Posted on 03/04/2022 10:26:29 AM PST by SpeedyInTexas
Every day for the past week, Russian forces have tried to fight their way through this suburb of Kyiv to reach the Ukrainian capital. And every day, Ukrainian troops have forced them to retreat, leaving burning tanks and armored personnel carriers behind.
“We go out to hunt and destroy them,” said Volodymyr, a Ukrainian special-forces team leader, as his squad, armed with a British .308 sniper rifle and British-made antitank weapons, waited for the latest Russian attack. “They certainly didn’t come here expecting that, expecting that we know how to fight.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Can someone find an un-pay walled link to the story? One is probably out there somewhere already.
I googled this “Ukraine’s Special Forces Hold Off Russian Offensive on Kyiv’s Front Lines” and the link to the story from google let me see the full article.
You may have to try that a couple of times. Sometimes it lets me see the full article and sometimes it doesn’t.
I have a WSJ subscription through work. Here you go, text only. (I'm too lazy to repost the pics or reproduce the in-story hyperlinks.)
Ukraine’s Special Forces Hold Off Russian Offensive on Kyiv’s Front Lines
Weapons from the West make a big difference—as do the Russians’ poor tactics, Ukrainian officers say
By Yaroslav Trofimov | Photographs by Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
March 4, 2022 1:06 pm ET
IRPIN, Ukraine—Every day for the past week, Russian forces have tried to fight their way through this suburb of Kyiv to reach the Ukrainian capital. And every day, Ukrainian troops have forced them to retreat, leaving burning tanks and armored personnel carriers behind.
“We go out to hunt and destroy them,” said Volodymyr, a Ukrainian special-forces team leader, as his squad, armed with a British .308 sniper rifle and British-made antitank weapons, waited for the latest Russian attack. “They certainly didn’t come here expecting that, expecting that we know how to fight.”
The front lines here have largely held fast since the first day of the war, on Feb. 24, when a Russian column pushed in from Belarus to the north. In some places, including the neighboring town of Bucha, the Russians have been pushed back.
“Ukraine is fighting in a way nobody expected, not the Russians and not our Western partners,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser and member of Kyiv’s delegation at cease-fire talks with Russia. “Kyiv was supposed to have fallen in three days.”
In part, that is because Ukraine has deployed elite special-forces units, trained by the U.S. and allies over the past several years, to defend Kyiv. Armed with British NLAW and American-made Javelin antitank weapons and Stinger antiaircraft missiles, they have helped blunt the Russian advantage in aviation and long-range missiles and artillery.
But Kyiv is also holding because the Russian forces here seem to have stuck to Soviet-style large maneuver tactics, moving in long convoys that are vulnerable to strikes by small reconnaissance units and by Ukraine’s fleet of Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 armed drones, Ukrainian officers said.
“We’re in shock at how dumb their behavior is,” said another member of the Ukrainian special-forces unit who has been going on missions in the area every night. His unit, he said, had lost two soldiers since the war began nine days ago, and killed more than 60 Russians in recent days. “Now, we mostly focus on hitting their rear, their supply convoys, because if they don’t get fuel, they can’t do anything.”
Morale among Ukrainian defenders was high in Irpin on Friday, even as a Russian attack airplane flew low over a housing block and sounds of artillery rounds landing got closer and closer. Big plumes of black smoke rose to the north and south of town, along other major routes where Russian forces have been trying for more than a week to break into Kyiv.
Cloud cover has hampered Russia’s use of combat helicopters, soldiers here said. But to be prepared in case enemy choppers or attack planes approached, one of the soldiers took a position with a portable antiaircraft missile on his shoulder. Troops here say they operate their own small drones, including some with thermal cameras, to hunt for Russian targets.
“The Russians keep trying to enter and to encircle us, but they just can’t. We are together, we are organized, and we are strong-willed,” said Alyona Pavlova, an Irpin native and a soldier who was helping evacuate civilians from the town on Friday. “It’s a real war—and nobody was really ready at first, because nobody really believed that Russia would do something this mad.”
Ukrainian and foreign civilians have been streaming out of Irpin and cities beyond that are under Russian control, walking toward the relative safety of Kyiv despite shelling and airstrikes.
With a bridge over the Irpin River blown up, they have to climb down and under the span and then navigate a precarious pathway, their suitcases and pets in their hands. There was no formal agreement with Russia on the humanitarian corridor here, Ukrainian soldiers said, and the risk of a Russian shell hitting the area, something that happened before, was constant.
“I’ve spent seven days hiding in a shelter, but today the power went off and enough is enough,” said Mykhailo, a screenwriter who hiked with two backpacks for more than an hour from the other side of Irpin, near the next town of Bucha. He declined to provide his surname.
“The Russians are hitting everywhere, and it’s blowing up just outside my home now,” he said. It is the second time Mykhailo said he has had to move. He fled his hometown of Luhansk after pro-Russian forces took it over in 2014.
