Russian special military operation in Ukraine #11

flamming_python wrote:Strelkov doesn't lie. Although I don't believe him when he said going to h Donbass was his own initiative. Did the border guards let him and his band through to the territory of another state also on their own initiative.

But Strelkov is cynical and pessimistic down to a fault. He states facts, but uses them to construct and argue the most depressing conclusions.
His political analysis of anything is bunk. I remember during the protests in Bashkiria, he was trying to put an accent on them as if a separatist conflict would start any day now. When there was a big protest in Ingushetia as a result of territorial swaps with Chechnya, he was also talking about blood being spilt any day now and the necessity of urgent measures

Well neither situation went that way

This is fukin unbelievable
A guy who orchestrated the failure of both Slavyansk and Kramatorsk back there, now posing as an ultimate strategist and second-to-Zhukov only
It was his incompetence, big mouth he could not keep shut back there, and inability to cooperate with other warlords that cost half of Donbas, and put it's people on the 8 years of harsh occupation. And Russkies were forced to intervene directly to cover that and save the republics.

Ukros are done.

Understand that finally.

The whole operation is a bloody marvel of military planning&execution. They strike in a week as deep as 300 km inside a well-prepared territory against the opponent having double the numbers on the ground, achieving an advance ratio on pair with Bagration only.
The Kiev operation probably failed on political background, still worked just fine as classic maskirovka that the Russkies were known for ever.
Still, it had to be performed anyway, just in case of altering the political situation.
The operational withdrawal was executed in a way that opposing forces needed 3 days to realize it was done.
Ukros has no heavy gear. They can't move other way than using civilian cars and ambulances, they can relocate the warehouses using red cross trucks and regular civilian transport only. They have no fuel, no lubricants, hardly any ammo. There is almost no artillery left, and we don't hear about artillery duels anymore, because there are none.
There is no navy.
There is no airforces. Some single survivors are assigned to one way suicide missions and end up in a field as scrap metal.
There are no tanks left, and when propaganda in EU is telling the stories of how they have more tanks than at the beginning, because they "lost 100 but took 150 on the enemy", they seriously consider a deliveries of scrap metal on pair with T-55. Who will operate it, where are the spares, ammo supply etc, is irrelevant. Only the gesture matters
Take a look at the bodies. Yes, it is not a pleasant job, but very informative.
Those are old guys dying.
Ukro army runs on reserves.
Those soldiers are unequipped, unsupplied, undressed and lack of any training. Stories that they have fired twice on the "training" are common, some of them didn't train at all.
Morale is getting lower and lower each hour.

The only question is, how the Russkies will proceed now on, and how much time it will take them to finish that.

100% true. The commies had to fight the US (CIA) backed resistance in West Ukraine until the early 50s, but they didn't proceed to then rip out every last damned fascist by the roots???? By contrast, the West has hounded and persecuted the nazis and their followers, even to the point of jailing private citizens for questioning the orthodox holohoax narrative and defaming notable historians and academics who dare to cite the physical historical record and challenge the obvious fallacies.

Not sure if you are talking the piss or  not, but the west supported the pro bandera nazis just after WWII and again now more recently... not a lot has really changed... the west still supports any threat to Russia in the hopes of damaging Russia.

The US found in Vietnam and the Soviets found in Afghanistan that fighting an enemy supported by the other superpower means while you can't properly win, that they wont lose either so eventually you leave.

In this case however the US is supporting nazis on the doorstep of Russia, so Russia really needs to make the US pay or it wont stop.

The point is that the British and French might have been happy to shoot all the nazis, but there were probably more nazis in the US than in Germany in the 1920s an 1930s, so it is not a goal they could possibly have achieved in their subservient position to the US at that time and since.

Again I assume that they are using mortar rounds due to the possible near vertical drop and relative small size, 10% of an Iskander warhead for example, both attributes needed to keep collateral damage of the site itself to a minimum.

Relatively small size?

The standard HE round is about 120kgs of HE and metal, while the Smelchak is the laser guided missile that is about 130kgs...

Compared with 50kg 152mm rounds these are quite heavy and rather powerful.

Seriously the rest of the world needs to get its shit in order and stand up for their own sovereignty. Russia will fight its battle but it can't fight everyone's battle.

When their dollars are no longer accepted they will struggle to get support, but honestly support would mean more before that so you know it is not just about money.

Russia wants trade partners.... they don't want slaves to be kept...

What 'hand-to-hand' combat is possible? Hope not all the rank and file are such fanatics

Very costly when one side still has ammo...

And Putin's fault, to be honest. Putin and all his people who planned this fk-up of an operation, and didn't manage to avoid this war in the first place

The problems in this conflict are caused by the US and HATO and EU and of course the whole western media making everyone think Russia are the bad guys and are losing.

