It says it's been moved, but the link just takes me to the Community page. What gives?


This is now the active "shit (might be) is definitely happening in Ukraine" thread.

News links, thanks to BerettaGuy:


Please @ me with additional stuff to be added here. I don't currently have time to properly curate this thread otherwise.

New news link c/o berettaguy:

Ukrainian Pravda
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/

Stop fake, anti - disinformation site:
https://www.stopfake.org/en/main/

Ghost year

I’m skeptical about air space but it’s possible. S-350 and 500 is all I care about Attached File

The counter-argument I've seen is that they are older, tanks left in storage in the Crimea, and the Russians are going to give them to the local National Guard style forces, not use them for their own forces.  

Besides, wasn't Russia supposed to be out of missals and tanks and men and fuel over two months ago?  And yet, they keep advancing.

Keep advancing? In the second month they gave up half the territory they gained in the first month and in the third month they pushed a tenth of the front 15km forward and you say they keep advancing like that’s something impressive?

No, I read it in Reuters. Like Pravda, only different.

Are you saying their Constitution is treated like our Constitution?

Or are the 5 political parties all in lockstep with Putin's orders?

The T-62's are supposed to be from a reserve unit. So the only thing that would make any sense is that they'll be used for counter-partizan ops behind the lines.
There doesn't seem to be any significant tank vs tank battles, so they're only likely to go up against infantry. Their main problem is that they have no ERA, no NV/thermal sights, and almost every AT weapon on the battlefield is capable of defeating them. They do have a manual loader, so it will be interesting to see if they're popping turrets like the autoloaders.

F-35s laugh in Hebrew at Russian hundreds series.

In Melitopol

Lynan is getting pressed.

https://youtu.be/5O73XOA3Gjc

Russians have entered the city from north and east.  Not good.

Mike

You're telling me Russia is going to be one big open air classic car show soon?

The S-500 haven’t been deployed to Syria. It just got to Moscow this year.

Lyman is gone. Bakhmut better hold or that’s gonna cause big problems for Ukraine.
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Could a Ukrainian RPG-7 take out a T-62?

Let me just say "Fuck France, Germany, and Italy!"  

Seems to be impressive enough to the Ukrainians, as they're throwing everything they have, including various Territorial Defense Units to the eastern front, and still are getting pushed back.  All the magic weapons promised to them from NATO countries aren't doing the job in keeping the Russians at bay, who are doing their modern Winter War method of using massive arty strikes to slowly, grindly, advance, take control of areas, and kill lots of their opponents.

If Russia is doing that badly, as all media outlets constantly claim, always with the same Smug Satisfaction!!! as when they would report on the death of someone from the Wuhan, who hadn't gotten a Wuhan shot, why are they able to keep advancing on the eastern front?  Calm before the Ukrainian counteroffensive?  Just days/weeks/months before those "crippling" sanctions kick in, and Russian can't afford to load up a single 5.45mm round?

Media hype, Defenders of Snake Island the Ghost of Kiev, and Smug Satisfaction! aside, facts on the ground are not favorable to Ukraine.  Their forces are being ground up and destroyed, in one unpronounceable town after the other by the Russians.   Ukraine seems to think that time is on their side, and that the longer the war continues, the better off conditions will be for them, via the massive inflow of NATO weapons and (most importantly) money, most of which will be stolen - Ukraine is one of the most corrupt counties in Europe.  But so far, sanctions on Russia (most of which don't matter, as the increase in the price of oil and gas have made up for them) and NATO weapons have not turned the tide.  Ukraine is losing troops and equipment that is at a rate not sustainable, all while continuing to lose ground.  

Half the Greek population and government and Bulgarian population and Hungary aren’t much different. Then there’s the rest of the world India, South Africa, Ethiopia etc. Attached File
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I think it's a given that a sviernodesk is going to get surrounded.  The saving grace may be those shoots that flow off the hills they can hit their m777's and she'll the shit out of popsana salient.

Yes, even the older PG7-VL can kill it. Even from the front. The PG7-VR will blow through both sides of it.

Has there been any OSINT-type talk about Russian forces that can still threaten Kyiv?

Have they just given up on the northern front, or are they rebuilding some sort of attack capability there?

I’ll believe it when I see it but since you asked
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It doesn't look all that rosey to me at the moment. When do these new ukraine reinforcements show up? When do the new weapons show up? A shitty old russian tank will still matter if there are enough of them. And russians are all about volume over quality, as always. They are using their old tactics of disposable troops and equipment. Ukraine needs to do something different if they want to hold ground.

I tried not to laugh, really.

Huh. It would make sense, get Ukie forces heavily committed in the east, then move back to Kyiv, but we'll see.

Is this WWIII?  Russia joins the Chechens to go into Poland?  These people
are insane!

Training someone to be competent on the battlefield takes a couple of months for the bare minimum. Press releases saying certain countries are sending arms does not mean they will be there next day delivery, especially those that require training.
The difference will really be seen in June.
Russia seems to be happy to just send people off the street to soak up bombs and bullets. That catches up to you eventually.

None that I've seen, even from pro-Ruskie Telegraph posters.

The Kiev front was one of 3 things:

1. A terrible miscalculation by Russia on how easy it was going to be to invade and take over Ukraine, compounded by bad equipment and tactics.

2. A feint, done merely to tie up Ukrainian forces who would be focused on protecting the capitol at all costs, while the other Russian forces moved into the east and south.

3. A gamble of a "Thunder Run", where a relatively small and not well supplied attack force makes a move on a capitol city, hoping the enemy will just fold up and run away (as happened in Baghdad in 2003), leaving the city to surrender.

