Russian special military operation in Ukraine #34

This number does not justify any serious modernization.

Conversely reduced numbers means navigation updates could be ad hoc and cheap... a modern cell phone could replace the entire navigation system using a US supplied military Navstar receiver...

I have already read some phantasmagoria on TG about equipping them with airliners transponders to fool the Russian AD systems and releasing them from "some other country".

You think they wouldn't do it?

The Israelis used Russian recon planes to hide behind while attacking targets in Syria, do you think they would draw a line that might get a civilian airliner shot down... over the UKRAINE.

People have a strange habit to overcomplicate the things that are bloody easy, or digging out some conspiracy theories.

Well technically it is what the hijackers did on 11/9.

They have few pcs left, will just attach FABs to it with glue and rope, and release in terrorist attacks hoping it will land anywhere to make some damage.
And that's it.

They disguised HE as rolls of material to hit the Crimean bridge, but they will just launch some old thing they had in storage and just hope... underestimating your enemy is why such things happen...

Biggest mistake is to not put enough Shorads around those strategic bases. They have 250+ Tunguska, 200+ pantsir and plenty of other igla 10, Osa akm and buks. The question is why they didn't deploy them around those bases. The military analysts underestimated the ukro ability and willingness to use long range drones despite them using such weapons in the last months. The AD command also underestimated them and didn't deploy enough system eventhough they have hundreds of them.

Those drones were shot down.

What if the recon drone had been packed with high level radioactive waste from one of Ukraine's reactors?

Except that would actually suit Russia better than Kiev or Washington, as it would expose the Orcs to being actual terrorists... the effect of such waste would be relatively limited and could be cleaned up over a period of time, while the reputation of the Orcs saving Europe from the Russian aggression would take a serious hit if they become nuclear terrorists... it would be a significant hit for PR, but it would be bad for the Orcs and the west and good for Russia and neutrals sitting on the fence.

Would you still be treating it as only burn marks?

Their level of success determines the Russian response... if that truck bomb on the Crimea bridge had just left scorch marks then their power network might have been left largely intact... but...

Conversely if they had filled the truck with nuclear waste as well as the bombs Zelensky might be dead along with as many of his like minded colleagues as possible, with the hope that the next group to replace them are not so suicidal.

If Zelensky became effective or just dangerous and unpredictable then he would be worth removing... currently... he isn't.

But the only reason Ukraine is even lasting this long is because Putin refuses to this day to reply the mass amount of men needed, so that forces the army to go at a snails pace because they are often going against heavily defended areas which insufficient numbers

The longer this thing takes the longer European airlines suffer from fuel costs and from having to fly around Russian air space, the longer this takes the more the west is destroying its stranglehold on the world... their Oil price cap has led to Russia buying up its own tanker fleet and forced them to set up insurance companies instead of using the ones in London like everyone else does... and anyone wanting to buy Russian oil will have to find different insurance companies too because Russia wont sell at the price cap to anyone, which means finding other transport options and other shipping insurance options from London for insurance and Greece and Cyprus and Germany for shipping... the next thing will be Russian sports shifting from European competitions to Asian ones, and such a cultural shift will be good for the Russian people.

There will be no major offensive in the foreseeable future!

The forces for a offensive would be too small. 150k is combat reserve and wouldn't be enough to take Kiev or western border of Ukraine. Could of course be some kind of Maskirovka...who knows?!

I do agree, but when they get around to offensives I would expect Orc defences to fold, plus I doubt they will be assaulting any big cities any time soon... by the time the offenses start large population centres will be encircled and given the chance to surrender, and if they don't then block off supplies and allow a humanitarian corridor or three for people to leave if they want to... after two months ask for a surrender again and continue... note those corridors are one way only.

A big offensive has only one simple advantage...ending the war very soon, but with high casualties on both sides. I don't know if this in the interest of Russia.

Exactly, though I am not so sure Russian casualties will be enormous because they wont be city fighting, but the longer this conflict takes the more damage and more cost to the west which is far more important than anything happening in Ukraine on the grand scale of things.

but remember Putin himself, for better or worse, said this war has no plans for territorial conquest so do not expect the map to be redrawn all that much.

