Russian special military operation in Ukraine #33

flamming_python wrote:Seems to be a critique of the practice of employing iron bombs from Su-35s again

Which is a valid point of criticism at a glance, but we do not know the the full story, nor the reasoning. AFAIK no VKS hotshots have said anything about it. I'll just assume there's more to it than simply sheer stupidity.

There's no lack of PGMs and stand-off weapons available to the Russian military, this we know. If something doesn't compute at a first glance, chances are that some crucial information has been withheld, rather than it simply being stupid to the point where even a random Twitter pundit could have done it much better.

For one thing, I believe that actual PGM strikes are underreported. Russian PR has been objectively crap since day one, so that is a reasonable assumption.

And you can't use PGMs if the target is moving around or you don't know where precisely it is,

You absolutely can. TV guided, SALH and IR guided air to ground missiles, like Kh-29TD, LMUR, hermes, khrizantema, Kh-38 have autotracking. This isnt 1975.

A long and though provoking post from one of the top posters on MoA, PavewayIV. What do you think?

"Still trying to make sense of the awkward handling of 1) Polish missile strike, 2) repeated shelling of Zaporizhzhia NPP.

(My) base assumption is that the US totally controls Zelensky, and anything the AFU does is either by US/NATO direct command or with US/NATO consent. Any time Zelensky or the AFU doesn't stay in their lane, western intelligence/military knows about it almost at once. Zelensky knows that, knows where his financial lifeline and arms supplies come from... thus, behaves unquestioningly. Some might argue that Zelensky has some autonomy from his US/NATO overlords so the rest of my argument will not apply.

Now suppose AZOV/ADIAR and the rest of the ultra-nationalist militias were never really absorbed by the Ukraine military (AFU, interior ministry Stazi, National Guards, etc.), Suppose they are still acting largely on their own impetus for their own reasons with their own oligarch financing. They were and remain only nominally under control of Zelensky and the military chain of command, but act on their own whenever they want.

After all, who's going to stop them? They essentially are in league with the SBU Gestapo, so no problems there. Zelensky as CIC? Hardly, they only seem to tolerate him as a somewhat-reliable arms supplier. AFU? Guards? Isn't AZOV/ADIAR the punisher battalions in the rear that shoot deserting AFU/Gurads?

Now consider how AZOV/ADIAR can act with impunity towards *their* rabid, psychopathic ultra-nationalist ends.

Russians took Zaporizhzhia? Shell it to punish (or irradiate) them. But [insert any logic against shelling ZNPP here]? Sorry, but AZOV/ADIAR is willing to take that risk... because it will kill Russians or prevent them from ever using ZNPP. Maybe the Russians will leave (or honor a 'Safety Zone') and AZOV/ADIAR can take it over and threaten Armageddon. Or build a few dirty bombs - whatever.

In any case, AZOV/ADIAR going rogue and shelling ZNPP explains Zelensky's crazy denials - he doesn't know because the 'real' AFU is NOT under orders to shell the plant and/or they are reluctant to report back to Zelensky that it's really AZOV/ADIAR gone rogue. Maybe AZOV/ADIAR is forcing small AFU units to shell the plant under threat of execution, and AZOV/ADIAR will come back and kill them all if they squeal. So all the AFU chain of command above them knows is that they didn't do anything or know anything about ZNPP shelling.

US/NATO getting cold feet in Ukraine? AZOV/ADIAR solution: launch an S-300 (or 'something') into Poland to turn up the heat. Does AZOV/ADIAR have S-300s or something? Doesn't matter. A little group of them show up to an AFU installation and 'encourage' the crews to light a few off towards Poland. And if the crews say anything, well... AZOV/ADIAR knows where their families live. This explains Zelensky's initial confusion/denial that Ukraine fired anything into Poland. Zelensky could find out the unit that fired it from debris (presuming S-300) so he insists on sending a Ukraine team to look at it. He'll never admit it was a Ukraine S-300, but he needs to know for himself if it was one of his.

Now keep in mind that the US had an AWACS right on the border all day and knows precisely where the missile was launched from. Poland quickly kicked out the firemen and had it's spooks sifting through the soil collecting fragments - they have to know by now exactly what it was and have all the serial numbers, etc. If US/NATO and Poland already know it was a Ukraine missile but not fired under the orders Zelensky or the AFU, then they have a bit of a dilemma. I'll call it the head-chopper dilemma for reasons below.

Now if AZOV/ADIAR have gone rogue on their own genocidal frenzy and Zelensky can't control them, then what does the US do? It can't use the SBU Gestapo to purge the ultra-nationalists because the SBU is compromised, too. Neither Zelensky nor his military commanders can do anything because they would get whacked... or worse. The US can't send in JSOC kill teams because the Nazis are everywhere, including Kiev, and there's hundreds of leaders. 'Regular' Ukrainians seem tolerant of AZOV/ADIAR because they're useful and effective. If the US decapitated the Nazi leadership, a lot of Ukrainians would be seriously pissed off.

