Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Storr]

Another Russian ammo depot hit:

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1545907872097353728?s=20&t=qlpl6e2zltkfc_...

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1545909416465240064?s=20&t=qlpl6e2zltkfc_...

Map of HIMARS strikes:
https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1545905051721416710?s=20&t=ngrNJe5DWy...

[NOVA Green]

Is the white noise still in this thread, then.

Well, at least for me just became temporarily muted (one of the first posters in a long time).

Sir Woodberry does make some positive contributions as do other posters who tend to be a bit more skeptical of Ukrainian claims of military success (Especially following the Russian fallback from various cities in the North, including Kyiv).

Totally agree that there should not be a consensus or false narrative that Ukraine is somehow "winning the war" at this point, although it is clear that Russian forces are themselves facing some major issues to further expand territorial control.

[The Dowager Mod]

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1546082474362654720

[Storr]

Last night alone there were 11 HIMARS strikes:

https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1546049511101005824?s=20&t=hACQawtQsB...

Igor Girkin is not pleased:

https://twitter.com/Rebel44CZ/status/1546130104731967490?s=20&t=hACQawtQsBln...

[NOVA Green]

Last night alone there were 11 HIMARS strikes:

https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1546049511101005824?s=20&t=hACQawtQsB...

Igor Girkin is not pleased:

https://twitter.com/Rebel44CZ/status/1546130104731967490?s=20&t=hACQawtQsBln...

Yeah, fwiw the reality is we will continue to see more and more of these highly precise hits on Russian targets (Ammo Depots, Fuel Depots, Command & Control Centers, etc...) as the various highly accurate and quick NATO systems start to become more fully deployed.

Sure Ukraine is nowhere close to matching Russia artillery shell for artillery shell, and in fact as their Soviet system stockpiles to deplete, versus the Russians going deep into their arsenal to pull out "vintage dumb bombs", but still have their armament plants running 2-3 shifts / day, but one can't understate how effective these systems can be at going after very important targets.

One of the issues here is that although doubtless Ukraine is getting NATO SIGINT and Satellite Data, from what I have read Russian air-defense systems in the Donbass have been pretty effective at taking out Ukrainian drones.

The obvious implication being, is that these systems might be able relatively easy to go after "fixed targets", it is still questionable how effective they will be in closer level tactical support where there is very much a real "fog of war" in many of the most recent battles in Donbass.

[Torie]

More Kherson chat.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-tells-residents-leave-occupied-south-due-counter-attack-plans-2022-07-10/

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1546259628010475520?s=20&t=3PQr8_qF81...

[Woody]

https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1546264684273319937?cxt=HHwWgoC-rbbit_UqA...

[Woody]

On the Izyum front, Bohorodychne might have been captured, one of the few settlements left towards the road to Sloviansk.

https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1546260964110123008?cxt=HHwWgICy_fCJtvUqA...
https://twitter.com/MilitaryLabb/status/1546125841930788864

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Amid reluctance to deliver more heavy weapons, Germany is at least working towards solutions to the ammunition problems (according to Der Spiegel): https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Ukraine-Krieg-Hersteller-fuer-fehlende-Gepard-Munition-gefunden-Wehrressort-in-Norwegen-article23453142.html

The government is apparently looking to fire up a disused factory in Romania which previously produced Soviet-era artillery ammunition (presumably this was previously financed by the Bundeswehr until it retired all of its GDR stocks).

In terms of concrete developments, they have finally found an ammunition supplier in Norway which can produce rounds for the Gepard anti-aircraft guns. It’s not clear whether this supplier now produces the best kind of ammunition for the Gepard; the Norwegian company Nammo was previously known to produce ammunition that was likely Gepard-compatible but qualitatively inferior to the rounds the most modern Gepards used best. The technicalities are a little bit beyond me, but this ex-Bundeswehr account knows a lot about the system: https://www.twitter.com/gepardtatze

Given the delay and the fact that Germany will apparently be testing this ammunition, I’d hope the supplier now produces the most impressive type - and that a stable supply allows Germany to deliver as many of its Gepards as possible. An order of 50 for Ukraine was initially cut down to 30 divided into two sets of 15, but from what I’ve read, there are up to 79 Gepards in Germany in a state of disrepair and more in Belgium and probably the Netherlands.

