Posted on 08/29/2023 10:35:41 PM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
"The intention seems to have been to force a breach in the Russian line using a concentrated armored assault by the 47th and 65th Brigades, after which a follow on force of the 116th, 117th, and 118th would begin the exploitation phase, driving for the Azov Coast and the towns of Mikhailivka and Vesele to the west. The objective was clearly not to get bogged down in urban fighting attempting to capture places like Tokmak, Berdyansk, or Melitopol, but to bypass them and cut them off by taking up blocking positions on the main roads.
Simultaneously, a lesser - but no less critical - thrust would come out of the Gulyaipole area and drive along the Bilmak axis. This would have the effect of both screening the main advance to the west and wedging the Russian front open, splintering the integrity of the Russian forces caught in the middle. Overall, this is a fairly sensible, if ambitious and uncreative plan. In many ways, this was really the only option.
So what went wrong? Well, conceptually it’s easy. There is no breach. The bulk of the maneuver scheme is dedicated to exploitation - reaching such and such a line, taking up this blocking position, masking that city, and so forth. But what happens when there’s no breach at all? How can such a catastrophe occur, and how can the operation be salvaged when it comes untracked in the opening phase?
Indeed, this is precisely what has happened. Ukraine finds itself stuck on the edge of Russia’s outermost screening line, spending substantial resources trying to capture the small village of Robotyne, and/or bypass it to the east by infiltrating the gap between it and the neighboring village of Verbove. So instead of that rapid breach and turning maneuver towards Melitopol..."
(Excerpt) Read more at bigserge.substack.com ...
It's GLORIOUS!!
Think of all the millimeters that they have gained!!!
Pink zone
Chicken george
Kunte kinte
Roots - diversity
The planet of the primordial primates
I just found an email and FReeper notes on a Ukrainian war video they watched from JUne 10, 2023. What I hadn’t heard elsewhere, or I heard it and didn’t understand, is that the Russians mined behind the Ukrainians attacking the Russian’s first line of defense, so if the Ukrainians needed to withdraw from heavy fire they would have to retreat back through a mine field(s). Brutal. An without adequate air support Ukrainians would have to withdraw with so many losses. On Tucker Carlson’s Twitter interview with Col Macgregor (ret.), the colonel said the Ukraine lost (died) 40 thousand men in the last month alone and were often surrendering, not because they didn’t want to fight, but because they couldn’t fight with so many wounded. The commanders knew that if they continued to fight, the wounded would not be evacuated and would die, so they contact the Russians and surrender.
Notes and link to the video some kind Freeper sent me are below:
~~~~~~~~~~~~emailed notes and video link
Yikes! Poor Dima from the Military Summary Channel. He lives in Belarus and is married to a Ukrainian woman. He used to appear on the Duran occasionally and ticked off the majority of the Duran comment posters with his Ukrainian sympathy and speculation. That may be why he hasn’t been on the Duran recently...:-)
But, in today’s Military Summary program (which covers the last 24 hours) he couldn’t find a positive thing for Ukraine. Defeat, after defeat, after defeat. His explanation for why Russia has been able to destroy so many tanks and men was very interesting.
Russia has developed a new weapon that spreads mines in big volumes and has been mining the area BEHIND Ukraine’s advancing troops so men and machinery is destroyed again as they retreat. Then Russia mines the area that the Ukrainians have left so that they are killed again several hours later when they come back to attack once more with additional forces. When the trapped troops call to be evacuated Russia blows up the rescue vehicles full of those Ukrainian troops.
Russia also has an interesting demining machine that creates narrow safe lanes for Russian advancing troops.
Russia had even been destroying tanks with UAVs. But, Ukraine can’t do the same thing because Russia has effectively jammed all their communication so attack drones are useless for them.
Currently this “counter offensive” has become a “turkey shoot.”
Lots of talk about “NATO” troops entering the conflict. Polish, Romanian, Baltic. And Trudeau’s surprise trip to Kiev is rumored to be about Canada sending F16s.
I don’t even want to think about what will happen if the West escalates further.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWhoW_zqW8E
Yes. Big Serge analysis is always sensible and fact based.
Another who has a lot of interesting data based assessment of this war is Simplicius65
https://simplicius76.substack.com
Canada has F18s, no F16s.
We just bought a bunch of old worn out F18 from Australia, so maybe some of the even older ones will be dumped on Ukraine.
Thanks for the new (to me) link.
None of these people know anything.
People have become popular bloggers more or less at random and then this random popularity becomes a credential of accuracy.
Some retired O5 or O6 looks at the camera and talks about troop movements that may not be happening. None of them know anything beyond claiming to have an inside source they don’t have.
Only one thing is certain and it largely is all that matters. Ukraine has essentially no oil or natgas reserves and Russia does. In fact, Russia is the #1 target reserves country.
Everything else is hand waving.
Sorry autocorrect.
Russia is the number 1 country in the world for natgas reserves.
Good summary, although I think Dima is a pretty straight shooter and he often mentions The Duran in a positive context, so I doubt there’s bad blood between them. As to Dima not being on The Duran lately...I have no clue!
Laying out a bunch of mines BEHIND advancing troops is BRILLIANT, something one who studies Russian/Soviet military doctrine is not surprised to see. (I think West Point replaced those courses with mandatory Drag Queen shows, by the way)
That may be true, US is pretty up there, question how much NG is Russia moving these days, and then there are the oil and NG fields of the coast of Ukraine waiting to be tapped, could that have something to do with putins “brotherly “ invasion?
Beyond that Ukraine has vast other resources including food
Again potential reason?
