After all the talk by some members about the Russians freezing to death, it seems the Ukranians are the ones getting frostbitten
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Well, you think a Germany with Scholz and VDL in charge would dare sanction Poland for delivering Leopard 2s to Ukraine? MSM would be all over them, labelling them as traitors of the entire "free world." It's bye bye for their political careers.No, which is why Germany sanctioned Turkey and left them without a powerpack for the Altay and KMW's upgrade packages for the Leo 2A4.
Anyway, part of what makes NATO's armored equipment is (besides their use mostly against third world countries with barely a functioning army) is the presence of round the clock air support and air defenses. Ukraine doesn't have that luxury for most of the front lines so it would be a matter of time before we get videos of LMUR's or Vikhr crashing into a Leo2.
That is, provided that with the low number of tanks, they don't end up like armored taxis for one unit commander/oligarch or another back in the rear.
As it is, the M55's have been in Ukraine for a while and they have only been seen driving around far from the frontlines.
There's some Ukrainian detachments on the western outskirts, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wagner mops them up pretty soon.Soledar confirmed taken/encircled?
He said that the soldiers had run out of food, were running low on water, and that they had wounded soldiers. He said that they still had some ammunition.“We tried to withdraw ourselves, but the Orcs [Russians] are already there. If there is no order to withdraw today, we will most likely not have time to leave,” he told CNN over the phone. “We were told that we would be withdrawn. And now we аre just abandoned.”
While gunfire can still be heard in the western outskirts of Soledar, it is clear now that Russian forces will emerge victorious. Their victory will, in turn, collapse a 70 km-long section of Kiev's defenses.The entire town is littered with the bodies of Ukrainian servicemen,” he said.
Russian forces’ likely capture of Soledar on January 11 is not an operationally significant development and is unlikely to presage an imminent Russian encirclement of Bakhmut. Geolocated footage posted on January 11 and 12 indicates that Russian forces likely control most if not all of Soledar, and have likely pushed Ukrainian forces out of the western outskirts of the settlement.
Russian information operations have overexaggerated the importance of Soledar, which is at best a Russian Pyrrhic tactical victory. ISW continues to assess that the capture of Soledar—a settlement smaller than 5.5 square miles—will not enable Russian forces to exert control over critical Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) into Bakhmut nor better position Russian forces to encircle the city in the short term.[8] Russian forces likely captured Soledar after committing significant resources to a highly attritional tactical victory which will accelerate degraded Russian forces’ likely culmination near Bakhmut.[9] Russian forces may decide to maintain a consistently high pace of assaults in the Bakhmut area, but Russian forces’ degraded combat power and cumulative exhaustion will prevent these assaults from producing operationally significant results.
Russian forces have not yet fully captured Soledar despite recent Russian advances, and the possible capture of Soledar is unlikely to enable Russian forces to capture Bakhmut. ISW assesses that Russian forces have not yet captured Soledar, despite numerous claims from Russian sources.
Has the UAF fully withdrawn from Soledar?