Gepards are old, short-ranged and complex, but gun rounds are much cheaper than MANPADS and apparently work well in concert with them. Demand for these systems has grown recent years because they are speculated to be a potential cost-efffective solution to low-flying drones, which Russia has used a lot of for surveillance/artillery-spotting purposes. The German government PR has been that they are not suitable weapons for the front and will instead be used to defend against cruise missiles in Western Ukraine, but I suspect they will be employed against low-flying aircraft (in this conflict, mostly drones, helicopters and Su-25 bombers) as they were intended to be.

[Virginiá]

Rumor: Poland might give Ukraine its stock of custom T-72 tanks, the PT-91 Twardy, of which Poland has 232. They would then be backfilled with Abrams tanks.

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1546412805821267968

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Rumor: Poland might give Ukraine its stock of custom T-72 tanks, the PT-91 Twardy, of which Poland has 232. They would then be backfilled with Abrams tanks.

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1546412805821267968

They already paid in full for the Abrams (pre-war), although one of the Ukraine bills had provisions which could speed up the delivery of these tanks by a couple of years.

It wouldn’t be hugely surprising if they chose to divest of the remaining T-72s and even the PT-91s as soon as the Abrams arrived, although it would take time for Polish troops to train with the new tanks. Assuming they’ve given no more than the 230-240 T-72s reported so far, they still operate three types of tanks (T-72s, PT-91 and Leopard 2s, each with multiple variants in service) and could have logistical weaknesses if they tried to maintain a fourth (Abrams) at the same time.

If you discount the tanks bought from Bulgaria, Biden announced at the NATO summit that 600 tanks had been pledged as aid for Ukraine by NATO members alone. We know that (at least) just shy of 300 have been delivered. Again discounting Bulgaria (along with Hungary) and assuming these tanks are variants or upgrades of Soviet tanks, Poland is by far the largest potential supplier of the remaining 300, unless the US has a secret stockpile of Soviet tanks it’s willing to part with or unless you count old T-55s and their upgrades (Ukrainian forces almost certainly have much less familiarity with these models than T-64/72/80/90 tanks, which have more in common).

[Storr]

Hmm...
https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1546462955042127873?s=20&t=MzZZleN_...

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1546473188254748672?s=20&t=MzZZleN...

[Woody]

Putin has now signed a decree simplifyng the aquiring of Russian citizenship to all citizens of Ukraine.

This procedure was just recently only available to the citizens of the occupied Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kherson.. now it applies to every Ukrainian in the country.. indication that Putin isn't willing to stop anytime soon?

Source: https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2022/07/11/7357528/

[Virginiá]

They already paid in full for the Abrams (pre-war), although one of the Ukraine bills had provisions which could speed up the delivery of these tanks by a couple of years.

The backfill would be additional, per the tweet. So Poland would end up with nearly 600 Abrams tanks. Although I guess you could also interpret that tweet to mean that they get the 250 M1A2s they ordered, and an additional 50 (give or take) used Abrams for the ~235 PT-91s they give to Ukraine. But that doesn't seem likely.

edit: I did manage to find an article about this that did clarify that it was 50 used Abrams tanks in addition to their previous order of 250. So yeah, it is 300.

Poland is really going to the mat for Ukraine. As far as tanks and other Soviet-era heavy weapons go, they've donated quite a bit relative to their existing stocks.

[The Dowager Mod]

https://twitter.com/cjdrew94/status/1546252643898630144

[Damocles]

I think this war has demonstrated that artillery is still the king of the battlefield. Sure, you have spotting drones, gun-laying radar, laser-guided munitions, and so on, but gun, rocket, and mortar artillery reigns supreme in an environment where neither side has a decisive advantage in the air. I don't think anyone expected this war to see a resurgence in WWI-style slow, methodical, tedious artillery barrages.

[rc18]

Darkness has fallen and HIMARS comes out to play.

An enormous explosion in Nova Kakhovka (just east of Kherson) as a major Russian ammo dump goes up in smoke.

https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1546580305661788160?s=20&t=uIXkXHlv7Ow3...

https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1546582641914388482?s=20&t=uIXkXHlv7Ow3...

[Storr]

Darkness has fallen and HIMARS comes out to play.

An enormous explosion in Nova Kakhovka (just east of Kherson) as a major Russian ammo dump goes up in smoke.

https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1546580305661788160?s=20&t=uIXkXHlv7Ow3...

https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1546582641914388482?s=20&t=uIXkXHlv7Ow3...

