation could result in a local collapse, thus leaving Russian defenses worse off than they were before.  If they have realized this (took them long enough if so!), maybe they thought that they could compensate by providing the heavy support they normally don't allocate to such attacks.  If I'm correct, the Russian general staff can't be too pleased with the results.

Whatever the case is, the Avdiivka attack is a sign of desperation on the Russian side.  They clearly felt they needed to do something to counter Ukraine's progress in the south and that they could NOT achieve it within that sector despite most of their best units being deployed there.

Steve

[THH149]

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Time and time again Ukraine has come away from the battlefield with significantly, sometimes vastly, lower casualties

What are the sources for this?

[THH149]

The ISW map still documents RF claims of advances north of Avdiivka, and some moves from the South, as well as moves east out of Kamyanka. Sounds like RF tried to spend a dollar, wait and see what they got in return.

[Battlefront.com]

Just now, THH149 said:

What are the sources for this?

Of course we don't have official counts, but that has been the conclusion by OSINT reporting throughout the war.  Even when Ukraine takes very high casualties (and it frequently does), Russia doesn't come out ahead.  Bakhmut is the most well documented and most extreme of this phenomena.  Conservative estimates are 3:1 in favor of Ukraine, optimistic numbers are 5:1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bakhmut

Easiest reference I can find as I'm headed off to bed

Oh, and as a reminder to everybody.  Comparing this year to last, Kherson was liberated roughly one month from now (Nov 11) with the start of obvious Russian collapse happening about a week ago (early October).  There's still time for something to happen that will give us reason to cheer, though my expectations for what that something is are very different than they were several months ago.

Steve

 

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, THH149 said:

The ISW map still documents RF claims of advances north of Avdiivka, and some moves from the South, as well as moves east out of Kamyanka. Sounds like RF tried to spend a dollar, wait and see what they got in return.

ISW also said:

ISW has observed footage of fighting in the area, but ISW has not observed any confirmation of these claimed Russian advances as of this writing

Highly flawed Russian claims very often stand for a few days because there's nothing to dispute them until Ukraine makes a claim (usually several days later) or someone uploads a video.  Sometimes we get videos within a day, sometimes not.

Steve

[THH149]

I got you, ISW (prob from Telegram), Ukr Prada and wikipedia based on Ukr sources, thanks.

The ISW map seems to have a slow refesh rate, with some very slow reconcilation of competing claims, going with the maximalist claims from both sides. eg I've seen several OSINT sources say the RF hasn't taken Orikhovo NW of Bahkmut (and never did apart from some random russian telegramers, several weeks ago) but there it is, still an RF claim. Though if someone had a source for an ongoing RF claim for capture, then I'd love to read it.

OSINT sources are such conjecture, assumption, wishful thinking and outright propaganda, not even secondary sources in an academic sense. Remember when historians of rome talk about the reliability of sources? here it is true to life.

Even educated guesses are fraught with unknowable variables.

My tax refund is more real!

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by THH149

[holoween]

 

6 hours ago, THH149 said:

The US pays for what 3/4 or 1/2 of this cost?

 

[THH149]

13 minutes ago, holoween said:

 

 

Nice to see. About 238bn euro, with a mix of  humanitarian, financial and military, and spread over several years hence. Going to the data, the biggest military contributors are US and Germany with a combined 59bn euro. Lucky the exchange rate is good, cos that would buy a lot!

Edited October 11, 2023 by THH149

[cesmonkey]

Ukraine claims to have destroyed a substantial number of tanks and APCs yesterday. Perhaps from the attack on Avdiivka?

 

[Butschi]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Of course we don't have official counts, but that has been the conclusion by OSINT reporting throughout the war.

OSINT is great for establishing a lower bound on the real number. It is not a totally independent source (we sadly don't have that) since, as the OS implies it relies on publicly available images/videos. So, how close this lower bound is to the real still depends on what both sides make public. Plus what can be taken from satellite imagery, I guess?

Anyway, my point is: This seems to produce decent estimates for vehicles but what about personnel? I mean, you cited Bakhmut which was in large parts urban warfare with infantry. I do wonder how reliable OSINT can be in such a circumstance. This probably means, and the Wikipedia article seems to support this, that here we are back to claims made by both sides, right?

[Haiduk]

8 hours ago, THH149 said:

Just heard that the Ukr 110th Mech was destroyed around Avdiivka.

 

If so, Avdiivka should be captured so far, but... but... %)

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, cesmonkey said:

Ukraine claims to have destroyed a substantial number of tanks and APCs yesterday. Perhaps from the attack on Avdiivka?

 

I think, these numbers can be divided on 2, but even so this is huge losses

Only one mobile group of "Omega" National Guard Special force brigade destroyed for yesterday 3 tanks, 3 IFV and armored car

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by Haiduk

[Rokko]

https://militaryland.net/news/the-situation-in-magura-brigade-is-far-from-perfect/

This article claims, the 47th Mech is basically a spent force and has to resort to sending specialists into assaults.

Reports like this and the recent renewed Russian assaults make me think, that maybe going on the offensive this year was premature, although probably (unfortunately) politically necessary. It seems, the Russians are more than happy to continue grinding themselves down against the most heavily fortified positions in Donbas over and over again. Had the Ukrainians stayed on the defensive and projected caution and weakness, rather than exuberant optimism and confidence, the Russians would have likely resumed their attacks much earlier. I believe there even was an allegation by Mashovets a couple of weeks before the "counter-offensive" kicked off that the Russian command was split on whether they should prepare for the coming blows or go on the offensive themselves (believing the counter-offensive talk to be basically a PsyOp).

I think it's quite possible that RU forces in Ukraine could have been attritted more efficiently that way, instead of grinding down multiple UKR brigades while carving out a tiny salient near Tokmak, thereby laying the ground work for 2024. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and, as I said, it was probably necessary for political reasons, both domestic and international.

[THH149]

We have official counts of casualties for both sides: UA publsihes them both (including 15k for their own).

But are they credible or self serviing?

For instance its widely reported that Ukraine has suffered 25,000-50,000 amputees.

And NYT said this August, presumably from US officials:

Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.

But Russians outnumber Ukrainians on the battlefield almost three to one...

So Ukr are saying Russia has 289k eliminated but NYT quotes officials saying 120k eliminated. And the US numbers would be based on what the Ukr tells them to say, so likely deliberately distorted to some degree. You be the judge.

And where does the NYT get the idea that Russians outnumber the Ukr by 3:1 when Ukr seem to be mobilising a 1m or so army. Does the Russ have 3m? Really?

Edited October 11, 2023 by THH149

[THH149]

5 minutes ago, Rokko said:

This article claims, the 47th Mech is basically a spent force and has to resort to sending specialists into assaults.

This is interesting, since I've heard rumours of the 82nd also being badly punished after they were committed to take Verbove.

So presumably the effect on the 47th was similar on the 82nd. I think they were in line only for a week to take that town and head south, but after an initial impact, then not much.

And remember, the 47th had the Leopards and Bradleys.