Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

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Apart from the Tranche 1 Eurofighters, there's not a lot to give. And this seems a major risk given there's still plenty of Russian SAM about. There's not a huge range of long-range weaponry to keep them out of harms way, except expensive Meteor air-to-air and Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

There were some rumours of France thinking about donating Mirages. Quite old now, but IIRC they are capable of launching SCALP, the French version of the Storm Shadow. Ukraine doesn't really need an expensive plane right now, just a compatible launch platform.  

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There will be lots of awful hot takes on the internet but what the USA always does in cases of provocation is to show up with overwhelming force. Expect a squadron of F-22s or F-35s to fly around the Black Sea soon.

Please. There will be some tough talk but then the 'de-escalation' doctrine will kick in, which of course will just encourage Russia to do the same to the rest of the surveillance fleet.

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"Culminating" means ending? Who knew? I guess English is not ISW's first language.

Culminating point is a specific concept in military strategy expounded by Carl von Clausewitz. It means that a force is no longer capable of successfully carrying out its operations; the threat from their strategy has peaked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culminating_point

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The article mentions: "As of 2 October 2022, 10 NATO member states – Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia – supported Ukraine’s future membership in NATO."

Any guesses as to which two countries Kubela is talking about?

I assume they are ex-communist countries, like all the others that publicly support Ukrainian NATO membership. We know Hungary isn't one of them and Bulgaria seems unlikely due to the country's political paralysis and lingering pro-Russian sentiment stemming from its pivotal role in Bulgaria gaining independence. So, I'd guess two of Slovenia, Albania, and Croatia.

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1652293906955112452?s=20

The quote from Kuleba refers to a conversation held at the April 28th meeting of the Nordic-Baltic states,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic-Baltic_Eight

(Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden.)

So it will be two of those. As all the Baltics have already publicly stated their support, it must refer to two of the Nordics. As Sweden isn't yet a NATO member it probably isn't going to take a position for fear it might delay their accession further. So it will be two of either Denmark, Finland, Iceland or Norway. At a total guess I'd say Finland and Norway. They're the only states not to have declared that share a border with Russia, so it is strongly in their interest to keep the Russians tied up with an even longer NATO border.

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The UK is procuring missiles for Ukraine with ranges up to 300km, on behalf of the IFU states.

https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1652991835936112641?s=20

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The UK looks poised to send long range missiles to Ukraine:

In a procurement notice posted May 2 by the British-led International Fund for Ukraine, a group of northern European counties that have set up a mechanism to send weapons to the battlefield, the United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry asked for “expressions of interest” in providing strike capabilities with a range of up to 300 kilometers, or nearly 200 miles. The notice asked for responses within three days.

No final decision has been made, according to a British official who declined to confirm the type, timing or quantity of weaponry under consideration. But the notice is a substantive step toward Britain itself supplying such munitions, and the requested specifications and capabilities closely match its air-launched Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

Storm Shadows can be mounted on Ukraine’s Soviet-made jets and reach into Russian territory. Kyiv has long sought that capability, and tried to ease Western escalation fears with pledges it would refrain from using donated weapons in such attacks.

“If we could strike at a distance of up to 300 kilometers, the Russian army wouldn’t be able to provide defense and will have to lose,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the European Union earlier this year. “Ukraine is ready to provide any guarantees that your weapons will not be involved in attacks on the Russian territory.”

Weeks before those remarks, according to a previously unreported file included among the classified U.S. documents leaked online through the Discord messaging platform, U.S. intelligence confirmed Britain intended to send Ukraine an unspecified number of Storm Shadow missiles, along with British personnel to aid in targeting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/05/08/britain-ukraine-long-range-missile/

Though they're not getting back to bidders until early June, a month after the call closed.

Take your time lads, it's not like there's a war on or anything.

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https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655854286994022400?cxt=HHwWgICxge6s4_otAAAA

They need to laugh at the fact that Russia can only afford to send one T-34 for the parade.

The irony has not been lost on Ukrainians that this symbol of Russian pride, the T-34, was designed in Kharkiv, Ukraine...

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February 2022: "The Russian army is the 2nd best army in the world!"

May 2023: "The Russian army is the 2nd best army in Russia."

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Both the US and UK governments are very pro-Turkey. Turkey is not going to be expelled any time soon no matter what it does.