This is beyond Putins control and certainly not a good reason to not attack the way they did.

A good article on the UK supplying Ukraine anti ship missile issue. As previously mentioned by myself its very unlikely to happen. This article explains why and the various option UK could choose but end result is very unlikely

But that would make Bojo a liar.... I can't believe that is true...  

The largest German defense concern Rheinmetall plans to supply Ukraine with up to 50 used Leopard 1 battle tanks and up to 60 decommissioned Marder infantry fighting vehicles, said the head of the company, Armin Papperger.

Leopard 1 tanks.... are they taking the piss... the Marders probably have heavier armour than the Leopard 1s.

No it's Putin's fault that he didn't outsmart them

And that when he couldn't, he wasn't smart enough to figure out and counter their strategies. Instead now we get all this.

He is outsmarting them... they are cutting all ties with Russia, which makes things easier for Russia to then pivot to Asia and Africa and central and south America and not have to worry about the west.

is what Kiev did to the people of Donbas, with full support from majority of Ukrainians.

They literally justified murdering those Ukrainian civilians by saying they spoke Russian and were supported by Russia and therefore they were Russia so the west and the Ukraine said it was OK to keep shelling those civilians...

It was OK because they were Russians.

Are you getting that FP?

he feels that this could have been prevented much earlier in the situation - back in 2014/2015. And I honestly agree. This was a tactical blunder for Russia since at the time they could have nipped this in the bud. But Russia didn't act then so it had to act now. Many good guys were lost back then too from the DNR and LPR side that if were alive today, could have been very valuable assets in these battles.

They helped negotiate the Minsk agreement to sort everything out... everyone agreed at the time... there was nothing left for Russia to do.... Kiev was going to sort this out by the numbers peacefully and to everyones satisfaction.

They didn't. Therefore it is their fault. They didn't because the US probably told them not to. Therefore it is their fault too.

What is this blaming Putin Shit.

Maybe it fooled enough people in 2014-2015 and silenced others, but even Zelensky was elected on a platform of ending the war and improving ties with Russia.

And he did the exact opposite, and the people could care less.

Only who's this someone

It's someone who looks like you, talks like you, can't be differentiated from you - but is not you, because they are a Ukrainian nationalist who hates your guts and wants to murder civilians.
And they may well have all the Russian passports which were handed out like candy over the last 30 years, be born in Russia, and whatever else.

How do you guard against something like that?

Wasn't Navalny born in Russia?

Great idea. Nobody trained to use the stuff. No trained mechanics. No spare parts.

HATO standard ammo too... I am sure there will be crates of it lying around the battlefield...

And the equivalent of T-55 at the end Laughing Laughing I must admit that this devils plan is something that only a real genie could figured out

Ironically they would have ammo for that still... including machine guns...

As expected the Russia strong crowd of this forum believes that NATO is not sending MBTs to Ukraine because they can be targeted by ATGMs apart from Russian tanks. It's not that easy.

Rheinmetall's ADS can be fitted on any Western tanks, IFVs. ADS works by having a series of modules mounted around the vehicle. Each has a prewarner (PW) that detects a threat, an EO sensor that times the initiation, and an explosive countermeasure (CM) that fires into the path of the threat and destroys it.

They are sending Leopard 1s... their frontal armour is less than the side armour of contemporary tanks because it was a light tank. Its 105mm gun  would struggle to penetrate Russian tanks from many angles especially ERA equipped vehicles, and you think they will be fitting APS equipment for the Russians to capture and examine?

Hahahaha.

They don't have any fuel or ammo for these vehicles... whether we are talking about main gun 105mm ammo or machine gun 7.62 x 51mm HATO calibre or 12.7 x 99mm Browning calibre, or even the smoke grenades the vehicle uses...

Anyway, since Mariupol is a done deal, it has to be Kharkov these are meant for.

Also a firepower support vehicle used for convoy escort for detecting and dealing with ambushes...

Pretty sure USSR used some in Afghanistan already back in the 80's, retrofitted to otherwise more vulnerable T-54/55s, but am no expert.

The Drozd system was tested there on T-55s of the Naval infantry forces, and it was quite successful... led to the Drozd 2 being developed and also the first generation ARENA system.

Putin did make some mistakes, in 2014 he shoulda completely wiped out the Ukraine military sent to the Donbass.

That was Ukrainians killing Ukrainians... Putin had Crimea and he thought Minsk would sort out the rest with those separatist regions getting what they wanted too, which at the time was just to speak Russian...

Russia needs to outsource the production of the Arena and some other last-gen tech to China

They can produce it quick

Russia can make it just fine... but they need the orders first.

Having said all that, it is weird they are bringing those in IMHO. They dont have them in great numbers and have already tested the platform in combat conditions. So leadership must really think the Terminators can be valuable in the upcomming offensive. Another, somewhat disturbing possibility, is that they need fresh equipment due to attrition setting in, But in this case it would make more sense to just bring in more T-72's from the garbage heap, so that is unlikely IMHO.

