Russian Invasion of Ukraine 2022

Antonov back in Russian Hands



Bucha heating back up.

Lord Sovereign said:

So far, I must say I am mightily impressed by the sheer bloody mindedness of the Ukrainian Army. They are effectively making Russia pay for every inch and I'm shocked the Kremlin thought it would be any other way. Don't let the Cold War kit fool you, this is a large and coordinated army fighting for the existence of its homeland. And Cold War kit is still dangerous enough.

A quick and easy victory was never on the cards.

Ultimately I think 2014 and Crimea put silly ideas in Putin's head and he's badly misjudged the Ukrainian will to resist. I think there is a chance the war drags on and they bleed Russia so badly that Moscow must negotiate with Kyiv. This is a possibility as, in order to occupy Ukraine (regardless of following hideous insurgency) the Russians have to overcome roughly half a million very angry Ukrainian soldiers.

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Putin never planned on Ukraine folding fast. What he needed to prevent was Zelensky mobilizing the reserves till it was too late.

This is born out by the actual conduct of this war with Ukraine frittering away its forces in local counter-attacks that are tactically successful, but operationally futile.

On the grander operational scale, the Ukrainian Army is being pocketed in Cauldrons and destroyed in detail as it can't mass a Corps Level counter-attack on any of these fronts that stands a chance of ejecting the Russians.

Lord Sovereign said:

So far, I must say I am mightily impressed by the sheer bloody mindedness of the Ukrainian Army. They are effectively making Russia pay for every inch and I'm shocked the Kremlin thought it would be any other way. Don't let the Cold War kit fool you, this is a large and coordinated army fighting for the existence of its homeland. And Cold War kit is still dangerous enough.

A quick and easy victory was never on the cards.

Ultimately I think 2014 and Crimea put silly ideas in Putin's head and he's badly misjudged the Ukrainian will to resist. I think there is a chance the war drags on and they bleed Russia so badly that Moscow must negotiate with Kyiv. This is a possibility as, in order to occupy Ukraine (regardless of following hideous insurgency) the Russians have to overcome roughly half a million very angry Ukrainian soldiers.

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Do we have any evidence that the Russians really actually thought this would be easy? All those claims seem to come from the US or Ukraine. If anything the Russians simply are using their worst troops and equipment as meat shields for the better stuff/units in the subsequence echelons except in exceptional cases like the First Guards Tank Army and VDV as well as Spetznaz. Fix with your worst and then exploit the opportunities created by the initial attacks with the 2nd and 3rd echelons once the enemy has committed/been fixed in place. It actually works to Russia's operational benefit to use shittier troops in the first wave to tie down Ukrainian forces in extended combat when their lack of training/experience means the fight cannot be decided quickly and it gives the Ukrainians hope they can win the engagement, while the better units in subsequent moves can then exploit the gaps created by Ukrainian forces being already locked in.

The Soviets did this in WW2 in Bagration, locking in German troops with their shitty rifle division meat shields while the cavalry-mechanized groups (later developed into Operational Mobile Groups during the Cold War) exploited gaps they created, while the extended first line fighting tied up enemy forces so they couldn't retreat and couldn't easily tell what the main effort actually was. Its a bloody brutal strategy, but it works well against a capable though numerically smaller enemy. Like the Germans during Bagration, Ukrainian reserves were minimal, so the operational technique is working as intended. Big wars (relative to the times) like this are messy and take time to work out. Operation Bagration took a month to play out in Belarus, a much smaller country, despite the Soviets having a massively larger numerical advantage in that campaign. Not to mention much more experience.

We can see from the maps that the Russian forces are currently pocketing the Ukrainians quite well and cutting them off of seaport access, which is the quickest and easiest way for them to get resupply:

Lord Sovereign said:

So far, I must say I am mightily impressed by the sheer bloody mindedness of the Ukrainian Army. They are effectively making Russia pay for every inch and I'm shocked the Kremlin thought it would be any other way. Don't let the Cold War kit fool you, this is a large and coordinated army fighting for the existence of its homeland. And Cold War kit is still dangerous enough.

A quick and easy victory was never on the cards.

Ultimately I think 2014 and Crimea put silly ideas in Putin's head and he's badly misjudged the Ukrainian will to resist. I think there is a chance the war drags on and they bleed Russia so badly that Moscow must negotiate with Kyiv. This is a possibility as, in order to occupy Ukraine (regardless of following hideous insurgency) the Russians have to overcome roughly half a million very angry Ukrainian soldiers.

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Yeah, no.

They are eight days into a war that none of the initially deployed units knew was coming. The Russian air force has been largely absent. Russian heavy artillery has been (relatively) absent.

Russia tried some thunder runs hoping to get lucky, those largely failed. That does not change the underlying force correlations or capabilities.