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I'm surprised I've managed to beat Woodbury's take, which will quite obviously be that the heartless Ukrainian monsters blew up the dam to murder Russian civilians as revenge or something. This dam blowing up looks like a big deal and at this moment there are plausible cases for both Ukraine and Russia being the culprit to disrupt the other's plans. Either way, its going to be very bad for civilians on both sides of the river. Even if we don't have official word, I think a good indicator that it was actually Ukraine would be the use the floods and chaos to amphibiously cross the Dnieper.

Why would Ukraine flood Kherson city itself and make any counterattack south of Kherson all the more harder? This has Russian ecoterrorism all over it. Not to mention Russia ridiculous explanation for how Ukraine supposedly blew the dam

Regardless of whoever attacked the dam, fact is that dams can be effectively treated as legitimate war targets by either side. That's neither straightforwardly morally wonderful nor completely fair, but such is war.
If Ukraine blew up one of its own dams to try to stop the Russians I don't think I could indict them for alleged "ecoterrorism" either.

This is incorrect; attacking a dam, if doing so imperils a civilian population, is forbidden and potentially a war crime.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v2/rule42

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I don't know who did it, but I am leaning towards Russia. Seems like a strategic play in their part. This morning (Ukrainian time) the Ukrainian garrisons finally withdrew from the islands located in the Dnieper due to the flooding. Crimea already taps other reservoirs for water and before the invasion they usually just shipped it off from Russia.

I'm positive it was Ukraine.

How though?

Blowing up a dam that isn't in your possession, particularly one the size of the kakhovka dam, is very hard. These are structures specifically designed to withstand huge external forces. It isn't the case of just lobbing a bunch of missiles, they would barely cause a scratch. To put it in perspective the bouncing bombs of the famous Dambusters Raid had over six times the amount of high explosive of even the largest missile in Ukraine's possession, and those took advantage of the pressure wave caused by underwater detonation to amplify the damage.

On the other hand, rigging the dam internally with lots of explosives is far easier.

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I don't know who did it, but I am leaning towards Russia. Seems like a strategic play in their part. This morning (Ukrainian time) the Ukrainian garrisons finally withdrew from the islands located in the Dnieper due to the flooding. Crimea already taps other reservoirs for water and before the invasion they usually just shipped it off from Russia.

I'm positive it was Ukraine.

How though?

Blowing up a dam that isn't in your possession, particularly one the size of the kakhovka dam, is very hard. These are structures specifically designed to withstand huge external forces. It isn't the case of just lobbing a bunch of missiles, they would barely cause a scratch. To put it in perspective the bouncing bombs of the famous Dambusters Raid had over six times the amount of high explosive of even the largest missile in Ukraine's possession, and those took advantage of the pressure wave caused by underwater detonation to amplify the damage.

On the other hand, rigging the dam internally with lots of explosives is far easier.

It's extremely easy with guided missiles, HIMARS for example has a practical accuracy of about 1 yard.

That's what guided missiles are for, to destroy stationary or slow moving targets with very high accuracy.

And Russia gets a big hole of about 100 miles in it's defence lines.

What has precision got anything to do with it if you are still just packing a firecracker?

A unitary GMLRS fired from a HIMARS has a warhead of just 90kg. That is not particularly large and isn't intended for hardened structures. It took an ungodly amount of them fired in salvos over many weeks to break through the deck of the Antonovsky bridge. The dam is a vastly stronger structure still.

Even Tochkas or Storm Shadows with 420-450kg warheads would only cause localised damaged.

As I pointed out, WW2 bouncing bombs were almost 3000kg, with multiple being needed to bring down a dam, despite being emplaced in the optimum position to blow one up.


Sorry, HIMARS can't destroy a dam. You might be getting confused with reports Ukraine was looking into breaking open individual gates with HIMARS, but that is clearly not what has happened here, the damage is far more extensive.

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Does anyone have any way to easy look up where these cities (in Ukraine) are?

Looking them up on Google Maps and isn't the most intuitive way to figure out where the battles and frontlines are.

Use Deep State, as it has a regularly updated map of the front.

https://deepstatemap.live/en

Bear in mind though this is Ukraine, so there's probably ~30 towns with the same name. Even worse, various sources will use the Russian name, which can be spelt similarly or be a completely different name to the Ukrainian one.

Good luck.

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Reports coming out that Kadyrov's right-hand man has been eliminated.

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1668911534184038403?s=20

I'm sure Ukrainian Military Intelligence have some colourful suggestions for where Kadyrov can go to find his friend...

