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Russian Ukraine Invasion
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#663
Yazata Offline Aug 11, 2022 04:16 AM (This post was last modified: Aug 11, 2022 04:58 AM by Yazata.)
The Ukrainian attack on the Russian air base in Crimea appears to have been a big one. Impressive, however they did it, whether it was missiles or as the video above claims, special forces. Given that this base is 200km/120mi from the Ukrainian held territories, it was a long-range hit.

https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/stat...9725192195

Satellite imagery of the base after whatever hit it, hit it.

It looks like planes were individually targeted inside their protective berms. (That more or less rules out an accident, as the Russians were claiming.) The long-range ATACMS has the range and the accuracy to have done this, but last I heard the Ukrainians had requested them but the US said no, and gave them the shorter range M31A1 rockets (with a range of 90km/55 mi) instead, which wouldn't have been able to reach this far. (Maybe the US relented.)

If it was commandos, they would have had to have snuck deep onto a Russian base in wartime and planted explosive charges on all these jets, without being discovered doing it. If that's what happened, it was another epic Russian screw-up, this time with base security. Judging from the craters and the mushroom cloud videos, these included some big explosions. Hard to imagine commandos packing in 500 pound charges, but maybe some of these jets were already armed with bombs that cooked off. (That's consistent with the video in the tweet above, that appears to show a plume of dark smoke from the ground prior to the big explosions going off.)


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#670
Yazata Offline Aug 14, 2022 06:56 AM (This post was last modified: Aug 14, 2022 07:21 AM by Yazata.)
Day 171 of the war that was only supposed to last a week.

There are two areas where the future of the war might be decided.

In one of them the Russians seem to be winning, but very slowly and at great cost. (The cost to Ukraine is equally great and Ukraine might fold first.) This is in the east as depicted on the map below. The Russians have been trying to approach Slovyansk from the direction of Izium for weeks, and the Ukrainians keep stopping them. So the Russians shifted their attention to the east where they took Severdonetsk and Lysychansk. From there they were pushing west towards Siversk. That advance seemed to stall for a while, as the Russians appear to have been rotating in fresh troops, but it's resumed. The map is a little out of date and the Russians are probably much closer to Siversk than it shows, but the Ukrainians still hold that town.

The main Russian effort over the last few weeks has been to the south towards the larger town of Bakhmut. The Russians have been making progress on that front and are deep in Soledar where street fighting is happening. They appear to have recently taken a big gypsum plant which is a landmark in Soledar. The Russians have taken many other villages in the area and are reported to have entered the eastern neighborhoods of Bakhmut itself, where fighting is ongoing. Most of Bakhmut is still in Ukrainian hands at this point. 


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The other pivot point is in the southwest on the west side of the huge Dnipro river. The Russians aren't exactly losing here, but signs of trouble are mounting. This is where the Russian occupied city of Kherson is located along with many Russian forces that tried and failed to take nearby Mykolaiv and once hoped to sweep west into Odesa. More recently the Russians have taken up defensive positions, successfully fighting off a series of small Ukrainian counterattacks.

The latest developments have been precision Ukrainian strikes (using HIMARS or similar systems from Britain or Germany) on the three large bridges crossing the Dnipro in that area (two road bridges, one rail). There are several thousand Russians on the west side of the river, with many vehicles. So absent the bridges, they will have to be supplied with fuel, ammunition and food by ferry. Supplies will dwindle. If the Ukrainians can keep the bridges out of action, its possible that in coming weeks we will see many vehicles running out of fuel, less artillery fire as ammunition runs short and perhaps even Russian troops looting for food. If any of that happens, one would expect the anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson to happen then.

Vitaly Kim, the head of the Mykolaiv oblast administration, is saying that the Russian occupation administration of neighboring Kherson oblast have evacuated out of the city of Kherson to the east side of the river. There's also talk that Russia is moving airborne forces to the area, perhaps because airborne troops travel lighter and are specialized in introduction, resupply and extraction by air.

The British Defense Ministry says


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