Hello everybody! Just a ‘quick and dirty’ one for today… Generally, there are very few reports about what’s going on. Even Putin’s PRBS-machinery is quiet – though there are good reasons for that. The last four days, the Russians run large-scale counterattacks almost everywhere along the frontline: from western Luhansk, all the way down to southern Zaporizhzhya - and all were shredded to pieces.
BTW, I read a DOD person said they could deliver the cluster munitions so quickly because they were "pre-stored" in Europe. Somebody has used their brain.
Is "miners with picks" a step up from mobiks with trench shovels?
Thanks, Tom, I very much appreciate your relentless work.
Being disappointed by most reporting of both sides and unable to investigate by myself, you are my most trustworthy and reliable source of information about this conflict. My only worry is that you are perhaps too upbeat and kinda snooty towards the Russian armed forces; I hope I am mistaken.
I really don't understand where people get this idea that an election in a mature democracy makes any significant difference to its foreign policy. The support for Ukraine in the US is bipartisan, every vote in the congress and the senate proves it. It makes 0 difference who wins the presidential elections. One candidate may help Ukraine win quicker, another may be obstructive. Makes no difference to the outcome. Foreign policy has near 0 impact on elections. If the Russian plan is to hope a pro-Russian candidate wins and helps Russia win the war, then they are the dumbest assholes on Earth.
In the late 2010s, think of the IRNF, Open Skies, NAFTA, TPP, JCPOA...
In the early 2000s, think of the ICC, ABM, extraordinary rendition, um, the Iraq War...
Brexit was a highly disjunctive foreign policy decision, and if one wishes to speak of a foreign policy "establishment", the British establishment was definitely opposed.
You just threw loads of acronyms. Don't even know how to respond to that. What does the Iraq War have to do with this? George W Bush was already the POTUS when 9/11 happened. He stayed for both terms. In Finland, Sanna Marin has just lost the elections after a universally praised foreign policy work. Foreign policy has negligible influence on elections, this isn't even up for discussion but a simple fact. All politicians know this, at least those that want to win elections. Foreign policy is unique in government, because it must be long-term and bipartisan, otherwise it's not a foreign policy but personal folly. Hence, no fundamental change in US foreign policy since WW2. Kissinger is 100 years old for God's sake.
As for Brexit. The British establishment was definitely not opposed to the degree some wish to portray it. The conservative party was ~50/50, at least where it matters, even before the referendum. Labour had little influence because they were in disarray after years of election losses. In addition, they decided to choose Corbyn as their leader. He's as pro-European as Russians are pro-peace. Also, Brexit referendum was fairly unique in British political history. I believe, that was only the 4th referendum ever. Finally, in every election since the referendum, local and national, Brexit was not a topic in and of itself, but its domestic, economic consequences. Had the British government achieved economic growth, Brexit wouldn't matter at all. All elections in mature democracies are about domestic matters, regardless of what affects them. If any government found a way to make enormous money trading with the martians, but had to nuke China to do it, they would win elections before and after.
"Foreign policy has negligible influence on elections, this isn't even up for discussion but a simple fact."
You seemed to be saying the inverse, that elections have no influence on national foreign policy. I would be more inclined to agree with the other statement, though not entirely without reservation.
The acronyms I listed were major treaties that were rejected, broken, or modified in a partisan fashion - that is, a prominent demonstration of the effect of elections.
Most obviously, only a Republican administration in the early 2000s could have invaded Iraq (indeed, it was a campaign proposal). That's a huge historical divergence given the geopolitical effects of the war. Both foreign and domestic policy can experience profound changes attendant to the nature of the coalitions in power.
As you do let on in your examination of Brexit, it was a decision point or a series of decision points - that could have gone very differently depending on the government in charge. (Though given there has been consistent 40-50% public opposition to European membership in the UK since the days of the EEC and before, by no means would it have been a 'settled issue.')
Yes, you are correct. I am saying both. Elections have no noticeable influence on foreign policy, because said policy has negligible influence on elections. This is the one area of government which is usually left alone.
There has been some rumour that Bush was keen on invading Iraq even before 9/11. However, to suggest he would've gone to war like he did without 9/11 is conjecture to say the least. The US has been involved in a military conflict directly or indirectly in every decade since pretty much forever. Same for most countries, the bigger the more often they do.
I get what you are saying, that specific people make specific decisions. Sure, they do, and maybe somebody else would make a different one. However, anything that happens at that level, is a result of a long chain of such decisions, usually spanning years. There is a long build up, you need to convince the wider civil service, then the wider society. Once you look at it from a distance, you quickly realise that most events happened because they were highly likely to happen, because of everything that happened beforehand, regardless of who is in charge.
Maybe the next POTUS will simply say "screw it" and deliver every conventional weapons system to Ukraine with no limits on its use. Maybe not. However, overall it will have little impact on the outcome, because what will definitely not happen, is a 180 degree turn and a complete change in US foreign policy of the last 70 years.
What I dislike is the framing of the concept against such extremes as "Maybe not. However, overall it will have little impact on the outcome, because what will definitely not happen, is a 180 degree turn and a complete change in US foreign policy of the last 70 years."
Is it that elections have no noticeable impact on foreign policy, or that they will not have the most radically disjunctive theoretical effects on foreign policy? They're very different frames, and of course it's trivial to argue something like there being no conceivable (s)election in the US or China that would push one to become the vassal of the other, for example.
No POTUS can deliver to Ukraine beyond what Congress authorizes, unless they're willing to take the broadest "emergency" powers to the Supreme Court. Speaking of which, we recall of course that the Bush administration did secure Congressional authorization to invade Iraq, and indeed part of the reason the whole adventure was possible was the willingness of parts of the security apparatus to support such an invasion, as well as the ongoing post-Cold War intellectual debate between neoconservatism (in Bush's corner), liberal internationalism, and realism/isolationism. But the political climate and rallying effect of 9/11 was the necessary stimulus that allowed the administration to take the very aggressive and unconditioned action that, I repeat, its leading personnel had advocated for years (e.g. Project for a New American Century, or reporting from 2002: "CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.").
Would an Al Gore admin have been friendly with Iraq? No, but he would almost certainly have followed the same policy track his boss Bill Clinton did with respect to what Bush later called the "Axis of Evil", one oriented on diplomacy, international mediation and treaty-making. Similarly, there might have been a hypothetical Russian leader in the recent past who would have maintained an antagonistic posture toward US unipolarity without resorting to war, but that's a pure alternative world.
