Ukrainian Defensive War against the Russian Invasion - Mark IV: The Partitioning of Discussion

[mindlessobserver]

Zelenskey says Russia is not doing anything for people on the left bank caught in flooded areas, and have been shooting at Ukrainian rescue boats attempting to get people out.

https://www.politico.eu/article/russians-shooting-at-rescuers-in-flooded-areas-zelenskyy-tells-politico/amp/

 

[Oxyjen]

If somebody truly did this on purpose, they're pretty messed up in the head, that's for sure

Russians did it before on purpose in 1941.
They’ve also been seen digging trenches in the Red Forest and firing shells at a nuclear power plant.
They are now shooting at rescuers in the flood they caused.
I think it’s fair to say they are messed up in the head.

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

At first I was like no way the Russians would be that fucking nuts to do this on purpose.
But then again I have been surprised by their insanity before, many times even in just these recent years.

 

[Coffee Mugshot]

Personal theory - I think Russia may have blown the dam in part as a 'punishment' for the border incursions near Belgorod. I don't have any particular reason for thinking so, but I was expecting them to have some kind of big response to it and nothing came up until the dam blew up. They know they can supply Crimea with water by bridge or boat, so it's not a big problem for them. And causing a major grain disruption to the world is going to create extra pressure for Ukraine to end the war sooner rather than later. Russia lost some ammo and other gear on the left bank, but nothing irreplaceable. Too many motivations and potential upsides for Russia... this is why I lean towards them doing it on purpose.

 

[DumbDude43]

The only correct answer at this time is "nobody knows", I mean, if it was truly intentionally blown up, somebody does know, but that's, well, quite useless for us.
I've seen claims that it might have been a water mine that simply eventually reached the dam. In all honesty, I expect the damn was also mined heavily. And I also expect each side playing with artillery around the area and hoping for the best.
Obviously there's also a chance this was deliberate, but for what exact purpose, we also don't know. Maybe Russia has actual info on a potentially dangerous assault over the river, and calculated that ts only way out was to remove the possibility. TBH seems a bit far fetched, how many Russian soldiers died in this flood? Will Crimea be OK? How many recently dug fortifications swept by the flood? We need answers like these before speculating.
Ukraine also has little reason to sabotage it IMO. Is it worth causing such an ecological disaster in the country you already spent thousands of lives defending? What for? Crimea? Was there some Russian army massing over the east bank of the river? More importantly, Ukraine has risked aggravating Romania, Hungary, Poland etc., NATO countries, just so it can export more cereals. It seems to be a very high priority to keep selling as much cereals as possible for Ukraine. And yet, now they kill 70% of their capacity to do that? That just doesn't really compute.
If somebody truly did this on purpose, they're pretty messed up in the head, that's for sure.

this dam is (was) a massive structure, i don't think a few naval mines drifting into it could do serious damage to it.

 

[draggs]

Hohols are pounding the bejesus out of Tokmak per vatnik telegrams. Zapo advances continue despite losing approximately 300 kerpillion NATO mercenaries in the last 3 days

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Never would have happened. The Ukrainians would never agree to it and the British would never let it happen (they were mighty miffed about what happened with Georgia; there is a reason the British government is so pro-Ukraine).

Not to mention for better or for worse, Trump's ego guarantees he'd never back down and would gladly throw the next election's candidate to the wolves in exchange for a win.

 

[Fuck It We'll Do It Live]

So... (at this moment)
About 42K people flooded, displaced, many left to rot on the roof of their houses without anyone coming to the rescue.
Drinking water, healthcare, sanitation - gone.
Predicted 70% decrease in Ukrainian agricultural output; grain prices already starting to explode, while bread is already sometimes 3 times the price it had before the war in the area
Obliteration of fauna and vegetation downstream of the dam
Predicted inability to cross the river as a military, so no counteroffensive that way
150 tonnes of industrial oil spilled; another 300 likely to spill as more infrastructure deteriorates with nobody able to fix things
Predicted desertification of territories that will remain without irrigation

Yeah, it's probably going to be more than that. Kherson area is the prime real estate for growing all sorts of food. More hunger, more instability on a global scale.

I'm going to miss Kherson watermelons.

Grain prices already going through the roof again

Who benefits? Polish farmers. There's the culprit, we solved it.