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A reminder that Zelensky's grandfather's parents were killed in the Holocaust after the Nazis burnt their village to the ground:

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1669702209968173057?s=20

Remember Zelensky began his political career explicitly in opposition to traditional Ukrainian nationalists, among whom antisemitism and association with Nazi sympathisers were rife (Sorry, but that is true). He was trying to set up a sort of unifying big tent nationalism. Zelensky is a Russian speaker, socialised with Russians, as well as Russian-sympathetic Ukrainians who later joined the Russian side post-invasion. He was regarded by the more nationalistic elements in Ukraine as a traitor and Russian-sympathiser himself. So from Putin's perspective (which doesn't appear to notice the nuance of Zelensky's political project) Zelensky has drifted into the arms of the nationalists/antisemites.

This tension has popped up a number of times during the conflict. For example I was a bit aggrieved when the Ukrainians made a big deal out of a Russian missile strike on Uman (a pilgrimage site for some Jews) as somehow the Russians were deliberately attacking Jews. The truth is the pilgrims now largely come from Israel and the US, because the Uman community barely exists anymore. That isn't only to do with the Nazis, but the Ukrainian nationalists who supported them, people who Ukrainian nationalists of today still admire.

Sometimes Israel's ambivalence on Ukraine is posed as somehow being just a Russian-Jewish issue by ill-informed commentators, it isn't. There's many reasons for it, but one is Ukrainian nationalism isn't exactly looked fondly upon by many Jews. While many aren't exactly fond of a Russia doing a pretty good impression of fascists either, there is also a certain sense of karma.

Of course that doesn't excuse everything else Russia is doing, but on this specific point I do see where Putin is coming from, if perhaps not entirely accurate.

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Finland has been weapons to Ukraine before joining NATO.

Sweden has long been giving weapons to Ukraine despite not being in NATO yet.

All the excuses in the world don't change anything.

And again because they don't have the same issues with neighboring countries as Israel. You just keep ignoring that and pretending like it doesn't exist.

If you want to keep walking around that, OK. I don't really have anything else to add. You don't seem to either, anyway.

Are you telling me that Israel couldn't spare a few Iron Done systems despite the fact that the US is paying the bills?

Israel is not in an alliance with Ukraine, it has zero obligation to provide anything.

Iron Dome is Israeli IP, not American. The US has invested into production of systems once it was developed, but the agreements mean much of the American money invested into production goes back to US contractors, it isn't "paying the bills".

Most countries on the planet haven't supplied Ukraine with weapons, why are you picking on just one?

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Finland has been weapons to Ukraine before joining NATO.

Sweden has long been giving weapons to Ukraine despite not being in NATO yet.

All the excuses in the world don't change anything.

And again because they don't have the same issues with neighboring countries as Israel. You just keep ignoring that and pretending like it doesn't exist.

If you want to keep walking around that, OK. I don't really have anything else to add. You don't seem to either, anyway.

Are you telling me that Israel couldn't spare a few Iron Done systems despite the fact that the US is paying the bills?

Israel is not in an alliance with Ukraine, it has zero obligation to provide anything.

Iron Dome is Israeli IP, not American. The US has invested into production of systems once it was developed, but the agreements mean much of the American money invested into production goes back to US contractors, it isn't "paying the bills".

Most countries on the planet haven't supplied Ukraine with weapons, why are you picking on just one?

Israel isn't "most countries".

Its apologists constantly tell us it is a shining beacon of civilised Western values in a sea of barbarism, and there is also the small matter of *vast* amounts of US aid and support to consider.

If you hate Israel so much, why the hell do you want their weapons?

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https://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2023/07/02/64a1084b9cff3300266a99b7-directo.html

"A Ukrainian officer says that French armor is "unsuitable" for the attack"

Well that's a bit 'no sh**t, Sherlock'.

AMX-10 RC is really a tank destroyer, not a tank. In combat it is primarily a mobile defensive vehicle designed to rapidly respond to and outmanouvre an enemy tank assault, not to go on the offensive itself. It can also be used for reconnaissance in low threat environments. It's a bit of a niche concept that isn't used by many militaries, and is likely to be extremely vulnerable in Ukraine.

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12264611/Britain-just-40-tanks-dozen-frigates-destroyers-ready-war.html

"Fight Russia? Britain has just 40 tanks and around a dozen frigates and destroyers ready to go war - the lowest figures in modern times"

The current conflict has de-militarized the UK.

