How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I would add #4 - Human or machine error.  We almost went over the edge a couple times on this one.  Throw Russia into chaos and the odds of just plain old human screw ups goes up dramatically.  People can say or believe what they want on this all day long.  In the end it is the major factor in western thinking.  If it wasn’t we would have started in on airstrikes and ground troops ages ago.

Exactly this. To the lay man, nukes are just a weapons system. In reality, they sit within a long thought out and tested set of systems and assumptions that every nuclear power devotes a military and political bureaucracy to. The entire structure is to ensure that nobody, ever, destabilizes the system because destabilization almost certainly leads to use. 

When that system collapses in any country, we are all in a hell of a lot of trouble.

[dan/california]

 

Quote

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defense-aerospace-report/id1228868129?i=1000656337108

A podcast/interview  Phd Harold Brown, head of the CSIS. It is discussing most of the same things we have been. He is of the opinion that we can and must be more aggressive about supporting Ukraine, but mostly agrees that we need to keep the war in a box as The_Capt puts it. He is strongly of the opinion that the West is not scaling up military production with sufficient urgency. Russia, and to a large extent CHINA, have gone to essentially wartime levels of production across the board. We uhm haven't, we really haven't, and it has to be fixed. He discusses the evolving more or less alliance between Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. he China's level of support to Russia for Ukraine is high and rising rapidly. He says U.S. planning needs to start taking account of possible coordinated action between them in a crisis/war.

I would argue that the mess in Gaza is ALREAY evidence of coordinated action between them, but we will put that aside for now.

The whole podcast is worth your time.

[Harmon Rabb]

Mike Johnson makes a statement regarding Ukraine being able to strike targets inside Russia.

Edited May 22 by Harmon Rabb

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Mike Johnson makes a statement regarding Ukraine...

Mike's boss has not approved this message.

[Sojourner]

Umm, Mike's boss is Louisiana's 4th Congressional District. I expect that at least some of those constituents support that message. 

[Fenris]

Haven't seen much footage of Stryker's

Always reminds me of (sorry)

 

[FancyCat]

Blinken following his visit to Ukraine, is now in favor of allowing U.S weapons to hit targets in Russia, but still in early stages before a decision by Biden. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/us/politics/white-house-ukraine-weapons-russia.html

Edited May 23 by FancyCat

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Fenris said:

Haven't seen much footage of Stryker's

Always reminds me of (sorry)

 

That looks like a pretty good load of WP that got dropped at the end of the video.  I wonder what that's about.

Steve

[ASL Veteran]

5 hours ago, A Canadian Cat said:

Mike's boss has not approved this message.

 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, ASL Veteran said:

 

So... you want a ban?  Because we've already had this discussion once and I thought you understood our conversation.  There's a big difference between an offhanded quip in context with what we're talking about and someone posting a purely political post with absolutely no ties to anything being discussed.

Tell you what.  That's strike 2.  Strike 3 is a vacation.  Our long term relations and your contributions gave you a pass that others would not get.  You may remember what happened to the last person that thought his contributions to CM gave him an all seasons' pass to breaking the rules.  In case you forgot or missed it, he was wrong.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

8 hours ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Mike Johnson makes a statement regarding Ukraine being able to strike targets inside Russia.

But starving Ukraine of critical financial aid as Russia ramped up offensive operations was "good policy"?

I really do hope there's an afterlife with someone keeping track of crap like this.  It would give me some comfort for having to suffer through this life watching crap like this happen.  Either that or some form of selective amnesia so I could forget what I know about how many faces people like this have shown.

If Johnson does manage to exert any influence on making a change to US policy, and not just riding on coattails he already sees dragging in front of him, I'll give him another mark for doing the right thing.  As it seems the Biden Admin is nearing doing the right thing on targeting restrictions, so every bit of influence to hurry this along is a good thing.  Been too long in coming.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

15 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

Fairly long update on the Kharkiv area by Konstantin Mashovts:

https://t.me/zvizdecmanhustu/1889
 

I will summarize it as Russia continues to commit more forces to offensive up north. At this rate, it will become Russia's main offensive rather than a diversionary offensive because it will run out of forces with which to conduct a main offensive somewhere else.

Here's a quote:
 

 

It is hard to believe that Russia has enough offensive power to maintain a brand new offensive in a brand new sector while also being able to launch a general offensive to take what they've either never had or retake what they lost due to being over extended.

