Ukraine Conflict - Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war

[kanisatha]

5 hours ago, Malcador said:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/national-security-warning-reportedly-involves-russian-space-weapon#transcript

Anti satellite weapon. This is more of a nothing burger, other than necessitating the Americans spending more

Yup. What I've been talking about with my students in my National Security Policy class, that the Russians will soon test (and deploy?) a nuclear space weapon for anti-satellite use. Not as much of a threat as an orbital bombardment system, but still a major escalation in space-based weapons.

[Mamoulian War]

8 hours ago, Malcador said:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-it-is-withdrawing-some-troops-avdiivka-more-secure-positions-2024-02-15/

Presumably this means the withdrawal is complete

They have withdrawn from Zenith, south of Avdiivka (no time to read the whole article now, so if it is mentioned there, forget that I said anything )

[Mamoulian War]

Budanov gave interview to French newspaper, that they already know, who is behind the assassination attempt on his wife, and that retaliation will follow soon

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/16/7442165/

[kanisatha]

R.I.P. Alexei Navalny

Murdered simply for caring about your country.

[Malcador]

Must be a sign the city's going to fall soon if ISW is saying this

[Zoraptor]

To be honest, DeepState and the like are better than ISW. They're as accurate- more so, really- and they don't try and hide their bias behind a veneer of pseudo academic language. Guess if they didn't hide it they'd not be used by the Beeb, AlJ etc though and miss out on funding.

(You're probably not really meant to remember it but if you do ISW's coverage of the 'counter'offensive and Robotyne in particular makes for an interesting contrast to their coverage of Ukrainian losses. Robotyne, 2021 (belated edit; lol) estimated population of 74* was a crucial gain and "tactically significant" (direct quote). A city in the 10s of thousands that had been touted as a fortress prepared for a decade: not operationally significant)

*2001 census had a few hundred population, for military purposes that may be a more fair estimate since, militarily, it doesn't matter if a house is derelict and no one lived there. Either way though, not large.

Edited February 17 by Zoraptor

[Malcador]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68323366

Looks like that's it.

 

[Sarex]

13 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

DeepState

That map has a mini game in it, wtf.

[Mamoulian War]

12 hours ago, Malcador said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68323366

Looks like that's it.

 

UA has performed controlled withdrawal from Avdiivka to prepared fortifications. It is said, that last few days there were 8000 UA soldiers defending the city, against 50k RU. Unfortunately during the Zenith retreat few days ago, some of the UA soldiers became POWs, as that retreat was ordered to late.

[Malcador]

Will have to look around , curious how their fortifications are but I doubt all the OSINT types are going to be sharing that information.

[Zoraptor]

One of the issues with Avdiivka does seem to have been a lack of proper fortifications behind the initial line. Will be interesting to see how far they do withdraw, I though they might well try to hold the Coke Plant at least but it seems not.

[Zoraptor]

Sokolov watch: now sacked as commander of the Black Sea Fleet as of a couple of days ago. Given its performance, not before time, but it seems close to incontrovertible that he's been alive the whole time.

I thought to check because one of the other senior commanders Ukraine had claimed to have killed (Andrei Mordvichev) in a separate incident was a senior commander in Avdiivka.

Edited February 18 by Zoraptor

[Malcador]

https://kyivindependent.com/denmark-to-donate-all-its-artillery-to-ukraine-says-pm/

New marketing tactic will be to say "Why do you need a military to defeat Russia when we can do it for you?".  I suppose a more pessimistic view will be that things are pretty bad if this is warranted (probably not).

 

[Mamoulian War]

According to reports, RU lost 47k soldiers since October at Avdiivka front. The most casualties have been incurred on them during first and last month. This averages to 300 casualties per day. According to general staff, the casualty ratio was 1:7 in favour to UA. According to documented OSINT, the equipment destruction was 1:12 - 1:25 ratio in favour of UA. depending on type of equipment- the worst for RU were manpower transporting vehicles, which goes in line with high casualty rate of RU army. Some russian soldiers from this frontlines are saying, that up to 70% of their brigade manpower is gone.

Avdiivka had pre war population of 32000 people. As being said above, the biggest issue for the defense were non-existent fortifications behind the initial lines made in 2014.

someone made a calculation, that if Russia would like to conquer whole Ukraine, with this casualty rate, they would need 8 billion soldiers

[xzar_monty]

2 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

someone made a calculation, that if Russia would like to conquer whole Ukraine, with this casualty rate, they would need 8 billion soldiers

The relevant calculation, though, is to see whether Russia could conquer Ukraine with something resembling this casualty rate through the fact that Ukraine will run out of manpower much earlier than Russia will.

[Mamoulian War]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

The relevant calculation, though, is to see whether Russia could conquer Ukraine with something resembling this casualty rate through the fact that Ukraine will run out of manpower much earlier than Russia will.

If the 1:7 death ratio is real, the math says, that Russia will run out of manpower sooner than Ukraine, unless Putin borrows DPRK army as well. Not to mention, that Russia could sustain the equipment losses, which they currently have for maximum 2 years. In some equipment it is projected just about 1 year. So less equipment will mean more meat assaults which would mean more favourable KD ratio for Ukraine.

But first, the EU and US should finally wake the **** up their factories, and the NATO have to allow strikes in Belgorod, and other bordering areas in Russia, which does not allow UA to perform at full capacity

[Malcador]

Two more jets downed today, well or is claimed so far, maybe moving western AD around or could be friendly fire, distances are pretty close.  Smart to move air defense closer to front line, Ukrainian troops got worked over by glide bombs in Avdiivka.

