Russian Ukraine Invasion

[Yazata]

Interesting remarks from Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and now chairman of an innovation panel at the Pentagon, about lessons learned from the Ukraine War and the outlook going forward. He anticipates that the war will continue for a long time, with neither side able to advance significantly.

https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/16...1779900416

The Kerch bridge. It looks to me like the Ukrainians steered one or more of their drone-boats under it. The explosion beneath seems to have lifted the roadway up off its supports. It certainly looks repairable, but the difficulty of the repairs probably depends on the condition of the supports underneath.

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[Yazata]

It's been several days and nothing really dramatic to report.

The Ukrainians keep attacking every day in Zaphorizha, but so far have only made minor progress, a few km at best. They still aren't even close to the main Russian defensive lines. Lots of dead, wounded and destroyed vehicles, seemingly for nothing, just thrown into the meat-grinder. In earlier months, the Russian generals were loudly criticized (in the West, by Wagner...) for repeated bloody and costly human wave attacks on the Donetsk front. And now the Ukrainian generals seem to be doing the same thing. Perhaps the common denominator in both cases is thinking according to old Soviet military doctrine.

But while the Ukrainians aren't saying much, the Russians are reporting that the Ukrainians are increasing their forces in Zaphorizhia. There's talk of convoys of armor and military vehicles moving south from the Kharkiv area. So the Russians are preparing themselves to fight another big Ukrainian push in coming days.

Perhaps associated with those preparations, the Ukrainians hit a fuel and ammunition storage site in Crimea with two British supplied Stormshadow missiles today. Big plumes of smoke visible as fuel burns. The Russians have evacuated a five km circle around the site, probably for fear of seconday explosions of ammuntion stored there.

Some Russian bloggers are saying that Ukraine is preparing a special forces operation across the (former) Dnipro reservoir towards the Russian held Zaphorizhia nuclear power plant. The stories claim that British SAS are present and coordinating preparations for the assault. I don't know how credible that is, but people are saying it.

There are also interesting reports from similar sources that Kharkiv is attracting lots of foreign volunteers, many of them American. They are supposedly visible in various hotels in the city. Again, to be taken with a grain of salt.

And the Russians already have crews and heavy equipment hard at work trying to repair the Kerch bridge. At the moment the rail line across the Kerch strait is working and the highway bridge is open to reduced traffic.

The burning storage site in Crimea

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[Yazata]

The Russians appear to have made a modest breakthrough just northeast of Kupiansk in eastern Kharkiv oblast. They seem to have moved forward maybe ten kilometers and are pushing the Ukrainians over to the west side of the Oskil river. This might be associated with the reports yesterday of Ukraine moving forces from Kharkiv oblast to reinforce their stalled Zaphorizhia offensive, which might have left this section of the front undermanned. So far, this Russian advance doesn't seem like anything to get too excited about.

And here's satellite photography from Maxar showing the Tsel garrison in Belarus, more widely known as the "Wagner camp". It looks like a Belarussian army facility that was turned over to Wagner, since all this wasn't built in just the last few weeks. The photo shows what appear to be preexisting barracks, many small prefab housing units that might be new, plus a huge garage area where many apparently civilian vehicles are visible, from cars and small trucks to big semis. But no military armored vehicles are visible that I could see. If they are there, they are probably inside the large garage buildings, under cover precisely so that spy satellites can't count them and identify their types.

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The vehicle area

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[Yazata]

And this just in - what appears to have been a Ukrainian drone has struck the top floors of a Moscow office building that housed the headquarters of the Russian branch of a French home furnishing company called Leroy Merlin. Leroy Merlin operates 143 stores in Russia and has indicated no intention of ceasing operations there. The presumed drone started a fire that gutted the building's top two floors but was successfully extinguished by the Moscow fire brigade. As yet, there are no reports of injuries or fatalities.

