We talking about Russia and Ukraine?

Black Ambrosia

Well-Known Member
I wondered about him when I heard some Americans who joined the fight had been captured. I'm guessing he got the fight he was looking for and will turn it into another book or TV appearances. Maybe his firsthand account will get him favor with the Biden administration.
 

charmingt

Well-Known Member
July has been very bad for Russia. August is going to be catastrophic, just as general Hodges said.



KyleRittenhouse-GotoUkraine.jpg





Maybe you want to read this — These notes below just scratch the surface here of what she is saying.
nadinbrzezinski.medium.com/…




Both generals Hodges and Hertling think she has superb insights. I sure do.
I will clip some of it —
“Ukraine is likely going to end in very Russian way. It’s starting to look like the armies of Vladimir Putin will go home on foot, leaving a lot of equipment behind. Why? They are facing a logistics collapse like that seen by the armies of the Tzar in 1917, after the Summer offensive.”...”
“General Budanov correctly predicted when the Russian invasion would happen when others in his government were publicly sceptical and now says he is confident about predicting its conclusion. ”The breaking point will be in the second part of August. ”Most of the active combat actions will have finished by the end of this year….”
“So, somebody within the Russian Ministry of Defense has confirmed how bad the logistics are. He has also told the world, or at least those of us who read certain Telegram channels, this is from Volyanedia, just how bad the Russian situation is. We already knew that troops were also refusing to fight. The number of refuseniks is growing...”
According to our sources in the army, difficulties have already begun with barrels for self-propelled guns, howitzers and heavy guns….
Barrels need to be changed regularly, or they will fail. When they fail, if lucky, you only get them to banana, as the explosive gasses breakthrough. If not, you get an explosion that injures and kills personnel...
Let’s just say these failures are terrible for morale. Artillerymen know the barrels need changing. They also know what happens and likely why when barrels fail...

“The barrels wear out quickly, faster than the factory parameters, because either the steel is worthless, or they are made with a violation of technology. There is almost nothing to replace them now, because there are few new trunks. Near Lisichansk and Severodonetsk, at some point, one of the three guns worked for us. And it looks like it will get worse in the future,” says the Russian artilleryman.
….
Remember the general that shot himself? Here you have absolute confirmation of what we were told. Perhaps ninety percent was too high, but one in four tanks that work is a problem. I have gotten confirmation from a source on this as well...No wonder crews abandoned these tanks.
In general, the situation with the technical support of the Russian troops, according to many Russian officers, is becoming close to critical, and by August threatens to become catastrophic...”August will be really bad. We will not see new equipment, and there will be nothing and nothing to repair the old one.
If the Armed Forces of Ukraine go forward at this moment, then we will have nothing to stop them, ”says another Russian staff officer.”
End clip.

There will be a come to Jesus moment and it will be in August and Russia cannot stop this. I am dead sure UKR is going to really push in the southern axis. It is the smart thing to do and they are doing it already. They know. I tried to say before — I really thought they were ruining their artillery, fired so hot every day, 60,000 rounds a day that I saw no way they could maintain those guns. I spoke of this and some MOS 13s made it pretty clear — not my MOS, but I think it was pretty ****ing clear they were firing them to **** . Do you know — RU fired more artillery here in 4 months then we did in 20 years! What neither of us took into account though was that Russia was producing those guns with crap steel and cutting corners. Honest to god — an artillery based army one would think would have well built guns. Guess not. It is why they are mostly aiming at cities I am sure — cause I don’t think they can hit the broad side of a barn so to speak.
So, when general Hodges said that July would be a bad month for Russia — how prophetic — August will be catastrophic.
Like I said — both Hertling and Hodges think she is dead on. I am sure they are not alone either. My optimism in this whole war was really man — I believed our former commanders that commanded armies. They know how one does war. That and I could read a war game. And they both matched up. So my optimism is quit tempered by the fact that I plainly believe our best commanders and ignore stupid doom and gloom ****. Why in god’s name would anyone believe BS written by people that never did a war, likely not even in the combat? That try and draw conclusions based on tactical issues that have little to no bearing on the larger operational issues involved. Certainly not strategically.
This writer here and I sure have one thing in common — we both studied military history. Clearly so. And we are both paying close attention to our retired generals that actually commanded entire armies. The only real issue I saw between all our military leaders was only if we were giving UKR enough arms fast enough. Has nothing to do with the outcome in the end— just how long it takes (as long as we keep suppling those arms) — and just how many people die.
Russia has lost this war and their senior officers know it.
Kind of interesting to me Nadin sees this war in more 20th century terms. I know we are both fluent in the study — but I look at it and I see Alexander defeating Darius, Hannibal defeating Varros, because honest to god, war never really changes — just weapons and tactics driven by new weapons. And it gets repeated over and over again- from at least the 5thy century BC to this day. This war is no different.
 

charmingt

Well-Known Member
Ukraine update: Russia loses two supply trains in a day ... but only one to Ukrainian attack


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Daily Kos Staff
Wednesday August 03, 2022 · 8:30 AM CDT

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Ukrainian rocket GRAD artillery, in action somewhere on the warfront.