EU, US, HATO out is the goal, they can all become Amish if they want.

There will be no offensive. There will be a slow bleeding of Ukrainian forces. More than 300k mobilized is probably far too little for a large offensive.

The current force has about 70K fighting men, and according to the post above more than twice that (150K) are in combat training... so when they join the fray that means they have three times more fighting men than they had when they surrounded Kiev, so if they want to mount offensives they certainly could and with improved gear and proper theatre specific training I would say they will do even better this time because I don't think the Orcs have the command and communication to organise and operate as large groups, which means the Russian forces will likely savage them in little bite sized packets... the level of Orc training will have dropped dramatically and their ability to move on the battlefield will be massively reduced too with a lack of military tracked vehicles.

russia voted in 4 new regions. It would be treason against the russian people not to fully liberate those oblasts.

Putin said to Japan that the Kurile Islands cannot be handed back because they are Russian territory, so I don't think he would think differently in those four new Russian regions... it was their choice to make and Putin could not have made it for them but equally he can't take that choice away from them either now they have spoken.

Putin never defined the real goals of that war. The very likely goal is to at least get half of Ukraine. Best scenario is to take the entire Ukraine.

Putin was very clear... people in the west pretend not to understand.

Ukraine needs to be a neutral country that is not controlled by the US or Germany or the EU or in HATO. They initially said joining the EU would be fine but then the EU started talking about an EU military force which torpedos that.

Russia wants a Ukraine that will not turn on them again, whether that is as part of Russia or as separate neutral regions is up to the Ukrainian people that survive to vote... Ukrainian acts to "defend" themselves... including the last 8 years defending themselves from a Russian invasion in 2014, have only made their own position worse as pro west Ukrainians get conscripted and killed or civilians leave for Europe...

Kiev will likely demand that Ukrainians around the world get a vote, but Russia wont let them stack the deck like that...

It will be funny because many fled the Ukraine because they committed war crimes.... if they try to flood back to vote they might get a tap on the shoulder and a nice new set of silver matching bracelets...

The Minsk agreements were a scam meant to stall time and allow Ukraine to build up defensive capabilities. Sadly Russia fell for it, and even today Donetsk, a Russian city, is being shelled daily without recourse.

Russia negotiated in good faith... the Ukraine could not have gotten away with it without the full support of German and France, so cutting off cheap energy sales to the EU and other cutting of relations and ties is a good result really, and now it is all out in the open Donetsk has a much brighter future than it did this time last year, as do other regions joining Russia... the remaining parts can remain stewing for a lot longer...

A quote from Angela Merkel

While that is very true... and that fucking bitch should be embarrassed at her own role in that deception, Russia was in no position to know, and was not really in a position to take on the entire west like they are doing right now. Without experience in Syria and extra work on weapons and drones and new engines and components for themselves they would have been rather more damaged by the actions of the western sanctions that would have been imposed.

When the EU starts enjoying power cuts later this winter hopefully she can reflect on the damage she helped to cause... there are going to be more dead German pensioners dying for Nazis again... deja vu.

Bakhmut is the gift that just keeps on giving. A constantly refreshed supply for the meat grinder. Any RA activity just leads to more on the way, A real honey trap.

Its almost as if Kiev is onside with the Russians demilitarisation plan.

They must be stark staring mad.

It is what Liman could have become if they had chosen to stay and fight for that useless town.

There are several reasons. Deteriorating weather, the need to increase production for mass use, plus perhaps there is an accumulation of drones for mass strikes that will accompany offensives in winter.

There is no data on the rate and volume of production of these drones in #Iran and #Russia, although Iranian military transport planes continue to fly to #Moscow with enviable regularity, so there is a flow of cargo. There is no intelligible information in the public domain about the operation of the Gerans in sub-zero temperatures.

After their use and experience in combat they might have some domestic upgrades of their own... perhaps adding optics and AI to hit moving targets in the terminal phase? Or maybe optical seeker so the targets can be marked with a coded laser beam to hit specific moving targets...