We can also debate the likes of Corbyn's deep personal views on the EU, Jews, Russia, whatever, but I'm not aware of information that he was prepared to press the issue should he have had the opportunity to form a government in 2015/16. That Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg would not have goes without any debate I gather.
The observation holds that we have recent, prominent examples of foreign policy decisions that served as something of a geopolitical turning point (Brexit much less so than Iraq or Ukraine), but were distinctly rooted in peculiarities of personnel. To say nothing of other examples in history or in principle.
To dovetail with your point about policy options arising from precedents and undercurrents and the like, yes indeed, these were not random decisions detached from any public or elite constituency, or sustained discourse, but that's beside the point because:
__The array of plausible foreign policy options available to states usually implies - contains - the possibility of considerably-divergent scenarios even in themselves.__
This is true even as your statement quoted at the top of this reply is trivially applicable. We can face the potential for profound changes in foreign policy rooted in single elections without those elections necessarily representing a choice between polar opposites or 'complete changes.'
Your report are good, but somehow to optimistic. It seem the counter near Klichkievska was kind of successful, since they managed to regain some positions and they even showed 5-7 POWs. I assume the fighting there are really brutal for both sides. Until i see this village totally abandoned and in UA hands, i`ll consider the that the advance was halted.
I know I sound 'very harsh' to the Russians. I'm perfectly aware of my 'hairsplitting' and 'super-critique'.
'But'.... that's my approach to what I'm doing, and I'm doing that in regards of any other topic of my research. Should there be any doubts: check my books about different Arab- and African air forces, or Arab-Israeli, and Iraqi-Iranian wars. Me thinks, I'm even-handed in all of them, even if for plenty of my readers, my (often fierce) critique of Israel is 'at least unusual' if not 'unheard of'.
Now, meanwhile, I'm into 'studying' the Russian armed forces - directly - for 8 years. Indirectly (because I've spent so much time studying their 'export customers') for about 40 years.
....and here I cannot but say one thing: believe it or not, but I'm even 'dampening' the critique of the VSRF and the VKS in comparison to what I get to hear from (few remaining) Russian contacts. I'm not forwarding their critique 1-for-1. What they're describing in regards of 'conditions/circumstances' in their units.... that's nothing else but 'unthinkable' - whether for 'us', here in the West, or even for the Soviet armed forces of, say, 1970s and early 1980s.
The System Putin has ruined the Russian armed forces. Degenerated them into oblivion, from within. Even things that something like 'semi-functioned' when they were rushed to Syria, back in summer 2015, are not working any more. Nah: nowadays, it's 'public' that one can pay the recruiting officer 100,000 rubles in order to avoid being sent to the frontline, and another 100,000 if already there, but demanding a leave. That's a norm. That's no exception. Nobody is at least trying to hide this: it's a well-known fact in Russia.
....and inside their trenches.....imagine a literal shithole, with litter and shit all over the place (because they can't even 'go out' any more to shit outside), and that at 35-40°C, with decomposting bodies to your left and right, and Ukrainian and Russian explosives falling all the time around you and everything around you... Only people who have experienced that first hand know what stench is spreading when a mortar bomb blows up a body decomposting for 6-10 days.... and then multiply that by 20, 30, 40, 50....100 bodies?
Alone that stench....this is something you can't 'wash away' from your uniform and body even two weeks after getting out....
....yet that's what they're enduring, day-by-day, day-and-night, without any kind of rotations. ZSU brigades are at least trying to rotate their battalions (or at least companies) in and out every 3-7 days: there's nothing of that kind in the case of the Russians. The mass of them can't pay 100,000 to get out: their officers tell them, without any remorse, you get out only if dead or wounded....if the wounded are evacuated this week at all....
(Do not believe me anything I 'say': go and ask ZSU troops that have captured their trenches what are they finding there.)
....and nobody in Russia cares about this (bar their relatives, as far as these care at all). If being an infantryman is (widely) considered 'hell' in the ZSU, I have no idea what would the same people think about being an infantryman in the VSRF... I know no words that would summarise that strongly enough...
....and if anybody thinks it's better in their field headquarters, in their field hospitals, in their forward supply depots.... well, would like to meet any such person: have two Ferraris to sell.
So, if that's now appearing 'optimistic' to anybody....guys and gals, sorry, can't help it. It's simply the reality of the VSRF nowadays.
But why there are no considerable protests or mutinies and how long can one endure such conditions? The soldiers must be getting ill only because of the heat, lack of water and anti-sanitary conditions. How can they fight at all?
They don't need to fight. They just need to catch enough Ukrainian ammunition so that the Ukrainians can't move forward.
That was so in Zhukovs counterattack before Moscow in 1941 as it was 1854 in Crimea. Quoting Peter Zeihan "The Russian way of solving military problems is throwing bodies at the problem until it goes away and they will do so as long as they can."
Sounds cringe, but cluster ammunition is a huminitarian weapon in this conflict, cause if the Russians are not crumbling, they will draft more men and put them into the meat grinder without hesitation.
Butt they are killed even if they stay in the trenches or die because of the unsupportable conditions. And "they do so as long as they can" is a limited option because Russia is not Stalin's USSR and it is not backed by anti-Hitler coalition. So they will have either to withdraw or to die in trenches. And you know the result of the Crimean war.
The understanding of the frontline conditions is not carried back to training areas or recruitment offices or families, it's mostly carried only to the grave. You see, the lack of rotations and medevac are part of the strategy to sustain in this mode and it's working so far.
It is working as a killing instrument . In general such "strategy" is possible only in the Russian army thanks to the total insensibility of the Russian population to casualties. In 2014 at the beginning of the invasion in Donbass it was supposed that Russian population would react to 50000 casualties as it was during the Afghan war but now we see that it was a great mistake to think so. Russian ex-functionary Alfred Koch supposed that for the great majority of the Russian population the war produced altogether no changes and the casualties of 1000000 also would be of no importance. On the contrary to the West Russian soldiers are very cheap and it hardly matters whether they are trained or not.
Ukrainian army defends it's own land from the aggressor who killed, raped, tortured, sent missiles to sleeping cities and to crowded malls and is ready to continue such actions indefinitely. If you dare to compare I am not fit to discuss with you anything.
First off all Russia is sending people from rural areas that are most of the times also non-russian "ethnicity". Basically also ethnical cleansing inside Russia.
Secondly, they are fighting against Hitler. That's at least what they are told and there is so much propaganda that most people are buying it or are simply afraid to speak up.
Thirdly, I know the result of the Crimean war. Nevertheless it is the way they are operating. It is also not certain, that they will this time. That is how war is.
