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Ukraine War Thread Part 2

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Ukraine War Thread Part 2

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Old 3rd Jul 2023, 21:48
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Update

​​​​​​​Both Osman from the 24th Aidar and the 'Bakhmut demon' confirm further progress near Klishchiivka. Based on our information, UA forces managed to kick out Russian troops out of the last strategic positions on the N/NE outskirts of Klishchiivka. Only one field to the settlement.
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Old 3rd Jul 2023, 21:52
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This sounds promising for Ukraine if Russia is having to commit their reserves.

Ukrainian forces widened their control at Lobkove/P'yatykhatky and reached the outskirts of Robotyne. Furthermore, Russians have deployed their reserves to stop the Ukrainian advance while Ukrainians still haven't deployed their main force.



some comments on the above that are pertinent:

​​​​​​​Why would the Russians deploy their reserves for defending forward posts and defence lines if they have a big and better build and heavily fortified defence line in the back. I don’t get it.
​​​​​​​Very slow. In 2 months the rainy season will begin. Let Budanov and Danilov continue to sell dreams, maybe they will only reach the Crimea in 2530 (!)
..
​​​​​​​

Last edited by NutLoose; 3rd Jul 2023 at 22:24. Reason: Additional info.
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Old 3rd Jul 2023, 22:15
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In the Right Order.

Shouldn't they check the weather before launching the nukes? 6:51

Last edited by nevillestyke; 3rd Jul 2023 at 22:22. Reason: wrong term and time stamp added.
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Old 3rd Jul 2023, 22:19
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Originally Posted by Obba
Another interesting point of view from Niki Proshin.
He shows how the Russian TV channels broadcast (to normal Russian people), some recent events.
Makes you wonder how accurate his opinion is and - if true - you can see why - if true - most Russians still seem to support Putin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x73...nnel=NikiProsh
He's quite a well balanced chap. I've watched many hours of his broadcasts, especially around the start of the SMO last year. He was quite well travelled before all this, hailing from Siberia where his Mum still is. He's an example of those intelligent Russians that escaped instead of becoming cannon fodder. I'd recommend his livestream/Q&A style recordings, as he answers global questions live...
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Old 3rd Jul 2023, 22:41
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A Ukrainian AS-90 155mm self-propelled howitzer was destroyed by Russian forces North of Mali Shcherbaky, #Zaporizhzhia Oblast. This is the first confirmed loss of this type, of a total of 32 donated by the UK.
The film shows a bloody big crater as well and the shell of the SPG
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Old 3rd Jul 2023, 22:49
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re the surrendering soldier with the grenade under his body, they pull his weapon away from him spot the pulled grenade pin, step back clear, say something several times which I assume is to hand it over, show his hands, then as he does not respond they empty a clip into him.

The occupier pretended to surrender and hid a grenade under his body, but the solder of the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to notice it in time and react.
Good instincts. Russian soldier didn't show his hands, and a grenade pin ring can be seen when the rifle was taken out. He just didn't get a chance to throw or release it before he was shot. Note that it blew 3s from the shooting.





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Old 3rd Jul 2023, 23:07
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Originally Posted by GlobalNav
I wish something could be done to treat these soldiers with adequate medical care. Few if any would re enter the fight but all would testify to the terrible conditions, morale and leadership of Russian forces.
easy,
  1. get out of Ukraine, criminal hordes;
  2. put Putin on trial;
  3. bring popcorn.

fixed.

next question?
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Old 3rd Jul 2023, 23:31
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Originally Posted by ORAC
Ominous if true and an indication of the failure of the allies to step up production.



It appears that The time windows for an attrition war against Russia was missed.

Months ago, I wrote about the three biggest Russian factories idling their production due to a shortage of electronics.

(twitter.com/pati_marins64/…)

Now, the situation is just the opposite. The three biggest Russian factories, Uralvagonzavod, Omsktransmash and Kurganmashzavod, are producing intensely, and that's not all. Uraltransmash and the Armored Repair Plants, consisting of eight units, are working at least 12 hours a day, but not yet in "war mode."
For example, Kurganmashzavod had around 1,700 workers but hired another 1,000 last year and another 1,200 recently.

During the last few months, the Russian industry has delivered dozens of helicopters and jets to African countries like Mali, Uganda, Togo, and Zimbabwe. This suggests that any shortage of electronics is in the past.

Recently, Uralvagonzavod set 100% of its production exclusively for tanks, while Omsktransmash isn't producing tanks anymore and has instead shifted its focus to the Tos-1 and the modernization of T80s and T62Ms, as well as some artillery, including the D30, 2s4, and 2s5.