Meanwhile, the #ZNPP staff was finally cleaned up - those who did not sign a contract with Rosatom were removed from the plant + tipsters from the AFU were cleaned up.

Tipsters meaning moles...

Partly, as the capture of #Artemovsk will force the AFU to rebuild its defences in #Donbass, but it is important to understand that until #Maryinka and #Avdeyevka are captured, shelling from barrel artillery will continue in its current mode. Stopping the shelling of #Donetsk requires serious movement west of #Donetsk towards #Krasnoarmeysk, where #Krasnogorovka, #Selidovo, #Kurakhovo and so on must also be taken.

Which means the amount of territory the Russians are going to take if the boundaries of the districts that voted to join the Russian Federation, plus the range of Ukrainian artillery... let them have ATCMS... that is 300km...

As we can tell from the quote from Angela Merkel (probably the most influential EU figure in the last 40 years), the West sees the 8 years of frozen conflict as a major win.

Ukraine only losing 20% of its territory when half the population was pro-Rus in 2014 is definitely considered a win.

Win or not, the goal was supposed to be the fall of Putin and the economic and military collapse of Russia... Afghanistan 2 so to speak, and it has had the reverse effect and in fact has seriously damaged the wests position in a wide range of areas...

Ukraine is not over and if they get out of this just losing what they have already lost they will be very very lucky... I rather suspect Zelensky is going to push the right button and become worth eliminating by the Orc side and then things will be more interesting... but lets give it a year or two first...

If it was a dirty bomb, that would have disabled a key facility.

Bullshit, they train to operate in NBC equipment, operations could have carried on as normal no problem.

@ kvs " Russia has been deliberately not sending its best
equipment into Ukraine and limiting its engagement. So clearly there is an issue with information outflow which needs to be managed."

The Su-57 has been spotted over Artemovsk just yesterday. I'd say they are using most of their best equipment, except a handful of ground pieces undergoing trials (e.g Armata, etc.).

I would think its sensors would be very useful in this conflict, being 5th gen fighter bomber technology... the risks would be very low and the benefits of using it and getting the data it can collect as well as the invaluable experience of disseminating that data in real time perhaps to units on the ground will also be invaluable.

In comparison if they have laser systems that can take out optical satellites, I would think that is not a capability worth revealing... the only laser systems mentioned being used incountry are anti drone lasers for destroying drones within 5 km and not satellites or optics at extended ranges.

In most other cases, the armour they used was armour used by southern region forces and of course the naval infantry forces and VDV which is to be expected and not state of the art ground forces equipment like the US would use in such a venture (they can charge more for spare parts and support for the new expensive stuff).

99% of the fighting is either old stuff or a mix of highly upgraded old stuff and new stuff.

And it seems to be doing the job well. Drones are new and they seem to be able to use them effectively enough...

Would hope they are able to test some of their ground based robots against enemy positions where they can drive the robot up while monitoring where all the enemy fire is coming from and neutralise it using artillery and the robots fire power... even just do that a couple of times a day to slowly wear them out and chip away at the defences...

They might want to revise the weapons and ammo choices for the robots based on experience... i suspect the 30mm cannon might be a bit light for fortified positions... perhaps a direct fire mount for a Vasilesk auto mortar perhaps with a continuous belt feed system... they could use standard 82mm bombs or use captured 81mm HATO mortar bombs.... perhaps develop 82mm shells for it too to extend range maybe.

Why do people keep talking about the 300K mobilized as if its the only troops they have. They had about 200K there, 300K mobilized and another 70K additional volunteers, plus 75K from Belorussia. So its about 645K troops.

They initially said joining the EU would be fine but then the EU started talking about an EU military force which torpedos that.