Russia cannot operate the way it operated 170 years before. It is simply impossible. In the Crimean war the Russian army consisted of serfs - the illiterate peasants that had to serve for 25 years and had nowhere to escape. Russian soldiers of today evidently differ somehow.
Jul 15, 2023·edited Jul 15, 2023Liked by Sarcastosaurus
I am a native russian speaker and sometimes read their forums.
They look at this war as a "national war", like, "war for your country".
For all of them its obvious that everyone must protect the country.
Its not emotional like "motherland is in danger", its more like I saw in Europe during Afgan or Lybia war "of course, Kaddafi is bad and we should destroy it".
I would rate it something in between European and Ukrainian willigness to fight.
Ukrainians are like "we are winning, we must destroy russia"
Europeans more like "its good to prevent russia, but not at the cost of our security" .
I feel from what they write they want to fight, if mobilization - ready to join army and if needed - be killed.
But main idea: this war is what they ( citizens ) want. Its not like someone force them.
These are convincing arguments from a human, cultural-ethical perspective, that it is most probably hell to be part of the Russian military (and beyond). Combined with their tactical-technical shortcomings (that you repeatedly describe) one can't but assume that the whole Russian enterprise is in a shambles.
But nevertheless they are still standing, a remarkably resistant opponent, that is able to inflict great damage on the Ukrainians. I'm inclined to believe you that it won't be possible for the Russians to sustain that kind of inefficient-ineffective effort much longer - but I'm afraid, that they will procure somehow or other ever more soldiers and weapons, that they will do literally anything to avoid defeat: This war is already their raison d'être, much more than a negotiable military conflict that may be won or lost based on rational calculation.
One on one, the Russians couldn't stand this. As described again and again: they're combining 2-3 regiments, even 2-3 brigades to stop a single Ukrainian battalion, a brigade at most. In the Vasilivka area of these days, two battalions of the 128th Mountain Assault are confronted by 8-9 regiments.
What is helping them stand is - partially - what you've mentioned: there are so many of them, Ukrainians need shiploads of ammo to take them all down. While they're shooting them away, though, they have to pass a literal 'sand of mines', and overcome multiple ATGM-teams, AGS-17-teams, snipers, and what's left of artillery. That's what's causing losses to the ZSU: not the Russian 'troops'.
That would be the same Putin who told us this week that the Wagner group does not exist and just a couple of weeks ago told us he had paid billions of roubles to this non existent group
After all the Moscow claims that they would never use cluster bombs (although they use them daily) we now have "President Vladimir Putin said today that Russia has a "sufficient stockpile" of cluster bombs"
I am starting to wonder if his conflicting statements are a sign he has some sort of old people's dementia, it would explain his swollen face which is a side effect of some Alzheimer treatments.
That is all we need, a mentally challenged dictator with his hand on the nuclear button.
These 100,000 rubles bribes are part of this cannon-fodder strategy - no one cares in Russia about poor people and poor people believe they can change nothing, so are very submissive to authorities. The (little or more) rich ones can pay yourself out.
I believe important to mention is the need for younger mobiks vs. younger people typically been informed less via (propaganda) TV and more via (international) social
media. In other words I believe, there is an inverse relationship between the need for “younger/fitter”
mobiks and those been less willing to fight this war. Hence, I also doubt, this situation is sustainable for Russia and once the defensive line cracks and it may (hopefully) result in a massive collapse.
Thank you for this optimistic and encouraging report! We in Ukraine have little news from the battlefield during the last 2 days. The only news is about the West and namely the USA again playing the card of F-16 in favor of Israel and against Ukraine. I find it really disgusting. So the Western experts advise Ukrainian army to use "high spirits" while crossing the mine fields.
To clarify, these are Gazprom's battalions, right? But as I understand recruited on behalf of MoD, not under private control (Gazprom is state-owned anyway).
Not that it's sane one way or another to direct large enterprises to generate military units. Feel free to point out if this has yet been conceived even in science fiction; if it has been, I'm ignorant of it.
Have no problem to admit: didn't even check. Too busy with trying to reconstruct and understand the air war (so much so, I'm actually lacking time to report about it). Only know they're 'there'.
The closest thing in SF would I think be SovOil in Cyberpunk, with their own military and a distinct Soviet-Russian esthetic: https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/SovOil
"SovOil employs about a million people, a great number for its size. SovOil can afford this number largely because labor is extremely cheap in the Soviet Union, even under the Eurobuck. Of SovOil's million employees, one hundred thousand are Infantry soldiers, fifty thousand are Infantry guards, one hundred thousand are Naval troops, and fifty thousand are special forces, spies, and Secret Police agents. One hundred and fifty thousand employees work offshore installations, one hundred and fifty thousand work terrestrial fields and pipelines, and fifty thousand have specialized technical jobs. The remainder work in factories, subsidiaries, and in offices around the world."
Well, that doesn't sound like well-thought out worldbuilding. But anyway, are they supposed to be soldiers of the Soviet Union, or just internal security for the organization? Glancing briefly at the wiki, SovOil's place in the Cyberpunk world seems to be mostly in the mold of the common trope of a rampant horizontal megacorporation with a private army (the Cyberpunk USSR is not socialist).
The special thing about the Gazprom battalions is that the central government tasked a state enterprise with mustering soldiers for the national military. It's a unique cross between early-modern Euroamerican militias, and cyberpunk (the genre) postcapitalism. Not even neofeudalism is the right term.
Estonian I tel life ce service released a note today indicating that Russians were at the verge of a massive defeat, as they had exhausted their possible reinforcements option s and were almost unable to fulfill necessary Amos supply to their frontline units .
This is not a surprise for you , Tom, and I guess you saw it .
What strikes me is that armored losses through June and July would essentially be 1:1, if not for the constant Russian attempts at a spoiling counteroffensive since late June - which bring it closer to the historical average. Once again, Russian foibles temper Ukraine's limitations.
Ukraine's operational plan is fundamentally an inversion of the Russian/Wagner approach around Bakhmut and the winter offensive. We see the same commitment of small storm units and artillery/aviation support to gradually *break in* to enemy lines in multiple sectors and fronts, while hopefully imposing overall materiel and personnel attrition and fixing reserves. The intent in both cases is that the enemy line would someplace become both weakened and retracted enough to allow for a rapid, yer shallow, push in a critical sector to finally break the line and perhaps force a strategic retreat amid a turning maneuver.
Meanwhile, the Russians just repeat what they've been doing for the past year, with slightly better tactics.
