Lol my very first reaction upon seeing the results so far of the offensive was that Muradov must have replaced Zaluzhny. Unfortunately it’s a very, very safe assumption that MoD is working overtime to sabotage the so far successful defense because that what they get paid to do..by the West. Anyone who follows this blog knows that true. What has unironically shocked me the most is seeing Russias aviation working normally. It’s not just John Deers the crocodiles have been wrecking but they are responsible for a lot of the armor kills so far. Russian troops having reliable air cover is a total novelty for the not war and I’m guessing that really wasn’t expected by Kiev. I’m also assuming that phone calls are being made to turn that off. Strelkovs guess that the Ukrainians are banking on shell hunger to take its toll on the defenders is also believable enough.
Pretty sad that “whoa Russian lines haven’t collapsed yet” is cause for celebration but here we are. Hope it keeps up.
Strelkov forecasting protracted stalemate, sounding more like Vietnam every day - more $$ to the arms dealers/manufacturers.
Strelkov says : To date: the auxiliary attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have not led to any results, except for heavy losses. We failed to take Novodonetskoye, in the rest of the sectors - at best, small tactical successes, measured in a few kilometers of the "gray zone" and several hundred meters deep in our forward positions. Near Donetsk - no change. Under Bakhmut - small (and insignificant from all points of view) tactical advances of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. On the main axis, the enemy goes "for broke", stubbornly attacking our positions in order to break through the front. At the moment - after a day of continuous fighting, it is indirectly known about minor penetrations, there are no breakthroughs. And there are big losses. A significant part of them are in minefields in the "gray zone" and from our air strikes there. It suddenly became clear that our aviation was ready for just such a development of events as a massive night attack, it was able to fire guided missiles at night no worse than during the day, and prepared in advance for an enemy attack. Now the "partners" have two options: stop burning their reserves in frontal attacks, crawl back and regroup (in fact, curtail the offensive at the very beginning) or still try - using the significant superiority created in the number of people and line units - to first push through the front , and then try to break through it (as they did last year near Davydov Brod in the Kherson region). I assume that the enemy will not stop the attacks that have been launched, will not change plans on the go, and we will have a long bloody battle. Depending on the success of the enemy, it can last from several days (4-5) to 2-3 weeks. If the enemy manages to achieve at least minimally encouraging successes, he will beat and beat in the hope of a breakthrough. No - attacks will gradually fade as losses increase.....
Our counter-offensive after repulsing the enemy offensive is not to be expected even in the most optimistic scenario - the enemy, even after the defeat, will have a serious superiority in manpower and the number of combined arms formations. Without broad mobilization and the creation of new armies and corps (an additional 300,000 military personnel - at least more or less normally trained, armed and equipped) - the RF Armed Forces will not be able to successfully attack with the strategic goals of defeating the enemy.
"... the UAF launched this attack despite not being ready. That it was Washington who put pressure on them to attack. Therefore, all the UAF has to do is make a good show of trying before backing off and going back to doing nothing while sponging up ever more money, equipment and adoration from their Western allies"
Your last paragraph really rings true. The whole idea of announcing your counter-offensive publicly seemed very odd to me. Why would you deliberately alert your enemy to an attack? Wouldn't it make more sense to conceal plans for a major offensive?
If you remember that, at a high level, this war is being fought by the US then it makes perfect sense that the purpose of announcing the counter-offensive is to get the hohols to go all-out and hopefully take more Russian territory to attempt to end this on a high note. As badly as things are going for Russia, they are also going bad, maybe worse, for the US. They want to wrap this up before election season, or at least put this on the back burner out of public view to make this whole Ukraine debacle less embarassing.
I don't see the point of this 'announce your attack' so many people make an issue of. Everyone was prophesying the attack. If Kiev didn't say they'd do it then they'd be the odd man out It would be tantamount to saying 'we are not going to attack'. And who would believe that?
The narrative had/has its own dynamic and it's not that it is a convoluted story: you either attack or you don't and I say again despite the total disinterest of the whole world: Kiev is the attacker and always has been. Simply being in Donbas is part of an attack. The whole thing is about Kiev's attack.
And Kiev's attack is part of America's attack.
And groping towards understanding what Rolo and friends of the same ilk seem to be saying America's attack is part of a largely Jewish international conspiracy of mega oligarchs to bring down Russia and divide it up.
So it never was 'will they attack' it was always and still is: 'Can we ever stop their attack and turn them back'.
Which truth if presented to the inert masses I believe would do much to remove support for the conflict and hence save lives.
So I keep asking all and sundry to present it everywhere and any way they can.
Medvedev said they would go on the offense after they stopped the Ukr counter-offense. I tend to believe him. So we may see more activity after this.