The Ukrainians will fight, they will make Russia bleed, and the long term occupation will be hell for Russia. But Ukraine actually standing a chance of making the initial capture bloody enough for Russia to essentially ask for terms? Not a chance.

Look at the map two weeks, a month, three months, and six months from now.

That southern prong that took the nuclear reactor yesterday? It's going to keep going North following the Dnieper river and securing every river crossing along the way. That will cut off everything between the River and the Russian border; and everything in that area is going to have no electricity and a general disruption of transport and infrastructure while the Russians get to basically run rampant.

To a large extent, Russia wants Ukraine to fight stand up fights and attempt to hold cities. Ukraine has a finite amount of military hardware, a finite amount of infrastructure, and a finite amount of people willing (and able) to fight. The more of all of those concentrated in one spot, the easier it is for Russia to bring heavy artillery, air power, and overwhelming force to bare. Yes, urban warfare can be hell (although it does get easier if you are willing to level the whole place with heavy artillery) but in the longer term it is less of an issue than hundreds or thousands of dozen to two hundred man strong bands equipped with night vision, secure radios, effective small arms, and supply caches dispersed across the whole of the countryside.

A Russian occupation where snipers are constantly taking pot shots before fading, where man portable mortars will fire a few rounds on a Russian squad before fading, where any lone armored vehicles will get Javelined out of nowhere, where Stingers drop helicopters basically at random, etc. is far more costly (in men, money, and time) than stand up fights.

And the people fighting in those cities are the same ones who would be, in future, the guerrilla leaders.

Yes, Ukraine is getting flooded with western military equipment but that is going to continue up until Russia is able to seal the borders. Anything that slows that process results, longer term, in a worse outcome for Russia.

Ah, fuck, Cammelface is coming back to Europe to fuck over whatever is still left unfucked.
Maybe she will outdo herself and get the Eurocrats to expel Poland and help Russia pacify Ukraine, then partition it, who knows.

Emperor Tippy said:

A Russian occupation where snipers are constantly taking pot shots before fading, where man portable mortars will fire a few rounds on a Russian squad before fading, where any lone armored vehicles will get Javelined out of nowhere, where Stingers drop helicopters basically at random, etc. is far more costly (in men, money, and time) than stand up fights.

And the people fighting in those cities are the same ones who would be, in future, the guerrilla leaders.

Yes, Ukraine is getting flooded with western military equipment but that is going to continue up until Russia is able to seal the borders. Anything that slows that process results, longer term, in a worse outcome for Russia.

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I think you are over-estimating the average Ukrainian's desire to fight.
From what I hear, they have been dodging conscription en masse.
Chances are the majority of them will just move to the rump state to the west or go back to civilian life.

Emperor Tippy said:

They are eight days into a war that none of the initially deployed units knew was coming. The Russian air force has been largely absent. Russian heavy artillery has been (relatively) absent.

Russia tried some thunder runs hoping to get lucky, those largely failed. That does not change the underlying force correlations or capabilities.

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Do we know that to be accurate? There is a lot of disinformation out there right now.
Assuming that is it fits with what I was saying about the Russians using their conscripts as meat shields to fix and lock in Ukrainian units while the better ones in the 2nd echelon and beyond have all the firepower and support to exploit the gaps so they can pocket the Ukrainians locked in. Why waste limited firepower supporting units that are supposed to fix the enemy by locking them in extended combat?

Rob Lee Tweeting an Article about the particular efforts of Ukrainian Special Forces and their operations in the Kyiv suburbs where the front in that particular area hasn't moved terribly much reportedly. The Ukrainian Special Forces had extensive training with US and NATO military trainers, especially on how to use their anti-tank weaponry.



I'd post the Wall Street Journal article but they're typically behind a paywall.

He also predicts that Russia's military will be overextended for the near future.



A train of Shillkas and other cutting edge equipment heading to the conflict zone. Since there isn't much of an air threat, those old AA guns could find some utility engaged in a different and almost just as famous pastime soon...



Russian Senator named Lyudmila Narusova reportedly makes a comment just as reckless as Lindsey Grahams's the other day!



Russia has blocked Facebook and Twitter for the "fake news" reportedly.


Make your jokes.

Chiron said:

No comment

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Looks like they sold their shares the day before the Invasion, on February 23rd.

USA Today said:

"TRS’s remaining exposure to holdings in Russia is proportionately negligible in a portfolio of about $26 billion," Barnes said in a statement Friday.

About $30 million of TRS's $26 billion investment portfolio — around 0.12% — is in Russian investments, Barnes previously said.
Barnes added that their stake in Sberbank consisted of $15 million in investments over several years, beginning in 2017, with the loss at their Feb. 23 sale "offset by dividends of about $3 million paid over the timeframe, resulting in a net gain of about $200,000."