I know it's not a popular opinion here, but it all just reinforces my impression that as in the first half of WW1 the major belligerents have still not 'discovered' the most effective way to break a defensive stalemate within the real conditions and constraints imposed upon them. In WW2 sheer brute force could always 'eventually' be counted on to throw back a fortified line, but such means are no longer available.
Though this war is still young, I hope we haven't seen the analogue of 1982 in Iran-Iraq last year already, with the future offering nothing but endless Karbalas and counteroffensives.
It will not be so simply because the parts differ greatly from the Iranians and the Iraqis. It is a great mistake to compare Ukrainian people in general and the soldiers in particular with the Middle Eastern soldiers. The same about the Russian professional military men or the mobics.
This is generally very much worth keeping in mind, but broadly in the dynamics and mechanics of the war many scholars (including Tom) have with good reason pointed out that 1980-88 is probably the strongest historical analogy.
I wouldn't recommend any kind of 'racism' in this regards - no matter how 'soft': I doubt you - or anybody else here - is qualified to gauge, Elena.
Actually, there are immense similarities between - especially - the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 and this one. Or to the majority of Arab-Israeli Wars, and many of wars fought by the British.
Principal - and biggest - one is the availability of lots of at least well-trained, and definitely extremely courageous troops, though led by idiotic commanders.
To call the evil - "evil" and to call the aggressor "aggressor" is not "racism" even "soft". Really it does not matter whether Russian soldiers are brave or not to call them aggressors. They can any time leave Ukraine alone and preserve their lives. As to Arab-Israeli wars I am on the Arab side. The wrong was done to Jews by Germans and not by the Arabs. So why not to let the Jews have some piece of Germany? The war between Russia and Ukraine is more like Hitler's invasion it its nature. You know that Hitler's troops as a rule were very courageous and far more disciplined than the Soviet army. His generals also were more gifted? they conducted brilliant offensives and many of the plans succeeded. But now nobody dares to glorify Hitler's troops.
People running such statistics are still collecting videos of all the stuff left behind by the Russians in south-eastern Kharkiv, in August-September the last year....
I have tried to pay attention (I'm not saying obsessively) to what the pipeline of additions from 2022 Kharkiv/Kherson has been over the course of 2023. Mind you, those were larger territories in which to scatter equipment, dragging out the discovery process, but I would figure the standard 0.8x modifier is well-attested by now and should carry over to the summer campaign. (Items like arty and SAM are inherently trickier, so most apply 0.5-0.66x in those categories.)
Well, 'not discovered' is relative: Ukrainians know what they need, but NATO is not delivering.
Point is: Ukraine got only about 60 MBTs and 120 IFVs so far. And far less artillery ammo than announced. That's hopelessly too little for the kind of offensive planned (indeed: advised by super-clever US 'experts in strategy and tactics') and the task on hand.
This is why I'm never talking about what is the West pledging in terms of 'arms deliveries' to Ukraine: it's pointless to talk about something that MIGHT happen sometimes in the future, but, usually, only 50% of which is delivered.
Like this was the case of the last 4-5 months.
....and why Zaluzny 'boiled over' in his recent interview with the NYT, and concluded, nobody in the West is going to dictate him whether to strike into Russia or not.
There's a positive aspect of it: had they not stopped him, three times, we wouldn't get evidence for 'high professionalism of the Russian Spetsnaz' (quote from the leading Austrian military analyst).
Many thanks for the update, Tom. I may guess it robbed time for your other chores, so it’s duly appreciated.
I can’t end laughing about the Spetnatz mortar man. If it doesn’t a serious thing and a real, cruel war, may be shining in a Benny Hill show. But at least he is still alive, so a little smart he is...
Great work as always Tom. As an expert in everything that flies, do you have any insight on how useful are the ~2000 Black Hornets ( https://postimg.cc/hXxB6rsn ) that Ukraine is to receive (850 pledged last year, 1000 more just a few days ago)? A niche capability for very specific situations or can be used in many scenarios?
Do you also think that there will any chance in the future of 1 side achieving lasting advantage in Drone recon capabilities? It seems as if we have to come to terms with the idea that the front is monitored 24/7 (incl. night?) and every movement will lack the surprise element, massively shortening reaction times, easily prioritizing targets like engineer vehicles (mine clearing, bridge layers, etc.), and making breakthrough offensives much harder than they already were.
As far as I remember, I've read last year that Black Hornets are good for some SSO (SOF) operations, but not much useful in common warfare in general, because they can fly just 20 minutes. Maybe ZSU has found some good usage for them (e.g. backup when main drone fails during attack?), or just Norway has realized they are useless so they can donate them without any great loss?
Thank you Tom for the quick and good report, I like what I'm reading, UAF is working their way ahead may not be huge gains but its in the positive direction do you if the front line forces have gotten the cluster shells to use yet all I've heard as they are in country, many good things in this report
Yesterday I read a report by Mashovets in Tvereso.info about the concentration of approximately 100000 Russian troops, tanks etc. near Kreminna. May you comment such information please.
Thank you for your continued excellent reports.
BTW, I read a DOD person said they could deliver the cluster munitions so quickly because they were "pre-stored" in Europe. Somebody has used their brain.
Is "miners with picks" a step up from mobiks with trench shovels?
Used the brians, for a change...
Thanks, Tom, I very much appreciate your relentless work.
Being disappointed by most reporting of both sides and unable to investigate by myself, you are my most trustworthy and reliable source of information about this conflict. My only worry is that you are perhaps too upbeat and kinda snooty towards the Russian armed forces; I hope I am mistaken.
I am sure this bunch of Russian war criminals, rapists and murderers of civilians are really unhappy about snooty.
Clearly russia is buying time until next election with stable 1000 loses per day.
365 k per year. It's a little price in their opinion, compared to winning the war and/or expending their territory.
USA - the only hope ruzzia has these days.
Not gonna work - but they believe it.
Are you from the future that you know it's not going to work?
"Knowledge of some principles easily makes up for not knowing some facts."
I really don't understand where people get this idea that an election in a mature democracy makes any significant difference to its foreign policy. The support for Ukraine in the US is bipartisan, every vote in the congress and the senate proves it. It makes 0 difference who wins the presidential elections. One candidate may help Ukraine win quicker, another may be obstructive. Makes no difference to the outcome. Foreign policy has near 0 impact on elections. If the Russian plan is to hope a pro-Russian candidate wins and helps Russia win the war, then they are the dumbest assholes on Earth.
This is far too broad a statement.