We have seen endless amounts of evidence that Russia's primary goals for terrain are the full territory of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts.  This has been stated directly by Russian leadership, it's also been easily seen on the battlefield.  A diversion of primary offensive activity to the Kharkiv sector reinforces my belief that Russia has already concluded it can't making meaningful progress in either Luhansk or Donetsk through a continued attritional frontal assault.  They've also apparently concluded that coming up from the south isn't viable.

If Russia continues to invest in the Kharkiv area to the detriment of other areas, then I think we can safely conclude that Russian combat power has peaked and is in decline.  Because I can't think of a single reason Russia would push opposite Kharkiv if they thought they had some chance of taking territory elsewhere and/or at a price they can afford.

Steve

[Offshoot]

22 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

If Russia continues to invest in the Kharkiv area to the detriment of other areas, then I think we can safely conclude that Russian combat power has peaked and is in decline.

These guys have bold plans for their position. No decline here...

Quote

A russian propagandist Sladkov proudly posts a video of russian soldiers in Robotyne sitting under a tank, which they call their “position.” They need masks to help with corpse poison from their comrades. “The crater under the bottom of a damaged tank is a mansion,” says Sladkov, and adds, “Not a single Western Rambo can withstand this.” Truly, they found their natural habitat next to "maggot civilisation". Just three days left to walk to Kyiv.

 

[cesmonkey]

 

[zinz]

Quote

■ Casualties slightly above 7-day average; milestone of 500k may be reached on Saturday

■ Equipment losses slightly below average; most 7-day drone & artillery losses to date

■ strikes intensify; 12 strikes reported

■ Poternet: +256 names added to KIA database

https://mastodon.social/@ragnarbjartur@masto.ai/112489748266891113

[The_Capt]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

It is hard to believe that Russia has enough offensive power to maintain a brand new offensive in a brand new sector while also being able to launch a general offensive to take what they've either never had or retake what they lost due to being over extended.

We have seen endless amounts of evidence that Russia's primary goals for terrain are the full territory of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts.  This has been stated directly by Russian leadership, it's also been easily seen on the battlefield.  A diversion of primary offensive activity to the Kharkiv sector reinforces my belief that Russia has already concluded it can't making meaningful progress in either Luhansk or Donetsk through a continued attritional frontal assault.  They've also apparently concluded that coming up from the south isn't viable.

If Russia continues to invest in the Kharkiv area to the detriment of other areas, then I think we can safely conclude that Russian combat power has peaked and is in decline.  Because I can't think of a single reason Russia would push opposite Kharkiv if they thought they had some chance of taking territory elsewhere and/or at a price they can afford.

Steve

Good lord, I think we have been too close to the problem on all this.  This entire Kharkiv thing may be far simpler than we have been thinking.  What if the RA realized it simply can no longer sustain the losses of playing smash face down south and shifted to Kharkiv in order to “stay on offensive”?

Edited May 23 by The_Capt

[Billy Ringo]

Is it remotely possible that Putin is sacking so many high-ranking officers to use as scapegoats to help with an off-ramp to this war.  Blame it on the military leaders so the failure of this war doesn't fall on him.  Wishful thinking?

[Battlefront.com]

18 minutes ago, Billy Ringo said:

Is it remotely possible that Putin is sacking so many high-ranking officers to use as scapegoats to help with an off-ramp to this war.  Blame it on the military leaders so the failure of this war doesn't fall on him.

This could be what is happening.  The narrative could be "we found out how corrupt these guys were.  Which explains how bad the state of the military is".  In theory this shouldnt be a viable message because for 2+ years Putin has been singing their praise and bragging about how well the SMO is going.  But this is Russia and Putin is the Tzar, so this sort of dot connecting is rather alien to their cultural makeup. 

Whatever is going on, this is significant and deliberate.  The house is getting cleaned for some reason other than establishing financial accountability.

Steve

[billbindc]

10 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

 

This is, or should be, embarrassing to you.

[billbindc]

26 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

This could be what is happening.  The narrative could be "we found out how corrupt these guys were.  Which explains how bad the state of the military is".  In theory this shouldnt be a viable message because for 2+ years Putin has been singing their praise and bragging about how well the SMO is going.  But this is Russia and Putin is the Tzar, so this sort of dot connecting is rather alien to their cultural makeup. 

Whatever is going on, this is significant and deliberate.  The house is getting cleaned for some reason other than establishing financial accountability.

