European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1330

There is an extreme amount of botting and shilling going on now on Russian channels, though that's normal. This morning they started handing out automatic rifles in Kiev to civilians and are trying to form their own Volkssturm. Opposition MP's from the Ukrainian parliament are asking for the government to step down, a few of them openly offering themselves to Putin to become the next President of the Ukraine.

Anyway, here is what I gathered from moderate pro-russian sources about how operations are going. This is all usually accompanied by video and other evidence but who knows, there is complete and utter radio silence within the Russian military. They are not using any of their new tech, presumably to hide their capabilities from NATO.


Very outdated map but just so you get the picture

1. On the Crimean front seems like Kherson is now completely under the control of the Russian army and they have pushed to Mykolaiv. Towards the east Melitopol is under complete control, and more importantly Berdiansk is either captured or surrounded depending on who you ask. This opens up the main strategic line towards Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk, as well as a pincer move on the now less strategically important port city of Mariupol. Basically no resistance yesterday, with Kiev sending troops today to Mykolaiv, destroying bridges ect.

2. The Donbass contact line is very active, the main objective is to keep the large bulk of the Kiev army bogged down so they cannot send units to relieve other fronts. A few settlements taken by the Republics but no major breakthroughs, heavy losses on both sides.

3. The most surprising advance was at the north-eastern border, with what was supposed to be poking and prodding operations turned into the encirclement of Harkov. Keep in mind that Russia only deployed around 30,000 - 60,000 troops the first day. These forces are primarily concerned with storming and securing key points (towns/cities/roads), after which wait for additional support to arrive to secure the area / keep the encirclement. Harkov is a city of 1.5 million, with Azov battalions and other territorial units ready to fight in civilian areas. Plan is to encircle and keep them there so they don't break out until Kiev falls. In general the Kiev army is not defending terrain outside of cities and is falling back to populated areas in this region.

So advance > secure countryside > wait for reinforcements that slowly push into populated areas > advance again towards Dnipropetrovsk. Strategic goal is to encircle on a massive scale the 60.000 Kiev units at the Donbass front.

4. The most important theater is of course Kiev. Last night the Russians dropped 200-300 VDV paratroopers deep inside Kiev territory and took over Gostomol airport while at the same time piercing through the lightly defended Chernobyl zone. Its 130km between Pripyat and Gostomol through difficult terrain and it began a race against time for the Chernobyl force to link up with and secure the bridgehead being held by the paratroopers. At stake was the entire western flank of the city of Kiev, with the amount of hysterics on twitter everything and the kitchen sink was thrown at the paratroopers entrenched at Gostomol but they held on at the airport. Russians cruise missiled and bombed everything close to and on the way to the airport overnight and today they linked up with the Russian forces coming to secure the bridgehead. With the entire Western and Eastern flank of the city under control, full scale encirclement of the city is expected tonight if it already hasn't been encircled with special forces units pushing into the suburbs from the North.

Forces loyal to the Kiev government bombed bridges to slow the advance into the city but as I mentioned in the first sentence, its kind of over if they had to resort to handing automatic weapons out to civilians and forming a Volkssturm. Handing out Molotov cocktails to people... its just... not what a stable government does.