Tanya Rybko and her two children spent the entire morning walking from the town of Hostomel north of here. Russian forces control several parts of town, while Ukrainians are deployed in others. “And tonight, we were right in the middle of it all, between the two sides,” she said.
Russian troops, she added, had taken over a nearby apartment building, holding civilians hostage and seizing their phones so residents don’t phone in tips to Ukrainian troops. Hungry, the Russian forces were also looting local stores and homes, looking for food, she said.
Mohammad Amin, a Tunisian information-technology specialist, has been living in Ukraine for the past 10 years. On Friday, Mr. Amin, his Ukrainian wife and their 4-year-old son, with a small suitcase in tow, left the apartment they had purchased in Irpin and walked for nearly an hour to the bridge, hoping to get to Kyiv and then on to the European Union.
“I just cannot sit in the shelter anymore,” Mr. Amin said, out of breath. “The Russians, they are just jealous. They feel themselves defeated, and so they are just hitting apartments with civilians in them. They know very well where civilians live.”
He pointed to Ukrainian soldiers guarding the bridge, with bright-yellow tape on their helmets. “And these people,” he said, “they are heroes. Believe me, I am telling the truth.”
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
Are .308’s really necessary? I would think a.223 or .762 would do just as much damage. More bullets to carry. if needed.
Might be a psychological aspect to it. The word will get
around.
.308 Winchester (or 7.62x51 NATO, pretty much the same thing, and please don't anybody start a semantics argument between the two) is a much more powerful round for sniping, with more energy delivered at a given distance than either intermediate cartridge .223/5.56 or 7.62x39 (the AK round.)
7.62 NATO is the main U.S. sniper round, but there are others as well.
This is the line I love:
“We’re in shock at how dumb their behavior is,”
I know the thought of this is beyond your imagination—but this could be war propaganda.
You have heard of war propaganda, right?
The front line Northwest of Kyiv hasn’t moved since first day.
Why do you think that is? Well, maybe what the article says is true.
I have no clue why the line has not moved—and I am very comfortable acknowledging that fact.
However, I do not trust biased sources on this stuff—there are just too many axes grinding.
I assume the Russians have air superiority. So they can carpet bomb Kiev back to the Stone Age.
I’m willing to go with Occam’s razor. If the Russian front line hasn’t moved, the simplest explanation is that they have been rebuffed.
I have heard several other possible explanations—not going to cause controversy here by repeating them—we just do not have data from reliable sources imho.
Thats the thing. They don’t have air superiority yet.
US says “majority” of Ukraine air force still taking to the skies.
Plus stinger missiles are now targeting russian planes.
Exactly, without more evidence, I choose to go with Occam’s Razor.
“I assume the Russians have air superiority.”
Here is a video of a Russian column. They are clearly afraid of an attack from the air.
“A Tor-M2, in a convoy, active even - looks like we’re seeing some basic evolution from last weeks ‘drive down the road clumped together without support.’”
https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1499834697769271300?cxt=HHwWiIC-5cHtvdApAAAA
There’s been speculation that a shortage of air-dropped smart bombs is why Russian aircraft haven’t been all over the place. The theory is that they have to fly within MANPADS range to accurately target Ukrainian ground forces, so they’ve mostly stayed on the ground unless necessary to ward off high-flying Ukrainian aircraft. Interesting account by a Weapons Systems Officer (e.g. Goose in Top Gun) of what bombing with unguided munitions involves - including the fact that it brings the aircraft well within the range of Stingers which can reach 12,000 ft vs the 4,500 ft needed to drop unguided munitions accurately:
The pilot also had to account for how the ballistics of the bomb would change its trajectory (after release, the bomb rapidly slows down, causing it to fall short of the aircraft flight path). He accounted for this by aiming long of the target and computing a depression angle (expressed in milliradians). This was known as the sight depression from flight path and was dialed in before each pass.
The pilot also needed good reflexes. Traveling at 450 knots and aiming for the 50-yard line on an NFL football field, he had to hit the pickle, or release, button within 0.2 seconds of the planned release point to ensure the bomb hit between the two end zones.
Even with perfect reflexes, small variations in attack parameters had drastic consequences. Being just one degree shallow could result in the bomb hitting 60 feet short of the target. To score a direct hit (called a “shack”), the pilot had to aim at the right target, correctly calculate the attack parameters, hit the pickle button exactly on time, and calculate the correct sight depression.
In Vietnam, fighter pilots often released their bombs from higher altitudes to avoid an additional issue: anti-aircraft fire. This increased what is referred to as the circular error probable — a circle around a desired impact point whose radius represents the statistical distribution of the bombs that will hit within the circle. This was overcome by simply dropping multiple bombs on each pass (to increase the chance of getting a bomb or two on target). As a result, aircraft were typically assigned on a formation-per-target basis (and occasionally a jet-per-target basis). For example, to hit a half-dozen targets, aircraft packages were generally built around 16 strike aircraft (escorted by other fighters performing escort and suppression of enemy air defenses).]
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