Russia's War Against Ukraine

[Gusington]

Everyone knows that killing the messengers always makes the root problems go away.

[GDS_Starfury]

 

and yes, it seems to be a real thing.

[SirAndrewD]

Everyone knows that killing the messengers always makes the root problems go away.

Seems to be what Putin and Shoigu hope for. 

Putin's clearly becoming more paranoid about messengers as Prighozhin had set himself up as the bearer of hard truths and tough solutions. 

They've now fallen into the trap of calling such talk as defeatism bordering on mutiny.

You can see it at work in the Russian media as they're following marching orders from the top to echo the talking points.

The Ukrainians for their part are taking advantage of it.  Their shift in tactics mirrors their playbook that brought them success in Kherson.  Put the Russian army tucked in their fortifications into a state of siege and push them to the breaking point. 

Lets see if it ends up working as well as it did without the bottleneck of the river working for them. 

The Russian army's woeful logistics and overreliance on rail is going to have to be the UAF's new Dniper.

[GDS_Starfury]

[GDS_Starfury]

nice clean break on both lanes.

[GDS_Starfury]

the internet works quick with some things......

[Gusington]

  

[GDS_Starfury]

[FarAway Sooner]

Andrew, your info has been pretty high-grade in the past, and I sure hope it's correct again.  A degradation in Russian troop readiness is a good thing, but it's always hard to quantify, even for the experts. 

The Russians seemed to spend most of WW2 fighting with low troop readiness, but they did seem to have some very competent commanders at the top.  Perhaps that is the difference here?

It'd be really nice to see this stalemate broken SOMEWHERE.  How many more months do we have before the Fall rains start?

A plumber 50 years ago told my mom, "Ma'am, there's only three things you got to know to be a plumber:  Hot water on the left, cold water on the right, and shit don't flow uphill."

I often think of that "shit don't flow uphill" as a metaphor for management problems--hardly limited to authoritarian governments.

[GDS_Starfury]

The Russians seemed to spend most of WW2 fighting with low troop readiness, but they did seem to have some very competent commanders at the top.  Perhaps that is the difference here?

not having US lend lease, not having a 6 million man army and not having the industrial capacity to make and replace things is the problem.  early war soviet commanders pretty much all sucked.  the late war commanders had almost all they could want for troops and kit.  for the final assault on Berlin they had over 40,000 artillery tubes to use.  they have maybe at most 2000 now for the whole front line.

[GDS_Starfury]

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1681281398957547525

[SirAndrewD]

Andrew, your info has been pretty high-grade in the past, and I sure hope it's correct again.  A degradation in Russian troop readiness is a good thing, but it's always hard to quantify, even for the experts. 

Very true, and it's not necessarily universal along the front line. 

The area to watch is Zaporizhzhia.  The main rail line from Mariupol is well within HIMARS range and has largely been unusable, which has caused the Russians in that sector to rely heavily on the Kerch Bridge as their main supply artery.

Part of the Russian supply issue there was of their own making, as their own former General Popov pointed out.  The bridge is still open to civilian traffic, food and water supplies right now in Zaporizhzhia and Crimea are prioritized for Russian tourists, not the army. 

The rail on the bridge is even still being partly used for civilian traffic.  Sadly the attacks on the bridge both failed to destroy the rail, so the primary military road is still open there.  The Russian media though has assured the public that civilian traffic is still fully allowed and encouraged and there will be no closing of Crimea for tourist season, so the army's throat continues to be cut for propaganda purposes. 

In Kharkiv though, the situation for the Russians is much better which is why they've now launched major offensive operations there.  Last summer the main UAF goal was to cut the rail and take Starbolisk, they ran out of momentum and outran their own supply lines making that impossible.  They're paying for it now.  The Russian forces in the north seem to have decent readiness.  Russian media says they have 100k troops and 900 tanks now ready for operation in Kharkiv.  Those numbers are no doubt exaggerated but it's clear they feel they have enough supply to try to reverse UAF successes last summer by making it to the river.

So, I'd call the Russian situation dire, at least in Zaporizhzhia, but not beyond recovery.  They could improve their lot significantly with a few policy changes, but they seem hesitant to do that.  The men in Zaporizhzhia are considered to be supplied "well enough" in their fortifications by the Russian MOD that they're not prioritizing fixing the issues there. 

[GDS_Starfury]

concerning the southern front and translated from rybar:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1VskhcWABkij9m?format=jpg&name=medium

[FarAway Sooner]

Andrew, it is interesting how, in authoritarian regimes, tactical and even strategic considerations seem to play a distant second fiddle to personal vanities and political maneuverings of various insiders.  I'm not sure if that's universal, but it seems to rear its head as often in Russian conduct of the Ukrainian War as it did with Nazi Germany (especially once Hitler started losing).

I'm certainly impressed with what I've seen so far, but 10 years after this conflict is over, it'll be interesting to see what experts make of the successes and failings of the Ukrainian high command and the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Were the failures in Kharkiv (if you can call them that?) due to lack of adequate supplies beforehand, or simply advancing so far ahead of their logistics that they lost momentum after the hard work of a breakout.

[Windigo]

I suspect that northern push by the russkies is not going to end well at all.