EPTRusso-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 547
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KwarK
United States41470 Posts
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Excludos
Norway7870 Posts
If we go by the rule that every accusation is a confession, then Russian military resources are almost exhausted | ||
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pmp10
3216 Posts
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-counteroffensive-volodymyr-zelenskyy-russia-back-to-the-drawing-board/ Before Ukraine asks 'what's next' they should ask 'why did we got it wrong'. Their objectives have been missed by a lot and I hope they can learn from it. | ||
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ZeroByte13
725 Posts
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Ardias
Russian Federation592 Posts
On August 17 2023 16:58 ZeroByte13 wrote: I did read it, it's a kinda gloomy one compared to what others post here (including external materials). Well, considering Ukraine had to throw in their last fresh reserves https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/08/15/ukraines-powerful-82nd-brigade-once-held-in-reserve-has-finally-joined-the-counteroffensive/?sh=6b3d6d99452c I think gloominess is kinda warranted. There are reports that brigades of the first eschelon of the offensive are already using people drafted after the start of it. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3275 Posts
"Meanwhile, Russia said on Tuesday its forces struck military industrial facilities at several sites across Ukraine overnight after authorities in the west of the country announced aerial attacks had left three dead. “Ukraine’s military-industrial complex suffered significant damage,” the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement, adding that it had carried out long-range precision strikes on “key” facilities." "One missile, however, hit a factory of Swedish ball bearing maker SKF in the western city of Lutsk, killing three employees. “We are very sad to also be able to confirm that three of our employees died in this attack,” Carl Bjernstam, an SKF spokesman, told AFP. The strikes also damaged a sports complex in Dnipro, central Ukraine, and a children’s playground in Lviv, western Ukraine." https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/russia-claims-ukraines-military-resources-are-almost-exhausted/article67198302.ece Much precision, very military. Russia surely knows how to wage war against the deadly Ukrainian U15 soccer teams. | ||
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Artesimo
Germany535 Posts
On August 17 2023 20:37 Magic Powers wrote: These "military industrial facilities" have oddly civilian sounding names. Is Ukrainian leadership housing children and Swedish workers in their munitions factories and relabeling them as recreational centers? /s "Meanwhile, Russia said on Tuesday its forces struck military industrial facilities at several sites across Ukraine overnight after authorities in the west of the country announced aerial attacks had left three dead. “Ukraine’s military-industrial complex suffered significant damage,” the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement, adding that it had carried out long-range precision strikes on “key” facilities." "One missile, however, hit a factory of Swedish ball bearing maker SKF in the western city of Lutsk, killing three employees. “We are very sad to also be able to confirm that three of our employees died in this attack,” Carl Bjernstam, an SKF spokesman, told AFP. The strikes also damaged a sports complex in Dnipro, central Ukraine, and a children’s playground in Lviv, western Ukraine." https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/russia-claims-ukraines-military-resources-are-almost-exhausted/article67198302.ece Much precision, very military. Russia surely knows how to wage war against the deadly Ukrainian U15 soccer teams. While I am not contesting that russia is deliberately attacking civilian targets, ball bearings are important for all kinds of industry, including militarily. The schweinfurt raid during ww2 for example had ball bearing factories as one of its primary targets. If a target is militarily or not gets a bit murky when it is use(able) for both military and civilian purposes (usually referred to as "dual use targets"), but a ball bearing factory to me as a layman seems very much a valid military target in a war. I am basing this on historic precedence as well as my laymen understanding of the classification of targets. | ||
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zeo
Serbia6251 Posts