In the late 2010s, think of the IRNF, Open Skies, NAFTA, TPP, JCPOA...
In the early 2000s, think of the ICC, ABM, extraordinary rendition, um, the Iraq War...
Brexit was a highly disjunctive foreign policy decision, and if one wishes to speak of a foreign policy "establishment", the British establishment was definitely opposed.
You just threw loads of acronyms. Don't even know how to respond to that. What does the Iraq War have to do with this? George W Bush was already the POTUS when 9/11 happened. He stayed for both terms. In Finland, Sanna Marin has just lost the elections after a universally praised foreign policy work. Foreign policy has negligible influence on elections, this isn't even up for discussion but a simple fact. All politicians know this, at least those that want to win elections. Foreign policy is unique in government, because it must be long-term and bipartisan, otherwise it's not a foreign policy but personal folly. Hence, no fundamental change in US foreign policy since WW2. Kissinger is 100 years old for God's sake.
As for Brexit. The British establishment was definitely not opposed to the degree some wish to portray it. The conservative party was ~50/50, at least where it matters, even before the referendum. Labour had little influence because they were in disarray after years of election losses. In addition, they decided to choose Corbyn as their leader. He's as pro-European as Russians are pro-peace. Also, Brexit referendum was fairly unique in British political history. I believe, that was only the 4th referendum ever. Finally, in every election since the referendum, local and national, Brexit was not a topic in and of itself, but its domestic, economic consequences. Had the British government achieved economic growth, Brexit wouldn't matter at all. All elections in mature democracies are about domestic matters, regardless of what affects them. If any government found a way to make enormous money trading with the martians, but had to nuke China to do it, they would win elections before and after.
"Foreign policy has negligible influence on elections, this isn't even up for discussion but a simple fact."
You seemed to be saying the inverse, that elections have no influence on national foreign policy. I would be more inclined to agree with the other statement, though not entirely without reservation.
The acronyms I listed were major treaties that were rejected, broken, or modified in a partisan fashion - that is, a prominent demonstration of the effect of elections.
Most obviously, only a Republican administration in the early 2000s could have invaded Iraq (indeed, it was a campaign proposal). That's a huge historical divergence given the geopolitical effects of the war. Both foreign and domestic policy can experience profound changes attendant to the nature of the coalitions in power.
As you do let on in your examination of Brexit, it was a decision point or a series of decision points - that could have gone very differently depending on the government in charge. (Though given there has been consistent 40-50% public opposition to European membership in the UK since the days of the EEC and before, by no means would it have been a 'settled issue.')
Yes, you are correct. I am saying both. Elections have no noticeable influence on foreign policy, because said policy has negligible influence on elections. This is the one area of government which is usually left alone.
There has been some rumour that Bush was keen on invading Iraq even before 9/11. However, to suggest he would've gone to war like he did without 9/11 is conjecture to say the least. The US has been involved in a military conflict directly or indirectly in every decade since pretty much forever. Same for most countries, the bigger the more often they do.
I get what you are saying, that specific people make specific decisions. Sure, they do, and maybe somebody else would make a different one. However, anything that happens at that level, is a result of a long chain of such decisions, usually spanning years. There is a long build up, you need to convince the wider civil service, then the wider society. Once you look at it from a distance, you quickly realise that most events happened because they were highly likely to happen, because of everything that happened beforehand, regardless of who is in charge.
Maybe the next POTUS will simply say "screw it" and deliver every conventional weapons system to Ukraine with no limits on its use. Maybe not. However, overall it will have little impact on the outcome, because what will definitely not happen, is a 180 degree turn and a complete change in US foreign policy of the last 70 years.
What I dislike is the framing of the concept against such extremes as "Maybe not. However, overall it will have little impact on the outcome, because what will definitely not happen, is a 180 degree turn and a complete change in US foreign policy of the last 70 years."
Is it that elections have no noticeable impact on foreign policy, or that they will not have the most radically disjunctive theoretical effects on foreign policy? They're very different frames, and of course it's trivial to argue something like there being no conceivable (s)election in the US or China that would push one to become the vassal of the other, for example.
No POTUS can deliver to Ukraine beyond what Congress authorizes, unless they're willing to take the broadest "emergency" powers to the Supreme Court. Speaking of which, we recall of course that the Bush administration did secure Congressional authorization to invade Iraq, and indeed part of the reason the whole adventure was possible was the willingness of parts of the security apparatus to support such an invasion, as well as the ongoing post-Cold War intellectual debate between neoconservatism (in Bush's corner), liberal internationalism, and realism/isolationism. But the political climate and rallying effect of 9/11 was the necessary stimulus that allowed the administration to take the very aggressive and unconditioned action that, I repeat, its leading personnel had advocated for years (e.g. Project for a New American Century, or reporting from 2002: "CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.").
Would an Al Gore admin have been friendly with Iraq? No, but he would almost certainly have followed the same policy track his boss Bill Clinton did with respect to what Bush later called the "Axis of Evil", one oriented on diplomacy, international mediation and treaty-making. Similarly, there might have been a hypothetical Russian leader in the recent past who would have maintained an antagonistic posture toward US unipolarity without resorting to war, but that's a pure alternative world.
We can also debate the likes of Corbyn's deep personal views on the EU, Jews, Russia, whatever, but I'm not aware of information that he was prepared to press the issue should he have had the opportunity to form a government in 2015/16. That Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg would not have goes without any debate I gather.
The observation holds that we have recent, prominent examples of foreign policy decisions that served as something of a geopolitical turning point (Brexit much less so than Iraq or Ukraine), but were distinctly rooted in peculiarities of personnel. To say nothing of other examples in history or in principle.
To dovetail with your point about policy options arising from precedents and undercurrents and the like, yes indeed, these were not random decisions detached from any public or elite constituency, or sustained discourse, but that's beside the point because:
__The array of plausible foreign policy options available to states usually implies - contains - the possibility of considerably-divergent scenarios even in themselves.__
This is true even as your statement quoted at the top of this reply is trivially applicable. We can face the potential for profound changes in foreign policy rooted in single elections without those elections necessarily representing a choice between polar opposites or 'complete changes.'
That's all I wish to emphasize.
Your report are good, but somehow to optimistic. It seem the counter near Klichkievska was kind of successful, since they managed to regain some positions and they even showed 5-7 POWs. I assume the fighting there are really brutal for both sides. Until i see this village totally abandoned and in UA hands, i`ll consider the that the advance was halted.
I know I sound 'very harsh' to the Russians. I'm perfectly aware of my 'hairsplitting' and 'super-critique'.
