Russian Ukraine Invasion

[RainbowUnicorn]

RU will like this.

There's a company in the Czech republic that makes full-size inflatable fake military equipment. The idea is to put them under trees or under camoflage netting as decoys, to make the enemy think they are real and attack them instead of real equipment and their crews.

https://www.inflatechdecoy.com/

They won't say if they are selling these things to Ukraine, but they do say their sales have increased in the last year.

Inflatable HIMARS



Inflatable M1 Abrams tank

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i think Ukraine should blow the damn on Berkhivs-ke reservoir
48.638504705944534, 37.95459062303756

& take out the down stream bridge on the road called
shoseina street
48.6479147439914, 37.9927993327226

& also take out the bridge on MO3 where it goes over the river at the same intersection
48.6477341941395, 37.992509981101044

and this road bridge
48.64316276912798, 37.95953203668972

this should divide the road access up to make significant problems for advancing west from east for the russians forcing them to either concentrate south or go far north resulting in them needing to split their forces and cover significantly longer distance to achieve smaller gains.

this should effectively cut off Bakhmut from the north and prevent encirclement & vastly increase the distance russia must travel to get to the Ukrainian front lines & convoys make good targets

blow the road damn(demo charge to blow up the road so the lake floods through it) on this road so it cuts off the road and helps flood the same river as Berkhivs-ke reservoir
48.64582204351894, 37.95219781583412

hit the road bridges first including the small lake
then blow the big reservoir to wash away the bridges & cut bakhmut off from the northern roads

road bridges & small lake-damn-road 1st(cutting off the roads)
then last blow the reservoir to flood the line to prevent vehicles

3 road bridges and the road damn(small lake with its road damn)
then the main reservoir

I'm not 100% certain, but I think that they have already done most of that. They seem to have pulled out of the part of Bakhmut east of the river, blew the bridges and are using the river as a defensive moat.

Map by Rybar

Those inflatable himars and tanks are good value

RE blowing the damn
they blew the smaller one around 5 days ago roughly which was good
which is here
48.61131014357145, 37.97605785555025

but i think they should blow the big one "Berkhivs-ke reservoir"
& blow those 3 bridges and 1 road(which is on the damn of a small lake)

i see there is a double railway line bridge down stream of the reservoir 
russia will want that
48.647244906609934, 37.99109719919241
 i would blow that as well

[Yazata]

One of the largest Russian missile attacks of the war is currently underway against Ukraine. Sirens blaring everywhere.

[Yazata]

Plume of smoke rising from Kyiv Energo #5 thermoelectric power plant in Kyiv.

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/...1486555137

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The plant prior to being hit

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[RainbowUnicorn]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/3PIc9m0NgBU

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https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/-QoJ1MZ0zPM

[Zinjanthropos]

Amazing how propaganda works. Few days ago I was positive the Russkies were about to crush Ukraine . Although my timing could be off or I’m abysmally wrong, all one needs to change their mind is watching more videos of Ukrainian forces blowing up Russians in various ways. Hope it doesn’t mean the more Russians you see dying, the worse it is for the Ukraine at the moment.

[RainbowUnicorn]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/m45Ojz8rvsU

[stryder]

Amazing how propaganda works. Few days ago I was positive the Russkies were about to crush Ukraine . Although my timing could be off or I’m abysmally wrong, all one needs to change their mind is watching more videos of Ukrainian forces blowing up Russians in various ways. Hope it doesn’t mean the more Russians you see dying, the worse it is for the Ukraine at the moment.

"Losing a battle, isn't losing a war" (although there are other lines like "in war, all sides lose"), currently Russia is attempting a "Pyrrhic Victory" where the loses are so high on both sides it's questioned why they ever fought in the firstplace. Pyrrhus of Epirus (wikipedia.org) (the great-grandfather the "Lose a battle, but won a war") actually is quoted to said after his "victory":

Another such victory and we shall be utterly ruined.

I guess what I'm saying is theres been a lot of speculation and doom and gloom about one "battle" in one location, and it takes presidence over the concept that it is "the war", when in reality it's just one theatre of operation out of many. As to the costs... For our posed present "Civilised" cultures to have law, order and diplomatic communication to try to smooth out problems, it is definitely the biggest failure in diplomancy for civilised countries likely this century.

[Yazata]

Amazing how propaganda works. Few days ago I was positive the Russkies were about to crush Ukraine.

Yeah, I was convinced that Bakhmut was in its last hours.

But the Ukrainians decided not to pull out, for reasons unknown to me, and seem to have better secured their routes in and out. While they aren't pushing the Russians back at Bakhmut anywhere, they do seem to still be holding them off.

Although my timing could be off or I’m abysmally wrong, all one needs to change their mind is watching more videos of Ukrainian forces blowing up Russians in various ways.

There are lots of videos of individual Russian soldiers or small groups of the getting killed, usually by small drones dropping grenades. But those little victories don't change the course of the war. (Actually, they make me more sympathetic with the Russian soldiers on the receiving end, so visibly scrambling to for their lives. I start to think 'what if it was me?'.)

Hope it doesn’t mean the more Russians you see dying, the worse it is for the Ukraine at the moment.

Ukrainian dead and wounded are a Ukrainian state secret. Figures have been leaked several times (100,000+) but that's usually denounced as "Russian disinformation", people are told not to believe it, and attempts are made to silence it. Instead there's this attempt to portray the whole thing as almost bloodless for the Ukrainians who just kill Russians by the thousands in Kyiv's "meat grinder". Much is made of supposed "human wave" attacks into the face of machine guns, World War I style.

The concept seems to be that Ukraine will keep killing huge numbers of Russians until Russia runs out of men and/or Putin's government falls, and the Russians just give up and surrender.

But there have been leaks from Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut that their own casualties have been very high as well. Entire units effectively wiped out. Street fighting is very bloody, for both sides. I'd guess the kill ratio is approximately 1:1.

The concern now seems to be that if Ukraine is sending thousands of new troops into Bakhmut, those troops must be coming from somewhere. Presumably they were part of the build-up for an anticipated Ukrainian spring offensive, perhaps southward through Melitopol to the Sea of Azov, cutting Crimea off by land. The worry is that the more soldiers that are pulled away from those preparations and sent to be chewed up and spit out in Bakhmut, the less likely that spring offensive becomes.

Which might explain why the Russians keep at it. They are using Wagner as surrogates in Bakhmut, so might consider them expendable, while the regular Army prepares for the spring offensive. Both sides playing 'war of attrition' hoping to weaken their adversaries by bleeding them out.

[Yazata]

With the Russians more or less held at the river just east of the center of Bakhmut, Wagner forces have shifted their attacks to the north and south sides of the city. They advanced into a large Azovstal-style steel plant just north of downtown (outlined in green in the map below) which like Azovstal has many tunnels underneath. Reportedly there was intense fighting both above and below ground, and the Ukrainians appear to have pushed the Russians back out of the plant.

While that was happening, Wagner was also advancing from the south, as indicated in the map below.

But the big news in the last couple of days appears to be that while the Ukrainians have so many soldiers in Bakhmut, the Russians took advantage of the rule of warfare: attack where the enemy isn't. So northwest of Bakhmut, the Russians appear to have broken through Ukrainian defensive lines and have advanced a short ways down to road leading to Sloviansk.

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[RainbowUnicorn]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/oSnMtXkfTrk