On August 17 2023 19:45 Ardias wrote: Well, considering Ukraine had to throw in their last fresh reserves https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/08/15/ukraines-powerful-82nd-brigade-once-held-in-reserve-has-finally-joined-the-counteroffensive/?sh=6b3d6d99452c I think gloominess is kinda warranted. There are reports that brigades of the first eschelon of the offensive are already using people drafted after the start of it. While the Ukrainians have taken staggering losses over the last few months. The fact that they are throwing in the units meant as a reserve 'not to be used in the offensive' doesnt mean the other units have stopped existing, just that they have been worn down a lot. Looking at the footage comming out of places like Staromayorskoye... Loosing half of a battalion to take a tiny village in a screening zone before the first defensive lines, crazy losses, but they had a lot of manpower and vehicles to start with. Whats the plan here? The first, second, and third lines have reinforced concrete bunkers. Dugouts five meters underground. In front of them are minefields with hedgehogs and anti-tank ditches and dragons teeth as far as the eye can see. The city of Tokmak is surrounded by trenches from all sides. A fortress city above which will be hundreds of aircraft and helicopters you cannot pull your anti-air to fight against and in the background the Russian reserve. Tanks, bvp, artillery, infantry. They have taken tens of thousands of causalties, if these units with the Challenger 2 tanks are realy their reserve forces whats going to stop the Russian counteroffensive? Are the units meant for the offensive the reserve now? What shape are they in? | ||
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KwarK
United States41470 Posts
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Sermokala
United States13627 Posts
The ukranians have us advisors. The first thing they will tell them is "don't do a full frontal assult on a fortified city why do I have to tell you that?" I would like the technology that allows rybar to tell the difference between Ukrainian armored vehicles and Russian ones. If the Russians were facing these casualties to take a small unimportant they would have been smart enough to stop the entire offensive right? They totally wouldn't have continued for 10 months for just the one unimportant and now worthless town right? | ||
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sertas
Sweden862 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States22322 Posts
Paying off oligarchs isn't cheap, and it's unclear just how much of the aid sent to Ukraine is being pocketed by their oligarchs. If we just presume the overt 10% kickbacks mentioned in the article (can be applied to all aid), that's almost the equivalent of the entire $20 billion Joe Biden recently asked to send. Could very well be more than that though. WASHINGTON — Just last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired all two dozen regional military recruiters. Investigators found they were coming up with bogus documents to show a potential recruit was unfit for military duty. The price? $10,00 each. And a few days later, the New York Times reported that a Ukrainian weapons dealer was inflating prices. This follows the dismissal of the chair of Ukraine's Supreme Court in May after being accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes. And before that Zelenskyy removed six deputy ministers and five regional administrators on charges of – you guessed it – corruption. That's not all. Last fall the U.S. Agency for International Development's Dekeleptification Guide reported that costs for large scale state construction projects in Ukraine are inflated by 30 percent, including 10 percent kickbacks for government officials and their friends. None of this comes as a surprise to Transparency International, which tracks corruption in government. It lists Ukraine as the second most corrupt state in Europe – after Russia. www.npr.org | ||
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Excludos
Norway7870 Posts
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ZeroByte13
725 Posts
On August 18 2023 01:44 Excludos wrote: Who said that?Thank god Russia is such an uncorrupt country The excerpt GH included literally says Ukraine is 2nd most corrupt state with Russia being the most corrupt one. Or is this an example of whataboutism that everyone usually condemns here, as in "Yeah but what about Russia?" | ||
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Dan HH
Romania8957 Posts
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CuddlyCuteKitten
Sweden2447 Posts
On August 17 2023 16:21 pmp10 wrote: A good article on the current offensive situation: https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-counteroffensive-volodymyr-zelenskyy-russia-back-to-the-drawing-board/ Before Ukraine asks 'what's next' they should ask 'why did we got it wrong'. Their objectives have been missed by a lot and I hope they can learn from it. The posts below (with the Russian perspective) are interesting because it allows a clear demonstration about how the same situation is viewed very differently depending on which source you listen too. Read some Ukrainian sources and they would say the following: Why: it's to hard to breach the heavily fortified defensive lines head on without overwhelming air support and massed forces only invite the enemy to commit artillery and air power which causes heavy losses, with little or no gain. Further exacerbated by western training being to short and not adapted to the reality of the situation in Ukraine and the fact that most of the troops had no prior combat experience. What's next: Current strategy (according to the "analysts") is instead to use small units (sometimes supported by limited armour) after (drone)recon and artillery attacks. This is more like the fighting that Wagner and the 3rd separate assault brigade (aka the brigade formerly known as Asov) use. But instead of digging in when they hit resistance they pull back if it's to fierce. The primary goal is favourable conditions for counter battery fire and taking ground is only the secondary goal. If the enemy counterattacks they often pull back. In order to remedy the problem with inexperienced units and get experience fighting in the correct environment smaller parts of different units are now rotated in which would explain why you see smaller parts of the 82nd being activated for example. The idea being that you can't make a breakthrough unless the enemy is depleted so focus primarily on taking out artillery and making tactical gains where you can while taking as few casualties as possible in the process. Worth pointing out that this kind of tactics would not work if the primary trench line were manned by more than skeleton crews but both sides have wisely understood that stuffing the trenches is an even worse idea. | ||