Given last night’s focus on our resounding abortion rights victory in Kansas, I don’t have the energy left to write the usual cogent longer-form narrative (I write these before I go to bed). So please forgive me for this “grab-bag” format including interesting vignettes collected through Tuesday.
Let’s start with this, which … is exactly as he describes it:






Mark and I have long discussed Russia’s “reconnaissance by fire” approach: Send Donbas cannon fodder forward until they’re shot dead. Drop artillery on that position. Send more Donbas cannon fodder forward to see if anything is left alive. If they live, then great! They have just advanced a few dozen meters. Otherwise, rinse, lather, repeat.
It’s bad enough they employ tactics so callous to the lives of their allied Ukrainian proxies. But here they are bragging about it. Apparently they don’t realize that this isn’t how competent, civilized militaries wage war! They don’t even respect these poor suckers enough to give them helmets and body armor, leaving them fully exposed to even incidental shrapnel a well-equipped soldier would shrug off. I guess it makes little sense to protect men whose entire job is to get shot.
Down in Kherson, Ukraine is still keeping a lid on details, but one government official offered some good news:

The previous reported number was 46, so Ukraine continues to advance. Note that most of these are tiny agricultural towns. But like we’ve seen with Dovhen’ke and Bohorodychne, the width of that dot on the map can’t always be measured by its pre-war population.
Now let’s tell the tale of two Russian supply trains. The first is Brylivka railway station, Kherson.
rail.png

There are two train routes from Crimea to Kherson, leaving them exposed to attacks. On July 31, that’s exactly what happened as Ukraine smashed a military supply train.
HIMARS missile systems crushed the railway echelon of the Russian occupation army - the occupiers complain on social networks about the effective operation of American weapons in the hands of the Armed Forces.
It is noted that a railway echelon with more than 40 wagons, which arrived from the temporarily occupied Crimea at the Brylivka railway station in the Kherson region, was hit by a high-precision HIMARS missile.
It is claimed that 80 occupiers were killed as a result of the strike, and another 200 were injured. In addition, all drivers and engineers of the "Russian Railways" company, who were transporting military cargo, were destroyed.
This is supposed video of the attack (clearly too dark to confirm via geolocation):

NASA FIRMS imagery confirms big fire at the rail station. A fuel storage site was also confirmed hit (along with surrounding fire damage) by satellite imagery. One Russian Telegram user in Crimea noted the emergency services effort in the aftermath (run through image translator):
tel.png

I didn’t realize that this rail line is a single track:

The other two peculiarities are that the station at Brylivka has “passing loops” that allow trains headed in opposite directions to share the line. That means one train has to “pull over” into one of those passing loops, which is where the train column likely got hit. The other peculiarity is that just north of this location, that single track passes over the North Crimean Canal, giving Ukraine a juicy bridge target to hit to fully cut this line. At that point, Russia would be dependent on that second line that goes to Melitopol, 230 kilometers away from Kherson.
This isn’t the only Russian supply train to have issues that day, although this next one is more of an own-goal: The Kalanchak railway station, on the same rail line but further south, went up in flames.

The how it happened is freakin’ hilarious:
On July 31, an echelon with military equipment and ammunition for the occupiers arrived at the “Kalanchak” railway station of the Kherson region. At 8 a.m. the next day, the Russians began unloading the echelon. Apparently, in order to mask the unloading process and protect against HIMARS strikes, the occupiers used powerful means of smoke. At approximately 11:20 an explosion rang out in the work area. It was not possible to accurately determine its nature due to a thick smoke screen. However, immediately after the explosion, the echelon without any warning started moving in the direction of Crimea. The enemy’s personnel scattered in panic.
Presumably, the explosion resulted from careless handling of ammunition during unloading or a fire that arose due to inept use of pyrotechnics during the creation of a smoke screen.
Smoke is widely used in combat to hide troop movements, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it used to hide an entire train station. The ultimate goal might've been to prevent a HIMARS attack, but the proximate goal was to hide the activity from Ukrainian drones scanning for targets.
It’s been assumed that Ukraine had a list of depots, and was systematically working its way through it. But if Russia is working this hard to hide actual loading and unloading of war material, it suggests that Ukraine is acting more opportunistically with real-time intelligence, hitting depots in the middle of operations.
So sure, smoke might be helpful, as long as you don’t blow yourself up. And even then, Ukraine is clearly aware of the ruse. If there’s smoke at a depot, odds are good Russia is up to no good.
One last fun tidbit: Here’s a recording of me playing one of my favorite compositions:

I got new studio recording equipment and I’m pleased with the results.
 

charmingt

Well-Known Member

Ukraine Update: Russia wants to talk peace again because it is losing



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Daily Kos Staff
Monday September 05, 2022 · 6:12 PM CDT

