Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Virginiá]

https://twitter.com/uamemesforces/status/1704894820756447524

[Virginiá]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/us/politics/zelensky-biden-ukraine-war-strategy.html

 “Zelensky’s visit showed the strategic gap between Ukraine and the United States.”

Zelensky wants to focus on Bakhmut  while the Americans want to focus on Southern front

There's an indomitable paywall for me, so I'm just going off the headline, but while Ukraine is putting some resources into the Bakhmut region, it's pretty clear most of their capabilities are fixed in the south. And even if Ukraine moved everything to the southern front, Russia would then have forces in Bakhmut freed up for that direction as well.

That quote gives a different impression of what is actually happening on the ground.

[Virginiá]

Ah, fair enough.
One can at least count on the R&D community within the US governmental apparatus to think of ways to blunt this. In combination with diplomacy and other levers.

This is part of what spurred the integration of directed energy weapons on ships. The Phalanx CIWS automated gun is also designed to defend against small attack boats like these drones.

[Virginiá]

https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1717594640654729551

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Interesting how dead this thread is since both Hamas-Israel War plus putting (2-3) s**t posters on ignore from this very thread.

I still follow it regularly but the urge to post here to update people on [lots of dead people] or [more equipment that doesn't fundamentally move the needle] is receding. Maybe I'm just getting jaded, but there is also a part of me that doesn't want to keep engaging on this topic because of how utterly negative it is for my mental health and how futile the war effort is starting to look. It doesn't matter to me how many Russian soldiers / equipment are blown up in one suicidal operation after another if the end result is no change in territory and Russia just mobilizes more men and refurbishes more heavy weapons from its seemingly bottomless stockpiles.

[Virginiá]

ZSU hit a shipyard in Kerch with cruise missiles, likely took a missile boat out of duty and did an unknown amount of damage to the shipyard itself.

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1720917231410860151

This is a better version of the first attack video:

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1720833790392639647

[Virginiá]

More video of the cruiser getting hit by cruise missiles, and the aftermath

https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1721583133244490087

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1721589358543712322

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Novocherkassk explosion:

https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1739515611162493215

And the remains:

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Not new pledges, but what they are planning to deliver in 2024:

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1750639998347497829

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Bade wake up Ukraine hit the Black Sea fleet again
https://twitter.com/bnonews/status/1753013968342282304?s=12

Pretty funny how useless Russian close-in weapons systems are against drones and missiles alike. Their failure rate is costing them a lot of ships. These aren't even new threats, either. The US began preparing for this many years ago.

[Virginiá]

Ukraine hit the Black Sea fleet again!
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1757676764808028412?s=12

I love how Russia's black sea fleet is basically trapped in this shooting gallery and seemingly unable to stop its slow death at the hands of Ukrainian drones and missiles.

[Virginiá]

FWIW Some of the more reputable OSINT people are saying it's 500k 155mm and 300k* 122mm, so under 1 million. Still quite a lot of shells. This would make a big difference.

It also seems like Germany financed 120,000 of those, at least if you make the connection that their recently announced ~1.2 billion aid package mentioned 120,000 122mm shells.

https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1758874350369870214

[Virginiá]

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1760320248127864901

[Virginiá]

Russia might have lost a Su-34 in Kherson as well, but no confirmation on that

At this rate, Russia either won't have any A-50s left by the end of the war, or they will pull their remaining planes back from Ukraine for future contingencies.

https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1761115850495394012

[Virginiá]

lmao @ Europe sending troops into Ukraine. America has absolutely no interest in deploying there (considering their focus is the Pacific), and there is no small contribution for Europe if they got involved. It would require a large mobilization of people, resources and manufacturing capabilities, considering many of their militaries are not particularly well-stocked, even before all the aid to Ukraine. Germany arguably has enough armor for one offensive in Ukraine, and not much ammunition for it. The UK is even worse off. Would Poland want to shoulder the brunt of that?

Laughable coming from France, who wouldn't even let the EU seek shells outside the bloc months ago, helping to lead to this desperation now. They aren't prepared to make sacrifices that come with joining the war. They wouldn't even sacrifice some domestic contracts so Ukraine could get more artillery shells faster.

[Virginiá]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/28/politics/pentagon-considering-tapping-last-source-ukraine-funding/index.html

The Pentagon is weighing whether to tap into the last remaining source of funding it has for military aid to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia even without guarantees that those funds will be replenished by Congress, multiple defense officials told CNN.

The Defense Department still has around $4 billion in presidential drawdown authority funds available for Ukraine, which allows the Pentagon to draw from its own stockpiles to send military equipment to Kyiv.