The AFU may still be short manpower and is short on equipment. But the NATO isn't. I have this theory that Z has made an agreement with Poland to the extend that Poland will support the AFU, but only on the west bank of the Dnieper. (This may be one factor in the dam break.) And only after the counter offense of the AFU failed.
Its interesting to see today that the NATO is now saying that "a NATO member may move troops to the Ukraine on their own, not directly supported by NATO"
There are only two feasible hypotheses for the dam. 1. The Ukies (probably using underwater drones or something like that blew it Or 2. The dam weakened by systematic Ukie shelling over a long period and having unusually high water levels finally just burst. I think the former probably a bit more feasible as the coincidence with it happening just as the offensive begins seems just a bit too much to swallow.
The idea that the Russians may have done it was patently absurd from the beginning. The idea that the US (on its own did it) is just as absurd. Of course they might have ordered the Ukies to do it, but the Ukies seem to have wanted to for a long time anyway, hence their repeated shelling of it. For them it has many plusses: -to show the local population the Russians cannot defend them; --to just vindictively harm the local population for being Russian speaking; --to cut water supply to the power plant and Crimea; --to serve as massive distraction for the Russians as their offensive starts; --. And maybe most importantly if their offensive failed it would give them a kind of victory to savour – at least they hurt the Russians and their people there.
Oh, and Rolo, saying the dam blown impeded the Ukies doesn’t make much sense at all. The worst choice for their offense would have been trying to cross the Dnieper in force – they’d have been sitting ducks in the water and on the other bank- and keeping their forces supplied across the river would have been a nightmare for them. I can’t see them having seriously contemplated that, so please drop raking up that silly idea.
One interesting point from this, however, is that it does show that the Russian (apparently Surovikin’s) decision to withdraw from the west bank was a very sensible one, and I’m saying that as someone who did criticize that bitterly when it happened. Blowing the dam then would have totally isolated their forces on n the west bank.
Funny how I didn't critique Surovikin at the time and predicted the retreat.
The population in the area is mixed. I'd say they lean Russian. But the war has shown that most Ukrainians are now anti-Russian. This is because of the propaganda and because of how badly Russia has been fighting and the perception that they are the aggressors.
The dam did indeed impede the Ukrainians and now they're forced to concentrate their attacks in only two places. I never said that Russia destroyed the dam only that they benefitted more from it militarily than Ukraine.
And another thing I would say is that I know it is very early but I still think it is late enough, we've seen enough, that there should be much discussion about just where they got the manpower from and the equipment from and the ammunition from? They are apparently firing shells all along the front like there's no tomorrow and I don't know what to use for metric but somehow doesn't every shell fired today in support of an attack that will supposedly penetrate represent a presumed 'back up repository' of shells that will be required to support that penetration if made?
I've got no idea how to measure it but instinct tells me that if I'm going to expend one tonne of ammo on the front line attack now I need at least 10 times that much in reserve. Probably twenty.
So: what are they judged to have expended today and what does that say about what they have?
And all our armchair experts from the most casual untutored 'off the cuff' to the supposedly very expert trained and experienced have long been predicting failure of their whole military machine for want of ammunition.
So the question is what area is it that all observers have failed to look in? How did it escape their attention? Perhaps its simple: no one was actually looking anywhere. The whole narrative fed to us was improvised on the spot by talking heads simply blathering.
"The fact that they are still attacking, and with increased intensity means that they have prepared a large force and think that they still have a chance, despite the setbacks. They had the option of calling it quits when the initial probes failed and the dam was destroyed, but chose to press on regardless" They had the option of calling it quits when BoJo showed up. Ukraine is very obviously under great pressure from the Washington, and Washington in turn is being pressured by upcoming elections. If all that materializes from this is lukewarm military activity, then much to the chagrin of the neocons, the people might become bored by the war, and an accounting of why the ticket for this boring entertainment is so expensive might become an election issue.
That in turn will threaten Western Democracy, don't you see, because it will become increasingly difficult to persuade the voters that what they really want is exactly what the elites are telling them they do. Whatever will happen if the propaganda consensus starts to shift out of alignment?
A good time for some inspirational wartime derrign-do.
AFU paid with Western armored vehicles for suicidal tactics
This statement was made by a high-ranking European officer, Asia Times reports.
“If you want to attack and you have a dozen brigades and a few dozen tanks, you concentrate them and try to break through. The Ukrainians are rushing in five different directions. We tried to tell them to stop this scattered tactics, to determine the main attack with proper infantry support and then did what they can," the officer said.
>Washington has been doing everything it can to escalate the conflict while also drip-feeding Ukraine supplies with the goal of prolonging the blood-letting.
Washington, the nominal capital city of the ethnically subjugated America.