The talk about Euro power projection is long gone.
This is nothing the overseas musters of puppets would enjoy, that is why they don't allow that
It was never a case for Ukraine.
As long as the thing was economics, Russia didn't care in any way other than stating the obvious things : Ukraine can't eat a cake and keep the cake.
If it would joining the EU economic sphere, it would be blocked at the eastern borders. Russian economic zone could not remain open for the inflow of goods&products subsidized in the EU, via Ukraine.
And Putin said that openly and in public back then in 2013 already.
What was next, was a due diligence of pros&cons Yanuk made, and, funny funny, it turned out that this is not a deal.
Sure that he represented the industrial clan of Ukraine, but the other would be no better!
EU granted export contingents amount was nothing other than an offense. In some spheres, it consisted of a weekly (!!) Ukrainian export volume.
Again, that was what Putin was saying all time long : you won't compete with the EU production, because they are not interested in that.
Yanuk made an obvious choice from the perspective of well being of a nation.
We can say whatever we want about the guy, but objectively he was one of the best Ukrainian rulers, and brought years of stability and growth. Did quite well in collaboration with all the neighbors. Ukraine was getting closer and closer to Poland, but this process was peaceful, stable, and constructed on healthy grounds of common interests.
He even started the deconstruction of Bandera occultism there.
And that was what killed him.
It was not a goal of the puppet masters.
Ukraine had a different role and position in a plan, and throwing Bandera in hell where his soul obviously fries now was not a part of this plan.

Has anyone found any useful info on Russia ammo production and inventories? I read they are consuming about 20K rounds a day of artillery rounds. Very plausible if you have 1000 tubes. Not even a high tempo in fact. At high tempo they could churn through that in about 8 min!!! I wonder how big the cold war stocks were, how much is left and what their production rate is.

Nobody will give you this info.
Not only as nobody here has any idea, and would keep his mouth shut only if know.
But because ammo production can be expanded to infinity.
Only in Doneck, there was one dedicated ammunition factory, Donetsk Factory of Chemical Products, capable of delivery 300k artillery rounds a month.
The number was given by accident I suppose.
It was one of several objects that can produce ammunition there if only supplied with raw materials.
Factory itself was destroyed with multiple Ukr strikes for 8 years, yet production was transferred to some other objects - ammo supply was never an issue for republican units due to that mostly.
Nobody sane will guess the production cap of entire Federation. Neither it's stocks.

GaryB wrote:

Bullshit, they train to operate in NBC equipment, operations could have carried on as normal no problem.

Regardless of the clean up procedure, even a small dirty bomb would spread in the wind.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

They are also supposed to be trained not to let a Tu-141 travel 650km in a straight line from Ukraine, and manage to fall on the air base.
The Tu-141 must have been in Russian air space for almost half an hour before it was shot down.

What happened to that aspect of training?

I await the official report.

"No plan survives contact with the enemy”.

Regardless of the clean up procedure, even a small dirty bomb would spread in the wind.

Radiation does not spread like a forest fire... say a 150kg HE charge to spread say 100kgs of highly radioactive nuclear material... it is not going to vapourise and blow up into the upper atmosphere and be spread for thousands of kms down wind... more likely the radioactive material will be spread about 1km square around the impact point mostly down wind... the bigger the spread the lower the levels of radiation, the smaller the spread the higher the levels but the easier it is to scoop up and haul away and bury.

Dirty bombs are not really that scary... honestly a bio weapon has more potential to do harm...

What is being said is simply open information and what authorities are saying. I don't actually believe it all of course and think there is a lot more not being said.

Because they have been caught out so often in lies?

The only one I can think of would be that they would not invade, but then at the time they said that they might not have known the Orcs were going to attack anyway so they weren't technically lying if they didn't intend to attack at the time.

The talk about Euro power projection is long gone.

It is, but the US is screwing the EU over super hard... raw dogging them with no contraceptives or raincoats to be seen... if there is a falling out between the EU and US over this there is little chance the EU will run to join a US adventure in future and equally it is unlikely that the US would support an EU invasion or conflict or police action, so the EU would need their own military force... and the Ukraine has shown itself to be fucking stupid when it comes to casualty tolerance...

Ideal candidates for the infantry divisions...