Absolutely nuts:

https://twitter.com/CalibreObscura/status/1546584455644676096?s=20&t=_2NZN6K...

[Damocles]

Kind of hard to pound Ukrainian cities to dust if they keep blowing up your ammunition warehouses and messing with your logistical capabilities. Guns, rockets, and mortars are all weapons systems, not individual weapons. A Msta is useless if there's no ammunition for it. A crate of 152mm HE ammunition is useless if there's no Msta to fire them from.

[walleye26]

How many ammo dumps have been hit now? I swear it’s been like a dozen this week. I mean, at some point the Russians won’t have enough ammo to fight back.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Rumor: Poland might give Ukraine its stock of custom T-72 tanks, the PT-91 Twardy, of which Poland has 232. They would then be backfilled with Abrams tanks.

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1546412805821267968

Nobody has been a truer friend to Ukraine than Poland. NATO should also send in a few hundred F-16 fighter jets and a few hundred Leopard 2 tanks, you also need tanks and fighter jets to launch a big counterattack. Artillery is a big help, but it's not enough on its own.

[NOVA Green]

How many ammo dumps have been hit now? I swear it’s been like a dozen this week. I mean, at some point the Russians won’t have enough ammo to fight back.

Well at this point (Without being an SME on Russian Arms depots in Ukraine), let alone diesel fuel to support heavy vehicles (Assuming to my naked eyes look like Diesel strikes on potentially air and ground diesel depots in a few of the videos posted--- different chemical plumes but spectrum analysis won't be easy to tell the difference especially during the hours of operation from the videos posted.

Would imagine Western Heavy Artillery systems should be pretty effective at driving Russian logistics operations behind the traditionally defined borders, and into "Russia proper" itself.

Naturally Crimea might be a "target" that Ukrainians tread carefully with, especially involving Western weapons systems.

It is interesting as well the massive series of "Industrial Incidents" in Russian armament and resource extraction factories over the past (3)+ months, which I really doubt in some of the further reaches came directly at the hands of the SBU (Ukrainian spy agency), but rather dissidents and ethnic minority in regions where in many cases have so far faced the highest Russian casualty numbers as many other forum members have noted (Storr at least I believe might have been one of the first posters on the thread to call attention to casualty numbers by region within Russia).

It is also interesting to see how a country such as Russia can move so quickly from a nation with high level of corruption, massive oligarchy who basically looted the countries wealth in the name of "capitalism vs communism", and then effectively created their own 1% Class, while meanwhile Male and Female life expectancy dropped something like 10-15 years within a decade!

As I have previously mused, Putin's curious obsession with Ukraine has been accentuated by not only the original "Orange Revolution", but perhaps more significantly what happened with the mass uprisings in Belarus, against which appears to have likely been a rigged election.

Although, naturally I'm not going to be "John Malkovitch", let alone trying to delve into "Putin's Brain" (Anybody on Atlas who can pull up some registered chess federation games involving Putin might get a random $10 award), it's pretty clear that his "eyes on the prize", have always been Russia proper.

Deep inside, strongly suspect that he is perhaps contemplating a scenario where he might be the next "Russian Czar" to die at the hands of a discontented public.

Surely the events in Kazakhstan in late '21 / JAN '22, would likely have added to his decision (His Alone) to launch the war against Ukraine, perhaps slightly earlier than military advantage might have suggested.

https://apnews.com/article/business-kazakhstan-almaty-9da42330ca51c36fe9fd88f9ef35ff4e

But yeah... the pounding will continue well beyond the range of Russian Artillery to respond.

The much vaunted power of the Russian Air Force has turned out to be a "Paper Tiger", and naturally it seems curious to use that quote considering that the late great Chairman Mao naturally used that back in '56 to refer to the Americans, which appears to be curiously topical as Russia's influence is waning, and China's is waxing:

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/paper%20tiger#:~:text=This%20phrase%20comes%20from%20an,United%20States%20a%20paper%20tiger.

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

So here's a brief snip from behind the Paywall regarding "Paper Tigers" from the WSJ way way back in '17.

The Chinese Origins of ‘Paper Tiger’

...But “paper tiger” didn’t get popularized in English until the 1964 translation of Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book,” which asserted that “imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers.” Mao had described the U.S. as a “paper tiger” as early as 1956, observing, “Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain.”

...