Lol my very first reaction upon seeing the results so far of the offensive was that Muradov must have replaced Zaluzhny. Unfortunately it’s a very, very safe assumption that MoD is working overtime to sabotage the so far successful defense because that what they get paid to do..by the West. Anyone who follows this blog knows that true. What has unironically shocked me the most is seeing Russias aviation working normally. It’s not just John Deers the crocodiles have been wrecking but they are responsible for a lot of the armor kills so far. Russian troops having reliable air cover is a total novelty for the not war and I’m guessing that really wasn’t expected by Kiev. I’m also assuming that phone calls are being made to turn that off. Strelkovs guess that the Ukrainians are banking on shell hunger to take its toll on the defenders is also believable enough.
Pretty sad that “whoa Russian lines haven’t collapsed yet” is cause for celebration but here we are. Hope it keeps up.
It is becoming more apparent that the progress of the conflict will be determined by politics/machinations than pukka military stratagems.
https://vk.com/igoristrelkov?w=wall347260249_678711
Strelkov forecasting protracted stalemate, sounding more like Vietnam every day - more $$ to the arms dealers/manufacturers.
Strelkov says : To date: the auxiliary attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have not led to any results, except for heavy losses. We failed to take Novodonetskoye, in the rest of the sectors - at best, small tactical successes, measured in a few kilometers of the "gray zone" and several hundred meters deep in our forward positions. Near Donetsk - no change. Under Bakhmut - small (and insignificant from all points of view) tactical advances of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. On the main axis, the enemy goes "for broke", stubbornly attacking our positions in order to break through the front. At the moment - after a day of continuous fighting, it is indirectly known about minor penetrations, there are no breakthroughs. And there are big losses. A significant part of them are in minefields in the "gray zone" and from our air strikes there. It suddenly became clear that our aviation was ready for just such a development of events as a massive night attack, it was able to fire guided missiles at night no worse than during the day, and prepared in advance for an enemy attack. Now the "partners" have two options: stop burning their reserves in frontal attacks, crawl back and regroup (in fact, curtail the offensive at the very beginning) or still try - using the significant superiority created in the number of people and line units - to first push through the front , and then try to break through it (as they did last year near Davydov Brod in the Kherson region). I assume that the enemy will not stop the attacks that have been launched, will not change plans on the go, and we will have a long bloody battle. Depending on the success of the enemy, it can last from several days (4-5) to 2-3 weeks. If the enemy manages to achieve at least minimally encouraging successes, he will beat and beat in the hope of a breakthrough. No - attacks will gradually fade as losses increase.....
Our counter-offensive after repulsing the enemy offensive is not to be expected even in the most optimistic scenario - the enemy, even after the defeat, will have a serious superiority in manpower and the number of combined arms formations. Without broad mobilization and the creation of new armies and corps (an additional 300,000 military personnel - at least more or less normally trained, armed and equipped) - the RF Armed Forces will not be able to successfully attack with the strategic goals of defeating the enemy.
"What gives the Z-side optimism is that the initial attacks appear to have suffered from bad intel and are attacking fortified points head-on."
What bad luck!
Starting to smell another rat.
"... the UAF launched this attack despite not being ready. That it was Washington who put pressure on them to attack. Therefore, all the UAF has to do is make a good show of trying before backing off and going back to doing nothing while sponging up ever more money, equipment and adoration from their Western allies"
Your last paragraph really rings true. The whole idea of announcing your counter-offensive publicly seemed very odd to me. Why would you deliberately alert your enemy to an attack? Wouldn't it make more sense to conceal plans for a major offensive?
If you remember that, at a high level, this war is being fought by the US then it makes perfect sense that the purpose of announcing the counter-offensive is to get the hohols to go all-out and hopefully take more Russian territory to attempt to end this on a high note. As badly as things are going for Russia, they are also going bad, maybe worse, for the US. They want to wrap this up before election season, or at least put this on the back burner out of public view to make this whole Ukraine debacle less embarassing.
i think they were trying to intimidate Russia's elite with the pr campaign.
I don't see the point of this 'announce your attack' so many people make an issue of. Everyone was prophesying the attack. If Kiev didn't say they'd do it then they'd be the odd man out It would be tantamount to saying 'we are not going to attack'. And who would believe that?
The narrative had/has its own dynamic and it's not that it is a convoluted story: you either attack or you don't and I say again despite the total disinterest of the whole world: Kiev is the attacker and always has been. Simply being in Donbas is part of an attack. The whole thing is about Kiev's attack.
And Kiev's attack is part of America's attack.
And groping towards understanding what Rolo and friends of the same ilk seem to be saying America's attack is part of a largely Jewish international conspiracy of mega oligarchs to bring down Russia and divide it up.
So it never was 'will they attack' it was always and still is: 'Can we ever stop their attack and turn them back'.
Which truth if presented to the inert masses I believe would do much to remove support for the conflict and hence save lives.
So I keep asking all and sundry to present it everywhere and any way they can.
Medvedev said they would go on the offense after they stopped the Ukr counter-offense. I tend to believe him. So we may see more activity after this.