Kurganmashzavod is working intensely on IFVs like the BMP3M, and at least five repair armored plants are refurbishing other IFVs and APCs. Uraltransmash is producing Akatsiya, Malka, and Msta S artillery and has already delivered two batches of Msta S this year.

The number of missiles launched against Kiev is another example of the kick in production for the Russian aerospace industry.

All evidence suggests that the Russian military complex can produce/refurbish many hundreds of tanks and probably thousands of IFVs, APCs, and artilleries annually.

We must consider 14 units producing (not including the units working in indirect production like the "techzavods").

The war is on the way where the US will hold the front, or the allies have to start negotiating with Russia. If Russia keeps up this rate, it will easily overcome the EU donations for Ukraine and seriously threaten the EU's capacity to keep supplying Ukraine. This situation just exposes an old criticism, where the allies didn't invest in facilities for Ukrainian companies to keep producing, refurbishing and repairing outside the country. Ukraine had an excellent military complex that suffered the war's consequences and didn't receive any restructuring program funds from the allies. From other hands, the Ukr decided to buy $800 millions in weapons never delivered. Another mistake.

*Adding as note, Ukraine just got something like 60% of what was announced for the offensive.

The Ukrainian army improved considerably since the begin of the offensive, but the scarcity of SHORADS and heavy armored vehicles are a serious issue for this kind of offensive, nor mentioning the lack of Air support.

I'd like to hear where are the perspectives for the Ukrainian offensive. With the current equipment I don't see any perspectives, except if US take a step forward and send many hundreds of Bradleys and Abrams. It would be able to balance the war again. The number of Storm shadows is insufficient to cause worries for RuAF.

Bellow are recent pictures and videos of the mentioned factories, while the deliveries you can search on Google.….
Interesting, and the source is not clearly biased one way or the other.

Increasing production staff eventually will increase production rates where supply of all other components is not a limiting factor. The immediate effect is to slow production in most cases, unless there was a systemic training program that does not impact the production process. Nothing in recent Russian history suggests that the term "systemic" (remarkably, it is a word in russian, "системный ") is used in processes within Russia. Don't expect to see trainloads of Armata tanks rolling down the road anytime soon.

Russia might spend some time on collecting shoes for its troops, or water, or food, preferably not ammo. Ammo is going to be needed to try and hold the criminal consortium together by their mafia bosses, the Federation.

Other than the fact they cannot apparently find their way to get shoes, food, water, clothing, cardboard body armour etc to their troops in the field, yes, it seems to be a great opportunity to lift their game.

Should the West increase their support for Ukraine? Absolutely, and ASAP. The longer the war progresses bleeding out Ukrainian blood, the greater the probability that the blood of the other supporting countries will end up being mixed in the field of Ukraine, as awarding a victory to Putin in the field will have a high probability of emboldening his delusions of grandeur, and those clearly include Poland, Romania, Moldova, and the Baltics, and that makes it a seriously unacceptable proposition, one that Putin should have known was an abort criteria in Feb 2023, but track record of the west was appeasement. There is no appeasing criminals without consequences. (1938...)
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 00:34
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From https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/07/...ines-pressure/

Today there is a lot of news from the Orikhiv direction. After Ukrainians pushed Russians from the last line of fortification in from of Robotyne, the Ukrainians shifted their focus to the flanks. The main goal of the Ukrainians right now is to improve their tactical position around Robotyne before attempting to take it. As you can see, step by step, the Ukrainians have already managed to advance by almost 5 kilometers on a 16-kilometer-wide front line.

Nonetheless, globally speaking, advancing by 5 km does not give the Ukrainians a strategic advantage: the Ukrainians are still 20 kilometers away from Tokmak and 70 kilometers away from Melitopol. It has been one month since the beginning of the active stage of the counteroffensive operation, and this is not the result that most people expected to see, especially after the hyper-successful Kharkiv counteroffensive. But does this mean that the counteroffensive operation is failing? No.

First of all, the counteroffensive operation is still in the early stages because the Ukrainians still have not deployed their strategic reserves. Secondly, the Ukrainian command warned everyone in advance that this counteroffensive would not resemble the one in Kharkiv and would take significantly more time. The Kharkiv counteroffensive was so quick and successful because it was before the mobilization in Russia, so Russians lacked troops; the Ukrainians unexpectedly found a weak spot, penetrated one defense line, and collapsed the whole front.

This time the setting is completely the opposite: Russians have more troops, have prepared multiple lines of defense, and have expected the counteroffensive to happen in the South. That is why the first line of defense is overcrowded with troops and equipment. A Ukrainian soldier recently reported that there are around 60 pieces of heavy equipment only around Robotyne, which Ukrainian troops need to destroy to get closer. That is why the Ukrainians are using a completely different approach.