It will be interesting to see if the third world changes its tune politically in regard to Ukraine; Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already seriously disrupted their essential supply of grain to keep their rapidly increasing populations happy. Russia has now placed them in further jeopardy, with many nations seriously looking at famines in the near-future.

 

[Ghostse]

So what are the odds that Russia actually intentionally did this? It makes it hard for the Ukrainians to counterattack across the river, but if what I've heard about Russian troops stationed on the bank being wiped out and water supply to Crimea being affected are true, along with affecting agriculture and pissing off the international community even more, it feels like they've kind of stomped on their own dick a bit here.

No one knows but given what we've learned in the past 24 hours, I'd give 5:1 they did it intentionally.

As quoted above, Russia has signed a law forbidding investigation into accidents at (effectively) dams.
Almost assuredly the impetus was Ukrainian counter attacks along the front.

I'm going to tl;dr the strategic situation:
South of Kherson was just a bunch of moblik formations backed by a few experienced units that had gotten ate the fuck up in other actions, particularly Bahkmut. Due to terrain, they could not dig in at the river and Russian positions were (iirc) a couple hundred yards back from the bank. This means if Ukraine did a crossing in force, Russian troops would need to move up to counter and wouldn't be fighting from hardened cover, and there is a chance they would be caught unaware. Russian military command seemed to accept this and had worked out defense-in-depth with multiple lines of fall back positions (this is very standard for Russian military planning to be clear.). These troops weren't meant to turn back an attack, they were meant to provide SOMETHING so Ukraine couldn't just waltz in and to buy time for reinforcements to arrive.
If Ukraine pushed over the river, this means Russia would need to hustle troops from North/Central areas to Kherson to try to turn back the assault. If they couldn't do that in time.... well, you remember Kharkiv.

If you also remember the run up to Kharkiv, you'll remember the Ukrainians psy-oped the Russians successfully into thinking their troops were somewhere else. Russian response to the attack was slow because they thought it was a feint, and Ukrainian "thunder run" tactics with light, unsupported elements leading the way both fed that assumption and created chaos in the Russian positions. (The generals thought it was a bluff, the feild commanders thought they were being encircled). Russian logistics suck, so nearly an entire province was liberated before Russian troops were in position; this also let to the shivering Mobliks being dumped into forests to try to keep it from happening again.

An assault over the Dnieper would be difficult and very likely costly, but if you had heavy armor and logistics feeding it, it could succeed and, if succesful, would effectively isolate Crimea. The bridge to russia would be the only land connection for supplies/reinforcements, and its been proved vulnerable. Naval supply would be a potential option, but Russian Navy has proven vulnerable to USVs and cruise missiles.

What this translates to is:
Russia would need to stop a Ukrainina push over the Dneiper at any cost. Russian last-mile logistics are shit.
Russia is being pressured all along the fronts, but no Dnieper crossing in force has happened yet. So while very clearly the plan was to blow the bridge if a cross river assault was attempted, I think the plan was blow it pretty much as soon as Ukraine's counter attack started in force as a way to "shorten the front". Blowing the dam has shorted the area Russia needs to defend, at bare minimum for the next couple of weeks.





Regarding other points:
Crimea is fucked. They have filled up the local reservoirs with ~2 years worth of water and that is without rationing or other methods of supply. Russia is clearly hoping either they can reverse the course of the war in that time, or work out a truce. Ukraine will want repair of the dam nearly (or more) badly than Russia.

The Russian troops were cannon fodder. We've seen Russian command doesn't give a shit about mobliks. Its also very possible that while the demolition might have been planned, the switch was thrown accidentally. Maybe the guys in charge panicked hearing reports of Ukraininan troops on the shore and blew it without notifying anyone.

And while "This seems like Russia is just punching itself in the dick for no reason or gain", as others have pointed out that seems to be the Russia SOP here. They toss veteran airassault units into a fight with no resupply. They send armor into narrow areas with no infantry support. Their armored collumn doesn't have enough fuel and intact vehicles are abandoned. The attack begins at the height of muddin' season. They dig fortifications around Chernobyl, they shell nuke plants, they attack water supplies for plants, they attack civilian infrastructure randomly and go after power delivery in the middle of winter.
This is would just be continuing the trend.