Yanuk made an obvious choice from the perspective of well being of a nation.
We can say whatever we want about the guy, but objectively he was one of the best Ukrainian rulers, and brought years of stability and growth. Did quite well in collaboration with all the neighbors. Ukraine was getting closer and closer to Poland, but this process was peaceful, stable, and constructed on healthy grounds of common interests.

As soon as he rejected the EU deal and went with the much better Russian deal which could have been done together with the Chinese deal because neither demanded exclusive deals like the EU did, he became Putins puppet... a stooge for the evil Russians despite him being rather anti Russian anyway... he just recognised a good deal and a bad deal and chose in his countries interests... so in that sense he was like Putin, but hardly a puppet... which is why he had to go.

They are also supposed to be trained not to let a Tu-141 travel 650km in a straight line from Ukraine, and manage to fall on the air base.
The Tu-141 must have been in Russian air space for almost half an hour before it was shot down.

What happened to that aspect of training?

This wasn't training from an Orc perspective... this was a mission, which required the Tu-141 to fly where it did when it did.

We don't know what it did to evade the attention of the air defences of Russia but it ended up being shot down, which is more than we can say for the drones and missiles fired at Saudi Arabia.

I await the official report.

Always the best idea.

Wars are won by destroying the enemies military and taking away his ability to resist. If Russia had tried to hold all of this territory it would extend the frontlines by factor of 3x and would have been impossible to defend under SMO manpower levels.

I'm becoming increasingly intolerant of these fckin morons who just won't learn...

Russia has extended frontlines because ITS NOT CAPTURING NEW TERRITORY. The ukrainians holding entire western donbass and eastern kharkov region has massively overstretched the russians.

When the russians liberated the severodonetsk lisichansk agglomeration, they shortened the frontline by around 120km, which is good but not enough. The loss of Izyum was exactly because russia, despite 9,10,5 or whatever superiority in artillery and air support, failed to take Artemovsk or ugledar, celebrating advances of 200m. If the frontile reached slavyansk, the russians wouldnt have been overxtended.
Ukrainians holding ugledar prevents the russians from using an important railway, reducing logistics efficiency, and overextends the frontline by around 250km between gulaypole and marinka.

No, the russians arent spread out because of holding territory, theyre spread out because they suck at liberating the donbass, including tiny little hamlets like nevelskoe, or sets of a few dacha houses like pervomaiskoe, or a few commieblocks like ugledar.

But yeah, the ukrainian forces are denazified at an alarming rate!!!!111!!!!!! Now advance in pervomaiskoe is 104m in 3 weeks instead of 67m last 3 months!!!!!!! URAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA A MASSIVE STRONGHOLD BUILT IN 8 YEARS WAS LIBERATED(2 basements, 1 dacha turned to rubble)

Nice to know that the number of artillery shells the US will be sending to the Ukraine is what Russia uses in 15 days, talk about losing the war of attrition.

Read the fine print, this are multi-year contracts. 

At the beginning of the conflict someone stated how many grenades Russia produced in 2005. Can´t remember if it was 1,5 or 2,5 million a year.
Todays production will be larger, much larger.


Western exit strategy is:

- Zelensky was a fool
- Can´t trust slavic untermenschen to do a good job

The russian flag may fly above Kiev, Odessa and Lviv but...
- Russia lost at least 200.000 soldiers
- 10.000 tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed
- 1.000 planes and helicopters shot down
- russian economy is in tatters
- rebuilding of 404 will cost 500 Trillion $
- without western money, tech and expertise Russia won´t be able to rebuild 404

After that they will concentrate on the "big insurgency" which will consist of a handful of small terror attacks a year
but blown up in western media to a Iraqi-style battle with thousands of russian soldiers killed every year.

... and they will erase Tolstoy from university lectures replacing him with the famous Ukrainian writer Gogol

Russia lost at least 200.000 soldiers

Not even 1/10th of that...