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Ukraine war photos



Short update today because it’s a holiday and I still haven’t recovered from yesterday’s monster update. If you haven’t seen it, it’s still a current representation of public information on the ground situation in Ukraine. In short, I went out on a (short) limb to declare Russia’s offensive culmination, with a clear shift to defensive ops as their war machine runs out of steam.
No new liberations were announced today in Kherson, so this is still the official map:




However, Ukraine did claim that three more unnamed settlements, around Vysokopillya, at that northern tip, had been liberated. We also have video of Ukrainian forces walking casually through an empty and peaceful Arkhanhel's'ke. The town was declared captured by CNN on Day 1 of the Kherson counteroffensive, but that’s the first confirmed video of liberation, and the lack of any obvious signs of war suggests the front lines have moved well past the town. (The map above still lists Arkhanhel's'ke as contested, on the edge of the front lines.)
Another sign of liberated territory—videos of Ukraine towing away captured Russian equipment (like here, here, and here).
The action in Kherson has led Russia to formally postpone its sham referendum to annex to oblast. Ukraine also claimed it destroyed the warehouse with the paper ballots.

This is the umpteenth time Russia has postponed this referendum, and I wish I had written the piece I had on tap last week about how there would never be a Kherson referendum. Russia’s problem is that it’s not confident in its security situation in the region. What would happen if Russia annexed Kherson, then Ukraine liberated it? Russia would have to admit an inability to protect its own territorial integrity. It would be an internal PR and propaganda catastrophe.
So as long as there was war, there would never be annexation. Russia can blame it on the “security situation” (which is not totally inaccurate), Ukraine can claim it destroyed the ballots. But in the end, this referendum was never happening while overall hostilities continued.
Meanwhile, while most observers dismissed Russia’s new overtures for peace negotiations as nothing new and a cynical effort to freeze the conflict, I have a different view on it.
In short, Putin’s press spokesperson said Russia new negotiations were “possible,’ but that they would focus on “the fulfillment of the conditions set by Russia.” That was taken by the pro-Ukrainian side as a fake offer, based on unrealistic and ridiculous conditions that have already been summarily rejected by Ukraine:
  • Neutrality agreement barring NATO membership
  • Crimea is Russia
  • Luhansk and Donetsk (Donbas) are independent
  • Demilitarization of Ukraine
  • “Denazification,” whatever that means
While Ukraine had once considered the neutrality component, that seems off the table. The others are definitely off the table, particularly since Russia defines “Nazi” as anything or anyone that opposes Russian imperialism.
Those conditions haven’t changed with this new overture. But Russia’s statement includes this: “Any crisis situations eventually ends at the negotiation table.” That is, Russia isn’t demanding unconditional surrender, it is signaling some level of flexibility—something it hadn’t really bothered doing before with a “take it or die” approach during early talks. Problem for Russia, Ukraine has refused to die. In fact, it is Russia that is doing much of the dying.
And while Putin may not care about his cannon fodder in Ukraine, his nation’s economy is a different matter. Bloomberg got its hands on an internal Russian report that despite rosy public proclamations, Russia is facing a deep and long-lasting recession.
Two of the three scenarios in the report show the contraction accelerating next year, with the economy returning to the prewar level only at the end of the decade or later. The “inertial” one sees the economy bottoming out next year 8.3% below the 2021 level, while the “stress” scenario puts the low in 2024 at 11.9% under last year’s level.
All the scenarios see the pressure of sanctions intensifying, with more countries likely to join them. Europe’s sharp turn away from Russian oil and gas may also hit the Kremlin’s ability to supply its own market, the report said.
This explains why Russia suddenly cut off all gas supplies to Europe, holding them hostage in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Putin may brag publicly about the failure of sanctions to bring down the Russian economy, yet this move says otherwise. While cutting off that gas may cause short-term pain in Europe, it will accelerate the continent’s shift away from Russian energy supplies. And even more worrying for Moscow, this action may very well accelerate efforts by China (and maybe India) toward energy independence. No one wants to be held hostage by energy terrorists.
So put it all together: Russia’s offensive operations culminate, their forces spent and no longer able to push forward. Ukraine begins taking back territory on all fronts. The Kherson sham referendum is officially cancelled. Russia cuts off European energy supplies, demanding an end to sanctions. And Russia suddenly wants to restart negotiations for an end to hostilities.
Seems obvious to everyone that there’s no reason for Ukraine to agree to any of the previous Russian demands. Russia has very little leverage at the moment. But what seems obvious to the rest of us—like Kherson was a transparent trap—seems to somehow elude Russian policy makers. What matters here is that Russia can’t accomplish its goals on the battlefield, so it is trying to get concessions it hasn’t earned at the negotiating table.
Put another way, a strong Russia wouldn’t be begging for sanctions to be lifted, it would sell all that gas and use it to fund its war machine, it would stage a real referendum in Kherson, it would smash Ukrainian defenses, and it would get what it wanted by force.
Ukraine is in the driver’s seat.

Monday, Sep 5, 2022 · 10:12:05 PM CDT · kos
OMG

That is just sad.
Tuesday, Sep 6, 2022 · 12:15:31 AM CDT · kos
 
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