Posted on 10/04/2022 6:53:43 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
Reasons for the retreat near Kherson. Of the units I am acquainted with, almost all of them reached out, losses are small. The men fought like lions, but this time fortune was not in their favor.
The reasons I see are:
1. No unit rotation. Units of the 126th Brigade have been fighting since March. Soldiers would go on leave for five days at best. Seven months on the front line without rotation. Constant battles, wounds, experienced and seasoned men were bombarded for seven months in a row.
End of August, these same guys knocked out the AFU’s 128th Transcarpathian brigade so badly that they declared mourning. Our men were left at their positions. The Ukrainians rotated out the 128th, brought in additional tank units and a month later knocked us out of our positions.
Miracles do not happen, no matter how heroic our soldiers may be, if the village is defended by 15 people, and the enemy hammers them with attacks and artillery fire for seven months in a row, sooner or later the unit will lose combat effectiveness.
2. Judging by the nature of the losses, the enemy used a tactic of wedging themselves between our strongpoints. Wildly short on infantry, ours sat at the strongholds, i.e. in the villages and plantations.
After months of reconnaissance, the enemy found places to infiltrate between the strongholds. Then came the insertion of mobile units into the gaps that were wedged open.
Our troops were severely strained, the strongpoints held, but the mobile reserves needed to stop the breakthroughs either did not exist, or were insufficient.
The strongholds would stay intact, but instantly, in the first few hours, would find themselves surrounded, fight until they ran out of ammunition and break out under fire.
By the way, the Ukrainians would have so little strength that they weren't even really trying to catch the encircled men, most of them made it back to us.
Weather was bad, neither side used artillery. So it's logical to suppose if we had some BTGs equipped with heavy copters, capable of seeing several kms, the breakthrough would have been stopped. But I have no info that the tankers fought to the last man, please excuse me if so.
3. Guys from the field report en masse that our tactical insignia, i.e. Z and V, was applied to enemy equipment, causing confusion in the first hours of the battle as the front collapsed.
If this is true, it means the enemy has an American network-centric battle management system, where all units on the battlefield are net-linked and marked on computers, even at company level, let alone at battalion-regiment level.
Thus, even a company sergeant in a Humvee, BMP, or T-64 can see on the screen where his own are and where the others are, and he doesn't care what marks are on the armor.
If this is case, then that's very bad news, since that's a qualitatively new level of troop control, and our retreat would be a consequence of losing parity.
4. Just looking for better smoking accomodations.
5. It’s another goodwill gesture.
6. It’s difficult to stop on that terrain, resulting in explosions.
The Ukrainians have a number of network-centric tools that are very effective. Some of them have been publicly disclosed like a distributed artillery request and management system.
There are also multiple applications for reporting Russian troop locations which are used by civilians to report the locations of Russians. If you look at local Telegram and Twitter feeds there are constant video reports of convoys, artillery locations, who is firing and when, etc. which are undoubtedly helpful to the Ukrainian military.
I have seen instances of the typical fog of war situations where small units have limited communication, and trouble with IFF. I think that the Russians are suffering much more because in a hasty retreat under fire it is very hard to maintain awareness of friendly vs enemy forces.
In the Lyman area there were multiple reports of Russian troops who were lost, confused, separated from their command, and either wandered into mined areas or walked up on hostile forces and suffered severe casualties as a result.
YAy!
Himars!
Bah all they are is pin-pricks!
A putard here told me so!
Nevermind the extermination of the Ukrainian people previous to that by the"Russian speaking population". Are you on that side?
And using your logic. you're on the side of KGB Putin, the same KGB that empowered the present day LWO which is trying to exterminate populists and freedom lovers everywhere. Are you on that side?
No YFM, I'm not siding with the Nazis. I'm on the side of freedom loving people everywhere.
Says the gangster government cheerleader.
You’re right. They are either calling us Nazis or Globohomos or Soros disciples. They don’t seem to catch on that one can oppose the LGBTQP trendy set, Soros, Putin, and Biden all at the same time. MAGA and Glory to Ukraine!
Absolutely. I don't think a lot of people understand how much maintenance and logistical support it takes to keep armored units in the field. And even then, regardless of how much support you have, a significant percentage of your tracked vehicles are going to be sidelined in any one time for maintenance reasons once they start being used heavily.
So if you take into account the standard difficulty in keeping those in the field, and couple that with the horrible Russian maintenance and logistical systems, it wouldn't be the least bit surprising for them to have lost upwards of 50% from non-combat causes.
I think a more accurate version would be:
it means the Ukrainians have a Ukrainian developed network-centric battle management system
The Ukrainians have developed a system where local commanders can view drone video feeds and direct their armor, infantry, and mortar support based on live video from above the battlefield.
You’re right. They are either calling us Nazis or Globohomos or Soros disciples. They don’t seem to catch on that one can oppose the LGBTQP trendy set, Soros, Putin, and Biden all at the same time. MAGA and Glory to Ukraine!
