News & thoughts on Putin's invasion of Ukraine

[hammarö]

Interesting information is that the over 60 km convoy takes so long time to march.

Today came inside information from US intellgence that Russia have internal problems with groups of soldiers. Could it be the convoy? Soldiers have low attitude.

During the 80-90s came the same information from soldiers who were on the way to invade Polen. Russian soldiers in tents were very seek. Russia simply inhibated the invasion, and the soldiers went home. This information came from the Swedish intelligence, and I red it in the english newspaper Time.

This is not aircraft information. But air warfare could contributed to the situation with hard bombing.

[hammarö]

During the day 1st March made the Ukrainan Air Force 4 attacks against tanks, combat vehicles and other vehicles.

https://korrespondent.net/ukraine/44531 ... y-vertolet

[Coati]

Interesting article about the underperformance of the Russian Air force. According to the article, the Russians only use about 75+ aircraft and "The Russians are discovering that coordinating multi-domain operations is not easy," "And that they are not as good as they presumed they were."

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/wh ... 022-03-01/

[hammarö]

Remember Chechnyan war 1994-95 and the storming of Grozny. Several convoys against Grozny ended in a slaughter (bloodbath) of Russian conscripts in the storming of Grozny. It looks as the same could happen know in Kiev.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War

One problem was the communications and the call in of the air support. Russian army have a lot of communications vehicles there special radios are for air force communications and the call in of combat aircraft and helicopters (serial 600?). A Russian brigade have around 50 communications vehicles. They are distributed to the Battalion battle group (BLT). Many of them had no educated personnel to communicate (in Chechnya). They had also to communicate without crypto. Poor education of signalists. Vehicles were also transported without signalists because they lacked it. It also ment that radio traffic with the higher command in Rostov were done without crypto. The best signalist was the Russian enemy in this case, the Chechen army (educated signalists). They red the radio traffic very well, with big Russian losses.

In the Syrian war the last years they had the same problem. Russia had also to tow the newbuilt communications vehicles from landing ships in Tartus there the most important vehicles had broken chilling systems, together with the other problems.

In the past was much of the communications equipment produced in Ukraine. Ukraine know a lot of this.

I am shore that the US intelligence knew much about what happening. During the Hungarian war 1956 could intelligence listen to tank and combat vehicles radio traffic 1000 km away.

One other thing is the bad precision of the combat aircraft and the helicopter weapons.

Remember the 2018:s other 100 cruise missiles against Syria. They hit direct.

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[ehusmann]

"~100,000 #Russia troops inside #Ukraine (~70% of its entire deployed force) is running out, or has already run out of fuel & food."
https://twitter.com/charles_lister/stat ... 1712869379

And that huge column heading to Kyiv: has apparantly not moved in 24 hours. Same issue, ran out of fuel. So now they have to supply the resupply column...

And next week Ukraine might see a blizzard. This might get ugly very, very fast. I am just honestly fearful of Putin reaching for his last resort...

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[ehusmann]

If you compare it to the first Gulf War, then also compare the forces involved. The allies then had almost a million troops ready in Saudi Arabia for the liberation of Kuwait. Now, Russia apparantly had 150.000 to 190.000. So that is for a far larger country and for an invasion, not a liberation. The Russians might have thought they were going to 'liberate' Ukraine, but obviously that was never going to be the case. This was a failed war from the beginning. Putin has already lost, unfortunately, he will not be able to admit that...

In other news, the Ukrainian Air Force announced the downing of a Russian Su-30 near Kyiv this morning.

[ehusmann]

Another interesting read about the state of the Russian Army. This guy apparantly is a tyre expert and has some interesting thoughts on the mismanegement of that within the Russian Army. Not too long story even shorter: the Russian wheeled trucks will not be able to leave the roads of Northern Ukraine during the next couple of months. And the Ukrainians could very well copy the Finnish tactics of the Winter War.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1499 ... 02944.html

In other news, the Ukrainians also claim to have downed another Su-34 this morning (besides the mentioned Su-30).

[Canberra TT.18]

Very interesting analysis.
I wondered why there were vehicles with flat or broken tyres in almost every clip I saw.

[Coati]

This is very interesting info Erwin! I already wondered why they stuck to the roads, causing these in these ridiculous traffic jams. Even the tanks, but if their supply troops cannot follow them, they also need to stick to main roads.

[hammarö]

Weapon 28.02 01.03 02.03 03.03
Aircraft 29 30 30 33
Helicopters 29 31 31 37
UCAV 3 3 3 3
Tanks 198 211 217 251
BBM 816 862 900 939
Artillery 77 85 90 105
Soldiers 5710 5840 9000 9166
PVO syst 7 9 11 18
Grad 24 40 42 50
SmallBoats 2 2 2 2
Vehicles 305 355 374 404
Fuel tanks 60 60 60 60


Last source
https://korrespondent.net/ukraine/44539 ... -v-ukrayne

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[michel N]

Russ. ground forces are closin' in on Kiev with a spearhead advance from the east. No flank attacks seems to stop that.

Zelensky (UKR) still asks for a no flow zone or even just sending him fighter planes to use themselves. Even that, does not seems to be forthcoming.
((the only stuff as I see it, if ever, could be in the form of JF-17's, redundant types like old sSyhawks and Macchis. That would takes time and UKR does not have that. And still, they would need airfields and of course, the ever important ground support to keep 'new' types going.

Last resorts:
putting (hand) guns and rockets (RPG, LAW and so on) and (hand) grenades on sports and utility aircraft. or even Use their own fled types such IL-76's as make shift bombers. They just cannot win this war/struggle/battle/operation/clansing* alone

It seems the Ukraine got new deliveries of Bayraktars, that do quite some damage. Also I saw pictures of a new (unknown to me) small drone with one bomb. They claim it’s stealth, but it might be just its size that makes it nearly undetected. And to say Ukraine can’t win this? Russian losses are quite high, and they don’t only have the army against them, but also the population. Which means partizan and guerilla tactics.
This war is far from over.