Recently, a prominent Russian source published a short interview with a Russian soldier who described exactly what Ukrainians are doing. He said that, right now, the main goal of the Ukrainians is not to penetrate the Russian defense but to drain all the accumulated ammunition, equipment, and reserves.

The Russian soldier reported that the Ukrainians were very carefully testing the ability of each Russian strong point to conduct defensive operations. The first thing the Ukrainians do is initiate a light engagement to force the Russians to use up their ammunition. By slowly increasing the intensity, the Russians are forced to unload their artillery.

Since a Russian multiple-launch rocket system does not have a truck with ammunition following it, after each salvo, the whole system has to drive to the warehouse to reload, which takes a lot of time. And once all artillery systems in the area make a salvo, the Russians lose the ability to conduct concentrated artillery strikes. This is precisely when the Ukrainians start intensifying their actions and sending additional two or three assault units.

At the same time, the Ukrainians are hunting down other types of artillery systems. Ukrainian reconnaissance drone operators work closely with artillery crews, including HIMARS crews, and identify and destroy up to four Russian artillery systems at a time. Due to the lack of artillery support, Russian strong points become much more vulnerable, which allows several Ukrainian infantry squads to approach the trenches and establish control over the positions.

The most effective way to undermine Russian well-prepared fortifications is to create a short-term deficit of ammunition and artillery support by forcing Russians to unload all of their equipment. The first wave of rebuff is the most powerful one because all weapons are obviously loaded and shoot virtually simultaneously. Once the concentration of fire decreases, the Ukrainians gain a window of opportunity. The first line of defense is the most difficult to breach because the Russians are well-prepared for Ukrainian attacks and have plenty of supplies. When the Ukrainians burn Russian reserves and Russian default defensive capabilities deteriorate, Ukrainian forces will finally be able to consider deep front-line penetrations.

In our daily frontline report, we pair up with the military blogger Reporting from Ukraine to keep you informed about what is happening on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
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» Russian Aggression » Frontline report: Russian defense in Zaporizhzhia...
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 01:03
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Originally Posted by Bksmithca
I'm sorry but who gives a F*** if they are gay, white black or whatever. They are fighting for their country
Short answer;The Telegraph thought it important to inform us of this. Quite what their editorial intention was, we can only speculate. And yes, I agree, irrelevant to the matter at hand.
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 01:35
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Originally Posted by fdr
There is no appeasing criminals without consequences. (1938...)
The appeasement in 1938 was done against a background skilling up and tooling up in preparation for war. Some have suggested Chamberlain knew the score, and his letter-waving and "peace in our time" were self-sacrificing cover for what needed to be done to prepare for what was inevitably to come.

Russia are "all in" now - this is existential as far as they are concerned (and whether you or I think that's "rational" or not doesn't matter, only whether they do). Neither the mockery of their inept early performance, nor the suggestions they just go home and forget about it, nor for that matter the hopes that Putin will get ill and die / get overthrown / get therapy and chill out or whatever have discouraged them. They have prepared defensive positions which are proving difficult for a force without equivalent air power to breach. Meanwhile the only countries seemingly taking this seriously as a direct existential threat in "the West" are the ones that know - through harsh lived experience - that it is, e.g. Poland. From what I can see from a distance, Britain is nowhere near a Churchillian commitment to being ready to play a "last ditch" bridgehead role for any potential arrival of the cavalry from over the pond - indeed both sides of the Atlantic are dissolving into cultural infighting and irreconcilable political division (encouraged and catalysed by years of Russian operations). And from what I've read on here those with better knowledge of military - particularly air power - in the UK have concerns with the current state of readiness.


TLDR; I wouldn't be too quick to mock plausible reports of Russian military-industrial capacity increases.
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 02:23
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Originally Posted by fdr
easy,
  1. get out of Ukraine, criminal hordes;
  2. put Putin on trial;
  3. bring popcorn.

fixed.

next question?
I think I hate what the Russians are doing like you do. My point is two-fold, they are already out of the fight and their death accomplishes nothing further for the UKR cause, while with their survival they are a testimony to their people of Putin’s desperate criminality. The real enemy is Putin and his synchphants.
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 02:37
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Originally Posted by fineline
The appeasement in 1938 was done against a background skilling up and tooling up in preparation for war.
I'll take it a notch beyond that. This whole 'appeasement' accusation against Chamberlain was bogus from day one. It was a machiavellian political attack by Churchill that had no basis in truth and was meant solely to shore up Churchill's position and political power. It was a completely unnecessary slandering of an honest and competent man.