9 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

But first, the EU and US should finally wake the **** up their factories, and the NATO have to allow strikes in Belgorod, and other bordering areas in Russia, which does not allow UA to perform at full capacity

Won't happen, nature of the game means the West won't want their weapons to be hitting Russia proper.  Ukrainians have their own stuff that can hit Russia, they've done it quite a bit in the past few weeks.

 

[Mamoulian War]

1 minute ago, Malcador said:

 

Won't happen, nature of the game means the West won't want their weapons to be hitting Russia proper.  Ukrainians have their own stuff that can hit Russia, they've done it quite a bit in the past few weeks.

 

well som high officials in some EU states (including Germany) have voiced, that this should be allowed as soon as possible. But I am on with you on this one. Unfortunately.

 

Also speaking about manpower in my previous post, since the jailing of prominent Bashkir activist in Russia, There are numerous reports, that Bashkir commanders are keeping their men away from active fighting. And there is also a lot of reports of Tatar mistreatment at the front, which could lead to similar outcome.

[xzar_monty]

28 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

But first, the EU and US should finally wake the **** up their factories, and the NATO have to allow strikes in Belgorod, and other bordering areas in Russia, which does not allow UA to perform at full capacity

I fully agree about the first part. I'm not sure how likely that is, though.

It's like the situation with the young woman who was apprehended by the police and social services when she was about to jump off a bridge and kill herself. "You think you came here just in time but you're twenty years too late" is a fairly devastating point to make. (And as this is an internet forum, I feel compelled to point out that this is not a general statement: not every dire situation is such that someone else is fully or partly responsible for it and should have acted earlier.)

[BruceVC]

Here  is a  good analysis from  Fareed  Zakaria about Carlons comparison where  he suggested Russia has better cities than the US,  its only 6  minutes long

 

Edited February 19 by BruceVC

[Mamoulian War]

It looks like freshly rotated 3rd Storm Brigade and Azov Brigade are raiding ruins of Avdiivka during night time. It is said, that they have inflicted 1400 casualties on drunken Russian soldiers in last 24 hours. Should be taken with a hefty load of salt, but there are so many videos popping out lately, that the russian casualties will be not minuscule.

[Malcador]

SVR thinks they're Mossad or something.

[Mamoulian War]

23 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

I fully agree about the first part. I'm not sure how likely that is, though.

It's like the situation with the young woman who was apprehended by the police and social services when she was about to jump off a bridge and kill herself. "You think you came here just in time but you're twenty years too late" is a fairly devastating point to make. (And as this is an internet forum, I feel compelled to point out that this is not a general statement: not every dire situation is such that someone else is fully or partly responsible for it and should have acted earlier.)

This seems to be interesting, especially the wording used in the proposal.

"the supply of additional long-range weapons systems and ammunition needed for Ukraine (...) to be able to carry out targeted strikes under international law on strategically important targets located far into the Russian aggressors’ rear"

Germany will vote on this soon.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/20/7442721/

[pmp10]

  

On 2/19/2024 at 9:09 AM, Mamoulian War said:

According to reports, RU lost 47k soldiers since October at Avdiivka front. The most casualties have been incurred on them during first and last month. This averages to 300 casualties per day. According to general staff, the casualty ratio was 1:7 in favour to UA. According to documented OSINT, the equipment destruction was 1:12 - 1:25 ratio in favour of UA. depending on type of equipment- the worst for RU were manpower transporting vehicles, which goes in line with high casualty rate of RU army. Some russian soldiers from this frontlines are saying, that up to 70% of their brigade manpower is gone.

Avdiivka had pre war population of 32000 people. As being said above, the biggest issue for the defense were non-existent fortifications behind the initial lines made in 2014.

someone made a calculation, that if Russia would like to conquer whole Ukraine, with this casualty rate, they would need 8 billion soldiers

If these numbers are even remotely accurate we will see the front stabilize long-term.
I would expect Russia to at least have some forces saved for the US election.

[Zoraptor]

Neither side are at all accurate. And the OSINT guys are well into "here's how Bernie can still win!" territory*.

More losses than the Ukrainian side for the Russian is pretty much a given given the situation, though the shambolic retreat would not have helped at all and likely brought the loss ratio down significantly. The main problem for Ukraine is that they're now lost nearly their entire urban defensive anchor system around Donetsk city (Avdiivka and Marinka) over a comparatively short period. It may (just) be less territory than Ukraine took in their 'counter'offensive, but it's of way more strategic value than Robotyne and Klishcheeva and is way more built up.

The other issue is the supposed refusal of units to obey orders which has been reported on by western media. Some of that may be scenario fulfillment for those who preferred Zaluzhny to Sirsky but if it's even slightly true it's a major issue since it will infect every aspect ("sure, we'll hold, we'll attack when ordered to... but what if the guys next to us run? Got to be prepared"). While I don't think anyone could blame the 110th for cracking as they'd held Avdiivka since the outset the main culprit was not conscripts nor a weak new brigade, it was 3rd separate/Azov. Supposedly volunteer, an over strength rather than under strength brigade and highly motivated.

*we had one of the Oryx guys trying to pass off a Leo2 and Bradley as Russian losses two days ago. That at least was so obvious it got corrected (but also so obvious it should never have happened in the first place), but you can imagine the number of times things weren't quite as obvious, and didn't.