But the Pentagon had previously been reluctant to spend any of that remaining money without assurances it would be reimbursed by Congress through the administration’s $60 billion supplemental funding request, because taking from DoD stockpiles with no plan to replenish that equipment could impact US military readiness.

“At issue here again is the question of impacting our own readiness, as a nation, and the responsibilities that we have,” he said last month when asked about the money. “And so, yes, while we do have that $4.2 billion in authority, we don’t have the funds available to us to replenish those stocks should we expend that. And with no timeline in sight, we have to make those hard decisions.”

[Virginiá]

This is so unbelievably idiotic. The US military has tons of spare, and besides they have no plausible reason to be fighting a war in the next decade. The Pentagon should be scraping the bottom of its reserves to send to Ukraine right now and it's shameful that they keep dithering over bullsh*t reasons like this.

Yeah, the gist of their excuse is that this is only spending authority, but they don't actually have money to replace what they send, like they've been doing.

I honestly don't get it for a lot of things Ukraine needs. They were not going to replace the cluster artillery shells with newer versions, and they were already going to decommission them, so why couldn't they send more of those? They didn't already have money to replace them anyway, so what difference does it make?

The US and other countries have done a lot for Ukraine, but you can tell through actions like this that there is limit to how "uncomfortable" they will make their own military in service of their allies. Sometimes that limit is laughable.

[Virginiá]

Ukraine sinks another Russian ship, this time a Project 22160 Patrol Ship

https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1764961463561527342

[Virginiá]

Russia finally destroys a HIMARS launcher (not counting the previously damaged ones, as they were being sent for repairs and were not even close to total losses). Only took them nearly 2 years to do so:

https://twitter.com/John_A_Ridge/status/1765071378984862148

On a side note, Russia seems to be getting better with its ISR capabilities behind Ukrainian lines. And the use of ballistic missiles to hit actual military targets instead of apartment buildings and hospitals seems to be an ongoing shift in tactics the past few months.

[Virginiá]

Notable thing about Ukraine/artillery shells: Ukraine's best bet long-term is to manufacture their own. If you go by some estimates of 155mm shells from European manufacturers, they can cost as high as $4k/shell, or even higher, since demand has skyrocketed into the stratosphere the past 2 years.

350,000 at that rate would be 1.4 billion dollars. For a country like Ukraine, that is just...not economically sustainable without outside support. So we're talking about a minimum of 12 billion dollars a year just for artillery shells. Not even counting propellant charges and spare parts for the guns themselves (like new barrels).

https://twitter.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1765062605109108833

[Virginiá]

re: new US military aid package

This is apparently based on savings from contracts the US negotiated previously under USAI funding.

https://twitter.com/laraseligman/status/1767584964051157192

And for Europe:

https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1767579716985266264

[Virginiá]

Czechia finds another 700,000 artillery shells available, bringing the total sourced worldwide to 1.5 million. They estimate it will cost $3.3 billion to obtain them all. So assuming these deals hold up, a shell shortage in Ukraine is avoidable if the price is willing to be paid, at least for 2024.

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1769483993492193542

[Virginiá]

https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1771819631365222522?s=12
The Black Sea fleet has been hit again

They also destroyed the Black Sea Fleet's Communications Center and some oil depot:

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1771937657486008453

https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1771755566106317085

[Virginiá]

https://twitter.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1775153015701262657

Another 1.2 million artillery shells for Ukraine?

At the latest UDCG meeting, Estonia informed the coalition that they have identified €2 billion-€3 billion worth of artillery ammunition available on the global market *in addition* to the ammo sourced by Czechia.

🇪🇪 Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur tells newspaper Postimees that deliveries could begin in 2 months if funding is secured. The available ammunition includes 122mm Grad rockets, and 122mm, 152mm & 155mm shells.

[Virginiá]

This is where Russia’s stubborn tactics these 6 months can bite them as ever since the house gop messed with aid, Russia got big ratio advantages in manpower and artillery and these used these advantages to just take Avdiivka after losing a ton in men and equipment and have since then been wasting a ton of manpower and equipment on human wave tactics on the small villages around Avdiivka and Robotyne and now we’re seeing the EU find a total of 2.5 million shells to send along with mobilization taking shape then Russia could be facing the prospect that they wasted this window for an actual breakthrough

Not to mention Ukraine might still be able to access the deep stocks of 155mm DPICM from the US, if they ever get around to passing more aid. Ukraine could have some advantages in localized firepower by the end of the year if its allies buy out all the shell stocks they've found.

OTOH, Ukraine still needs to deal with its manpower/mobilization problem, so I think I do agree with other analysts in that 2024 is likely going to be primarily about defense for Ukraine, with fresh opportunities next year, as it takes time to stand up new brigades, which they've lost too much of now due to Republicans.