'But'.... that's my approach to what I'm doing, and I'm doing that in regards of any other topic of my research. Should there be any doubts: check my books about different Arab- and African air forces, or Arab-Israeli, and Iraqi-Iranian wars. Me thinks, I'm even-handed in all of them, even if for plenty of my readers, my (often fierce) critique of Israel is 'at least unusual' if not 'unheard of'.
Now, meanwhile, I'm into 'studying' the Russian armed forces - directly - for 8 years. Indirectly (because I've spent so much time studying their 'export customers') for about 40 years.
....and here I cannot but say one thing: believe it or not, but I'm even 'dampening' the critique of the VSRF and the VKS in comparison to what I get to hear from (few remaining) Russian contacts. I'm not forwarding their critique 1-for-1. What they're describing in regards of 'conditions/circumstances' in their units.... that's nothing else but 'unthinkable' - whether for 'us', here in the West, or even for the Soviet armed forces of, say, 1970s and early 1980s.
The System Putin has ruined the Russian armed forces. Degenerated them into oblivion, from within. Even things that something like 'semi-functioned' when they were rushed to Syria, back in summer 2015, are not working any more. Nah: nowadays, it's 'public' that one can pay the recruiting officer 100,000 rubles in order to avoid being sent to the frontline, and another 100,000 if already there, but demanding a leave. That's a norm. That's no exception. Nobody is at least trying to hide this: it's a well-known fact in Russia.
....and inside their trenches.....imagine a literal shithole, with litter and shit all over the place (because they can't even 'go out' any more to shit outside), and that at 35-40°C, with decomposting bodies to your left and right, and Ukrainian and Russian explosives falling all the time around you and everything around you... Only people who have experienced that first hand know what stench is spreading when a mortar bomb blows up a body decomposting for 6-10 days.... and then multiply that by 20, 30, 40, 50....100 bodies?
Alone that stench....this is something you can't 'wash away' from your uniform and body even two weeks after getting out....
....yet that's what they're enduring, day-by-day, day-and-night, without any kind of rotations. ZSU brigades are at least trying to rotate their battalions (or at least companies) in and out every 3-7 days: there's nothing of that kind in the case of the Russians. The mass of them can't pay 100,000 to get out: their officers tell them, without any remorse, you get out only if dead or wounded....if the wounded are evacuated this week at all....
(Do not believe me anything I 'say': go and ask ZSU troops that have captured their trenches what are they finding there.)
....and nobody in Russia cares about this (bar their relatives, as far as these care at all). If being an infantryman is (widely) considered 'hell' in the ZSU, I have no idea what would the same people think about being an infantryman in the VSRF... I know no words that would summarise that strongly enough...
....and if anybody thinks it's better in their field headquarters, in their field hospitals, in their forward supply depots.... well, would like to meet any such person: have two Ferraris to sell.
So, if that's now appearing 'optimistic' to anybody....guys and gals, sorry, can't help it. It's simply the reality of the VSRF nowadays.
But why there are no considerable protests or mutinies and how long can one endure such conditions? The soldiers must be getting ill only because of the heat, lack of water and anti-sanitary conditions. How can they fight at all?
They don't need to fight. They just need to catch enough Ukrainian ammunition so that the Ukrainians can't move forward.
That was so in Zhukovs counterattack before Moscow in 1941 as it was 1854 in Crimea. Quoting Peter Zeihan "The Russian way of solving military problems is throwing bodies at the problem until it goes away and they will do so as long as they can."
Sounds cringe, but cluster ammunition is a huminitarian weapon in this conflict, cause if the Russians are not crumbling, they will draft more men and put them into the meat grinder without hesitation.
Butt they are killed even if they stay in the trenches or die because of the unsupportable conditions. And "they do so as long as they can" is a limited option because Russia is not Stalin's USSR and it is not backed by anti-Hitler coalition. So they will have either to withdraw or to die in trenches. And you know the result of the Crimean war.
The understanding of the frontline conditions is not carried back to training areas or recruitment offices or families, it's mostly carried only to the grave. You see, the lack of rotations and medevac are part of the strategy to sustain in this mode and it's working so far.
It is working as a killing instrument . In general such "strategy" is possible only in the Russian army thanks to the total insensibility of the Russian population to casualties. In 2014 at the beginning of the invasion in Donbass it was supposed that Russian population would react to 50000 casualties as it was during the Afghan war but now we see that it was a great mistake to think so. Russian ex-functionary Alfred Koch supposed that for the great majority of the Russian population the war produced altogether no changes and the casualties of 1000000 also would be of no importance. On the contrary to the West Russian soldiers are very cheap and it hardly matters whether they are trained or not.
I have heard that the Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut was not much better, except that there was cold and mud instead of the heat.
Ukrainian army defends it's own land from the aggressor who killed, raped, tortured, sent missiles to sleeping cities and to crowded malls and is ready to continue such actions indefinitely. If you dare to compare I am not fit to discuss with you anything.
First off all Russia is sending people from rural areas that are most of the times also non-russian "ethnicity". Basically also ethnical cleansing inside Russia.
Secondly, they are fighting against Hitler. That's at least what they are told and there is so much propaganda that most people are buying it or are simply afraid to speak up.
Thirdly, I know the result of the Crimean war. Nevertheless it is the way they are operating. It is also not certain, that they will this time. That is how war is.
Russia cannot operate the way it operated 170 years before. It is simply impossible. In the Crimean war the Russian army consisted of serfs - the illiterate peasants that had to serve for 25 years and had nowhere to escape. Russian soldiers of today evidently differ somehow.
Already in Afghanistan, the Soviet armed forces suffered the same number of casualties to health-related issues, like to combat.
Why are there no protests and/or mutinies?
Call it fatalism or whatever you like: that's the way the Russians are. We would protest and run mutinies, they do not.
BTW, in 1917, it wasn't soldiers that launched the revolution, but hungry women working in ammunition factories of St. Petersburg....
I am a native russian speaker and sometimes read their forums.
They look at this war as a "national war", like, "war for your country".
For all of them its obvious that everyone must protect the country.
Its not emotional like "motherland is in danger", its more like I saw in Europe during Afgan or Lybia war "of course, Kaddafi is bad and we should destroy it".
I would rate it something in between European and Ukrainian willigness to fight.
Ukrainians are like "we are winning, we must destroy russia"
Europeans more like "its good to prevent russia, but not at the cost of our security" .
I feel from what they write they want to fight, if mobilization - ready to join army and if needed - be killed.
