Replies

Rob Lee
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1572554898201538561

“Thread:
1) There are more unknowns than knowns at this point
2) It is one of the most significant/riskiest political decisions Putin has ever made
3) He is still resisting a broader mobilization
4) It is an acknowledgment that Russia’s war was failing and a change had to be made”

“Much of this depends on how this order is applied. The number of reservists with combat experience is limited, though they may include everyone who deployed to Syria. Shoigu is notoriously unreliable when it comes to figures so don’t treat them as fact. 2/”

“There are two important immediate effects from this order: conscripts currently serving in the Russian military likely will be deployed to fight in Ukraine, and volunteers serving on short contracts will be stop-lossed into continuing to serve. 3/”

“In the short-term, those two steps could be enough to prevent a collapse of Russian forces. Otherwise, Russia’s manpower issues could have become catastrophic this winter when many short-term volunteers likely would not sign another contract. 4/”

“But the war will now increasingly be fought on the Russian side by people who do not want to be there. The difference in morale, unit cohesion, and other critical factors between Ukrainian and Russian units will grow even greater. 5/”

“This is true, which is why we’ll need to wait and see how the order is applied. Russia may start by mobilizing a small share of reservists under the narrow conditions Shoigu mentioned and then increase that over time in response to developments. 6/”

“Russia dismantled parts of the Soviet mobilization system with cadre units with officers and equipment ready to take on mobilized conscripts. Conscripts and reservists may be used as combat replacements to fill out understrength Russian units currently in Ukraine, instead. 7/”

“Each regiment and brigade was supposed to have one conscript battalion (also with officers and contract NCOs), but Russia’s manpower issues have been so serious that I assume most of these officers and NCOs were already deployed. Not sure they are still coherent battalions. 8/”

“If we’re only talking about Russia deploying reservists who were previously contract soldiers and not conscripts, that would narrow the number available. However, conscripts will likely face greater coercion to sign contracts to deploy regardless. 9/”

“The other important short-term effect is that there are criminal penalties for soldiers who refuse to fight. Considering that this was 20-40% of soldiers in some units, that isn’t insignificant. But an involuntary fighting force won’t have great long-term prospects. 10/’

Ukraine: military situation update with maps, Sept 20, 2022
(’Orc’ is associated with the various hoards of 13th century Mongol invaders, as well as LOTR evil villains)

War in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP2QApi8G2TKc8NZmeDWSUg/videos

Artillery (key to success in this war), Fuller explanation of Orc military structure, Other Bonus articles - see previous postings in “Attack on Europe” (FR title search).

(Numbered printed material below - Some of the items below may be out of date, and not updated yet)

••denotes transcribed dialogue.

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WiU takes another rest day, apparently.

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Ukraine Situation Report: 80 Percent Of Kyiv’s Airpower Remains Intact
HARM missiles are helping Ukraine’s aircraft operate more freely as Russia’s failure to gain air superiority has left its planes vulnerable.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-surface-to-air-missiles-have-wreaked-havoc-on-russian-aircraft

Excerpt:
Most if not all of those shootdowns were caused by Ukrainian surface-to-air missile (SAM) attacks on Russian aircraft, according to Gen. James Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa.

“We’re pretty sure all of those losses were due to surface-to-air missile attacks from Ukraine on the Russians, primarily SA-10s, S300 and SA-11s, Buk,” Hecker told The War Zone and other outlets on Sept. 19 at the Air Force Association’s annual Sea-Air-Space conference outside Washington, D.C. As The War Zone pointed out in this previous story, air defense systems are more critical to the defense of Ukraine than fighters.

“The Russians lost other aircraft, just recently they lost one on takeoff that crashed because of maintenance practices, not shot down,” Hecker said. “What’s not included in the 55 that I talked about are the ones that they lost on the ground.”

••Hecker’s numbers match the database of visually-confirmed equipment losses being kept by Oryx, an independent open-source analyst, which lists 53 Russian fixed-wing military aircraft destroyed and two damaged beyond repair.••

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Proxy leaders in Russian separatist regions like the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic have dutifully reached out to Putin to ask for a quick accession into Russia once the votes are held.

Pentagon Spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the votes would not be recognized by the U.S. and that Ukrainian territory held by Russian forces rightfully belongs to Kyiv. Ryder joined French President Emmanuel Macron, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba in calling the referenda a “sham.”

“This is simply an information operation that’s meant to distract from the difficult state that the Russian military currently finds itself in right now,” Ryder said during a press briefing at the Pentagon. “But no one will view such sham referenda with any credibility and the US certainly will not recognize the outcome of any sham elections. And so, in terms of how that will affect us and international support to Ukraine, it will not; we will continue to work with Ukraine and our international partners to provide them with the support they need to defend their territory.”

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Another indication that Russia’s war is not going the way it planned is the reported move of its Kilo class submarines from the Black Sea Fleet’s home port of Sevastopol in Crimea to Novorossiysk in southern Russia.

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Shogui Joke:

Shogui - We have only lost 5,000 in Ukraine.
Shogiu - We have killed 50,000 Ukrainians.
Shogui - We need to mobilize 300,000.

Shogui is telling the truth: The other 48,000 Russian deaths were due to smoking accidents.