Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[NewYorkExpress]

Iran to supply Russia with combat drones

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is set to visit Tehran next week as the US has accused Iran of preparing to supply Russia with hundreds of weapons-capable drones for use in Ukraine.

Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told reporters the US had information indicating Tehran was “preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs, on an expedited timeline”.

“Our information further indicates that Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use these UAVs, with initial training sessions slated to begin as soon as early July.”

Sullivan added that the information received by the US supported views that Russia’s heavy bombardments in Ukraine, which have led it to consolidate gains in the country’s east in recent weeks, were “coming at a cost to the sustainment of its own weapons”.

Sullivan said it was not clear whether Iran had yet delivered any of the drones to Russia. He noted that Iran’s drones had been used by the Houthi rebels in Yemen to attack Saudi Arabia.

[bilaps]

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:


- 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

Kofman agrees with me, he must be a Russian bot or a troll or a Serbian

[Virginiá]

Ammo dump in Nova Kakhovka just completely obliterated

https://twitter.com/wammezz/status/1546794020906696705

[CumbrianLefty]

To reply to the white noise, you have repeatedly stated that the Kherson offensive does not exist. The person you claim in your aid says it does, just not on a very large scale at present.

Which is perfectly understandable in several respects, not least to tie some Russian forces down. In the meantime, partisan disruptions within occupied territory are continuing.

[Storr]

The Petrovsky District of Donetsk is in the southwestern part of the city, bordering Ukrainian controlled Marinka.

https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1546857749048426497?s=20&t=eVvcqBFut...

[Virginiá]

https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1546560077695516673

Meanwhile, for NATO members:

https://www.ft.com/content/d413576c-c4d5-4ca6-9050-58f3f8dc3c00

Those scarcities may now be impinging on the west’s ability to quartermaster Kyiv’s war effort. Total annual US production of 155mm artillery shells, for example, would last less than two weeks of combat in Ukraine, according to Alex Vershinin, a US procurement expert who says the conflict marks “the return of industrial warfare”.

Ben Wallace, the UK’s defence minister, has said western countries would struggle to wage a protracted war comparable to Russia’s assault on Ukraine as their ammunition stocks “are inadequate for the threats we face”. During a simulated war game last year, the UK’s ammunition ran out after eight days.

As for the guided multiple-launch rocket systems made by Lockheed Martin that Kyiv has pleaded for so it can launch strikes behind enemy lines, the US has dispatched about a third of its total stock of 20,000-25,000 missiles.

But it cannot readily replace these with older versions because they use banned cluster weapons in their warheads, said Mark Cancian, a former Pentagon official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank.

The west has been caught with their pants at least slightly down here. European members have neglected their militaries for some time, leading to insufficient stocks for an actual war, and industrial capacity for production has shrunk. As the article says, military investment collectively is still far larger than Russia or even Rus/China together, but a lot of that has gone into advanced weapons/air force assets that aren't being used in Ukraine. Artillery and other land force stocks are insufficient and it could be a good while before replenishment occurs for some weapons.

It's at least somewhat understandable IMO, though. In relative peacetime, there isn't as much pressure to maintain huge capacity for war, particularly when NATO members know that M.A.D serves as a powerful deterrent. Still, though, to maintain an effective conventional deterrent, they need to maintain bigger stocks than this.

[bilaps]

To reply to the white noise, you have repeatedly stated that the Kherson offensive does not exist. The person you claim in your aid says it does, just not on a very large scale at present.

Which is perfectly understandable in several respects, not least to tie some Russian forces down. In the meantime, partisan disruptions within occupied territory are continuing.

Not really. When I say fake twitter offensive I say it's really being exaggerated by twitter. If we say that this is really "offensive" than after so many weeks and not any meaningful gain, can we call it a failed offensive? Truth is that this "offensive" was never really a large scale action, it only exists for purposes of propaganda, so that Ukrainians have something to talk about and sky news to report so that morale of Ukrainians on the ground don't slip even more and that viewers at western countries have something to cling on when their countries are sending weapons in this proxy war.