--- Owen writes, "People have become popular bloggers more or less at random and then this random popularity becomes a credential of accuracy."
blitz128 poses a pertinent question: "...there are the oil and NG fields of the coast of Ukraine waiting to be tapped, could that have something to do with putins 'brotherly' invasion?
The answer was presented to those members of Free Republic a week or so ago.... That answer, should you accept the citation, was alleged to be....
Putin is in charge of Russia, the US and Ukraine. I read it right here in Free Republic. UMCrevmom@aol.com stated clearly and in a way we can all check and double check ---
Here is a FACT about one of Free Republic's fine and ardent proponents of one side in the war. If you accept her "facts," all becomes clear, And don't take my word for it, but go to the link to prove the source....
A quote verbatim made originally to CatOwner, and the URL citation.So there it is, if you accept this "testimony" from 20 August 2023 and relying on "popular" bloggers. After over 500 days of war, Putin is still controlling Ukrainian corruption and controlling Biden. And the Clintons and Obama and ..."The ‘PUTIN-Biden-Clinton-Obama’ cartel did used Ukraine as a FRONT to stage their money-laundering by using Russian agents embedded BY PUTIN in the Ukraine government: Ukrainian deep-state!
President Zelensky is still trying to remove Ukraine CORRUPT “deep state created by Putin!”
Source: https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4176363/posts?page=52#52
Makes sense then that the war is about adding more "oil and NG fields" with the massive aid of, as above, Biden and the Clintons and Obama. Check the URL above, please. Trust but verify that this was indeed asserted as reality.
Unless one is "tired of dealing with the infantile war propaganda from legacy media" and Free Republic threads citing in daily posts those "popular" bloggers.
The OP was the best article I’ve seen all summer about what is going on over there. I’ve been reading military histories for about 65 years. Treating that article simply as literature, in my view it’s right up there with the best of them.
I defer to your judgment in this. My hobby reading has been in other fields, like cognitive science, philosophy and demographics.
From the article: "...an attritional-positional struggle is simply bad math for Ukraine..."
I think this applicable in larger events worldwide, as "attritional" alone can refer to what is happening in migrant-stresed European nations, as well as in the entire theme of "abortion" and the sterilizing "gender affirmation" lunacy ongoing. "Attritional" also well applies to the rapid growth in debt which our US has taken on in the last 22 years -- an additional $27 trillion. Benefiting the few, while impacting all.
As to "positional," the rapid development of non-BIC and non-SWIFT systems -- plural -- by which to side step constraints to trade speaks volumes.
What is going on over there also seems to me what is going here, replete with its corruption and media manipulation. Reading between the lines seems advisable. Seeing from varying views seems sensible. And skepticism in much seems warranted.
Best wishes.
There is essentially no significant oil in Ukraine or offshore Ukraine. If there were, Rosneft and GAZPROM would have drilled 20+ years ago.
3D seismic is not new tech. Rosneft and GAZPROM are perfectly able to find oil and gas and they didn’t find any worth pursuing there. Here are the actual numbers, from the BP (Now a different outfit with BP as their primary source) Statistical Review of World Energy. You can download the large, annual spreadsheet from EnergyInstitute.org, subbed out from bp.com.
Russia NatGas Reserves, lead the world with 37 Trillion cubic meters
Iran 2nd with 32. Qatar 3rd 25. Turkmenistan 13.6. US 12.6.
And Ukraine 1.1, and I can assure you that is a generous assessment. Generous or not, it’s nothing. There are 20 or more countries with more than 1.1 trillion cubic meters of reserves. They are
What you will get is either wackos or people looking to get paid to drill who will quote the number in cubic feet, which is a times 30 on cubic meters. They want to say big numbers and surround them with !!!!! UNDERSTAND THE NUMBERS. Most !!!! stuff about oil and gas is crap.
As for oil, that’s tricky because not all oil is created equal. US crude includes diesel-poor shale in the assessment vs Russia and KSA and other conventional fields with diesel rich crude.
The world of oil reserves gets the big Venezuela and Canada numbers. Hundred billion barrel fields. US at 60. Russia at 100. KSA at 297.
As I said, tricky stuff, and even more tricky when reserves are summed by companies with leases or outright land ownership who want to polish the asset totals reported on their balance sheets.
Be that as it may be, the spreadsheet lists for Ukraine oil reserves . . . 0. As in they aren’t even listed because it is so little.
These effects are avoided by people media interviews for information. Nobody likes to hear about empty oil fields because it offends the inclination of folks to believe in abundance rather than scarcity.
Just remember, OPEC is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Indonesia was once a member and no longer is. They are going empty and can’t export anymore. Ditto Ecuador. And Qatar. They went empty. . . ish. Emptyish. Nearly zero. Approaching zero.
Regardless, Ukraine’s oil reserves are
Voice to text problems. Still readable
Oh and btw. Of Russia’s 37 trillion cubic meters of natgas, their annual production (sum domestic consumption + export) is 0.6 trillion cubic meters/yr. That’s a long time.
US production is about 1 trillion cubic meters/yr. Of the 12.6 reserves, that is NOT a long time.
Will more be found? Yes. Is there some reason to expect geology to reward the US more generously than Russia? No. In fact, the US has been producing (why not use the word draining) much more per year than most places. How could you not expect to run out first?
Russia will have to be begged for resources someday. They are the wrong enemy to demonize. Your children or grandchildren will curse this choice by the Swamp when Russia informs people that since they are so evil, the request must be an error because no one would ever want to deal with such evil people. So no thanks. Not selling you gas . . . at any price of printed pieces of paper.
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