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zeo
Serbia6251 Posts
On August 18 2023 01:19 sertas wrote: zeo the master strategist, he should help ukraine plan (he would tell them to just give up, let russia have kyiv and let them implement bucha execution camps in all of ukraine). Also so obsessed with ukraine losses, oryx constantly shows russia is losing more equipment in every? category Ukraine has no realistic path to victory in this conflict. The catastrophic losses at Bahmut and now this failed offensive have basically ended any possibility. For the offensive, Kiev has only engage brigades that have the logistics capable of carrying out offensive operations. In order to achieve these numbers, a lot was taken from the other brigades (personal, equipment ect ect.), and all these other brigades are currently mostly only capable of carrying out defensive operations. So not capable for an offensive but good enough to sit and defend a line. Before this offensive neither side wanted to start big arrow maneuvers because something like that can easily decide the war, just in favor of the opponent who would grind that maneuver with a solid defense and then destroy it with a counter maneuver. Even if the attack succeeds, it would be paid for with losses that are almost impossible to recover. Hence Kiev is using this "piecemeal" tactic, which almost never succeed and cause more damage to the Ukrainians because they try it much more than the Russians. So what can the Ukrainians do? Logic says that the Ukrainians, instead of losing a dozen pieces of equipment day after day, could have tried with 300 pieces at once, even if the Russians completely destroyed them. Their losses would be the same and the chances of some kind of big gain would have been higher. But then you have to understand that the Ukrainians are fighting in a specific circumstances where they count on a constant flow of equipment and newly trained personnel. So perhaps they think that by pecking at the Russian defenses sooner or later they will achieve something and that it will pay off more than risking one big maneuver that... in the event of a breakdown, the Russians would clap down on them and probably force them into a serious retreat. At any given moment, Ukrainians have several thousand people undergoing training abroad, and this is only what's been officially confirmed. They are mobilizing non-stop, both the willing and the unwilling, but they will never have enough. The equipment and ammunition are coming in in a never ending flow, but they will never have enough. With the Russians, it is not yet clear what they have, and whether what they have is enough to keep what they have, or whether they have some capacity to start a big arrow maneuver after the Ukrainians are worn out (and the offensive is on its last legs now). This is a very strange war in which little is really known, and most of what we think we know is based on the information, half-information and misinformation that comes out of it every day. Russia seems to be banking on baiting into battle and killing all the new troops Ukraine will keep bringing in, but without a new wave of mobilization they can do fuck all until they kill the event horizon number of Ukrainians were they start collapsing in on themselves. UA heavy equipment will make-or-break what they can do in the future, which is not good for them because everything they got from the West is fucked, everything is fucked to some extent and will take a very long time to bring back to the place, numbers and condition they were before the offensive (and the Challenger 2 is a nothing burger to begin with). This offensive is done and Russia probably won't be able to capitalize on that. But there will be no more capacity for future offensives on Ukraine's side, they might be able to get the numbers but the quality will be horrible compared to what they had until now. Also Russia won't let them build up like this again P.S. The reason why Oryx shows that Russia is losing more equipment in every category is because they have absolutely zero criteria for marking something as a Russian loss and downplaying or ignoring UA losses. Which is whats expected of them if they want to make money from covering this conflict, propaganda. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3275 Posts
