The War in the Ukraine

[gelgoog]

And Kherson? I recall people stating here the Ukrainians launched a major offensive and were beaten. Yet the Russians were forced to retreat to the other side of the Dniepr.

I would call that a Pyrrhic victory for Ukraine. They had tens of thousands of casualties in Kherson alone. The Russians took 2/3rds of Kherson's population when they left with them. Plus they smashed the power stations. The 1/3rd of the population left had to leave the city because they cannot heat themselves in the winter. Some victory.

It has been hypothesized that this invasion was basically a preemptive strike. Perhaps the level of commitment was not sufficient. However, the resistance presented by the Ukrainian forces does hint that waiting any longer may have produced an even worse result for Russia.

Read the OSCE reports. Ukraine had been ramping up their artillery bombardments of Donbass massively and the Russians had reports they were going to move tens of thousands of troops into the contact line.

3BM18

Jesus. Is this what Ukraine is using? 265mm/0° @ 2km. There is no way this is going to penetrate a Russian tank in the front. Even 3BM42 Mango like India uses has like twice the penetration. Let alone a modern Russian round like Svinets-2. I thought Poland and Slovakia had projectiles similar to Mango.

The conclusion from this is clear: Ukraine's Operational Command-South, which once boasted of marching on Kherson with a million men, was destroyed on the Ingulets. The handful of battalions freed are likely the only combat-capable units it could muster to send elsewhere. We may see other OC-S brigades later in this war, but as shadows of their former selves, stuffed with territorial defense conscripts riding on MRAPs and pickup trucks.

Ukraine have another contingent coming from the UK and probably more elsewhere who finished training recently.

the Russian Ministry of Defense announced 50,000 mobilized are already at the front and a further 80,000 are receiving training in and near the theater of operations. But where are the rest? Why is it taking so long?

This is actually quite smart. They should embed the mobilized with existing units to train them for a bit before rotating the other units out. Otherwise the resulting replacements will be lackluster. So far though, I think, the Russians have made a bit of a bungle of the training process. They seem to be taking trainers from the military academies. I think they would have been better off taking some soldiers out of the front and making those do the training.

It also means that you can discount any UKR stories of mobilized Russian soldiers being rushed to the front without training. That is the UKR and the West projecting their problems and their sins onto Russia. All the mobilized will arrive at the front when they have received all the training they need. They will all arrive when they are ready and not a minute before.

Well they basically sent the people who had left the service 1-2 years ago ahead first. Or people with actual combat experience. For example Western press talk a lot about that St. Petersburg "lawyer" who was sent to the front and died after a week or two. Turns out he was a combat veteran.

Besides the training there were issues getting the men enough equipment. So it makes sense to send them in batches instead of just sending the whole lot of them. The issue was less about uniforms and more about things like tents and bags. They had uniforms but they were spread all over the place so it took some time to sort things out. Still I think Russia did not produce Ratnik in enough numbers for all these people. They had enough for the whole army. I think like some 300,000 uniforms of Ratnik were produced. This was enough to equip the standing army but I wonder what they will do with all these people going in.

 

[Tam]

Reportedly, The Ukrainian Deputy PM has said all the Thermal / Hydro power plants has been hit by missiles. No idea on the severity of the damage or if they are still operational.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1596185011673214977

Proof of 80 to 90% hit rate of Ukrainian SAMs.

 

[Tam]

I am going to get mocked and screamed at, but...

Logistics is no small part of the problem as well. Not so much HIMARS destroyed the centralized dumps, but since the beginning of the war, it has been really difficult for Russia to move more than a truck drive from a railhead. That is pretty telling, IMO. The rail dependency also creates artificial choke points a purely truck mobile force would not have.

In addition, the noted lack of palletization may seem trivial to many, but it has a profound effect on the ability on logistics.

The exhaustion of the troops compounded by a logistics train (see what I did there?) that may not be up to the task are the two main culprits on the Russian side.

I hardly see exhausted troops from videos of the Russian side, and there is plenty of it.

 

[Tam]

Ukrainian AFV getting targeted.

Ukrainain T-64 burns somewhere in the Donbass region.

 

[Tam]

Russia literally mobilized extra 300K troops.... if it's not a shortage of (fresh) manpower causing recent slow progress, then what is?

