Russian Special Military Operation in the Ukraine - Mark IV: The Partitioning of Discussion

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Machine Translation:
Artemovsk direction, 98VDD are conducting assault operations, (https://t.me/vdd98) the enemy abandoned their positions, the paratroopers took “Bell” and a large number of prisoners from the 214th battalion “OPFOR”
(Artemovsk is the old name for Bakhumut btw.)
From
the VDD98 Telegram


I'll say it. It looks as though Ukraine is either in or very near a crisis. I can't be sure but enough things are going wrong at once that it seems to be true. All of their top level commanders have been replaced. There are manpower issues and pressure on nearly every section of the front. Morale amongst the army is bad judging by the number of surrenders. It is too soon the be certain but it looks like defensive movements are slow and that there are little holes forming.

Ukraine may manage to stabilize this crisis especially if the new commanders can figure out how to do their jobs in time. But on the other hand they don't have a lot of spare resources to just throw at this problem. It is too soon to be completely sure of a crisis point being reached but it really does look like it. If this really is a crisis and it is not stabilized then it means the continued survival of the Ukrainian Army is forfeit and the war could end somewhat soon. I really do want to encourage cautious optimism though. Things do look really bad but you never really know how bad they are actually are.

If I were Russia right now I would pump the gas and put as much pressure as possible on Ukraine in hopes of breaking something critical.

(The furry faggots must surely celebrate this re-org, right? Because it guarantees no negotiations, no surrender.)
A lot of the Pro-Ukraine people/NAFO are tied in with specifically the Zahluzhny Military faction. I don't think they are wrong either if we are celebrating it means things are not good for them.
 
Personally I think you are overestimating the significance of their problems, but that you are right they are showing more signs of stress than before.
Morale is in the лайно and the front line soldiers KNOW that the people in charge will be getting them all killed for no good reason. They have zero incentive to fight because no method of forcing them to fight is worse then the guaranteed agonizing deaths facing them. Surrenders or escapes will accelerate, and the new people in charge will be overwhelmed trying to keep up with a situation where they never know how many soldiers they have left. If Russia keeps up the pressure well enough, the war will be ending faster then the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Nice of them to tell us this time.
 
Changing out so many of the top military positions at the same time is never a good thing. A change at just the top might have been dealt with, but so many changes at the same time in the middle of a real crisis will lead to months of institutional paralysis.

And there appear to be no real changes in strategy coming out of this. The rumor is that they are going to deal with the crisis in avdiivka with a new head-on assault on the russian defensive positions northwest of the city by the carefully built up reserves of the Ukrainian Army. They do not seem to be intending either relief or reinforcement for the worn out 110th brigade defending the city center. The plan is to just throw meat into the russian lines away from avdiivka thinking it will do something.

The civilians are talking about rotation and discharge policies for soldiers at a time when the lack of soldiers for the front lines is critical. It sure is starting to feel like the prelude to a total disaster. It was a stalemate in October, but the momentum is all with the Russians now.
 
It sure is starting to feel like the prelude to a total disaster.
Ukraine is not going to surrender until the Russian armies enter Kiev (and even then they will just evacuate the government to Lvov). Disaster or not, I expect slow crawling toward the Dnieper, painful attemps to cross it and establsh a foothold as Ukraine throws every Western missile and shell at the crossing troops, and even slower crawling past every pimple on the map that can be turned into an improvised Bakhmut. Ukraine may not be able to win, but they sure as hell will make sure Russia cannot win either for as long as humanly possible and then some.

I have been hearing talks of Ukraine running out of men, money, ammo and morale for a year now and yet here they still are, fighting tooth and nail for every inch. Which is, justifications aside, fully appropriate for someone defending their homeland.
 
Ukraine is not going to surrender until the Russian armies enter Kiev (and even then they will just evacuate government to Lvov). Disaster or not, I expect slow crawling toward the Dnieper, painful attemps to cross it and establsh a foothold as Ukraine throws every Western missile and shell at crossing troops, and even slower crawling past every pimple on the map that can be turned into an improvised Bakhmut. Ukraine may not be able to win, but they sure as hell will make sure Russia cannot win either for as long as humanly possible.
This is a lot closer to what I personally expect. That or there is finally a negotiation.
 
This is a lot closer to what I personally expect. That or there is finally a negotiation.
They made it crystal clear there will be no negotiation until Zelensky's government holds. Putin clearly stated in his interview that he is open to a settlement and will not even object to the West spinning it as a triumphant victory, but the initiative must come from their side first.
 
They made it crystal clear there will be no negotiation until Zelensky's government holds. Putin clearly stated in his interview that he is open to a settlement and will not even object to the West spinning it as a triumphant victory, but the initiative must come from their side first.
Right, Trump has all but explicitly stated he intends on forcing zelensky to negotiate. We just tell him we will turn off all aid and even act against him unless he comes to the table, and then they negotiate. He has no real choice there, either he negotiates or he loses really fast. They aren't even close to producing minimum ammo needed to hold the line without help. That turn of events is still possible at this point.
 
Right, Trump has all but explicitly stated he intends on forcing zelensky to negotiate. We just tell him we will turn off all aid and even act against him unless he comes to the table, and then they negotiate. He has no real choice there, either he negotiates or he starts losing terribly. They aren't even close to producing minimum ammo to keep up with their own needs without help. That turn of events is still possible at this point.
So November it is, and that is assuming Trump can beat the crucial dead people, undocumented people and senile people in nursing homes demographic who will be mailing in their ballots in droves. This is still another year away.
 
