Problem is, Putin couldn't care less about how many of his men are killed, he'll just send thousands more in and eventually they'll get the job done if the economic tide hasn't turned enough by then.
Current Affairs Ukraine
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Problem is, Putin couldn't care less about how many of his men are killed, he'll just send thousands more in and eventually they'll get the job done if the economic tide hasn't turned enough by then.
Zatara
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I counted 29 armoured trucks, ignoring the smaller vehicles.
I wonder how many troops were there...surely at least a few hundred?
Ghost Rider
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A little bit off in regards to the treaty of Versailles.
Key differences is that Germany started the war but had land taken away from them that they had a right to, as a means of punishment. So when they marched into the Rhineland for example, the rest of Europe seen that as reclaiming what should not have been taken away. Hence no action against it at the time.
Everything until going into Czechoslovakia was seen as fair on their part.
The Germans weren't angry at the treaty either , not in the way you compare to Russia now. Poles apart I'm afraid, reprecussions for actions ongoing is not the same as punishment afterwards.
It all depends. Each truck or light vehicle may only have one person in it - this is what we were doing during the 1st Gulf - or an additional body on board.
The same with the BTR and Tigrs really as while they can carry troops to dismount (6-10 respectively) they may be running them on skeleton crews.
But yes, I'd expect a minimum of a hundred plus. The question of casualties is different as while there are some obvious ones, there's not mass corpses.
Have they dismounted and fought else where? Have they fled and regrouped or been captured? They're moving to convoys and this comes with so many issues.
Zatara
Player Valuation: £100m
An ex SAS chap has said that with the Bayraktar attack drones coming from Turkey + the jets via Poland then when the pilots and drone controllers are ready he believes in the coming days the Ukrainians will attack that massive column.
Says they have the ability to wipe it out.
He says (as most of us have) that its a sitting duck for aircraft and once destroyed he can see the whole Russian army being in disarray.
Meanwhile Ukrainian forces are destroying lead vehicles and bridges while the Russians are using up food and fuel while static.
Kill the food kill the army. Kill the fuel kill the column.
-- Robin Horsfell.
Others are saying the column has stopped due to a lack of fuel and poor conditions. Russians there are having to steal food as the provisions provided are so bad.
Key takeaway also mentioned, apparently the Ukrainian army needs to hold out for 10 more days. Putin planned for 1-4 days before Ukrainian surrender.
It will take the Russians 3-4 months to make more weapons...they will slow down the rockets now as they really only have a few days worth left.
Apparently its costing Russia $20mil+ a day...they cant continue to fund this after another 10 days.
Says they have the ability to wipe it out.
He says (as most of us have) that its a sitting duck for aircraft and once destroyed he can see the whole Russian army being in disarray.
Meanwhile Ukrainian forces are destroying lead vehicles and bridges while the Russians are using up food and fuel while static.
Kill the food kill the army. Kill the fuel kill the column.
-- Robin Horsfell.
Others are saying the column has stopped due to a lack of fuel and poor conditions. Russians there are having to steal food as the provisions provided are so bad.
Key takeaway also mentioned, apparently the Ukrainian army needs to hold out for 10 more days. Putin planned for 1-4 days before Ukrainian surrender.
It will take the Russians 3-4 months to make more weapons...they will slow down the rockets now as they really only have a few days worth left.
Apparently its costing Russia $20mil+ a day...they cant continue to fund this after another 10 days.
All these time estimates need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but the underlying principles are sound. I suspect the Russians can sustain this for more than another ten days, so the Ukrainians need to be able to maintain their defensive perimeters for longer than the ten days estimate.
The key here is how strong a strategic position Russia is in by the time the ceasefire negotiations are announced.
It's interesting to me that most of the stories of Russian military failures / ineptitude seem to be coming from the areas along the northern axis of advance - the Kyiv and Kharkiv line. If you look at the Russian gains in the areas were the shale gas was discovered (Donbass) and where holding the land grants possession of the territorial waters where the oil and natural gas was found (Crimea) there's a different pattern, one of what seems to be relatively efficient Russian military work.
The area north of Crimea appears to have been occupied from Kherson and all along the banks of the Dneiper, the coastal strip between Crimea and Donbass has pretty much been entirely taken too (apparently), with only Melitopol still in Ukrainian control and that's surrounded and under constant bombardment.
It makes me wonder if that whole region, the south and southeast of Ukraine (below the mouth of the Dneiper all the way along the river to Dnipro), and everything east of the road between Dnipro and Belgorod (in Russia) is the minimum Putin wants to hold permanently. It grants him possession of all the oil, most of the natural gas and half the shale gas in Ukraine. This prevents Ukraine becoming an oil exporter and probably limits their gas industry to domestic supply only. this in turn will significantly slow the rate at which the Ukrainian economy can grow.
