"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (4 Viewers)

manta22 said:

I wonder if the Ukrainians studied Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign?

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Théy seem to be fairly savvy with their tactics.

The Bakhmut meat grinder was straight out of the Red Army's playbook in '42 for drawing out the Wehrmacht's men and resources.

Putin, like Hitler, was obsessed with an objective that held little value but wanted it at all cost. A rational commander would have bypassed it, leaving the defenders to wither on the vine.

I am certain that the Ukrainians recognized it as Stalingrad V2.0 and took advantage of it like the Soviets did and the outcome was near identical.

Admiral Beez said:

Did NATO sort out how the get ammo for the Gepards?

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Rheinmetall has set up a new production line for 35mm ammunition.

There's some rumours that "pre-production" batches of ammunition started going to Ukraine at the end of June, to support "quality testing".

Nothing formally handed over yet though. The ammunition is officially due to start delivery in either late July or early August. According to Rheinmetall, it will deliver about 40-60,000 rounds from the new production line this year.

Last word I heard was that 300,000 new rounds had been ordered by Germany for Ukraine.

EDIT: Looks like there might be some more Gepards and their ammunition coming out of Jordanian stocks as well. The US contracted a 3rd party private company in late May to purchase Gepards for $118 million.

Interestingly, the funds for the purchase are from the FY2010 Foreign Military Sales budget. The Foreign Military Sales Trust Fund budget authority is "classified as permanent, indefinite, no-year authority". I wonder how much unspent money is sloshing around in the FMS trust?

EDIT II, THE RE-EDITING: Nammo looks to be supplying 35mm ammunition as well. There were some problems with the ammunition not being recognised by the guns on German supplied vehicles. That was sorted by November 2022 (likely earlier) following some work in Germany.

SaparotRob said:

Tin Tin.

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What's tartars precious ?

Its looking as if Russia are fighting back in a significant manner. Assuming that the reports are remotely close to reality, Russia may be repeating Germany's Battle of the Bulge tactics and a lot will depend on how Ukraine handles this.

Source Reuters
Large contingents of Russian forces are on the offensive in northeastern Ukraine's Kupiansk sector and engaged in heavy fighting, Ukrainian officials said on Monday.

Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar, writing on Telegram, said: "For two days running, the enemy has been actively on the offensive in the Kupiansk sector in Kharkiv region. We are defending. Heavy fighting is going on and the positions of both sides change dynamically several times a day."

Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesperson for the eastern grouping of troops, told national television the Russian military had amassed more than 100,000 troops and more than 900 tanks in the area. Ukrainian forces were holding their lines, he said.

On a different topic there was a report in the Times yesterday that a new production line and a modernised existing production line will increase our production of 155mm shells by a factor of eight (yes 8) during September. Production of 30mm RARDEN ammunition is also being significantly stepped up as Ukraine now have a good number of Scimitar recce vehicles which are being widely used.

Lets hope this capability will be used and a good proportion of the production shipped to Ukraine

Denniss said:

The purge of russian commanding officers is widening. Again Putin does not know or does not want to know history of its own country and learn from Stalins errors - he just repeats them.

Institute for the Study of War

The Russian MoD has begun to remove commanders from some of the Russian military’s most combat effective units and formations and appears to be accelerating this effort. The recent dismissal of 58th Combined Arms Army Commander (CAA) Colonel General Ivan

www.understandingwar.org

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Is this the beginning of the end? …or the end of the beginning?

After 18 months of war in Ukraine, Russia has finally succeeded in taking over Russian assets of a French-owned yoghurt factory and a Danish-owned brewery. Once again Putin shows his acumen as a Master Strategist:



On a (slightly) more serious note, it's really interesting that it's the Russian state taking over these assets. Now...I'm sure they'll get parsed out as gifts to the anointed Putin loyalists which smacks of organized crime kick-backs. That said, hasn't Putin learned that taking businesses into state ownership isn't a recipe for success? The USSR couldn't even provide bread and shoes for its people...but now state owned business is the way to go?

Alternatively, if they are given to "businessmen" do the latter really have the skills to grow companies and make them profitable? Or will they just keep selling the same ersatz crap to the Russian people? There's a reason Western businesses were in Russia...and it wasn't because the competition from Russian companies was too stiff.

Couple of different Western sources reporting Russian front lines are becoming increasingly 'brittle'. Seems to be a few common reasons:

Troop shortages. Russian BTGs are supposedly operating at only about 80% combat strength. Russia also lacks the reserves to rotate troops into and out of the battle line AND build up a reserve to react to any Ukrainian penetrations.

Artillery shortages. Despite still having an at the front advantage in tubes and launchers of about 3:1, Russian artillery fire mission rates have slackened over the past month (down nearly 30%). Ukranian targeting of ammo depots has forced Russia to re-disperse artillery ammunition, leaving the guns short of shells. In addition, Russia is having to fall back on ancient stockpiles, leading to higher dud rates. Finally, there's reports that Russia is short of counter-battery radars.