 

[Standardized Profile]

Does anyone have the translated version of this interview? It's pretty funny, he predicts the Russian military turning against their leadership and setting up firing squads within the next two months, he gossips about Shoigu, he gives his opinion on nuclear doctrine, it's great fun. YouTube will generate subtitles for this one, but the version I saw had much better subs.

 

[mindlessobserver]

It's apparently going to be pretty grim reading in the coming months. Ukraine is losing 3,600 cubic Kilometers of drinking water. Almost 50,000 tons of aquatic life are going to die off, and once the summer sun starts drying up the reservoir mud is gonna turn to dust storms, spreading disease to local villages and wildlife.

All in all, the best parts of the Egyptian plagues.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/catastrophe-experts-fear-dramatic-consequences-ukraine-dam-collapse/story?id=99911625

 

[World in Scarlet]

Since Ziggers are trying to memory hole this and spam their retarded "Ukraine tried to slightly open sluice gates with precision shelling but gave up on it before doing significant damage" as if that somehow caused this now, let's all remember that it was in fact the Russians that blew up the bridge across the dam to cover their retreat, damaging the dam in the process. They also fail to explain why the damn was allowed to slowly decay instead of being repaired if it was truly damaged by the Ukrainians last autumn, and how they let the water level shoot through the roof even though the Ukrainian attacks increased water outflow from the dam.

I post this here because there's no point trying to talk to ziggers, they're too subhuman to have the ability to engage in conversation, but I think many people forgot this detail since the Russians blew up a bunch of bridges at the time and few people paid much attention to this one.

It will be interesting to see if the third world changes its tune politically in regard to Ukraine; Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already seriously disrupted their essential supply of grain to keep their rapidly increasing populations happy. Russia has now placed them in further jeopardy, with many nations seriously looking at famines in the near-future.

Russia does diplomacy with the third world by giving money or materiel to corrupt dictators in return for rhetorical support, so I doubt anything will change. The Third Wold filth will keep blaming the devil west and imperialism for all their woes while robbing their own populations into starvation.

Does anyone have the translated version of this interview? It's pretty funny, he predicts the Russian military turning against their leadership and setting up firing squads within the next two months, he gossips about Shoigu, he gives his opinion on nuclear doctrine, it's great fun. YouTube will generate subtitles for this one, but the version I saw had much better subs.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to these theatrics. They are mostly meaningless drama related more to obscure court politics and publicity campaigns to generate financial and political (which translates to financial) capital, rather than representative of any reality on the ground. The only take away from all this screeching is that the Russian military is a fractious incompetent shitheap, which we already know anyway.

If you want to follow someone, follow Igor Girkin. He is a piece of shit FSB member instrumental in the 2014 invasion of Ukraine and its embarrassing failure to capture more than a small fraction of the territory that was aimed for.
However!!! He writes in an extremely catty style and calls his former comrades drunkards, degenerates, drug addicts, thieves, whatever applies to them. His criticisms of the Russian government and political figures, as well as the military establishment are always very colorful and funny. He sometimes brings up details that were forgotten or weren't widely known outside of HOBOPOCCNER circles, or points out specifics of the corruption underlying events in Russia, which can be interesting, and his reports about the situation in occupied Ukraine are generally relatively realistic.
For some reason he has the license to call for Putin to get deposed and get away with it, so who knows what this guy's deal is, and like all Russian ultranationalists he has the bizarre delusion that Russia is somehow holding back and could crush Ukraine if Russia's leaders just wanted to. He doesn't understand that what we see right now is the Russian army pushed well beyond its ability and that there is nothing more to mobilize or accomplish. If you want to follow any Russian ultranationalist, follow him. All the others are muzzled by the Kremlin and are legally required to copy paste absurd Kremlin lies. Here's an example of a post of his about Prigozhin:

He (by his own admission) already had 80,000 fighters. 20,000 (his words) were dead, at least the same number were wounded. In just six months, on a front line of 30 kilometers wide (give or take). I can`t imagine how Yevgeniy Viktorovich will manage with 200 thousand soldiers... But I understand that it will be much cooler to publicize himself on camera against thousands of corpses, than against hundreds, as he has already done ...

For people who think the point of Wagner is to provide a service: They have a history of hiring out in return for mining licenses granted to Prigozhin by dictators and then accomplishing little beyond terrorizing locals into working those mines for them.