The AFU may still be short manpower and is short on equipment. But the NATO isn't. I have this theory that Z has made an agreement with Poland to the extend that Poland will support the AFU, but only on the west bank of the Dnieper. (This may be one factor in the dam break.) And only after the counter offense of the AFU failed.
Its interesting to see today that the NATO is now saying that "a NATO member may move troops to the Ukraine on their own, not directly supported by NATO"
There are only two feasible hypotheses for the dam. 1. The Ukies (probably using underwater drones or something like that blew it Or 2. The dam weakened by systematic Ukie shelling over a long period and having unusually high water levels finally just burst. I think the former probably a bit more feasible as the coincidence with it happening just as the offensive begins seems just a bit too much to swallow.
The idea that the Russians may have done it was patently absurd from the beginning. The idea that the US (on its own did it) is just as absurd. Of course they might have ordered the Ukies to do it, but the Ukies seem to have wanted to for a long time anyway, hence their repeated shelling of it. For them it has many plusses: -to show the local population the Russians cannot defend them; --to just vindictively harm the local population for being Russian speaking; --to cut water supply to the power plant and Crimea; --to serve as massive distraction for the Russians as their offensive starts; --. And maybe most importantly if their offensive failed it would give them a kind of victory to savour – at least they hurt the Russians and their people there.
Oh, and Rolo, saying the dam blown impeded the Ukies doesn’t make much sense at all. The worst choice for their offense would have been trying to cross the Dnieper in force – they’d have been sitting ducks in the water and on the other bank- and keeping their forces supplied across the river would have been a nightmare for them. I can’t see them having seriously contemplated that, so please drop raking up that silly idea.
One interesting point from this, however, is that it does show that the Russian (apparently Surovikin’s) decision to withdraw from the west bank was a very sensible one, and I’m saying that as someone who did criticize that bitterly when it happened. Blowing the dam then would have totally isolated their forces on n the west bank.
Funny how I didn't critique Surovikin at the time and predicted the retreat.
The population in the area is mixed. I'd say they lean Russian. But the war has shown that most Ukrainians are now anti-Russian. This is because of the propaganda and because of how badly Russia has been fighting and the perception that they are the aggressors.
The dam did indeed impede the Ukrainians and now they're forced to concentrate their attacks in only two places. I never said that Russia destroyed the dam only that they benefitted more from it militarily than Ukraine.
Hey, I guess we will see.
And another thing I would say is that I know it is very early but I still think it is late enough, we've seen enough, that there should be much discussion about just where they got the manpower from and the equipment from and the ammunition from? They are apparently firing shells all along the front like there's no tomorrow and I don't know what to use for metric but somehow doesn't every shell fired today in support of an attack that will supposedly penetrate represent a presumed 'back up repository' of shells that will be required to support that penetration if made?
I've got no idea how to measure it but instinct tells me that if I'm going to expend one tonne of ammo on the front line attack now I need at least 10 times that much in reserve. Probably twenty.
So: what are they judged to have expended today and what does that say about what they have?
And all our armchair experts from the most casual untutored 'off the cuff' to the supposedly very expert trained and experienced have long been predicting failure of their whole military machine for want of ammunition.
So the question is what area is it that all observers have failed to look in? How did it escape their attention? Perhaps its simple: no one was actually looking anywhere. The whole narrative fed to us was improvised on the spot by talking heads simply blathering.
"The fact that they are still attacking, and with increased intensity means that they have prepared a large force and think that they still have a chance, despite the setbacks. They had the option of calling it quits when the initial probes failed and the dam was destroyed, but chose to press on regardless" They had the option of calling it quits when BoJo showed up. Ukraine is very obviously under great pressure from the Washington, and Washington in turn is being pressured by upcoming elections. If all that materializes from this is lukewarm military activity, then much to the chagrin of the neocons, the people might become bored by the war, and an accounting of why the ticket for this boring entertainment is so expensive might become an election issue.
That in turn will threaten Western Democracy, don't you see, because it will become increasingly difficult to persuade the voters that what they really want is exactly what the elites are telling them they do. Whatever will happen if the propaganda consensus starts to shift out of alignment?
A good time for some inspirational wartime derrign-do.
Everyone knows NATO is running the Ukies.
https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1667511109807423488
AFU paid with Western armored vehicles for suicidal tactics
This statement was made by a high-ranking European officer, Asia Times reports.
“If you want to attack and you have a dozen brigades and a few dozen tanks, you concentrate them and try to break through. The Ukrainians are rushing in five different directions. We tried to tell them to stop this scattered tactics, to determine the main attack with proper infantry support and then did what they can," the officer said.
>Washington has been doing everything it can to escalate the conflict while also drip-feeding Ukraine supplies with the goal of prolonging the blood-letting.
Washington, the nominal capital city of the ethnically subjugated America.