Once imported into English, “paper tiger” quickly moved to other contexts. New York Herald Tribune sports editor Stanley Woodward wryly titled his 1963 memoir “Paper Tiger.” (Three years later, when George Plimpton wrote a book about trying to join the Detroit Lions as a backup quarterback, he called it “Paper Lion.”)

The expression is already getting a workout in the Trump era, and not just with regard to relations with China. Bloomberg View bestowed the epithet on Mr. Trump for his belligerent stance toward House Republicans, while the Chicago Tribune made use of it in a headline when the president denounced Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s fashion label: “Nordstrom stock shrugs off Trump’s tweet attack, showing he’s become a paper tiger.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-chinese-origins-of-paper-tiger-1487873046

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

The much vaunted power of the Russian Air Force has turned out to be a "Paper Tiger", and naturally it seems curious to use that quote considering that the late great Chairman Mao naturally used that back in '56 to refer to the Americans, which appears to be curiously topical as Russia's influence is waning, and China's is waxing:

I broadly agree with your recent posts, but wouldn’t go this far. The VKS has had some huge failures: they stockpiled too few PGMs, proved unable to suppress Ukrainian air defences and could not establish air superiority across Ukraine, could not defend the Snake Island garrison, left their helicopters vulnerable in Chornobaivma, etc.

However, they still managed to establish localised air superiority near parts of the front (at the moment, this adds to their edge in the Donbas). Air defence units, often integrated with the VKS, have done an even better job of denying the Ukrainian Air Force of access to airspace near the fronts. Manned aircraft occasionally still fire PGMs where lower-flying planes holding dumb bombs won’t dare to fly.

They’ve managed to repurpose/reprogram a lot of missiles for land attacks: Ukraine recently claimed that Russian S-300s (presumably older ones) are now being used in this role, along with ancient Kh-22 anti-ship missiles. Most of these land attack capabilities aren’t especially accurate, but they’re better than having no stand-off weapons capability at all and maintain the terror factor of ballistic/cruise missile strikes. Because of the creative reuse of other kinds of weaponry (Ukraine’s also done this with old Soviet reconnaissance drones), missile attacks will continue to pose a problem for Ukraine for months to come, although not nearly to the extent that they did in the first month of the invasion when they were fired at much higher (read: “running out of missiles” rates).

Finally, it is important to consider Russian army aviation and the many reconnaissance drones it employs. These are low-tech but attritable and thought to be a force multiplier for the artillery they spy for and guide. If Ukraine could deny the airspace to the ubiquitous Orlan-10, Russian artillery would be less of a problem to begin with. The US recently claimed that Russia is set to buy hundreds of drones from Iran for use in this conflict - I’m skeptical Iran would be ok with this, but Russia clearly sees the value in such systems.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

One of the largest ammo dump explosions mentioned earlier has overloaded a tracking satellite used throughout the conflict:

https://www.twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1546709407156813830
Kofman’s assessment in the most recent Geopolitics Decanted podcast is as follows:
- He first retracts the tentative forecast he made on Twitter regarding where the Russian offensive will stop. He argues there isn’t enough information to make a forecast with enough confidence to be worthwhile
- The claimed operational pause probably isn’t yet real. If Russia chooses to continue with the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk offensive without one, that offensive could be slower and go on for months, during which time an operational pause will become increasingly necessary
- Without a pause, most Russian units deployed since the spring will not be able to rotate out for R&R. The newer volunteers (often older, in terms of age) will supplement, not replace, those currently deployed
- Russia is probably ~5 years out from regaining all of their lost active military stocks, assuming they expedite the processes by modernising old equipment pulled out of storage
- It’s hard to know how well their PGM manufacturing is doing, but in general, Russian defence industries are not shutting down. If they were running out of parts, factories wouldn’t be putting out extra shifts - they still have stockpiled components to burn through, if not a stable supply
- The Kherson offensive has achieved small, slow gains, but the Ukrainian forces assembled there are too small for it to constitute a “real” offensive. Kofman speculates it is being used to put Ukraine in a better position to launch a genuine offensive later on. In the medium term, the most important objectives for Ukraine are defending Slovyansk/Kramatorsk and pushing Russia east of the Dnieper
- Russia will eventually adapt to HIMARS, reducing their effectiveness - although the extent for which that is reduced in the long term remains to be seen. They are not wunderwaffen, but they are useful