In the mean time, AZOV/ADIAR knows they're untouchable and will continue to wage war on *their* terms against Russia. There will be no negotiations with AZOV/ADIAR - there's nothing to negotiate. Their 'terms' are exactly what Zelensky has parroted: all Russian troops leave Ukraine, all land returned to Ukraine. Until then, shelling a NPP, fomenting NATO entry into the war or just torturing and executing Russian POWs (and 'disloyal' Ukrainians) provides plenty of entertainment. There is no one 'leader' that they all follow, and nobody to negotiate with. They're driven by ideology alone.

Which brings me back to the US head-chopper dilemma from Syria. What do you do when your efforts to hide radical head-chopper jihadis fail? Once too many YouTube videos come out of 'FSA' moderate head-choppers doing what they like to do - chop heads - then the whole public support thing falls apart. There's no way to fund 'just' the FSA good guys to fight Assad. You pull the plug on the whole project, lick your wounds and take over some oil fields and granaries to punish Assad.

See why the US might be obsessed with hiding the most serious AZOV/ADIAR provocations/war crimes? If the US admits that Zelensky has no control over them, then the US taxpayers are going to get plenty pissed off that we're funding terrorists (directly or indirectly) that are trying to provoke WWIII or irradiate Europe. I would think the Europeans would be plenty worried about this too, but they seem to have a high tolerance for suicidal insanity committed by their leaders. I assume many have caught on by now but are in the same position as I am: what do you do when your own government has gone rogue?

Worse of all, if this has happened (AZOV/ADIAR effectively gone rogue) but the US is afraid to admit it or do anything about it, then you have the Head-chopper Paradox: what do you do when you depended on them for earlier political/military gains, and you still desperately want to 'win' (Depose Assad, Chase Russia out of Ukraine) but now they've become inconvenient and insolent? Head-choppers gonna head-chop.

Now, you're desperate to 1) hide this fact from the American/European public at all costs, and 2) somehow distance yourself from responsibility for their war crimes that you enabled, Walking away isn't an option like it was in Syria. These guys are a serious problem, shelling ZNPP and lobbing rockets into Poland is only the beginning. They'll do more and have to be stopped. But you're arming them to the teeth even better than you're arming the AFU (because AZOV/ADIAR takes what they want first, including financial aid). You can't send NATO in to 'defend' Zelensky and the AFU from the head-choppers that put them in power. You know how sensitive westerners are to the sight of their own dead soldiers.

The 'solution' to the Head-chopper Dilemma in Syria was to walk away and let Russia clean up our mess. I don't think that's going to work in Ukraine. It's clear that US/NATO are terrified and paralyzed - sending more arms and money is just going to make the problem worse."

Exactly. Main problem is reconnaissance and target acquisition, as we've seen numerous Ukrainian convoys moving unopposed in the rear, during Kherson and Kharkov offensives.

^ You can't just destroy armies with bombs and more bombs. If some foreign power with deep pockets takes your entire neighbors country hostage , and brainwashes millions of them into fighting you , its not about target acquisition.

If all of Mexico was taken hostage by China and China put a gun in every Mexican males hand, every American and their dog would be saying the same thing. Can't we just bomb them ? And theyd be in a similar situation

I agree. Russian political elites flunked it in Ukraine before and during 2014 coup. It is a failure of general strategy. They didn't learn from Orange revolution.

Since I dont want to flood this place with a bunch of tweets.

• German defense minister says they are running of weapons to give to Ukraine.
  

• US says they are running out of weapons
  

• 1200-1500 dont remember the exact number have moved from backing up kherson to move some of their forces further north.
  

• Kherson is getting shelled with rockets.
  

• Iran and russia setting a deal with drone production in Russia
  

• the slow and steady wins the race approach of grabbing territory back
  

@GarryB is everything OK or does forum have random down time?

"Still trying to make sense of the awkward handling of 1) Polish missile strike, 2) repeated shelling of Zaporizhzhia NPP.

I think the Polish missile strike could be a false flag which went wrong when photos of the missile wreckage leaked out to the media.
Kiev knew it was happening and had prepared a narrative.

At first I thought it was a mistake, but I couldn't see how the missile was heading west not east towards the direction Russian missiles come from.

Then the clincher, was the reporter who got fired for releasing the missile photos. Why would you fire someone for that?

I like the gist of this piece. But on some level , i don't know why Russia couldn't think of a another strategy to deal with it. They should have bombed Kiev to the point where it was unusable for the US.

Alcibiades on the War, November 22nd, 2022: The failure of the Ukrainian People's War

Someone replied to my post yesterday with a defeatist comment that the Ukrainians are drafting men into their army faster than the Russians can kill them, with the implication that the Russian approach to grind the UAF out of existence has failed.  It's worth examining this argument closely.

The Ukrainian authorities were very clear prewar that their plan to defeat their technically-superior neighbor relied on mass mobilization to drown the Russians in an avalanche of bodies.  There was nothing sophisticated about it.  They simply adopted Mao's People's War to the European context and proceeded from there.  They have been executing that plan since February 24th, with mass mobilization of reserves and wave after wave of conscription on top of that.