That’s because we support the US and they don’t. They’ve quit and wish America to be defeated. One is fantasizing about the US getting nuked in another thread today. That tells where they’re at.
Me too!
The whole story about Ukrainians trying "to exterminate the Russian speaking population" is a fake Russian propaganda talking point.
The Russians destroyed the city of Mariupol, killing thousands or tens of thousands of people but Mariupol was a mostly Russian speaking city in Ukraine.
In 2021 before Russia's invasion less than 30 people died from hostilities in the Donbass. Half of them were killed by mines or unexploded ordnance that they accidentally activated.
Since Russia's invasion to "protect" Russian speaking Ukrainians the Russians have killed thousands and thousands of Russian speaking Ukrainians. And destroyed their homes and wrecked their farms.
Putin couldn't care less about Russian lives.
So those guys speaking Ukrainian and fighting in Ukraine are not Ukrainians???
Did you eat the pot brownies for breakfast?
There were destroyed some Chechen vehicles shown in this area. Akhmat division or something like that.
Exactly. Any HONEST observer can only reach these same conclusions. Western observers noted that Russian tires were dry rotted due to not alternating the trucks when parked in the sun. One side showed the clear sign of photo oxidation on many vehicles. The Russians are so lazy they can’t even bother to turn the vehicles around.
When I saw all of that, I knew RuSSia was doomed.
A strategic withdrawal before some massive strike?
The rule of thumb that we had with tanks when I was in the Army (more years ago than I want to admit) was two hours maintenance for every hour of operation.
However bad the corruption in Ukraine is (or in DC) it pales in comparison to the corruption and brutality of the phony “republics” in the Donbas, or even Russia itself.
https://sonar21.com/premonitions-by-helmholtz-smith/
Weariness is visible – three recent American polls show a desire for diplomacy, “less concern” and that Ukraine doesn’t make the list. I’m reminded of a comment by Gonzalo Lira that Russia should just make the war boring to Americans.
The economic effects of the boomeranging sanctions are inexorably tightening in Europe. We’re now hearing about possible bank collapses and reading cheerful pieces on how to keep mold out of cold damp houses. With Nordstream out of contention. no improvement is visible. Time is on Russia’s side. At some point the European population will have had enough. Protests are growing. The overwhelming rejection in the German parliament of increased support for Ukraine points this way.
America is better off but is also feeling the boomerang. Inflation is rising and what will happen to gasoline prices (a huge concern) when they stop draining the Strategic Oil Reserve? And if China dumps a lot of US currency the situation will get worse.
WESTERN ARMS RUNNING OUT
The West is running out of arms to send Ukraine. A CNBC report speaks of America being out of 155mm guns and ammunition (manufacturers are being sought); it has already sent ten years’ production of Javelins! The latest HIMARS “sent” haven’t been built yet.
Similar stories from Europe. The available stock of ex-Soviet equipment is gone – 28 (“modernized” 20 years ago) T55 tanks scrounged from Slovenia are the latest “wonder weapon”.
The West does not have the industrial capacity to sustain modern war. Everything that has been sent to Ukraine so far has been from existing stocks. Western militaries must either start cannibalizing their standing armies or stop. Then what? Western weapons made the September offensive possible.
###
PREMONITIONS OF WHAT?
In short, the Western plan is not working. The sanctions cost the West more, it’s running out of weapons to send and there are signs of softening. If Moscow’s plan was to move slowly and wait them out, then it’s working.
One should not rule out the possibility of a negotiated settlement and it may be that NATO realizes in time that it has painted itself into a corner from which that is the only exit. But it’s hard to see, given all the hyperbole, how the West’s present rulers could admit to such an enormous failure. Electoral replacement, while happening, is too slow. And why would Moscow ever trust anything the West says? A unilateral surrender by Kiev is possible but the only way I could see it is if Zelensky were overthrown. Therefore I rate a negotiated ending as not impossible at the moment but of very low probability. But time is on Russia’s side and October’s improbability may be March’s desperate desire.
More likely to me is, to use a World War II analogy, that now that Kiev’s Operation Citadel in the Kursk Salient is petering out, it’s time for a really powerful mechanized offensive accompanied by strikes deep in the rear with no holding back. One must remember that Putin said they hadn’t really started – I think we’re about to see what he meant. And sooner, I would guess, rather than later. I can’t imagine that anyone in Moscow wants this thing still going on next February.
Ukraine is a fascist government. There is no freedom. You do what the government says.
But what is apparent is that their military really bought into the remaking of their forces post-2014. Mark Hertling has written a lot about that, but they clearly are fighting much more in accordance with Western/U.S. doctrine rather than Soviet/Russian doctrine.
It's not a coincidence that so many guys with military experience in the modern U.S. military have such a similar understanding of what is happening over there.
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