I'm not really sure what the current conflict has to do with the number of destroyers and frigates the RN has. And the UK has decommissioned far more tanks than have been given to Ukraine.

The winding down of the UK armed forces long predates the war.

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12264611/Britain-just-40-tanks-dozen-frigates-destroyers-ready-war.html

"Fight Russia? Britain has just 40 tanks and around a dozen frigates and destroyers ready to go war - the lowest figures in modern times"

The current conflict has de-militarized the UK.

I'm not really sure what the current conflict has to do with the number of destroyers and frigates the RN has. And the UK has decommissioned far more tanks than have been given to Ukraine.

The winding down of the UK armed forces long predates the war.

I was thinking of  British Challenger 2 tanks

Yeah but they are being cut down anyway. Only 148 will be kept and upgraded to Challenger 3, the rest are being retired.

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Repost: 🇷🇺milblogger Romanov reports that the AFU is seriously contesting Urozhaine.
...
Let’s see if anyone else picks this up 😗

Here is an extensive article on the subject. Urozhaine per my google map search appears to be pretty far south, suggesting a Russian defense line or two has been breached.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/07/29/frontline-report-ukrainians-advance-near-urozhaine-on-eastern-front-russians-suffer-supply-disruptions/

I'm afraid you've fallen for the Ukrainian curse. The Urozhaine mentioned in the article is one in Donetsk, which is next to Staromaiorske, not the one in Zaporizhzhia on your map.

I assume Urozhaine derives from the word for Harvest, so naturally Ukraine being an agricultural nation there's quite a few places with that name.

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https://frontierindia.com/revolutionary-su-57s-inertial-navigation-embedded-rvv-md2-short-range-missile-a-decade-ahead-of-the-us/

"Revolutionary Su-57’s Inertial Navigation Embedded RVV-MD2 Short-Range Missile ‘A Decade Ahead of the US’"

Russians claim that they have reached the industrial stage of production of fifth-generation RVV-MD2 air-to-air missiles for Su-57 which they say is 5-10 years ahead of the USA.

LOL

Some background on Russian short range A2A missiles below. This isn't the 'new' one that is the main thrust of the article; 'RVV-MD2' is the export variant name of the R-74M2 (a.k.a Izdeliye 760) Su-57-compatible missile. It is just an incremental update of the old R-73 platform, albeit smaller to fit in the Su-57s internal bay.

https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis//military-balance/2021/02/russia-air-to-air-missile

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https://frontierindia.com/revolutionary-su-57s-inertial-navigation-embedded-rvv-md2-short-range-missile-a-decade-ahead-of-the-us/

"Revolutionary Su-57’s Inertial Navigation Embedded RVV-MD2 Short-Range Missile ‘A Decade Ahead of the US’"

Russians claim that they have reached the industrial stage of production of fifth-generation RVV-MD2 air-to-air missiles for Su-57 which they say is 5-10 years ahead of the USA.

So while Russia is crowing about an update to its old short range missile designed for an aircraft it can barely operate, it turns out the UK has been strapping modern ASRAAM anti-air missiles on the back of truck as a fire-and-forget air defense against helicopters and Shaheds.

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1687555787067961344?s=20

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Oh yes very well

If this level of English proficiency is common among Ukrainians, then what is the problem with F-16 pilots?

By the way, the Ukrainians from Uzhgorod, in whose TRPG club I was a member, also spoke excellent English, and one also spoke excellent Hungarian.

There is a big difference between conversational fluency and fluency in the highly technical jargon you will find in aviation manuals.

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President of the Czech Republic Petr Pavel just announced that Czech has found 3.5 million shells abroad for delivery to Ukraine
"So far, we have found half a million 155 mm shells, and 3 million 122 mm shells, which we will be able to ship (to Ukraine) in a few weeks, if we can find the funding for it. We will turn to partners in the USA, Germany, Sweden, etc. for this help."
Nice to see Ukraine has done allies they can depend on
https://t.me/Tsaplienko/48490

Rumour is that many of them belonged to the Greek Army and were shipped without much fanfare to avoid any negative reactions from the leftists and the Putin-loving right-wingers, who unfortunately are quite numerous, especially in Macedonia and other regions of northern Greece.

The Czechs are referring to munitions outside the EU. The had been pushing for the EU ammo fund to be used to buy munitions from outside the EU as well as in the EU, but France, Greece and Cyprus objected. They are looking for countries to buy bilaterally instead.