But main idea: this war is what they ( citizens ) want. Its not like someone force them.
Mutinity was not against war but pro-war
Prigozhin's rhetoric aimed at support from both anti-war and pro-war fractions.
Probably because he was an agent with idea to show all anti-putin fractions, both pro and anti-war.
But in reality, I have not seen a single russian who was anti-war
These are convincing arguments from a human, cultural-ethical perspective, that it is most probably hell to be part of the Russian military (and beyond). Combined with their tactical-technical shortcomings (that you repeatedly describe) one can't but assume that the whole Russian enterprise is in a shambles.
But nevertheless they are still standing, a remarkably resistant opponent, that is able to inflict great damage on the Ukrainians. I'm inclined to believe you that it won't be possible for the Russians to sustain that kind of inefficient-ineffective effort much longer - but I'm afraid, that they will procure somehow or other ever more soldiers and weapons, that they will do literally anything to avoid defeat: This war is already their raison d'être, much more than a negotiable military conflict that may be won or lost based on rational calculation.
One on one, the Russians couldn't stand this. As described again and again: they're combining 2-3 regiments, even 2-3 brigades to stop a single Ukrainian battalion, a brigade at most. In the Vasilivka area of these days, two battalions of the 128th Mountain Assault are confronted by 8-9 regiments.
What is helping them stand is - partially - what you've mentioned: there are so many of them, Ukrainians need shiploads of ammo to take them all down. While they're shooting them away, though, they have to pass a literal 'sand of mines', and overcome multiple ATGM-teams, AGS-17-teams, snipers, and what's left of artillery. That's what's causing losses to the ZSU: not the Russian 'troops'.
Was it any different during the WW2?
Russia is stuck in this war that they started and cannot leave.
Reminds of the Russian intervention in Syria in September, 2015.
All the smart commentators were telling us they would complete their mission in six months, now 8 years later they are still dropping bombs on Idlib.
....I only wonder: where are all the smart commentators to explain us how comes Putin - personally - declared that war for over.
Three times.
....and that was in 2016-2017....
That would be the same Putin who told us this week that the Wagner group does not exist and just a couple of weeks ago told us he had paid billions of roubles to this non existent group
After all the Moscow claims that they would never use cluster bombs (although they use them daily) we now have "President Vladimir Putin said today that Russia has a "sufficient stockpile" of cluster bombs"
I am starting to wonder if his conflicting statements are a sign he has some sort of old people's dementia, it would explain his swollen face which is a side effect of some Alzheimer treatments.
That is all we need, a mentally challenged dictator with his hand on the nuclear button.
There was a guy on an aircraft carrier with a big banner "Mission accomplished". The same guy is now selling paintings for charity.
I am always wondering how commentators can live on only short-term memory...
I disagree, as Putin can decide to leave and is able to tell his people whatever story he wants (which they will believe).
the same is valid for Putin in Ukraine, too....
Yeah, that is what I meant. Putin can decide to leave Ukraine in millions of ways and explanations. Thanks for clarifying!
As cruel as it sounds and is, it is the only way to somehow depict, what is going on. Thanks, Tom!
These 100,000 rubles bribes are part of this cannon-fodder strategy - no one cares in Russia about poor people and poor people believe they can change nothing, so are very submissive to authorities. The (little or more) rich ones can pay yourself out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_of_the_Dead_Men
I believe important to mention is the need for younger mobiks vs. younger people typically been informed less via (propaganda) TV and more via (international) social
media. In other words I believe, there is an inverse relationship between the need for “younger/fitter”
mobiks and those been less willing to fight this war. Hence, I also doubt, this situation is sustainable for Russia and once the defensive line cracks and it may (hopefully) result in a massive collapse.
Thank you for this optimistic and encouraging report! We in Ukraine have little news from the battlefield during the last 2 days. The only news is about the West and namely the USA again playing the card of F-16 in favor of Israel and against Ukraine. I find it really disgusting. So the Western experts advise Ukrainian army to use "high spirits" while crossing the mine fields.
"Russian Potok and Fakel PMCs"
To clarify, these are Gazprom's battalions, right? But as I understand recruited on behalf of MoD, not under private control (Gazprom is state-owned anyway).
Not that it's sane one way or another to direct large enterprises to generate military units. Feel free to point out if this has yet been conceived even in science fiction; if it has been, I'm ignorant of it.
Have no problem to admit: didn't even check. Too busy with trying to reconstruct and understand the air war (so much so, I'm actually lacking time to report about it). Only know they're 'there'.
The closest thing in SF would I think be SovOil in Cyberpunk, with their own military and a distinct Soviet-Russian esthetic: https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/SovOil
"SovOil employs about a million people, a great number for its size. SovOil can afford this number largely because labor is extremely cheap in the Soviet Union, even under the Eurobuck. Of SovOil's million employees, one hundred thousand are Infantry soldiers, fifty thousand are Infantry guards, one hundred thousand are Naval troops, and fifty thousand are special forces, spies, and Secret Police agents. One hundred and fifty thousand employees work offshore installations, one hundred and fifty thousand work terrestrial fields and pipelines, and fifty thousand have specialized technical jobs. The remainder work in factories, subsidiaries, and in offices around the world."
Well, that doesn't sound like well-thought out worldbuilding. But anyway, are they supposed to be soldiers of the Soviet Union, or just internal security for the organization? Glancing briefly at the wiki, SovOil's place in the Cyberpunk world seems to be mostly in the mold of the common trope of a rampant horizontal megacorporation with a private army (the Cyberpunk USSR is not socialist).
The special thing about the Gazprom battalions is that the central government tasked a state enterprise with mustering soldiers for the national military. It's a unique cross between early-modern Euroamerican militias, and cyberpunk (the genre) postcapitalism. Not even neofeudalism is the right term.
Estonian I tel life ce service released a note today indicating that Russians were at the verge of a massive defeat, as they had exhausted their possible reinforcements option s and were almost unable to fulfill necessary Amos supply to their frontline units .
This is not a surprise for you , Tom, and I guess you saw it .
It confirms your own analysis .
Ukrainian news publish something like that on biweekly basis
What strikes me is that armored losses through June and July would essentially be 1:1, if not for the constant Russian attempts at a spoiling counteroffensive since late June - which bring it closer to the historical average. Once again, Russian foibles temper Ukraine's limitations.