I suspect the best of Russia's military was sent to expand territorial gains around Crimea and Donbass, and seize land enough to complete an unbroken territory linking the two. The advance towards Kyiv and Kharkiv may have been a secondary operation designed to divert some Ukrainian assets away from the south and forcing the Ukrainian military to spread their troops out along a front that becomes difficult to defend effectively, so maybe the Russian troops allocated to those areas of operation didn't need to be as effective. If they were able to seize Kyiv and Kharkiv, then push past Kharkiv to the Dneiper, linking up with the southern front around Dnipro, then they would completely occupy the eastern half of Ukraine, the entire coast of the Sea of Azov and more than half of Ukraine's Black Sea coastline. That's an enormously strong position to be in when negotiations start.
If during negotiations Ukraine is only asking for Crimea and Donbass to be returned, Russia has to give SOMETHING back to be seen to be compromising, but whatever they give back they are losing one of their strategic targets. If Russia holds the entire length of the eastern bank of the Dneiper, from Kyiv to Dnipro to Kherson, then they can return chunks of land they didn't strategically NEED to take (in order to achieve their goal) and appear to the world to be conceding, compromising... but still keep Crimea and Donbass.
TL;DR Ukraine needs to push back all Russian advances to practically their starting points, or they will not be able to negotiate the return of Crimea and Donbass to Ukrainian control when the peace is agreed, IMVHO.
UTFU
Yarrgh
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I agree with most of this. I suspect that come any horse trading Crimea, the Donbass and a large land corridor to Crimea are going to be left within Russian control. If he can keep Kherson and keep the water supply* to Crimea open, he'll probably be very happy with that outcome. If he gets all the way to Transnistra, he might well try to keep that route to bypass Ukraine into Europe with gas/oil/ imports/exports.
What will then need to be done is ensure that the Ukrainian state is secured from further aggression from Russia who now have a bigger head start on where they were 10 days ago, plus they have Kiev within striking distance from Belarus any time they want.
I would also not be surprised if they try to ditch Chernobyl and keep the operational nuclear power plant. Get rid of the cost to someone who has maintained it safely in their own interests and keep the 'asset' which no one in their right mind would go after.
This is a land grab of not far off the size of the UK. If he gets this plus sanctions reversed, he'll think he's played a blinder. It will create resentment in the area for years if not generations.
*one of the few things that Russia may have a point about. Starving Crimea of water for several years was and is an awful thing to do.
BigMick
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Only significance is that a tiny Palestinian outlet broke the news 2 hours before Israeli and world media picked up on it.
The company has ties with Mohammed Dahlan, arch-rival of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Dahlan has good contacts in Moscow so I would guess the leak came from there.
Apparently Zelensky had previously asked Bennett, and before him Netanyahu, to mediate between the two countries but Putin had always said no until now. Don't know if that has any significance or whether Putin is just trying to show that he's open to negotiations.
Meeting lasted for 3 hours but a good chunk of that was probably Putin lecturing Bennett about Russian history!
tsubaki
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TBF I think we all will need to be - we can't believe anything he says after this so there needs to be increased defence expenditure across the EU and NATO, increased internal security (against influence operations, bio-security and more traditional measures like border security), increased focus on what the two countries are actually doing and most importantly increased diplomatic and economic effort across the world, especially in Africa and states that may be at risk of permanently siding with Russia / China (Brazil, Turkey and India especially). Most importantly we as citizens need to educate ourselves and get better leaders.
Yarrgh
Player Valuation: £80m
No one will ever trust Putin again. And we also need to ensure that whoever his successor is will come into a setting which Russia is encouraged to play by the rules and not be a pariah state.
The binman chronicles
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With any luck they destroyed their own vehicles and deserted.
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
Indeed, but I think the pressing concerns (beyond any more sanctions) are to quickly start to change our societies to get us ready for the next ten or twenty years - things like food production / security, which I should have mentioned in the post above (where the entire continent can learn from what the Dutch have done). We can do that now, and we should.
The problem from the Ukrainian perspective is that if they surrender the Donbass, the Crimea and a strip of land linking the two then they are reducing themselves to being a landlocked nation with few natural resources beyond the agricultural production of wheat and other similar grains. The geopolitical risk of doing that is:
1) maybe in a few years' time the West won't care if Putin marches in and takes the rest. America can ramp up agricultural production easily enough and would do so if the market opportunity was there; and
2) the Ukrainian yearly national income will be smaller per annum from hereon, meaning they cannot effectively replace the troops and munitions lost. Their new, reduced budget won't support it. That means they could not mount a defence of the same intensity as this current one.
The Ukrainians MUST have better strategists in their government and military than any of us on here, so if I can spot the issue then they must have too. They simply cannot afford to come out of this without getting the Crimea back. They could probably continue to grow as a nation even if they permanently cede the Donbass to Russia, but if they lose the Crimea permanently too then I think their country will wither and die over a prolonged period. For the West, Ukraine WITH Crimea is a useful asset/ally/trading partner, but without Crimea.... what's the Western interest at that point?
Could be wrong and I REALLY hope I am.
This is the best possible scenario. It means the fewest lives lost.
It's so easy to get caught up in anger with Russia's actions here, but the footage of teenage Russian conscripts surrendering and being protected by Ukrainian civilians giving them food, hot drinks and access to phones to call their parents has served as a MASSIVE moral anchor. So many of these Russian troops deserve nothing but sympathy, support and a safe passage home.
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