[bilaps]

And after weeks talking about Kherson now the line of the talk is ammo depots hit by HIMARS. Sure, they hit some. It's a war. But the trend continues to be bad for Ukrainians.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1546560077695516673
Meanwhile, for NATO members:

https://www.ft.com/content/d413576c-c4d5-4ca6-9050-58f3f8dc3c00

Those scarcities may now be impinging on the west’s ability to quartermaster Kyiv’s war effort. Total annual US production of 155mm artillery shells, for example, would last less than two weeks of combat in Ukraine, according to Alex Vershinin, a US procurement expert who says the conflict marks “the return of industrial warfare”.

Ben Wallace, the UK’s defence minister, has said western countries would struggle to wage a protracted war comparable to Russia’s assault on Ukraine as their ammunition stocks “are inadequate for the threats we face”. During a simulated war game last year, the UK’s ammunition ran out after eight days.

As for the guided multiple-launch rocket systems made by Lockheed Martin that Kyiv has pleaded for so it can launch strikes behind enemy lines, the US has dispatched about a third of its total stock of 20,000-25,000 missiles.

But it cannot readily replace these with older versions because they use banned cluster weapons in their warheads, said Mark Cancian, a former Pentagon official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank.

The west has been caught with their pants at least slightly down here. European members have neglected their militaries for some time, leading to insufficient stocks for an actual war, and industrial capacity for production has shrunk. As the article says, military investment collectively is still far larger than Russia or even Rus/China together, but a lot of that has gone into advanced weapons/air force assets that aren't being used in Ukraine. Artillery and other land force stocks are insufficient and it could be a quite before replenishment occurs for some weapons.

It's at least somewhat understandable IMO, though. In relative peacetime, there isn't as much pressure to maintain huge capacity for war, particularly when NATO members know that M.A.D serves as a powerful deterrent. Still, though, to maintain an effective conventional deterrent, they need to maintain bigger stocks than this.

Cancian’s claim doesn’t match up with the publicly known reality. Unless the US is undervaluing the rockets it’s sent (if anything, it’s done the opposite in aid packages), the aid’s headline figures indicate that Ukraine has only received a few hundred GMLRS rockets. The rate at which they’ve received them may well be slower than maximum production rates of 11,000 per year (even without switching to wartime production). Alternatively, they are sending a lot without announcing it and Ukraine has good OPSEC, but I really doubt they’d have sent so many rockets for 8 launchers in a few weeks.

In general, Ukrainian allies are probably going to want to increase ammunition production within existing capacity (some already have) and maybe build further capacity if they intend to support Ukraine in a long war without giving them more advanced weapons and assuming Ukraine has a significant number of guns which use such ammunition. However, they do have a buffer of a few million shells, and most of Russia’s artillery strength comes not from its wartime economy but from the legacy of the Soviet Union it is currently squandering.

Ukraine probably has <300 155mm howitzers right now and deliveries of these have slowed down - they probably aren’t going to be able to wield the kind of firepower they want to anyway, and are currently demanding more guns, rather than ammunition, for their 155mms. It is also quite possible that certain countries aren’t ramping up production because they simply aren’t willing to spend much more on aid and will use a shell shortage as an excuse to bow out of efforts to supply Ukraine.

IMO the primary takeaway from all this is not that countries must spend to match the Russian army in every possible way (watch out for the MICs demanding this) but should instead consider a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to Ukrainian aid. Ukraine is unlikely to ever field as many howitzers as Russia can, but as the very limited number of HIMARS demonstrate (along with previous wars against artillery-heavy armies such as Saddam’s in 1990), attempting to match an army’s specific strengths isn’t the only way to erode or reverse their overall advantage. Building up Ukraine’s Air Force has clearly scared a lot of politicians because of the price tags of jets etc. but in the long run, that might be cheaper than churning out artillery shells for years with no end in sight.

[Virginiá]

It's possible Ukraine has received more than officially listed - donor countries were pretty upfront about not detailing everything they send when the aid started rolling in, so it's hard to say exactly what quantities were received for some weapons. It doesn't seem like Ukraine has received ~7,000 rockets. I agree that doesn't really match up with the number of launchers they have received, but we only have access to so much information.