Steve

It's pretty simple in a certain way. This is a mafia state. Corruption is standard operating procedure. Fealty and money moves up while protection is provided down. Once Shoigu lost control of the MoD his 'tail' no longer had anyone to pay and nobody to provide krisha. Rule *by* law then applies. All of the obvious theft that was ignored when they were under Shoigu's wing suddenly becomes a state case and they are ejected in favor of officials who are of the newly favored faction. 

Here's where it gets interesting. Does Belousov have a faction with which to populate the ministry? I don't think so...at least not in the way in which the thoroughly political Shoigu did. I take that fact to mean that there will be more selections that answer directly to Putin. The goal being to coup proof things more thoroughly and also to attempt to streamline the Russian military industrial complex for a long war.  

[Battlefront.com]

34 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Good lord, I think we have been too close to the problem on all this.  This entire Kharkiv thing may be far simpler than we have been thinking.  What if the RA realized it simply can no longer sustain the losses of playing smash face down south and shifted to Kharkiv in order to “stay on offensive”?

Since the start of the Kharkiv move it looked to me to designed to get the Luhansk front moving (at a minimum) and not the other theorized reasons (buffer, taking Kharkiv, blitzing to London, etc).  Accepting that premise the question is why they felt opening up a long closed section of front was necessary?  The obvious answer is that they didn't think they could move the front in any significant way using their usual strategy of costly fights over a few KMs of ground. 

Continuing down this road brings us to the tantalizing question of... why did Russia finally come to this conclusion?  Well, there's a bunch of different possible scenarios for this and we need to be careful to not bias them with our perspective.  Here's what I've come up with:

1.  Russia is running out of TIME.  In this context time is defined as the plethora of economic, social, political, and military problems that Russia is facing.  It could be as simple as the accountants stating that they are out of tricks and next year there won't be enough money to keep the war going.

2.  Russia is running out of MANPOWER.  The headcount bean counters have seen trend lines that their current recruiting methodology isn't working and they don't have any more tricks up their sleeve, so sooner rather than later another Mobilization will be necessary.  We've long since known that, for whatever reasons, this is not something Putin thinks is viable.

3.  Russia is running out of EQUIPMENT.  The bean counters tasked with keeping the military equipped has signaled that Cold War inventories are dangerously low in key categories.

4.  Russia is running out of MUNITIONS.  There could be plenty of time, manpower, and equipment for more bloody frontal assaults, however the ammo bean counters have said they can't find the next big batch of critical munitions in the quantities needed for high intensity assaults.

5.  Any combination of the above.  It could be that no one thing is at a critical stage yet, however the pile of warnings from all of the above has gotten to the point where Putin has calculated that something is going to fail no matter what if this war doesn't end soon.

Note that I'm not saying that Putin thinks everything is going to collapse immediately.  What I'm theorizing is he's concluded that "victory" can't be achieved by doing the same thing they have been doing.  And that is resource sucking frontal assaults.

Steve

[zinz]

https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/cp/144780479

Tom Coopers thoughts on Russias Kharkiv push. Article is already from 13th of May. But not much has changed since then. The article is really long so I posted some relevant excerpts for the discussion here. 

Quote

This is not a simple feint or border raid. However, it is also not something that could in and of itself alter the course of the conflict. Moscow’s forces aren’t charging for the Dnipro west of Kharkiv, at least not yet.

That’s why I see Moscow’s Kharkiv play as an opportunity more than a threat. In fact, unless these operations are a very sophisticated feint ahead of a sudden push west of Kharkiv towards the Dnipro, these attacks falling to the east of the city implies that Moscow has chosen a more limited option in keeping with its ongoing attrition campaign.

The orcs do aim to turn Ukraine’s flank, but only by extending the existing one. Another reason for this offensive is simply paying Ukraine back for the raids that Russian freedom fighters mounted against Belgorod from Kharkiv this spring.

Certain affronts compel Putin to respond in a particular way to preserve the illusion of power he depends on. The timing and pace of the recent bombardment of Ukrainian energy sites suggest that it is a revenge campaign for Ukraine’s attacks on ruscist oil infrastructure more than part of a coherent strategic plan to cripple Ukraine’s economy.

Putin, simply put, is winging it. He’s attacking now because the next four to six weeks mark a point of vulnerability while Ukraine waits for delayed aid to arrive. His forces appear to be making a naked effort to turn the flank of the Kupiansk front, fearful of the risk trying to cut off Kharkiv and reach Dnipro would entail. Good way to lose a field army if you screw that up, as the orcs have done with every other large-scale offensive for two straight years.

As I’ll lay out in the second section of this week’s post, Putin seems to be trying to replicate the part of the 2022 assault that actually worked. It probably won’t a second time, though.