Overall this is not a strategy that Ukraine has an immediate answer to. To progress faster, Ukraine needs a combination of better mine clearing technology and counterbattery, plus a lot of AA. Mine clearing is a big issue because the technology is quite far behind. To make matters worse, Ukraine can't just cut deep into the defense line in a small area (to create vulnerable gaps in various directions) because, as CCK correctly points out, that would cause too many casualties in one place. But at the same time I don't think Ukraine can afford to push into many parts of the front at the same time, because that would lead to very little progress. I have to say, I think Ukraine has to copy Russia's mining tactic to cover its own most vulnerable areas. This wouldn't help directly with the offensive, but it would make it easier to allocate resources more efficiently. | ||
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Yurie
11631 Posts
On August 18 2023 03:38 Magic Powers wrote: Ukraine is currently battling with the mine fields in the Russian defense lines. They're spread across the entire front and they can be laid basically continuously for very cheap. Additionally Russia uses artillery to stop mine clearing efforts. Overall this is not a strategy that Ukraine has an immediate answer to. To progress faster, Ukraine needs a combination of better mine clearing technology and counterbattery, plus a lot of AA. Mine clearing is a big issue because the technology is quite far behind. To make matters worse, Ukraine can't just cut deep into the defense line in a small area (to create vulnerable gaps in various directions) because, as CCK correctly points out, that would cause too many casualties in one place. But at the same time I don't think Ukraine can afford to push into many parts of the front at the same time, because that would lead to very little progress. I have to say, I think Ukraine has to copy Russia's mining tactic to cover its own most vulnerable areas. This wouldn't help directly with the offensive, but it would make it easier to allocate resources more efficiently. Ukraine is mining its most vulnerable areas. There has been a lot of video of Russian spring attacks going into mine fields and failing. Neither side seem to have the tools required to push quickly. Thus it is now a math game, where the amount of lost artillery is probably the most important metric. While also being one of the hardest to track since you lose a lot of it to wear over time. | ||
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Jones313
Finland169 Posts
On August 16 2023 20:56 zeo wrote: Nytimes article is behind a paywall, can you extract the main points? Cant see anything passed the headline. Energy infrastructure can be seen as a legitimate target if they are used to power the war effort of that country. They were seen as legitimate targets in most military conflicts during and after the Cold War. Saying this conflict is any different is hypocritical and demagoguery, the precidents were set long before and these attacks were not condemed beyond lip service, nor were the purpetrators brought before international courts of Law. In the past where smart bombs and the like missed and hit kindergardens, hospitals, civilian trains and private apartments these victums were called collateral damage. Because they were not the target, something else was. When a wedding got drone bombed it was because of that one guy that might have been linked to a terrorist group. The women and children killed are collateral damage, and no one is held accountable. The 'evil regime' of xyz country is to blame. Not the people dropping the bombs. Usually the civilian death tolls far outmatch military deaths in any war. This one has comperatively very few civilian deaths compaired to military. These numbers are all either overblown or minimised but in any case military death far outweigh civilian deaths A bit late with this, long day at work yesterday. Roughly 700 attacks on medical facilities and health care workers in the first year of the invasion. 218 damaged or destroyed medical facilities. WHO saying 64 have been hit in the first month of the invasion alone. https://phr.org/our-work/resources/russias-assault-on-ukraines-health-care-system/ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/24/who-says-64-hospitals-attacked-since-russia-invasion-of-ukraine Sure, when you're reducing cities to rubble you're bound to hit a few hospitals but that's not exactly a justification. Saying it's all collateral damage is only slightly less absurd than chalking it up to malfunctioning air defense. Along with their freezing of Ukraine operation it's another element of Russia's terror campaign intended to break the population. It's the best they can do, and what they've done before in Syria. Speaking of which, it's not like Russia has been held accountable for their actions in Syria, Georgia, Chechnya or Ukraine pre-2022. Instead they carried on with their pipeline projects and hosted the Olympics and UEFA Euro Championships. The ICC arrest warrants for Putin and whatsherface have to do with deportation of children specifically. The bombing of energy infrastructure, let alone all the other terror bombing, torture camps etc. aren't even mentioned, despite Russia having set up their own Guantanamo Bay in every occupied town. So there's no double standard when it comes to Russia or whatever this argument even is. You keep defaulting to "what about what the US did" like you're arguing with Dick Cheney. It's also pretty incredible how you can say "The 'evil regime' of xyz country is to blame. Not the people dropping the bombs" both with heavy sarcasm in one instance and without any sarcasm in another. | ||
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