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Emperor Tippy said:

Yes, Ukraine is getting flooded with western military equipment but that is going to continue up until Russia is able to seal the borders. Anything that slows that process results, longer term, in a worse outcome for Russia.

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It's cute you think Russia has any chance of actually sealing the borders.

Agent23 said:

I think you are over-estimating the average Ukrainian's desire to fight.
From what I hear, they have been dodging conscription en masse.
Chances are the majority of them will just move to the rump state to the west or go back to civilian life.

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You don't need the average person to fight, or to be willing to fight.

What you need is a relative handful of people willing (and equipped) to fight and then a general population that is neutral in those fighters favor.

You need locals willing to tell the fighters where Russian forces are and locals unwilling to tell the Russian's about the fighters sitting out in the woods.

A sniper sits around and then takes a pot shot at an officer, then they dissapear. If a Hind, for example, gets called in to engage them then the guy with a Stinger takes his own pot shot and disappears. A tank is moving? Then someone uses a Javelin to wreck it before fading away.

A town has a few dozen Russian troops occupying it. Well one day they find themselves set upon by a hundred guerillas who kill them all and then fade away into the general population.

The hardest part of truly effective/painful insurgency is getting resources. Well if, with the willing help of the Ukrainian government, the US provides entire container ships of not just small arms but secure radios, satellite phones, small drones, C4, night vision, body armor, etc. and has all of that broken up into small supply caches spread across the whole of the nation then suddenly the hardest part of effective insurgency is taken care of.

And lets not get into the (almost certain) US deployment of deniable trainers for those future insurgents. One of the core purposes of the Green Berets is training insurgency forces.

You think Iraq or Afghanistan were bad? What do you think happens when the US is feeding intelligence information, including satellite surveillance and ELINT, to the insurgents on the ground and has the entire US propaganda ecosystem spinning the insurgents as the good guys. Russians massacre a village, for example, and suddenly it is being streamed on CNN in full color 1080p.

Funding? Well those insurgents will basically have limitless foreign funding. Less useful inside of the area given the sanctions and how isolated the area is/will be but still very useful.

Vaermina said:

It's cute you think Russia has any chance of actually sealing the borders.

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At scale? They absolutely do. The US, right now, could fly an entire C-130 filled with - for example - Javelins into Poland, load them onto a truck, and then just drive them into Ukraine via a major highway.

Stopping THAT kind of thing is what Russia is initially worried about.

Or the "here's twenty million rounds of crated 5.56 and ten thousand M16A2's complete with underbarrel grenade launchers and a few hundred grenades each" shipments.

Where Ukraine can take all of those small arms and then just go town to town and say "Free weapons and ammo for everyone who wants some" and let all of that hardware just walk away, deliberately untracked and untraced, with the locals to be hidden away as and how they will.

The Whispering Monk said:

Like other posters...the downsides to geeking Putin are pretty dang bad.

Putin goes and you'll likely see a fight over Russia that'll make the fall of Yugoslavia look like a scuffle between the Sharks and the Jets.

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They would also retaliate against our "leadership" whether that is an upside or a downside i leave to you.

Emperor Tippy said:

You don't need the average person to fight, or to be willing to fight.

What you need is a relative handful of people willing (and equipped) to fight and then a general population that is neutral in those fighters favor.

You need locals willing to tell the fighters where Russian forces are and locals unwilling to tell the Russian's about the fighters sitting out in the woods.

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Russians know that as well comrade.

So they will round up a bunch of people into camps, find collaborators and make them the new elite and make it clear its loyalty to Comrade Putin or the grave.

Worked in Chechnya. All major resistance stopped in 09, a minor ISIS resurgence was mercilessly crushed by Kadyrov and everyone else decided to take Putin's silver instead of his lead.

It will be the same in Ukraine.

As for the propaganda front: How many divisions does Twitter have?

Answer is none Comrade and who cares if Onlyfans cuts Russian Men off from its porn, it just means they will go for actual Russian Women then.



A reminder that Putin has all the cards to play. Too bad for Egypt if they can't import wheat or Potash. Sissi better stock up on bullets.

The War in Ukraine

Looks like the Donetsk and Luhansk Fronts are moving. Volnovakhia has fallen which tightens the siege of Mariupol.

A thrust at Krasnyi Lyman is also developing.

Also seems Russian Forces are working to clear the Kherson Estuary so the Russian Navy can move in and support the attack on Mykolaiv and begin the attack on Odessa.

Some twitter rumors of a new OMG forming in Crimea but all images are from the 25th so until something concrete comes, that is likely Twitter trolling.



Ukrainians who managed to get out of Kharkiv.

Floridaman said:

They would also retaliate against our "leadership" whether that is an upside or a downside i leave to you.

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Upside.

Chiron said:

Russians know that as well comrade.

So they will round up a bunch of people into camps, find collaborators and make them the new elite and make it clear its loyalty to Comrade Putin or the grave.

