Traffic on the single bridge that links Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea and serves as a key supply route for the Kremlin’s forces in the war with Ukraine came to a standstill on Monday after one of its sections was blown up, killing a couple and wounding their daughter.
The RBC Ukraine news agency reported that explosions were heard on the bridge, with Russian military bloggers reporting two strikes.
RBC Ukraine and another Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda said the attack was planned jointly by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian navy, and involved sea drones.
If it weren’t for Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries staging a mutiny against the Russian military, I would have cast serious doubt on Ukraine’s counteroffensive succeeding. Regardless of what you think about the competency of the Russian armed forces, it can’t be denied that Wagner are one of their few effective units in force.
Ukraine has remained boldly united in the face of a long and a bloody war on their own doorstep, whereas we’ve seen deteriorating Russian morale, both within the country’s borders and on the frontlines.
At this rate I think that Zelenskyy will retake Crimea and the Donbas within months.
What is with the Prigozhin/Wagner mutiny anyway? Never heard anything after.
It died when Belarus intervened and brokered a compromise between the Wagner group and Putin. Still unfolding so we still don’t know the full story. Here’s a summary from Business Insider.
My guess is he got paid off to back down. Putin has a lot of money and probably offered him safety in Belarus as well as a huge chunk of change for him and his troops.
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Gotcha! I’ll remind you at Monday, August 14, 2023, 9:11:16 PM UTC.
That is not two months from now?
They edited the message, used to be 1 month
Ah thanks. Makes sense. Is there some way to see the edits?
Dont think so, only way I know is cause I was checking around to see if the bot was responding to people properly and saw that comment early before it was edited
Good bot
Who invaded who again?
What does that have to do with the effectiveness of the counter offensive?
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-war-dubik-interview-defense-offense-tavberidze/32476276.html
"Well, campaigns are judged on how much they contribute to the strategic gains. So, [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy’s strategic aim is to secure his country’s political sovereignty, territorial integrity, and that sets conditions for economic prosperity. That’s how I read them. And so, a successful counteroffensive will achieve all of those or move toward achieving those.
So, what that means on the ground is that Ukraine’s forces have to seize back enough territory from the Russians to, at the minimum, force the Russians to negotiate from a position of weakness and from a position that Zelenskiy can secure political sovereignty, territorial integrity, and thus economic prosperity. So, it’s not an objective of how many miles, how many cities. It’s the relationship of the campaign and the strategic objectives that determines success."
Let me know when Ukraine is able to achieve enough success to force Russia to the table on their terms.
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Ironic seeing the human wave of Ukrainians sent into the land mines and open fields to be hit by indirect fire. Russia has no problems supplying this war of attrition and it could be argued that they sought to impose such a war after pivoting from the maneuver based doctrine of the start of the SMO. As I quoted in the rail line the Russian supply chain is limited by the rail and as such would be unable to sustain themselves far from the lines as opposed to the established and new lines they have created to the Donbass region.
From an old comment of mine: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/569600
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/dissecting-west-point-think-tanks
“The capacity to detect and strike targets at ever-greater distances and with ever-growing precision increases the vulnerability of dense troop concentrations, and therefore limits the ability to conduct large-scale sequenced and concentrated operations. As such, in order to enhance survivability, current battlefield conditions are forcing military units to disperse into smaller formations, dig in, or both, unless these conditions are effectively countered. As a result, the battlefield tends to become more fragmented, offering more independent action to lower tactical formations as the depth of the front is expanding to a considerable extent.”
“As a survey of decades of history illustrates, Russian military strategy over the past decades has correctly forecasted a number of implications of advancements in weapons, as well as sensor technologies, that are currently affecting the character of warfare in Ukraine.”
“The operational level of war sits between tactics, which consists of organizing and employing fighting forces on or near the battlefield, and strategy, which involves aspects of long-term and high-level theatre operations, and the government’s leadership. The Soviet Union was the first country to officially distinguish this third level of military thinking, when it was introduced as part of the deep operation military theory that its armed forces developed during the 1920s and 1930s and utilized during the Second World War.”
“After the failure of the initial invasion, the subsequent period of the fighting in the Donbas was at first marked by Russian dominance in fires. Besides precision munitions, the employment of UAVs for target detection greatly enhanced the effectiveness of Russia’s large numbers of legacy artillery systems. Russian artillery batteries employing UAVs for target detection generally showed themselves capable of engaging Ukrainian positions within minutes after being detected. As a result, Ukrainian infantry companies were forced to disperse and often occupied front lines up to three kilometers wide. Consequently, battalions covered frontages that are traditionally the responsibility of brigades. Russian artillery superiority and sensor density even prevented Ukrainians from concentrating in units above company size, because anything larger would be detected prematurely and effectively targeted from a distance.”
“Russian forces also rarely employ armor and infantry in concentrated assaults and in the defense occupy dispersed positions, while increasingly drawing on artillery to blunt Ukrainian attacks.”
“However, current battlefield conditions are adding the related difficulty of achieving the concentration of forces necessary for establishing main efforts during offensive operations. This is reducing large-scale engagements and thereby necessitating a concentration and synchronization of effects, rather than a traditional physical massing of troops. In turn, this places an extra burden on command and control, especially when contested by electronic warfare. Only by disrupting the opponent’s kill chain can larger formations regain the ability to concentrate and engage in maneuver warfare. During the war in Ukraine, superiority in kill-chain effectiveness has become one of the prime objectives for both sides. In this war and any other characterized by the same dynamics, this superiority becomes an essential condition for victory.”
With a doctrine advantage, western acknowledged electronic warfare, indirect fire, and air support superiority combined with an established, modernized supply line its JOEVER
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He is breaking down a very dense report from the West Point and the Department of Military Instruction: https://mwi.usma.edu/the-russian-way-of-war-in-ukraine-a-military-approach-nine-decades-in-the-making/
Most of the quotes ive used are also from that same report
Hello Ivan. How’s the weather in Moscow today?
Ukraine is making good progress and there is no doubt how degraded and brittle the Russian defenses are.
As the campaign succeeds, the impacts of their striking capabilities will become more and more clear.
Remember that degraded morale has a compounding effect as well. If a position hears that four other positions near them have failed, they might decide “well fuck it”, and then the positions behind THEM hear “well now five positions have failed” and they scramble, and so on. Combine that with the fact that Russian morale is already reportedly extremely low (who would’ve thought conscripts make shitty and unhappy soldiers).