So November it is, and that is assuming Trump can beat the crucial dead people, undocumented people and senile people in nursing homes demographic who will be mailing in their ballots in droves. This is still another year away.
Yea I don't think much will change until then. Avdivka will fall for sure. The decision of whether the US and its (apparently) vassals will keep prolonging this is I think the main question as to whether russia can win quickly or not. Frankly, our 'vassals' fucking suck and most of the actual ammo production is coming from the US, so its really mostly that.
 
Something striking about this is how similar Ukraine's behavior looks like the Germans after the tide of war had turned against them. Hitler threw away men and materiel to fruitlessly try to hold "fortress cities," or in useless offensives that were never going to achieve more than pyrrhic victories.

Another interesting similarity is the logistical & training nightmare imposed by the sheer number of armored vehicles on a wide variety of chassis. Some vehicles were never manufactured at scale and never had an assembly line. There were vehicles built on discontinued French tanks, and the famous (especially to WW2 strategy gamers) Elefant antitank gun was the single run of one-off Porsche Tiger tanks converted to an AT weapon. Only 89 were ever made. Small-batch superweapons obviously did little for Germany, especially after the Luftwaffe was mostly destroyed at Kursk, and they're doing little for Ukraine as well, whose air force is similarly crippled.
 
Something striking about this is how similar Ukraine's behavior looks like the Germans after the tide of war had turned against them. Hitler threw away men and materiel to fruitlessly try to hold "fortress cities," or in useless offensives that were never going to achieve more than pyrrhic victories.

Another interesting similarity is the logistical & training nightmare imposed by the sheer number of armored vehicles on a wide variety of chassis. Some vehicles were never manufactured at scale and never had an assembly line. There were vehicles built on discontinued French tanks, and the famous (especially to WW2 strategy gamers) Elefant antitank gun was the single run of one-off Porsche Tiger tanks converted to an AT weapon. Only 89 were ever made. Small-batch superweapons obviously did little for Germany, especially after the Luftwaffe was mostly destroyed at Kursk, and they're doing little for Ukraine as well, whose air force is similarly crippled.
Perhaps it is worth mentioning that the local news have been lighting up with "Terrorist attack prevented" articles for the last couple of weeks. A shipment of explosives going to Russia from Odessa detained by Georian authorities, a family couple mapping out the routes of a Crimean dignitary to blow him up with an explosive jury-rigged from a German mine, an explosive discovered in a factory in St. Pete's.

The Chechen insurgency gave the counter-terrorist apparatchiks plenty of practice in rooting out things that go boom ahead of time, so at least there's that.
 
BTW whats with the whole avdeevka/avdiivka thing? I thought it was just mocking them but everyone is pretty consistent about it, is that a russian spelling or what? Google trannies do not want to tell me.
 
Personally I think you are overestimating the significance of their problems, but that you are right they are showing more signs of stress than before.
I'd agree with this except for the fact that what is expressed below. It isn't any one problem they are having but all of them at once with people who are inexperienced in their role being tasked to solve it.
Changing out so many of the top military positions at the same time is never a good thing. A change at just the top might have been dealt with, but so many changes at the same time in the middle of a real crisis will lead to months of institutional paralysis.
I could not put it better.


If I had money to lose I'd bet it all on this turning out like the fall of Afghanistan with absolute confidence I'd make a profit.
I don't think it is that soon to be quite honest I think it is at least another three months almost certainly more if it actually does happen. And Ukraine could go through a crisis but manage to survive it. We must remember it is not impossible for them to crawl their way out of it. All a crisis really means is it is reasonably possible for destruction to occur. Not all patients in the crisis center die but all of them can.

I have been hearing talks of Ukraine running out of men, money, ammo and morale for a year now and yet here they still are, fighting tooth and nail for every inch.
This is true although I'll note whenever I talked about the problems Ukraine was having I made sure to mention they were not critical. The way these things go is you see something happening for a while and you flash red warning signs and it still doesn't get fixed and then eventually it breaks. I am cautious about what I am seeing being a crisis or even that if it is it means Ukraine will be destroyed by it. I am trying to be objective and merely note that it could be based on everything that has been seen.

Ukraine is not going to surrender until the Russian armies enter Kiev (and even then they will just evacuate the government to Lvov). Disaster or not, I expect slow crawling toward the Dnieper, painful attemps to cross it and establsh a foothold as Ukraine throws every Western missile and shell at the crossing troops, and even slower crawling past every pimple on the map that can be turned into an improvised Bakhmut.
I think this is true but it needs to be asked who will continue fighting. The amount of surrenders suggests at least some Ukrainians have had enough. I see no reason surrenders could not increase quite a bit given the right circumstances. Ukrainian leadership will fight to the bitter and carry on till Lvov as you mentioned but who will follow them? If Ukraine does not have the resources, it does not have to be a bitter multi-year crawl to Kiev. As for crossing the Dnieper it is worth remember about Russia's Belarussian Uncle who has already agreed to let troops move through him and if given enough would likely do so again. I think this is the reason the Russian General Staff was willing to give up Kherson.

It is worth mentioning that if the crisis is happening, it doesn't get fixed and Russia does move to exploit it that Russia might not have enough resources to really make it hurt. Clausewitz wrote that there was some point during an offensive when an army reaches its limit and has to stop due to supply lines and attritioned resources. Russia could make a lot of progress and then be stopped before the war is fully over.

You are right to be cautious though and I also am.
 
here they still are, fighting tooth and nail for every inch. Which is, justifications aside, fully appropriate for someone defending their homeland.
It really isn't though? Ignoring the nature of the Kiev regime, to the population it makes very little difference which city you pay your taxes to. For the common man, the most rational choice is immediate surrender. It spares the people, the infrastructure, and the economy.
Like I'm patriotic and all, but the whole "fight until the last man" thing never made any sense to me. Better to not fight, and still have all the men.
 
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