I would expect its fire power and ability to deal with drones would make it an excellent convoy support vehicle to protect support convoys.

In a situation where the primary target is enemy infantry 125mm guns are not ideal for enemy troops dispersed around the place, while 30mm grenade and 30mm cannon shells would be ideal for targets on the ground and drones in the air.

The Pro-Combat consensus in the West was apparently confirmed last week by European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who said on Saturday that the "war will be won on the battlefield" as he was also visiting Kiev.

Well the west has already won every day of the fight in the media, but it does not seem to have changed anything on the ground, so now after a month they realise perhaps winning in the media means nothing if it is your own media and the other guys media has already been banned.

Problem is... there is no military hardware they can send to change the balance on the ground or in the air.

1) Kh-15 was fully withdrawn? or Russia can still use kh-15P or kh-15S ?

Only version of Kh-15 has a 350Kt nuclear warhead and no conventional alternative.

It is for a strategic cruise missile carrier and is intended to clear its way though SAM and airfields filled regions with a nuclear explosion.

But.
That doesn't mean it shouldn't be made ready. Not at hand, but just, not too far away.

The Kh-15 could be carried by the Tu-22M3, it could carry four externally and 6 internally on a revolving launcher, so the aircraft could carry 10 at a time...

The Blackjack could carry 12 per rotary launcher in tandem so with both rotary launchers filled it could carry up to 24.

The Kh-22 is a liquid propellant rocket. Liquid-fueled missiles can't be stored for too long in a ready to fire state; the propellant is often corrosive or spoils in some way or the other. However they can always be emptied, and then refueled later with fuel and oxidizer when you do need them; provided you have the facilities to do so.
So the Kh-22 should in theory be good if they've been stored empty. However in practice, they are mostly getting upgraded to the Kh-32 anyway; keeping the case but with a smaller warhead, new seeker, engine and different propellant mix

The Kh-22M were very unpopular because their fuel is really really nasty, but it is not fuelled up until it is loaded onto the aircraft so they are not stored fuelled.

The Kh-32 would be the same but with even more volatile fuel.

They would not just be safe but also quite light until they are fuelled up for takeoff.

The Kh-55 is a jet-powered missile. All you need is to add fuel to it ahead of employment as you would to a jet-powered aircraft. If the fuel is good, and the engine, electronics haven't corroded out due to bad storage practice - the missile will work

Quick and easy to fuel up... main issues would be any batteries in the missile. Leaking batteries would be a common problem, but replacement batteries should not be that hard.

Ukrainian forces likely still have some Buks; they can hit high, up to 20km potentially. Although their range envelope won't be big at such a high altitude

Unless they upgraded them altitude limits should be about 15km, but still a bit high for a bomber to fly over.

Perhaps dedicated Wild Weasel types armed with ARMs to swat targets as they appear.

The nazis feel like they are doing a good job

The ones on the ground are the ones that matter and they know the cold hard truth...

Nazis in Washington really don't matter in this equation.

he EU is like a communist creation, only the orders do not come from the Central Committee but from Brussels.

Washington it seems to me...

Zelensky has ordered an attack on Belgorod

Massing a force to attack something makes defeating them very easy with air power and artillery... that would be a great way to group a lot of nazis together so they can be eliminated from the game.

“A poisonous substance of unknown origin” was used, the militants claimed, allegedly leaving three fighters suffering mild respiratory issues, dizziness and headaches.

Dizziness and headaches... my god... Putin is clearly going all out with a full scale attack with Novachok...

An interesting story from the ground.

Having friends who are Ukrainians, and whose families live on both sides of the border, I can give you some first eye observations.

Well, to begin with ... all the "Russian propaganda" is actually true.
The first wave of refugees that passed through the Polish border in Bieszczady used to be visible wealthy people. Caravans of Lexus, BMW, Mercedes and Bentleys passed the Krościenko border point, and none of those even stopped. All traveled south-west.
On the Ukrainian side of the border, refugees just rent the houses and stay there, having prolonged Spring holidays. Grilling. Still, the renting prices skyrocketed.
Later on, the refugee status and structure changed the visible way. Most of them are women with kids, obviously not wealthy. Cars are old, torn off, breaking. Those women don't know how to handle it, can't afford repairs, and cars are being abandoned.
As I have said, the last wave will be the people who will need the biggest support and attention, but the deposits of it will be already depleted on those who consider themselves better.
Sad.

Shtil, as they said

And west going to war with Russia is not a matter of having balls or not, but being physically capable.
We are not, and that is the point.
Big mouth and loud shouts won't cover that, at least to anyone who has eyes, ears, and brain to process the pictures.