The Ukraine war thread
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@Renauda said in The Ukraine war thread:
the Kremlin will plead innocence and that it acted in self defence.
We're starting to see that this week. Allegations that the US and NATO were the aggressors.
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Time for an operational pause.
Russian Defense Ministry Spokesperson Igor Konashenkov announced on July 7 that Russian forces in Ukraine are pausing to rest and regain their combat capabilities, confirming ISW’s assessment that Russian forces have initiated an operational pause.[1] Konashenkov did not specify the intended length of Russian forces’ operational pause. As ISW previously assessed, Russian forces have not ceased active hostilities during this operational pause and are unlikely to do so.[2] Russian forces still conducted limited ground offensives and air, artillery, and missile strikes across all axes on July 7.[3] Russian forces will likely continue to confine themselves to small-scale offensive actions as they rebuild forces and set conditions for a more significant offensive in the coming weeks or months.
Key Takeaways
- The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Russian forces are conducting an operational pause to rest and reconstitute.
- Russian forces continued efforts to advance toward Slovyansk from the southeast of Izyum and may be setting conditions to advance from the southeast of Barvinkove—either toward Slovyansk or toward Kramatorsk.
- Russian forces made marginal gains to the southeast of Siversk and continued offensive operations west of the Lysychansk area.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations to the south and east of Bakhmut.
- Russian forces conducted a limited and unsuccessful attack north of Kharkiv City.
- Ukrainian partisans are likely continuing to target Russian-controlled railways around Melitopol.
- Russian oblasts are continuing to create their own ad hoc volunteer units to compensate for personnel losses in Ukraine.
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Some interesting points:
Since we last talked, how have things looked internally in the Russian government?
The main thing is that, at least among the military, everybody now understands that it’s going to be a long, conventional war, not the small military operation they pretended it would be. And that is why some changes were made in terms of the structure of who is in charge of leading the troops on the battlefield. The military-intelligence agency was also put in charge of collecting intelligence information for the troops. [Previously, the domestic security service was doing so.]
Does this suggest that Putin has simply blamed the intelligence agencies for the war’s problems? Or is it that he has no option now, other than to turn even more to the military?
That’s the problem. He’s actually out of options. He’s quite limited. He got himself in a big war, and right now the military is finally quite convinced that they are fighting a really big war, not just some limited conflict. So what’s he going to do? He needs to vow to keep going in Ukraine. And he understands that he’s fighting a conventional army, not some group of Nazis. And the military thinking is that in this big war, the Russian Army is on the losing end, because the Ukrainian Army is a completely mobilized army that actually claims it can call on hundreds of thousands more in reserves. The Russian Army is still largely a peacetime army.
At the same time, the Ukrainian Army is given the best weaponry that the West can provide. And this weaponry is tested against the Russians and the Russians are not in position to inflict any damage on nato. They’re suffering heavy losses from the weaponry supplied by nato countries.
For many years, the Russian military believed that they had a chance to win a conflict with the West, not because they have better technology—they knew that the West always would have better technology—but because the West, and specifically the United States, would never sustain heavy casualties like the Russian Army can sustain, because, to the leadership, the cost of life is different. But in this war, in Ukraine, all the casualties are not by nato or by the American Army but by the Ukrainian Army. So even this cannot be played by the Russian Army. And that is why they think that they picked up a fight with nato in the wrong place.
You’ve said several times that this means it’s going to be a big, long war. What is the goal of that war? What does the Russian Army think it is trying to do?
The Army feels that it’s going to be a really long war. They believe that this pretense of running special operations should be abandoned and some people in the Army establishment are saying this openly. For instance, Vladimir Kvachkov—he’s a former colonel of Special Forces. He is respected in the Army because of his war record in Afghanistan. And he became prominent in 2005. He was actually charged with trying to kill Anatoly Chubais, a big name in the Russian reformist government back in the nineteen-nineties. Lots of Russians blame Chubais for the way reforms went in the nineties. So, allegedly, Kvachkov tried to kill him. He got caught and sent to prison, and then got acquitted and released. On May 19th, a statement signed by Kvachkov, which lots of people inside of the Army support, said that, Look, we need to admit that we lost the first stage of this war. The Special Forces part of the war didn’t work and the Russian armies were told to retreat from the Kyiv region and Kharkiv, so now we need to accept it’s a big war and we need to adjust our strategy. And I talked to some people inside of the military, and they are supportive of this point of view.