Moscow’s efforts on the new Kharkiv front are making the headlines this week, but having failed to break through beyond a tactical level anywhere since Avdiivka fell three months ago Moscow is visibly committed to a naked strategy of attrition. Putin can’t win the war, so he has to hope his enemies cede the field after becoming discouraged by the costs of continuing the fight.

Three trajectories seem likely:

A. Moscow could be activating this sector, and probably others like Sumy, to the northwest of Kharkiv, to stretch out Ukrainian forces by presenting a credible threat. This could ease efforts elsewhere.

B. It could instead be fixing Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv area ahead of a surprise offensive west of the city.

C. The aim could be to outflank Ukraine’s defenses north of Kupiansk in a bid to restore the drive on Sloviansk from the north, repeating the success of early 2022.

The level of force that Moscow is applying does make whatever is going on look like more than a feint. A video emerged showing a ruscist Iskander ballistic missile taking out a Ukrainian Vampire multiple rocket launcher after it returned to a hide. But that’s a bit like using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito. The Vampire is a Ukrainian variant of the standard Grad rocket launcher used by almost every Soviet customer since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s not a target worth using a precision guided ballistic missile on unless you absolutely must - or want to make a point.

Moscow either really cares about this operation or wants Ukraine to think it does. The best feints are ones that you can’t ignore, after all. However, Ukraine has a plan for this sort of thing and fortifications prepared well enough back from the border that Moscow couldn’t interrupt construction with routine shelling.

The question is how much firepower Moscow eventually throws in. If it does indeed have a 120,000 strong strategic reserve prepared, that amounts to about a dozen of the Soviet style divisions appearing on the battlefield today. Abandoned is the battalion tactical group concept, which Moscow’s military machine was never professional enough to make work. Now we’re dealing with triangular divisions with three core regiments of infantry each with several separate battalions and at least a company of disposable assault troops in each.

For Moscow, the main attraction in initiating offensive operations in this region, aside from potentially Ukrainian reserves away from intervening on other fronts, is that Ukraine is unable to strike deep into its logistics network. Every ruscist operational push is halted before it gets more than ten kilometers in part because of the inefficiency of the distributed supply system Moscow had to adopt.

That’s why the restriction on Ukraine using ATACMS and other fancy precision weapons with a range out to several hundred kilometers is so asinine. Early in the conflict there was reason to fear that Moscow might see ballistic or cruise missile launches from Ukraine as the start of a broader NATO intervention - or worse, a disarming nuclear strike.

But as everyone has had time to observe everyone else’s behavior, it’s blatantly obvious that nobody is using this war as a pretext to launch a disarming or decapitating strike, nuclear or otherwise. At this stage in the game Moscow is simply not going to believe that the few dozen missiles that might land in its territory at any given time from Ukraine constitutes a threat to the survival of the regime.

Putin has apparently finally realized that if he’s going to open a new front, Kharkiv is his best bet - until, of course, ruscist troops move far enough away from the border that their supplies have to be cached on the Ukrainian side. Then it’s HIMARS and ATACMS o’clock. This is part of why I don’t expect his forces to replicate their successes of early 2022.

Now, some will no doubt insist that Moscow is making a mistake by not concentrating all available forces on a truly decisive front. However, a lot of times people talk about logistics without realizing that effective throughput will vary.

By that I mean that it is very possible to saturate the logistical potential of an area to such a degree that adding more troops does more harm than good. It’s why you can’t really talk about Ukraine holding interior lines.

Thanks to drones, you have to spread forces out a lot more. Concentrating them for a decisive strike is likely now a matter of attacking intensively along a broader front than was standard in Cold War tactics when even a few dozen armored vehicles could effectively hide in gaps between enemy radar and satellite scans. To break an enemy front now demands operating across a wider area while somehow building up enough momentum to prevent a new defensive line from forming a short distance behind the one you seized.

Your basic options are to overwhelm an entire front that is or can be isolated or push everywhere, wearing the enemy out until a weak spot forms. The latter is an approach best suited for decentralized, highly autonomous teams, not the intensive mechanized assaults Moscow relies on. Thanks to the lack of major terrain obstacles in the steppe except water channels, lakes, and settlements, the former option is also not ideal for Moscow - hence its persistent efforts to create a cauldron, trapping Ukrainian forces inside.