[Storr]

Colonel Alexey Gorobets and Colonel Sergey Kens have been confirmed, through Russian media, killed in a HIMARS strike. It is claimed they were the commander and chief of staff of the 20th Guards Motor Rifle Division, respectively. Also claimed killed (not confirmed atm, will update if/when this changes) in the same strike were chief of artillery 20th GMRD Lieutenant Colonel Gordeev, chief of operations 20th GMRD Lieutenant Colonel Koval, and chief of staff 22nd Army Corps Major General Nasbulin.

Believe it or not, Gorobets was only 49 years old. I guess being a Russian officer is stressful. lol

Edit: Well that was quick. Deputy Commander for political-military affairs of the 20th GMRD, Colonel Alexey Avramchenko, born and raised in Simferopol, Crimea (so a traitor to Ukraine), was killed in the same HIMARS attack.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1546565160462159872?s=20&t=-7QxDSgHuZZBxR...


https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1546897718051758081?s=20&t=-7QxDSgHuZZBxR...

[Damocles]

Also we have to consider the barrel life and maintenance of the artillery guns. Rifling degrades after so many thousands of rounds are poured through it, and eventually, the barrels will have to be bored out and re-lined again at the factory. With the rate at which both Russian and Ukrainian artillery arms are burning through their respective stocks of shells, I wonder what logistics are in place to re-line worn-out barrels.

As time goes on, it becomes clear that this war is going to be a knock-down, drag-out fight, where the ability to replace losses and sustain forces readily will matter more than what pre-war stocks were available.

[Virginiá]

Also we have to consider the barrel life and maintenance of the artillery guns. Rifling degrades after so many thousands of rounds are poured through it, and eventually, the barrels will have to be bored out and re-lined again at the factory. With the rate at which both Russian and Ukrainian artillery arms are burning through their respective stocks of shells, I wonder what logistics are in place to re-line worn-out barrels.

As time goes on, it becomes clear that this war is going to be a knock-down, drag-out fight, where the ability to replace losses and sustain forces readily will matter more than what pre-war stocks were available.

I know Canada sent some extra barrels for this purpose. I think it was also mentioned that the last aid package from the US focused on maintenance and repair. That was how it was described by some officials, anyway, even though in the description they categorized it all as "spare parts" in addition to some recovery vehicles. So it's possible they had something like this in mind.

[Damocles]

I know Canada sent some extra barrels for this purpose. I think it was also mentioned that the last aid package from the US focused on maintenance and repair. That was how it was described by some officials, anyway, even though in the description they categorized it all as "spare parts" in addition to some recovery vehicles. So it's possible they had something like this in mind.

Surely, they don't want to give away too much information.

[Storr]

Another one:

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1546974947364552704?s=20&t=7J87YC...

[NOVA Green]

Colonel Alexey Gorobets and Colonel Sergey Kens have been confirmed, through Russian media, killed in a HIMARS strike. It is claimed they were the commander and chief of staff of the 20th Guards Motor Rifle Division, respectively. Also claimed killed (not confirmed atm, will update if/when this changes) in the same strike were chief of artillery 20th GMRD Lieutenant Colonel Gordeev, chief of operations 20th GMRD Lieutenant Colonel Koval, and chief of staff 22nd Army Corps Major General Nasbulin.

Believe it or not, Gorobets was only 49 years old. I guess being a Russian officer is stressful. lol

Edit: Well that was quick. Deputy Commander for political-military affairs of the 20th GMRD, Colonel Alexey Avramchenko, born and raised in Simferopol, Crimea (so a traitor to Ukraine), was killed in the same HIMARS attack.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1546565160462159872?s=20&t=-7QxDSgHuZZBxR...


https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1546897718051758081?s=20&t=-7QxDSgHuZZBxR...

Yeah--- I was wondering how long it would take for Senior level Russian military commanders to show up listed as KIA (Harder to hide than casualty levels among the grunts), considering what were reportedly some pretty devastating Ukrainian artillery strikes on Russian Command-and-Control centers with their new "toys".