Or maybe 3, with the benefit of causing 2.  I don't think anyone except the Russians know at this point, and please don't post some Smug Satisfaction! photo of a burned out Russian tank to try to prove it was scenario 1.  If amateurs talk strategy while professionals talk logistics, then novices post random pictures of destroyed equipment and try to say who's winning based on that.  

And it could be a mixture of all three - thinking the Thunder Run was going to be all that was needed, and then not even doing a very good job supporting a slimmed down attack force, while consoling themselves on it tying up forces elsewhere.  Note in the Winter War with Finland, it was unclear if Russia ever really wanted to try to take Helsinki and was stopped, or if they had no plans to go that far.  

In any case, it's unlikely that Russia will try another move on Kiev.  Odessa would be a more achievable target at this point, and one that Russia could feel they could take without upping the stakes with NATO, as with as much political investment as NATO countries have put into Ukraine, they can't allow Kiev to be taken over at this point.  Odessa would be more in line with the long game that Putin has shown elsewhere, such as in Syria, where Russia slowly and gradually helped Assad destroy his enemies.  

Taking Odessa would cut off Ukraine from the sea, leaving it to rely on antiquated rail and road systems from what I've read, for trade.  It would cripple the countries economy, leaving it a vassal, beggar state relying on NATO and the EU (which might not be a bad thing in the eyes of Ukraine's ruling elite - more foreign money to steal).  

But Russia has made no serious move on Odessa yet.  They seem to be concentrating their forces in the east, and will probably grind Ukraine down there.  If Ukraine is sufficiently weakened from a loss in the east, then maybe Russia make a move on Odessa.  We shall see how things progress in the next month.

Ukraine isn’t throwing everything into this fight. They are also pushing in Karkhiv and have concentrated troops for an offensive in the south. They have more equipment than they started with and are mobilizing additional troops.

There have been multi brigade tank battles. Particularly near Kharkiv.

I haven't seen any evidence that the Ukrainians are "throwing everything they have". They have hundreds of thousands of men in training and several brigades on the border with Belarus and Transnistria. If anything, it appears they are using economy of force and trying to hold on with "just enough" for as long as possible. The reason you would do this is so that you can use the combat power elsewhere or at a later time. Hence, the offensive that forced the Russians away from Kharkiv just a few days ago.

Russians have numerical superiority in local sectors of the battlefields in the east. They do NOT have numerical superiority in Ukraine as a whole. But with Zelensky's goal of 1 million troops even local superiority isn't going to last.

Even so, they are drawing ancient relics out of storage for combat. T-62's? What's next T-55's?  Why do you think they would be doing that if they have thousands of T-72's in storage? They've suffered heavy losses of their best tank forces. There were never as many late model, upgraded tanks as people were led to believe. They were being pilfered in storage, sold off, cannibalized to keep the parades going. The T-62's and 64's were their deep reserves and ultimately destined to be sold off to client states as monkey models - the Syrias, African republics, Venezuela, whoever. And how about the Russian AeroSpace Force? Flying around with handheld GPS to strike targets with coordinates from hand penciled notes.

You are witnessing a slow motion apocalypse. And your normalcy bias (or just perhaps your desire to spite the people you hate, your cultural enemies, the managerial class) is perhaps, leading you astray.

As far as Smug Satisfaction goes, I have a little thrill in my heart at the sight of every popped top of a Russian tank or crispy comrade stuck in a death rictus hanging halfway out of a BMP. I consider that Javelin money well spent.  They started a war of aggression for the purpose of territorial conquest. The intention was absolutely to destroy Ukraine and reduce its people to a state of terrified servitude Instead, Russia is bleeding itself out day by day. They are extending the process by utilizing their poor meat puppets in the DPR and LPR, press-ganged off the streets so they can keep their own casualties low. But you've got refusers  whole units refusing to fight now. Eventually there won't be enough Chechens to murder and bully them into submission. And then the Chechens will have to do something beyond making Tik Tok videos.

Russia is a semi-peripheral country. A 2nd world country, at its base. They are down to using scavenged household appliances to furnish components for missiles. Because they are incapable of providing their own. They will run out of the good stuff. It's just a matter of time. And then their casualties grow even faster.

At the same time, slowly and shittily, the west is re-equipping Ukraine with NATO gear. This is a clue for the future. It is going to be big business feeding 155mm artillery shells, 5.56 NATO, 81mm and 60mm mortars, SINCGARS, Harris radios This is the new frontier the military industrial complex. Every NATO arms consortium is going to be showcasing its weapons against poor DPR bastards east of the Dneiper. And yeah, some of it will be stolen. But so what?

This is already very clearly, not Afghanistan. The Ukrainians are really in this to fight. Not to just make money as long as they can then trample each other climbing into the ass end of a C17 to the land of the big PX.  A great deal of that equipment is going to be used as intended. Unlike Afghanistan, NATO can't just abandon them and pretend they don't exist. They aren't some land locked country on the literal opposite side of the world. Ukraine directly borders two NATO countries, which from a treaty perspective, is the same as bordering Maine.

So, yeah. Things will be dicey and go back and forth. But, I see time as favoring the Ukrainians. Not Russia.

The Russians can't be on offense and defense at the same time. Either they push forward or get beaten back. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, can do both because they have both greater manpower and materiel to do so. That's why Ukraine will ultimately push the Russians out. What happens then remains to be seen. If the Ukrainians stop at their own internationally recognized borders, then Russia is likely to stop but Putin likely won't survive the defeat. If the Ukrainians decide they want to take and hold "Russian" territory, then Russia will likely use tactical nukes because they won't have any conventional army left to do the job of fighting the Ukrainians.