But do we know what the goals of this war are?
No, that’s the most interesting thing. The thinking is that, look, we are sustaining heavy casualties and suffering a lot, so the goal of occupying the Donbas cannot be the objective of such a war. We need something a bit more ambitious, and some pro-military channels on Telegram have just conducted polls and asked their subscribers, “What do you think? When will the objective for this war be achieved?” And only six per cent of people said that it would be achieved with the “liberation” of the Donbas, while thirty-three per cent said it would be when the whole of Ukraine capitulates unconditionally. People in the military and people close to the military want something much more ambitious than what Putin is saying.
So, even if people in the military are still very much in favor of the war, there’s started to be more self-questioning about why things have gone so badly?
Yes. They think that the war is a necessity. That’s how they see it—like it’s unavoidable. But the way the military command is conducting operations, that is now questioned by high people in the Army and in the security services.
What’s the hope there, or what do you draw from that?
Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I think we have some new factor here in that Telegram is such a big thing in Russia, that it is probably the very first war where we have, if you can call it, some public opinion of the Russian military and some sort of discussion about the military, which is happening on Telegram, not always in open channels but in some private groups. People talk about what is going on. It is a new factor.
The veterans of the Russian Army are quite unhappy with the equipment their friends are given. So they’re gathering radios, medicine, armor, or, for instance, if they know that there’s some shortages in night-vision devices for pilots. It also started a discussion about why the Army cannot provide this kind of equipment. And that creates some sort of—well, it’s not pressure, but at least people have started talking inside of the military. They are talking about these problems.
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@Renauda I've read that the HIMARS are making a huge difference. They fire six missiles in rapid succession, and can be moved to another location in two minutes. Difficult to find.
Also, they are tremendously accurate. Using satellite guidance, they can land the missiles within meters of the target.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@Renauda I've read that the HIMARS are making a huge difference. They fire six missiles in rapid succession, and can be moved to another location in two minutes. Difficult to find.
Also, they are tremendously accurate. Using satellite guidance, they can land the missiles within meters of the target.
@George-K said in The Ukraine war thread:
@Renauda I've read that the HIMARS are making a huge difference. They fire six missiles in rapid succession, and can be moved to another location in two minutes. Difficult to find.
Also, they are tremendously accurate. Using satellite guidance, they can land the missiles within meters of the target.
Depending upon what munitions we're letting them have, the system has a range of 190 miles.
And in other news, the Marines fired the system last year off of a moving ship and hit a target on-shore. Precisely. That's mind-boggling.
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Found it:
https://wartranslated.com/russian-bloggers-on-himars-missile-strikes/
The Russians are unhappy:
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Russia hunts Ukraine’s US-made HIMARS
A Ukrainian soldier fires a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher during a training exercise in Donbas region, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters
A Ukrainian soldier fires a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher during a training exercise in Donbas region, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has ordered generals to prioritise destroying Ukraine’s long-range missile and artillery weapons after Western-supplied weapons were used to strike Russian supply lines.
Nearly five months since President Vladimir Putin ordered the February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces are grinding through the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and now occupy around a fifth of the country.
Shoigu, one of Putin’s closest allies, inspected the Vostok group which is fighting in Ukraine, the defence ministry said.
Shoigu “instructed the commander to give priority to the enemy’s long-range missile and artillery weapons,” the defence ministry said.
The ministry said the weapons were being used to shell residential areas of Russian-controlled Donbas and to deliberately set fire to wheat fields and grain storage silos.
Ukraine says it has carried out a string of successful strikes on 30 Russian logistics and ammunitions hubs, using several multiple launch rocket systems recently supplied by the West.Yeah...
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Something you might find interesting...
Link to video