In 1938, England had a single infantry division available to be fielded against the Germans, if that. At the time, the British Army's primary purpose was to maintain the colonies and the people wanted to keep it that way after the bloodbath of WW1. Chamberlain had no other option but to parrot the 'Peace in our time' line (while beginning a massive buildup). https: //api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/mar/10/army-estimates-1938

By May of 1939 Chamberlain had introduced conscription of every male into the Army. By September of 1939, when Churchill took over, Britain had 27 infantry Divisions and two armored divisions.

In 1939 Churchill won the Battle of Britain with the planes that Chamberlain built, in 1940 Churchill won the Battle of the Atlantic with the ships that Chamberlain built.
(In May 1939 the Military Training Act 1939 introduced limited conscription to meet the growing threat)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britis...cond_World_War

Chamberlain sacrificed himself for the nation, he never appealed Churchill's unjust judgment of him, he could not do so while the nation was at war.

As an American I am incensed by this use of appeasement as a pejorative. In my lifetime I have seen it used to sell the Vietnam war and later to sell the Iraq war; the unscrupulous use of 'appeasement' was a major selling point for both of those wars. Without those blunders, the US would never have lost the moral high ground and political leadership that it had when I was a young man.
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 04:24
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Thank you Sfojimbo, an interesting and informative perspective. I do note that Churchill offered a stirring eulogy for Chamberlain in parliament after his death in 1940. I wonder if the same honour would be accorded between the bickering merry-go-round of British prime ministers today?

I also miss the America that I perceived from a distance in my youth. Although Vietnam was a bit before my time - I was a small child when the choppers were pulling desperate people off roofs in Saigon - the recent redux in Kabul drew a close to a sorry chapter of policy decisions which contributed in no small part to a loss of moral authority that has helped embolden the totalitarian world. Let us hope the rekindling of that moral clarity in Ukraine in the face of outright, brutal Russian aggression presages a better future. We shall see.
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 05:04
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Risk of a NATO split

fdr:
Should the West increase their support for Ukraine? Absolutely, and ASAP. The longer the war progresses bleeding out Ukrainian blood, the greater the probability that the blood of the other supporting countries will end up being mixed in the field of Ukraine, as awarding a victory to Putin in the field will have a high probability of emboldening his delusions of grandeur, and those clearly include Poland, Romania, Moldova, and the Baltics
Unless there's an increase in support from the West, I can foresee an acrimonious split between those NATO member states which are at the greater immediate risk from Putin's Russia and the remainder. I think it's reasonable to assume that this scenario has already been 'wargamed', in Washington, Moscow and indeed the countries concerned.
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 07:22
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Originally Posted by John Marsh
Unless there's an increase in support from the West, I can foresee an acrimonious split between those NATO member states which are at the greater immediate risk from Putin's Russia and the remainder.
NATO member states have differed in their respective degree of support for Ukraine since the beginning of the war.

I assume you're not suggesting that those members not at immediate risk from Russia are going to abrogate Article 5?
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 08:23
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Originally Posted by DaveReidUK
NATO member states have differed in their respective degree of support for Ukraine since the beginning of the war.
I assume you're not suggesting that those members not at immediate risk from Russia are going to abrogate Article 5?
If things drag on too long, Poland or the Baltics may engage in activities that bring them into military engagement with Russia. In that case, would the other NATO members see article 5 as being violated? Might they try to distance themselves from actions they see as imprudent?
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 08:44
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Originally Posted by Sfojimbo
If things drag on too long, Poland or the Baltics may engage in activities that bring them into military engagement with Russia. In that case, would the other NATO members see article 5 as being violated? Might they try to distance themselves from actions they see as imprudent?
As I understand it, if any member acts unilaterally, then they do so on their own national responsibility and there would be no question of Article 5 being invoked. Obviously if this unilateral action were an immediate response to an attack, that would not be the same at all and Article 5 would , presumably, be enacted as soon as the necessary meetings/agreements were carried out. Where I am completely uncertain is how any cyber attack would be viewed, and what intensity would be required before there would be any joint action.
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Old 4th Jul 2023, 09:07
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Originally Posted by ORAC
Ominous if true and an indication of the failure of the allies to step up production.



It appears that The time windows for an attrition war against Russia was missed.

Months ago, I wrote about the three biggest Russian factories idling their production due to a shortage of electronics.

(twitter.com/pati_marins64/…)


….
This account is not 'neutral'. It has always been biased towards RU.

Sure RU won't run out of weapons any time soon. That' obviously propaganda. Since it is a war of attrition, does anybody believe RU can out-manufacture the West? The SU tried it during the Cold War. We all know how that ended.

What she totally ignores is the ramping up of weapons production in the Free World. It's not just Poland.

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Old 4th Jul 2023, 09:30
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