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Regarding the 2022 operations, as you mention, they were more like a parade. I would call them a show of force, aiming to cow Ukraine into submission without firing a single shot - they were definitely not wartime assaults, so the Russians can't really draw consequences from them. If they could amass a few thousand tanks and support vehi…
Regarding the 2022 operations, as you mention, they were more like a parade. I would call them a show of force, aiming to cow Ukraine into submission without firing a single shot - they were definitely not wartime assaults, so the Russians can't really draw consequences from them. If they could amass a few thousand tanks and support vehicles for the task, they could probably still make a strategic breakthrough, but they apparently don't have the numbers, capacity and training for that.
What 2022 did show is that they also have serious issues keeping their spearheads supplied. The Soviet army would have been probably able to do it, but I don't recall even them doing it in an actual war with native equipment (when they did it in WWII, they used hundreds of thousands of US-made vehicles - they wouldn't have had enough trucks themselves, not even back then).
Parade or not, they did manage to take a very big chunk of territory in a short span of time and the land bridge to Crimea was quickly established. We'll probably never know how close they came to overthrowing the government in Kiev.
It is a different, much more capable army today. So is Ukraine's. The difference is, Ukraine is at the mercy of NATO governments and Russia is not.
Even so , I doubt the Russian army is capable of big arrow offensives yet. Sure, they could attempt to emulate the Red Army's operations but the Soviets paid very dearly for those successes.
From Russian perspective it makes much more sense to slowly attrit the Ukrainian army, society and allied support. It took a very long time for the US to approve the most recent aid package for Ukraine. Well, in 10 months time the whole process starts again... more money, more weapons, more men, more everything.
By just seeing you writing “Kiev” but not “Kyiv” I could already tell about your affiliations
Well Sergei, Kiev is how millions of Ukrainians refer to Ukrainian capital in their native language. A language shared by the Ukrainian President as well the Ukrainian chief of armed forces. Ukraine should embrace its cultural and linguistic diversity.
This is how it is done in more civilized countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cpc6JtENOE
You’re not interesting to anyone here
Erm....The assaults of the 35th CAA on positions of the 72nd Mech in the Moshchun area, in March 2022, were anything else than a 'parade'.
Almost an entire battalion of the brigade was KIA or WIA. Just the media missed them at the time, and the ZSU was too scared about a possible breakthrough but to report about that. Had the 72nd not held out there, the Russians would have reached Kyiv not only with 'few Spetsnaz and the VDV', but with an entire division of troops, and 'Boucha' would've been 'peanuts' in comparison.
Thanks for the update. I really wasn't aware of Moshchun being of such a scale (the news were more about the flooding of the Irpin area thwarting the Russian advance).
Voznesensk actually received coverage back then, though it was also more like "the Russians were already overextended and withdrew after unexpectedly coming under artillery fire".
There are few articles in the Ukrainian press, and two in the specialised US online media (like Small Wars Journal). Not particularly precise, but offering a good overview.
Thanks for this and for the update. I recall only about the "attacks repeled because overextended Russian forces".
Voznesensk was covered by The Atlantic, Moshun was covered in EXTREME detail by I think WaPo as part of an extremely long article about the Battle of Kyiv
Moshchun was the point were the Irpin was crossed successfully, but the Russians got stopped there immediately. It is the only place were Russian armored vehicles were east of the Irpin in direction of Kyiv.
That's why they tried encircling Kyiv by going South and got stopped there too. Main reason was Ukrainian resistance and no logistics in place...
....and then the blowing up of a dam: water swept away the third Russian pontoon bridge at Moshchun.