1.000 planes and helicopters shot down

Read it again and try to visualize that picture... debris would be everywhere and it would be all over MSM.
We saw only a handful of debris, about 10 confirmed Russian hull losses..
if we add some planes demaged ob the ground it will be 20+ max.
FYI US lost 129 helicopters and 24 fixed-wing aircraft in Iraq between the 2003 invasion and February 2009

russian economy is in tatters

 
Indeed and it shrank 2%      

without western money, tech and expertise Russia won´t be able to rebuild 404

Pathetic statement

Feeling of irony must be really an issue with you my friend

Edit : it seems friendS as adds to Erk either

This are western claims. Lies they started telling from day 1 exactly to have an exit strategy for the case they can´t hide the russian victory anymore.

Pardon me for being late, but yeah, seems like those attacks were indeed drones - Soviet-era Tupolev reconnaissance drones retrofitted with some kind of explosive instead of the camera package they were meant to carry back in the 70s.

So, some MacGyvered cruise missile, in essence. Quite clever, and frankly quite expected (UA had lots in stock after 1991, and have used them since 2014 here and there, though not with explosives until now I guess). Surprised they're still airworthy though, but I guess that's testament to rugged Soviet engineering.

I highly doubt this will be a recurring thing, anyhoo. Lucky Ukraine because Russia didn't expect it and was slow to act, and lucky Russia that the damage was comparatively minor. There aren't that many of them left I reckon either, and even rugged Soviet equipment probably needs refurbishing a lot of the time, requiring factories and expertise that Ukraine does not possess anymore.

They fired one across Central Europe, which famously crashed in Croatia back in March. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a trial shot (that they blamed on Russia, as usual, and the unconditional support the west has given them left the west no choice but to simply "forget" about it, which Kiev was indeed counting on).

Then they spent 9 months preparing a couple more they had for this attack on Russia. That's my wild theory.

In more recent news, there's been a bunch of clips surfacing of Ukrainians executing their own for not following (suicidal) orders. Both from a Russian drone observing the entire affair, and mobile phone footage by the guys who did it. This is 1945 level stuff. A cursory glance at western media also reveals a kind of fatigue if you read between the lines.

All in all, the indications are that things aren't going well for Kiev, but the make-up artists are hard at work.

sepheronx wrote:Testing it in a few uses isn't really "using" beyond just seeing its use in such a tempo.

99% of the fighting is either old stuff or a mix of highly upgraded old stuff and new stuff.

Some Russian assets used are very modern, like the naval ones (post-2010s vessels with VLS cells launching modern cruise missiles), many munitions of all kinds elsewhere, both aerial and artillery ditto.  

But the "dirty", more-close up fighting on the ground is indeed about 99% old-ish stuff (20+ years, some curious examples of 80+ years old too, in both "camps"). Among the few truly new vehicles, I might have missed something but to my knowledge it's really only the BMPT "Terminator" that has been sent to the theater, but it hasn't engaged as far as I know. Waiting for something.

As for Su-57, it launched a few token missiles in Syria too. It's not really "combat deployment", just a hotter kind of trial. They're very few in numbers and very sensitive. I wouldn't be surprised if it's mostly about SIGINT. Like monitoring responses, since Ukrainian airspace is under complete NATO surveillance with all their best assets.

"Legacy" aircraft do the actual work.

But the "dirty", more-close up fighting on the ground is indeed about 99% old-ish stuff (20+ years, some curious examples of 80+ years old too, in both "camps"). Among the few truly new vehicles, I might have missed something but to my knowledge it's really only the BMPT "Terminator" that has been sent to the theater, but it hasn't engaged as far as I know. Waiting for something.

So several people keep saying. But this is not true. BMPT "Terminator" was used in Battle of Popasnaya for example and seems to have performed well there.
It does not make a whole lot of sense to use it in wide open ground. So I think it will only be used again once they start attacking larger settlements.

BTR-82A modernized is not anymore in its 20+ year old form. It has a 30mm dual axis stabilized gun with thermal sight. When it is upgraded from BTR-80 they replaced the engine. So even the powerplant is not the same. Might as well be a new vehicle.

But yeah a lot of vehicles have not been upgraded at all especially a lot of the BMPs.