My expectation over the next two months is that Moscow commits a substantial portion of its reserves to offensives across the entire line of contact. Training about 10,000 more orcs than it has lost each month for the past year, cobbling together units by using motorcycles, ATVs, and golf carts along with MT-LBs from the 1950s and tanks (poorly) protected by metal screens, the army Moscow has on paper is as big as the one it started out with in 2022. But that obscures a tremendous degree of irreversible degradation thanks to the callous way Moscow treats its front line troops.

The most sensible approach would be to apply all its remaining firepower to an area where it stands a chance at surprising Ukraine with how fast it can actually move. As I’ve written in the past, that’s a risky play that probably wouldn’t work but is likely Putin’s only hope.

Being a coward unwilling to roll the dice and accept the outcome, he is set to take a middle approach: threaten Kharkiv and perhaps try to repeat the initial success of the eastern wing of this axis of advance and try to get behind Sloviansk. Couple that with collapsing the Siversk bulge on the other side and laying siege to Kostiantynivka, and Moscow would go into summer with a propaganda win.

 

[The_Capt]

8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Since the start of the Kharkiv move it looked to me to designed to get the Luhansk front moving (at a minimum) and not the other theorized reasons (buffer, taking Kharkiv, blitzing to London, etc).  Accepting that premise the question is why they felt opening up a long closed section of front was necessary?  The obvious answer is that they didn't think they could move the front in any significant way using their usual strategy of costly fights over a few KMs of ground. 

Continuing down this road brings us to the tantalizing question of... why did Russia finally come to this conclusion?  Well, there's a bunch of different possible scenarios for this and we need to be careful to not bias them with our perspective.  Here's what I've come up with:

1.  Russia is running out of TIME.  In this context time is defined as the plethora of economic, social, political, and military problems that Russia is facing.  It could be as simple as the accountants stating that they are out of tricks and next year there won't be enough money to keep the war going.

2.  Russia is running out of MANPOWER.  The headcount bean counters have seen trend lines that their current recruiting methodology isn't working and they don't have any more tricks up their sleeve, so sooner rather than later another Mobilization will be necessary.  We've long since known that, for whatever reasons, this is not something Putin thinks is viable.

3.  Russia is running out of EQUIPMENT.  The bean counters tasked with keeping the military equipped has signaled that Cold War inventories are dangerously low in key categories.

4.  Russia is running out of MUNITIONS.  There could be plenty of time, manpower, and equipment for more bloody frontal assaults, however the ammo bean counters have said they can't find the next big batch of critical munitions in the quantities needed for high intensity assaults.

5.  Any combination of the above.  It could be that no one thing is at a critical stage yet, however the pile of warnings from all of the above has gotten to the point where Putin has calculated that something is going to fail no matter what if this war doesn't end soon.

Note that I'm not saying that Putin thinks everything is going to collapse immediately.  What I'm theorizing is he's concluded that "victory" can't be achieved by doing the same thing they have been doing.  And that is resource sucking frontal assaults.

Steve

So the Russian military strategy really is feeling like a Big Bluff by this point.  Look mean, big and bottomless.  This has led to an "always attack, always be seen attacking" approach in order to keep the "weak kneed west" shaking and doubting - we saw it here on this forum.  So if the RA is starting to run out of any or all of those elements they need to shift "always be seen attacking" to another area where they can get juice for squeeze.  This Kharkiv thing was noted for being largely dismounted and light on support, it was low hanging fruit.  Now we may see RA bites elsewhere as they keep trying to take nibbles and sell them as bites.  This all makes a lot of sense if they are running out of gas on the main effort down south.

So the next question - how long can they keep this up?

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, zinz said:

Three trajectories seem likely:

A. Moscow could be activating this sector, and probably others like Sumy, to the northwest of Kharkiv, to stretch out Ukrainian forces by presenting a credible threat. This could ease efforts elsewhere.

B. It could instead be fixing Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv area ahead of a surprise offensive west of the city.

C. The aim could be to outflank Ukraine’s defenses north of Kupiansk in a bid to restore the drive on Sloviansk from the north, repeating the success of early 2022.

This is a mistake we have seen western pundits make repeatedly, these are far too large muscle movements for the RA of 2024.  First off, there is no "surprise" left anymore.  It has been reported that the UA saw this one coming well out but were either restricted by ROEs or simply did not have the resources to stop right at the border.

The RA is not able to do "drives" at this point.  They do not have the logistics nor combat power to sustain it.  Nor do they seem able to exploit any "fixing".

[Ts4EVER]

9 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So the next question - how long can they keep this up?

To me this kind of depends on China.