I would imagine being a front-line Russian Senior Military Commander in Ukraine these days is probably an  occupation with current the highest occupational fatality rates within all of Russia.

[NOVA Green]

Another one:

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1546974947364552704?s=20&t=7J87YC...

One starts to wonder how many significant ammo dumps Russia still has remaining in Donbass, considering the pace of recent effective Ukrainian target selection.

Still, at some point, as I believe I opined recently, Ukraine will likely start to run out of more permanently fixed targets of opportunity such as command centers and ammo dumps, fuel storage locations, etc and shift some of the assets towards other targets (Not sure what would make the most sense here), but certainly considering the heavy Russian reliance on railroad resupply would imagine strategic targeting of roads and bridges might make some sense, making it harder to resupply their forces towards the front lines.

Thoughts?

[Blue3]

You know Russia isn’t doing too well when it’s going to Iran to restock its war supplies:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-armed-drones-russia-ukraine-white-house-rcna37777

[Damocles]

I also want to point out that while making a basic 155mm NATO shell isn't that hard from a marginal production perspective, the real challenge lies in the scalability of the production line assets. If you're the Ukrainian defense minister, you can't just call Raytheon and say, "Hey, I want a million of these 155mm NATO shells delivered every month."

For one thing, you have to tender the contract and solicit bids from multiple vendors, you have to finance the acquisitions through war bond issuance and available financial aid packages, you have to have the logistical capacity to accept that huge volume of deliveries and manage them through your internal supply networks, and most of all, you have to keep fighting the damn war while you're waiting for your order to be filled.

Accuracy, range, and resupply are going to be key for Ukraine to win the artillery war against Russia, and that's true even for the basic 155mm NATO guns they have. M982 Excalibur guided shells are nice, sure, and they're very very accurate, sure, but they're also expensive as hell. Why spend so much coin on those when you can get a M1156 precision guidance kit for the existing dumb shells for one-fifth the cost, while deriving 90% of the benefit?

You don't need to match the Russians shell-for-shell in order to beat them. In fact, that's a horrible idea. It would just put more unnecessary wear on the barrel liners than is strictly necessary, result in more maintenance and repairs, and degrade your capability to keep the artillery operational. The goal here is to maximize hit percentage, minimize the number of times you have to fire, and stay light and mobile enough to evade suppression attempts.

[Woody]

In other news, North Korea becomes the 3rd UN member to recognize the so called DPR and LPR as independent states, along with Syria and Russia itself.

https://www.reuters.com/world/north-korea-recognises-breakaway-russias-proxies-east-ukraine-2022-07-13/

[Damocles]

In other news, North Korea becomes the 3rd UN member to recognize the so called DPR and LPR as independent states, along with Syria and Russia itself.

https://www.reuters.com/world/north-korea-recognises-breakaway-russias-proxies-east-ukraine-2022-07-13/

Cucked and cringe.

[jaichind]

FT seems to be getting cold feet at the increasing financial costs of the war Ukraine's finances becoming a black hole of Western money

https://www.ft.com/content/141a9e85-19ed-47d4-be48-bb9febc76c98
"Allies sound alarm over plight of Ukraine’s public finances"

Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the country now needed $9bn a month from its western backers to plug the budgetary shortfall, almost double its previous request.

And just to start the argument on potentially reducing funding they put out

https://www.ft.com/content/bce78c78-b899-4dd2-b3a0-69d789b8aee8
"Nato and EU sound alarm over risk of Ukraine weapons smuggling"

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

In other news, North Korea becomes the 3rd UN member to recognize the so called DPR and LPR as independent states, along with Syria and Russia itself.

https://www.reuters.com/world/north-korea-recognises-breakaway-russias-proxies-east-ukraine-2022-07-13/

OK, I don’t see how taking North goddamned Korea’s position as newsworthy can seriously be anything but Putin trolling.

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1547316532631453697?s=20&t=V-CNDZ...

[Storr]

Now I get why North Korea recognized the DPR.

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1547334765879197696?s=20&t=cmYbEnv...