Leadership dysfunction. Russian mid-level command leadership (company/battalion level) has been hurt badly in the last month or so by a combination of leaders getting killed when urgently rushing in to plug gaps and Ukranian decapitation operations with long range artillery, missiles and SOF Above this, Russia appears to be undergoing some sort of purge of divisional and brigade level command staff, with as many as six removed in the last week and more rumoured to be coming.

Logistics/transport issues. Storm Shadow has forced Russia to pull back major storage sites further from the front. This, and Ukranian targeting of transport/logistics hubs, is creating havoc in rear areas.


The issue is that even just with forces in place, it's REALLY difficult for Ukraine to break the line decisively anywhere. As one commenter observed, minefields don't care how good your leadership is. And, even with Russia's artillery advantage slowly being whittled away, they can STILL bring in lots of fire onto any one point of the front at any one time.


Finally, Russia appears to be doing things right in a couple of areas.

They've started deploying small, fast and semi-independent anti-armour teams to deal with Ukranian heavy armour
They're giving more independence to their drone and Lancet teams, making them a bigger menace than they were in the winter. Plus, they're finally ramping up drone/loitering munition production (likely thanks to cheap Chinese electronics)
They've adopted battlefield level command & control to make them harder to target/kill
They're willing to trade space for time, and have been successful in cannalising some Ukranian attacks into fixed defensive positions

Jabberwocky said:

EDIT: Looks like there might be some more Gepards and their ammunition coming out of Jordanian stocks as well. The US contracted a 3rd party private company in late May to purchase Gepards for $118 million.

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Hmm... maybe the same 3rd party can buy Egypt's MiG-29s for Ukraine.

Glider said:

as Ukraine now have a good number of Scimitar recce vehicles which are being widely used.

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I hadn't heard of any deliveries of the FV107 Scimitar to Ukraine. Online I only see speculation that the Scimitar may be considered.

ISW: The July 17 attack on the Kerch Bridge will likely have significant & sustained impacts on Russian logistics as traffic from tourism to occupied Crimea jams Russian logistics to southern Ukraine in the midst of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.


View: https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1681114357583806464

The second successful Ukrainian attack on the Kerch Bridge to Crimea in less than a year is reportedly leading to "harsh" recriminations among the Russian security forces, who failed to prevent both attacks and responded chaotically to the latest one.
According to the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, the Russian Ministry of Defence, FSB, Rosgvardia and the local authorities are all pointing fingers at each other over who was to blame.

Ah, the good old blame-game, a game without winner.

Recent polling by the Reagan Institute from June 2023 reveals a compelling story: A clear majority of Americans — three-quarters, in fact — believe it is important to the United States that Ukraine wins the war against Russia, a sentiment that transcends partisan divisions, with 86 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of Republicans and 58 percent of independents expressing their support.

In general, a significant majority of Americans (59 percent) express their support for providing military aid to Ukraine. This includes 75 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans, although there is opposition from 41 percent of Republican respondents. The percentage of those who believe the U.S. aid has been valuable once they know that Ukraine aid accounts for 3 percent of the U.S. military's budget, the support jumps even higher, to 64 percent. Among Democrats, 77 percent share this sentiment, while among Republicans, it is 59 percent, and among independents, it is 46 percent.

RogerdeLluria said:

ISW: The July 17 attack on the Kerch Bridge will likely have significant & sustained impacts on Russian logistics as traffic from tourism to occupied Crimea

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It's amazing that Crimea still has tourism. How sh#tty does your life have to be that going to Crimea seems a move up?

Admiral Beez said:

It's amazing that Crimea still has tourism. How sh#tty does your life have to be that going to Crimea seems a move up?

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Beach. Very populair amongst russians.

Snautzer01 said:

Beach. Very populair amongst russians.

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I suppose, but there's the entire Black Sea coastline of beaches from Novorossiysk to Sochi.

All of us know there is a war and that Crimea is a warzone. However most Russian's don't. They are told there is no war and that Crime is safe.

RogerdeLluria said:

The second successful Ukrainian attack on the Kerch Bridge to Crimea in less than a year is reportedly leading to "harsh" recriminations among the Russian security forces, who failed to prevent both attacks and responded chaotically to the latest one.
According to the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, the Russian Ministry of Defence, FSB, Rosgvardia and the local authorities are all pointing fingers at each other over who was to blame.

Thread by @ChrisO_wiki on Thread Reader App

@ChrisO_wiki: 1/ The second successful Ukrainian attack on the Kerch Bridge to Crimea in less than a year is reportedly leading to "harsh" recriminations among the Russian security forces, who failed to prevent both...…

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It was me. Sorry.

SaparotRob said:

It was me. Sorry.

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Knew it.