Its not the shortage of manpower, rather than the rotation of manpower. Conscripts have a six month contract. Guess what, the SMO began to slow down precisely in six months after the invasion because these contracts are over and troops are being sent back home. This caused the troops in the front to dry up, and the Izyium area defended only by paramilitary. Putin acting as if the war is won didn't help things a bit, having military olympics and such. You need a mobilization to bring these troops back to duty. It didn't help that the entire Chechen unit was taken out of the front for a month and half for rest, relaxation and rotation.

War isn't a certainty for both sides, and plenty of mistakes and adjustments are going to be made in both sides. Russia appears willing to bid for time now since Ukraine is being turned into scorched earth --- remember what that did to Napoleon.

 

[Tam]

I would call that a Pyrrhic victory for Ukraine. They had tens of thousands of casualties in Kherson alone. The Russians took 2/3rds of Kherson's population when they left with them. Plus they smashed the power stations. The 1/3rd of the population left had to leave the city because they cannot heat themselves in the winter. Some victory.

Kherson is scorched earth. Kiev and Kharkov are in the process of being turned into such. Russians did that to Napoleon, Sherman did that to the Confederate and much later the Soviets did that to the German Army.

 

[Phead128]

Its not the shortage of manpower, rather than the rotation of manpower.

The additional 300K is on top of the initial 180K invading force implies manpower shortage, not merely substitution of existing expired contractees that returned home. Even if it's full substitution at 1:1 ratio, we are talking about an extra 100K troops on top of initial invasion force, which again, implies manpower shortage. A large proportion of invading force must be full-time personnels from regular army right, they wouldn't put reservists on contract for frontline combat only to call them up for active duty again later...just put a stop-loss order and extend their contracts indefinitely.

 

[Tam]

The additional 300K is on top of the initial 180K invading force implies manpower shortage, not merely substitution of existing expired contractees that returned home. Even if it's full substitution at 1:1 ratio, we are talking about an extra 100K troops on top of initial invasion force, which again, implies manpower shortage. A large proportion of invading force must be full-time personnels from regular army right, they wouldn't put reservists on contract for frontline combat only to call them up for active duty again later...just put a stop-loss order and extend their contracts indefinitely.

The initial 180k went down lower than 80k, some say 70k, after the implementation of troop rotations. The majority of the Russian force were contracted conscripts, and there ain't much of them after August, not to mention the Chechens, which are part of the Russian regular forces, are gone in September. Kherson is held mostly by Russian airborne, which is by the Air Force, and by Russian marines which is by the Navy. There isn't much of the regular Russian army except with artillery units. Can't put a stop loss order and extend contracts indefinitely because Russia isn't exactly the dictatorship authoritarian state, but a nation of laws with an incomprehensible level of bureaucracy. The mobilization is meant to cut through all these laws, return and renew the contracted conscripts, and hold indefinitely the contracts for those still in place. The returnees started coming back in October, which is around the same time we are seeing the lines getting denser and counterattacks getting rebuffed. Around the same time you see the Chechens return to the front line. As for Wagner, they are not part of the regular Russian armed forces, unlike the Chechens, they stayed fighting and refused any rotations. LPR and DPR forces themselves are not a part of the regular Russian armed forces, until the LPR and DPR are formally annexed. Until then they, along with Wagner, are acting independently on their own, but after annexation, become formally part of the regular Russian armed forces and under the command of Surovikin.

 

[Zichan]

Tam seems to have missed the part where the contracts of Russian soldiers were extended indefinitely. Russia had a manpower shortage from day 1. They invaded with only 180,000 troops, whereas realistically they required 3 times that much to achieve their objectives.

The BTGs were undermanned from the start: under normal conditions a large chunk of the infantry was supposed to be filled with recruits. However, they were not allowed to partake in the invasion of Ukraine resulting in mech heavy BTGs with far too few infantry. This led to quick attrition of BTGs and their eventual collapse as a fighting unit concept in the Russian Army.

 

[tankphobia]

So what's the Russian play now? Continue to strike at power infrastructure in hopes that Ukranian civilians pressure the government to sue for peace? Even if there is peace it's unlikely that the West will remove sanctions for the foreseeable future, afterwards Russia will be forever tied with China at the hip.