The actual results of this in terms of increasing the end-strength of the UAF have been very unclear.  According to Ukrainian agitprop their military was "full" months ago, with no need for additional recruitment... until they ordered new conscription waves recently.  They routinely boast of having a "million man army," even internally if Rezident is to be believed.  But if this is true, where are all these troops?

As I detailed previously, as of two weeks ago OC-South, one of Ukraine's major front commands, barely had 10,000 combat-capable troops to push on one of Ukraine's primary strategic objectives and was failing to make any headway against even slight opposition.  Ukrainian efforts near Svatovo and in Zaporozhizhe have been similarly feeble, and they are being driven from key fortresses near Donetsk as we speak.  Given reports of there being some 25-40,000 troops in "Zapo," it seems as though their front line strength is barely over 100,000 men.  This is consistent with them being unable to launch attacks over the company level lately.  Contrast this with the huge attacks over the summer and it's clear they've been bled white.

I agree, the claims that Ukraine have hundreds of thousands of troops seem unsupported.
Where are the located?

NATO has been sending in thousands of troops dressed as mercenaries.
Why would they do that if Ukraine had so many soldiers?

I realize the specialized hardware NATO has supplied needs trained operators, but they haven't supplied enough to warrant so many troops.

I guess we will eventually find out when Russia eventually starts a push west of Donetsk.

* 06:03 Stockpiles of weapons in Western countries, including the United States, have reached critically low levels due to deliveries to Kiev, and the ability to replenish them turned out to be very limited, writes Le Monde.
The newspaper refers to statements by a number of analysts, according to which the stocks of a number of weapons in the United States "fell below the level necessary for military planning and training." She also notes that Washington was forced to ask South Korea to buy 100,000 155-mm artillery shells in order to transfer them to Ukraine, however, according to analysts, Seoul is opposed because it does not want to supply weapons to countries involved into conflict.
https://t.me/intelslava/41540


* 06:08 Russian servicemen continue intensive combat training at the training grounds of the armed forces of the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Defense Ministry publishes new footage.
Servicemen improve firing from regular weapons, driving combat vehicles, tactical medicine skills and other disciplines.

MOSCOW, November 22. /TASS/. Gazprom has taken note that Russian gas supplies intended for Moldova via Ukraine actually "end up" in Ukraine and will start reducing gas supplies for transit if the imbalance persists, the Russian gas company said on Tuesday.

"Gazprom has observed that Russian gas intended for delivery to Moldovan consumers as per the contract with Moldovagaz actually settles in Ukraine. The volume of gas supplied by Gazprom to the Sudzha gas metering station for transit to Moldova via the territory of Ukraine exceeds the physical volume transferred on the border of Ukraine and Moldova. Moldovagaz paid for a portion of November deliveries to Gazprom in accordance with the contract on November 21. The actual volume of supplied Russian gas taking into account the breached payment for current deliveries in November is 24.945 mln cubic meters of gas. The cumulative total volume remaining in the territory of Ukraine is 52.52 mln cubic meters," Gazprom said.

https://tass.com/economy/1540363

Why Russia would be shipping any gas via a country it is at war with, is beyond me.
Of course it's being stolen.

Russia might as well ship weapons to Ukraine to help kill Russian soldiers too.
It makes about as much sense as shipping gas for free, then bombing energy infrastructure.

ALAMO, you know what I mean about Germany, France or the UK only having a few hundred tanks and howitzers each ?
Apart from the predatory military industrial complex, those countries no longer have the population to manage a large amount of weapons. Europe is a lost cause, at least Central and Western Europe.
Europe is more troubled by queer rights, they already have a plan for the children to decide for themselves which gender they want to belong to (only sick minds can do that), and the diminishing rights of the male population.
I have a feeling that this time, if the Turkish and Greek armies joined forces, they would reach not only Vienna, but also the Paris of Isos.

Every single weapon system owned by the EU countries was designed back when the USSR existed. So it was the time of Sony Trinitron and Sony Walkman, rock and roll was in its last years as mainstream music (I already like that), cassettes and LPs, BMW E24, Mercedes 560SEC, the era of air-cooled Porsche 911 was well underway but there was also a turbo beast called "widowmaker".
I love the eighties, but considering that I remember them quite well, it is clear that I am a fossil in terms of age.

I agree, the claims that Ukraine have hundreds of thousands of troops seem unsupported.
Where are the located?

NATO has been sending in thousands of troops dressed as mercenaries.
Why would they do that if Ukraine had so many soldiers?

I realize the specialized hardware NATO has supplied needs trained operators, but they haven't supplied enough to warrant so many troops.

I guess we will eventually find out when Russia eventually starts a push west of Donetsk.

In artemovsk, there are 3 ukrainian brigades 8000 troops each plus 1 territorial defence brigade. So up to 32000 troops for a tiny area. Ugledar has up to 16000 troops. Gulyaipole has 50000.Belarussian border has 30000 troops. Chernigov Sumy has 40000. So 700000-1 million troops isnt far from the truth.

Only ONE million u reckon?
Sure you didn't mean 20 million?

he mentions about 160k (BS at that) and then says that means 700k to 1 m.
Talk about megatrolling.

Anyway, whats happened to the quote button?