 

[AgendaPoster]

These bitches are so smug, that I'm starting to lean towards "maybe Russia did it".
Bonus farmland collectivization and communism lmao.

 

[World in Scarlet]

These bitches are so smug, that I'm starting to lean towards "maybe Russia did it".

There's the funny theory that Russians intended to blow up the dam, but accidentally triggered the explosion early and so their own troops got caught in the flooding.

Less funny is that Ukrainians on the Russian occupied side of the river get zero support and are left to rot on their roofs and upper stories of their buildings and people trying to leave the area are stopped by the Russian army and sent back.

 

[draggs]

There's the funny theory that Russians intended to blow up the dam, but accidentally triggered the explosion early and so their own troops got caught in the flooding.

Less funny is that Ukrainians on the Russian occupied side of the river get zero support and are left to rot on their roofs and upper stories of their buildings and people trying to leave the area are stopped by the Russian army and sent back.

Those people all love Russia and are glad to sacrifice for the rodina, remember

 

[World in Scarlet]

Their lies are so absurd, it never stops getting to me.

Archive





It takes as much time to prove them wrong as it takes to read their garbage, and yet people will believe it. People on this site even.

 

[Cool Dog Returns]

he has the bizarre delusion that Russia is somehow holding back and could crush Ukraine if Russia's leaders just wanted to

Technically if they go nuclear they would, but its 'here be dragons' after that and they are too chickenshit to go that far

They have a history of hiring out in return for mining licenses granted to Prigozhin by dictators and then accomplishing little beyond terrorizing locals into working those mines for them.

Is there any more on that? like videos or some articles

 

[Ghostse]

For some reason he has the license to call for Putin to get deposed and get away with it, so who knows what this guy's deal is, and like all Russian ultranationalists he has the bizarre delusion that Russia is somehow holding back and could crush Ukraine if Russia's leaders just wanted to.

The license he has is KGB contacts and the locations of some bodies. Also as a KGB, he knows all the right places to add "in minecraft" when calling for restablishing the Empire under communism.

And daily reminder that Russia is holding back, but in not the way the Ultranationalists are saying.
Only in the manner of 4x the population and massive materiel quantity advantage. Russia has the ability to just full Iran martyr brigade and send men faster than the Ukrainians can send bullets.

The question is "If they do that, completely burn their military to take Ukraine, what happens?" and answer would be the state is left too weak to defend itself - from external or internal threats. And that's provided that some third party (Poland) wouldn't go full commit to Ukraine Independence and grind that advance to a catastrophic halt, leaving them overextended and nothing to show.

So its not the Vatnik cope of "a methodical campaign to exhaust NATO", its the hard reality of "Russia can't full commit, because they need to survive after the war." they would need to be ready for Ukrainian insurgency and international isolation while being ready to deal with China or the US.
I'll say it little louder for the people in the back: Ukraine is not a peer nation and Russia is getting curbed

 

[mindlessobserver]

Comrades, the State did not lie when it said there is no Zoo in Nova Kharkovka. Since the flood, there has been no zoo.

 

[The Man With No Name]

The license he has is KGB contacts and the locations of some bodies. Also as a KGB, he knows all the right places to add "in minecraft" when calling for restablishing the Empire under communism.

And daily reminder that Russia is holding back, but in not the way the Ultranationalists are saying.
Only in the manner of 4x the population and massive materiel quantity advantage. Russia has the ability to just full Iran martyr brigade and send men faster than the Ukrainians can send bullets.

The question is "If they do that, completely burn their military to take Ukraine, what happens?" and answer would be the state is left too weak to defend itself - from external or internal threats. And that's provided that some third party (Poland) wouldn't go full commit to Ukraine Independence and grind that advance to a catastrophic halt, leaving them overextended and nothing to show.

So its not the Vatnik cope of "a methodical campaign to exhaust NATO", its the hard reality of "Russia can't full commit, because they need to survive after the war." they would need to be ready for Ukrainian insurgency and international isolation while being ready to deal with China or the US.
I'll say it little louder for the people in the back: Ukraine is not a peer nation and Russia is getting curbed

Historically, it takes very little motivation for the Poles to make Russian men an endangered species. If presented with an opportunity, I can imagine that 'total war' on Ukraine may trigger Poles to find some kind of doctrinal reason to show up. Who's going to sanction them?