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[Yazata]

Unverified anecdotal reports that Ukraine has suffered very heavy losses of men and equipment on the Zaphorizhia front over the last couple of days. Still no advance to speak of.

Interestingly, the American establishment media appears to be changing its narrative to reflect the realities on the ground. CNN records a Ukrainian army spokesman saying it, "There are more Russians than us. They have more weapons. More ammo. And more people..."

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status...4182593536

[Yazata]

The Ukrainian main thrust in Zaphorizhia has had no real success so far (more than a month in) and is only resulting in heavy losses of both men and western-supplied armored vehicles. And Russia seems to be having some small-scale success to the north along the Luhansk/Kharkiv oblast border, where the Russians have taken a few hills.

That said, one place where Ukraine is having success is around Bakhmut. They haven't tried to enter the city, but are pushing the Russians back both north and south of town. Most recently they have been attacking to the south of Bakhmut where heavy fighting is occurring.

Of course none of this is the big game-changing breakthrough that might keep this war from staggering on as a years-long war of attrition, until somebody (probably Ukraine) wears out and negotiates an end to the fighting. There were hopes that Ukraine's grand offensive might be that game-changer, but it doesn't look like it as of now.

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[C C]

The Ukrainian main thrust in Zaphorizhia has had no real success so far (more than a month in) and is only resulting in heavy losses of both men and western-supplied armored vehicles. And Russia seems to be having some small-scale success to the north along the Luhansk/Kharkiv oblast border, where the Russians have taken a few hills.

That said, one place where Ukraine is having success is around Bakhmut. They haven't tried to enter the city, but are pushing the Russians back both north and south of town. Most recently they have been attacking to the south of Bakhmut where heavy fighting is occurring.

Of course none of this is the big game-changing breakthrough that might keep this war from staggering on as a years-long war of attrition, until somebody (probably Ukraine) wears out and negotiates an end to the fighting. There were hopes that Ukraine's grand offensive might be that game-changer, but it doesn't look like it as of now.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F14s42uagAAy...me=900x900

Months prior to the ridiculous success of last year's counter-offensive going to their heads, the Ukrainians would have been relieved to just still be hanging on to most of their country. The West needs to stop feeding this expensive reality impairment of Ukraine getting back what it lost, and encourage them to be content with Palestinian-like harassment of the Russian occupied territories for decades to come.

The country needs to start rebuilding and paying off debt, not sending wave after wave of its youth into a meat grinder out of false pride. Given the pro-Russian sentiments in Donetsk and Luhansk before the invasion ever began, Ukraine troops are dying to win back what would probably be segments of a trouble-making or rebellious population, anyway. The rest have probably been brainwashed by now.

[Yazata]

Here's something interesting the Ukrainian engineers have come up with. It's a remote-controlled vehicle fitted with an old Soviet-era Mon-200 directional anti-personnel mine. (Like a claymore.) Apparently the idea is to steer it to a point where it's facing Russian troops, then detonate the directional shaped charge it carries. I don't know how close it has to be to be effective or if it is filled with steel ball buckshot the way the American claymores are. I would imagine that being hunkered down in a trench would be good defense against something like this and that it will be most effective against dismounted infantry advancing on foot.

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[Yazata]

Here's the current situation on the Southern Front as mapped out by War_Mapper

https://twitter.com/War_Mapper

The white areas by the blue arrows are what has been taken by the Ukrainians in their current summer offensive.

Ukraine's deepest penetration is the middle white zone just to the east of Robotyne. They have been pushing very hard here despite suffering appalling losses in men and armored vehicles. They have succeeded in reaching the Russian first defensive line and breaching it along a short stretch.

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In the last few minutes, airspace over Moscow has been closed. I assume more Ukrainian drones are inbound. The airspace closure has created chaos among the many airliners approaching Moscow's several large airports as they've been put into holding patterns.

[Yazata]

Two drones just hit one of the newer and more upscale districts in Moscow.

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/...8706906112

Damage caused by one of them

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/...4358864896