Ukraine's operational plan is fundamentally an inversion of the Russian/Wagner approach around Bakhmut and the winter offensive. We see the same commitment of small storm units and artillery/aviation support to gradually *break in* to enemy lines in multiple sectors and fronts, while hopefully imposing overall materiel and personnel attrition and fixing reserves. The intent in both cases is that the enemy line would someplace become both weakened and retracted enough to allow for a rapid, yer shallow, push in a critical sector to finally break the line and perhaps force a strategic retreat amid a turning maneuver.
Meanwhile, the Russians just repeat what they've been doing for the past year, with slightly better tactics.
I know it's not a popular opinion here, but it all just reinforces my impression that as in the first half of WW1 the major belligerents have still not 'discovered' the most effective way to break a defensive stalemate within the real conditions and constraints imposed upon them. In WW2 sheer brute force could always 'eventually' be counted on to throw back a fortified line, but such means are no longer available.
Though this war is still young, I hope we haven't seen the analogue of 1982 in Iran-Iraq last year already, with the future offering nothing but endless Karbalas and counteroffensives.
It will not be so simply because the parts differ greatly from the Iranians and the Iraqis. It is a great mistake to compare Ukrainian people in general and the soldiers in particular with the Middle Eastern soldiers. The same about the Russian professional military men or the mobics.
This is generally very much worth keeping in mind, but broadly in the dynamics and mechanics of the war many scholars (including Tom) have with good reason pointed out that 1980-88 is probably the strongest historical analogy.
I wouldn't recommend any kind of 'racism' in this regards - no matter how 'soft': I doubt you - or anybody else here - is qualified to gauge, Elena.
Actually, there are immense similarities between - especially - the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 and this one. Or to the majority of Arab-Israeli Wars, and many of wars fought by the British.
Principal - and biggest - one is the availability of lots of at least well-trained, and definitely extremely courageous troops, though led by idiotic commanders.
To call the evil - "evil" and to call the aggressor "aggressor" is not "racism" even "soft". Really it does not matter whether Russian soldiers are brave or not to call them aggressors. They can any time leave Ukraine alone and preserve their lives. As to Arab-Israeli wars I am on the Arab side. The wrong was done to Jews by Germans and not by the Arabs. So why not to let the Jews have some piece of Germany? The war between Russia and Ukraine is more like Hitler's invasion it its nature. You know that Hitler's troops as a rule were very courageous and far more disciplined than the Soviet army. His generals also were more gifted? they conducted brilliant offensives and many of the plans succeeded. But now nobody dares to glorify Hitler's troops.
Mind: that's _documented_ losses.
People running such statistics are still collecting videos of all the stuff left behind by the Russians in south-eastern Kharkiv, in August-September the last year....
I have tried to pay attention (I'm not saying obsessively) to what the pipeline of additions from 2022 Kharkiv/Kherson has been over the course of 2023. Mind you, those were larger territories in which to scatter equipment, dragging out the discovery process, but I would figure the standard 0.8x modifier is well-attested by now and should carry over to the summer campaign. (Items like arty and SAM are inherently trickier, so most apply 0.5-0.66x in those categories.)
Well, 'not discovered' is relative: Ukrainians know what they need, but NATO is not delivering.
Point is: Ukraine got only about 60 MBTs and 120 IFVs so far. And far less artillery ammo than announced. That's hopelessly too little for the kind of offensive planned (indeed: advised by super-clever US 'experts in strategy and tactics') and the task on hand.
This is why I'm never talking about what is the West pledging in terms of 'arms deliveries' to Ukraine: it's pointless to talk about something that MIGHT happen sometimes in the future, but, usually, only 50% of which is delivered.
Like this was the case of the last 4-5 months.
....and why Zaluzny 'boiled over' in his recent interview with the NYT, and concluded, nobody in the West is going to dictate him whether to strike into Russia or not.
"….and mind: he attempted to drop that bomb down the tube in ‘that direction’ - no less than three times…."
He should definitely win a Darwin award.
There's a positive aspect of it: had they not stopped him, three times, we wouldn't get evidence for 'high professionalism of the Russian Spetsnaz' (quote from the leading Austrian military analyst).
Many thanks for the update, Tom. I may guess it robbed time for your other chores, so it’s duly appreciated.
I can’t end laughing about the Spetnatz mortar man. If it doesn’t a serious thing and a real, cruel war, may be shining in a Benny Hill show. But at least he is still alive, so a little smart he is...
Thank you.
One can only wander how long ruzzians would be able to hold the line. I hope not for long.
Saw that video in a Russian channel. Those are Ukraine special forces lol
If Russians say so, it must be true.
Likewise the Ukrainians. Their "words" are the absolute truth lol
Great work as always Tom. As an expert in everything that flies, do you have any insight on how useful are the ~2000 Black Hornets ( https://postimg.cc/hXxB6rsn ) that Ukraine is to receive (850 pledged last year, 1000 more just a few days ago)? A niche capability for very specific situations or can be used in many scenarios?
Do you also think that there will any chance in the future of 1 side achieving lasting advantage in Drone recon capabilities? It seems as if we have to come to terms with the idea that the front is monitored 24/7 (incl. night?) and every movement will lack the surprise element, massively shortening reaction times, easily prioritizing targets like engineer vehicles (mine clearing, bridge layers, etc.), and making breakthrough offensives much harder than they already were.
As far as I remember, I've read last year that Black Hornets are good for some SSO (SOF) operations, but not much useful in common warfare in general, because they can fly just 20 minutes. Maybe ZSU has found some good usage for them (e.g. backup when main drone fails during attack?), or just Norway has realized they are useless so they can donate them without any great loss?
Why is smoke cover never used in this war?
Soviet tanks were equipped with smoke generators to cover the troops behind them IIRC.
Thank you Tom for the quick and good report, I like what I'm reading, UAF is working their way ahead may not be huge gains but its in the positive direction do you if the front line forces have gotten the cluster shells to use yet all I've heard as they are in country, many good things in this report
Hi Tom! Sometime ago you mentioned some kind of EW powerful thing that helped ZSU a lot to suppress russian drones. Is it that thing - https://www.bild.de/bild-plus/politik/ausland/politik-ausland/elektro-maschinengewehre-neue-schallwaffe-soll-putin-stoppen-84644820.bild.html ?
Just can inform, that Bild is a disgusting news outlet, which provides all type of garbage…
Like this for example? - https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/politik-ausland/bild-exklusiv-russlands-kriegsplaene-so-koennte-putin-die-ukraine-vernichten-78425518.bild.html
Yesterday I read a report by Mashovets in Tvereso.info about the concentration of approximately 100000 Russian troops, tanks etc. near Kreminna. May you comment such information please.