Worked in Chechnya. All major resistance stopped in 09, a minor ISIS resurgence was mercilessly crushed by Kadyrov and everyone else decided to take Putin's silver instead of his lead.

It will be the same in Ukraine.

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As soon as Putin pulls a million or two of extra troops out of his ass.
I'll explain to it to you on the level of a primary school math problem.
If Russia needed to use 70-80k troops to suppress Chechnya each time, with its population of 1.1-1.2m at the time, how many troops will Russia need to suppress roughly 40m Ukraine?
How many additional troops does Putin need to arrange to reach similar proportion of occupier to citizen to Chechnya?

The most effective way to crush an insurgency is colonization which is something that Putin might actually be willing to do.

I think someone posted a video that apparently the initial invasions plans were captured, and the Russian plan was apparently a 15 day invasion. If that was their timeline, the invasion would supposed to be "complete" by March 11. Or maybe it was to take Mariupol? So, if their plan was Mariupol in 15 days, they seem more or less on time schedule with their original plans.

Regular reminder that in the second Iraq War the drive from Kuwait to Bagdad took March 20th to April 9th, about 20 days. Kuwait to Bagdad was about 500 km, about 25 km per day average.

So, getting from the border to Kiev would take about a week, which it did, where its slowed. The advance in the south from Crimea to Mariupol is about 300 km, so the same rate of advance to take that city would be about 12 days, so from invasion start day of Feb 24 would be them taking it on March 8th, which they might do.

So, if the US rate of advance in the 2003 invasion of Iraq is considered fairly quick, the Russians are keeping that rate of advance more or less. And I don't think anyone really praised the hard will and determination of Sadams forces.

If there's going to be some march on Lviv necessary to bring this to a close, from a Crimea staging area is a 1,000 km march, so at 25 km/day that march would take about 40 days. Over that long of a campaign, maintaining a 25 km/day rate of advance is very difficult, and you normally do that in 100 km bursts every week or so. So it would be more like a 100 day campaign.

This being 1-2 years long and going well for Russia while lasting that long, are not mutually exclusive. The Russians may expect a war that long.

After all, the combat phase of the second Chechen War lasted 9 months according to wiki. And that was over a 150 km wide area. And Russia was willing to overall absorb about 7,000 forces deaths for that little area.

Keep in mind the Russians (well, Russian cause) per wiki, has already suffered 6,000 casualties for this cause, before this recent invasion. If the Russians take the Ukrainian issue as seriously as they claim, they may be willing to endure 10,000s of casualties for this.

I guess were going to see if this war resolves things, or it petters out at some point but without peace, so you settle into 6 months of phony war as forces get re-built up and the next round of conscripts. Which of course is how you get modern very long wars, like the Iran-Iraq war which dragged on for 8 years.

Floridaman said:

They would also retaliate against our "leadership" whether that is an upside or a downside i leave to you.

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That would make the Democrats' Russophobia go even more into overdrive!

Captain X said:

Looks like pro-Russian propaganda to me. What's so interesting about it?

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I'm wondering why you consider this a reason to dismiss it? Like, Mein Kamp is definitely propaganda, as its a book which Hitler argues his case for what he think needs to happen and why. Its a work of persuasion. But, if you wanted to understand why Hitler wanted to do what he did, as far as I'm aware its a fairly honest and direct laying out of his general case.

Everything is basically propaganda, in the sense it exists to try and be persuasive to some end or another. The more significant issue I would think is

1) Is this generally honest? It it telling you what they really think?

2) Is the argument being made persuasive to you?

That you don't find the argument persuasive is one thing, but your acting more like nothing was said at all, or that its all lies or bad faith.

I am dismissive of it because not long into it I could tell that it was disingenuous. It does not in any way present truth, rather it is someone's suppositions based nearly entirely on fantasy.

Even Pool is starting to get fed up with Zelenski's overexaggerated propaganda, after this whole issue with the nuclear plant attack that sort-of happened yesterday. No rad release has actually been detected, the fighting seems like it was most at the admin building, and yet Zelenski made it sound like a reactor or conatinment vessel was breached during fighting in his initial statements.

At this point I think Zelenski is getting dangerously close to actually becoming the next Baghdad Bob.

Bacle said:

Even Pool is starting to get fed up with Zelenski's overexaggerated propaganda, after this whole issue with the nuclear plant attack that sort-of happened yesterday. No rad release has actually been detected, the fighting seems like it was most at the admin building, and yet Zelenski made it sound like a reactor or conatinment vessel was breached during fighting in his initial statements.

At this point I think Zelenski is getting dangerously close to actually becoming the next Baghdad Bob.

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I like Tim Pool for the most part but his titles are always the most click bait thing ever. Anyways the people claiming WW3 are obviously unhinged or have bunkers to hide in once they fuck up the world.