IMO it’s at least 5 weeks until we get a much better picture of the situation for Ukraine and for Russia

Here’s a link to the Ukrainian view of their operation; it’s goals, successes and concerns {Povrosk} https://kyivindependent.com/kursk-operation-what-ukraine-achieved-so-far-and-potential-future-gains/ with which to reference 5 weeks from now

It’s my understanding that potentially up to 6 brigades have been involved in the operation but Kyiv has not disclosed troop numbers, so that is speculation on my part



https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/08/26/europe/pokrovsk-evacuation-russia-ukraine-intl-latam

Saw American soldiers holding up US flag on Russian ground.

God bless them

We hear all of your comments

I just want to know what should have Ukraine done?

I am just curious as well as others.

A nation has been invaded and people slaughtered by the thousands, should they had surrendered?

And if so is it because they brought this on themselves for past disobedience over their Russian overlords?

Or is it a belief the Russian government is better than their current government?

Could they lose? Possible but if we as a nation can keep a country from being taken over by Russia should we not try?

Or was it better to just smile and wave while a entire nation is invaded, people slaughtered?

Is the attempt to stop this not worth us losing some of our weapons and cash?

Not being a asshole I just want your insight on the war.

And I mean at a level that a civilian could understand with common non smartest guy in the room terms if you please.

I have never once contested the vast majority of your questions, so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to answer them, or even why I should.

I explained my stance in depth several pages back, and nothing you are talking about was a concern of mine.

Retreating and taking the pressure off is probably the worst thing he can do regarding another chance in the future.

Dollars to donuts Ukraine will become a nuclear weapons state if they can hold out long enough for an armistice that doesn't neuter them.

I have absolutely acknowledged that I have no idea how this will pan out. What I am addressing is the known reality...that the impact of this has not shown any commensurate benefit for Ukraine but has shown tangible negative effects on the FLOT.

The methodology you are asking me to apply is exactly my point, contrary to the absolutely biased discussion occuring here in this thread. Objectivity is a two way street, the concern against me here is that a notional two way street in discussion goes against the one way narrative everyone wants to here.

Nobody supports Russia, however

This has been a bit of a joke here all along. We're all guilty of it. From the early arguments about artillery and ammunition to current arguments about aircrew availability. A lot of the concerns posted by members were and are valid. There's an old DOD saying though that you have to let things break before they can be fixed.

Some of the rapid changes that are occurring are... pretty crazy to say the least.

Does anyone even know what Russia or Ukraine's end games are? The entire war has been obfuscated by changing objectives and unprecedented performances by both sides (good and bad).

They don't. Not publically. Saying what they think must be looked at the proper context through the prism of one wrong statement will land in a labor camp.

Thus the data is highly tilted towards "patriots".

https://kyivindependent.com/operation-in-kursk-oblast-prevents-russias-attempts-to-occupy-sumy-zelensky-says/

All we can do is acknowledge Kyiv’s stated objectives and goals now and then wait, it seems the waiting part is difficult for many, to evaluate if those have been achieved much later down the road.

My waypoints are October 1 and December 31 based off statements by Zelensky, Kyiv and the well known upcoming historical weather challenges

The problem is there are lots of irrationally positive pro Ukraine members. Several rediculously pro Russian posters bordering on information operators and very few voices in between.  So when a voice emerges that isn't crazy pro Ukraine its assumed to be pro Russian.

I'm constantly treated like I'm not pro Ukraine simply because I don't spout the party line.   You can ask questions about the wisdom and objectives of the Kursk offensive without being pro putin.  I get it, It's tough because there are legit pro Russian members. But to have an actual informed discussion you can't just have one perspective.

This.

You understand different people assess risk differently, right? From a different perspective, you don't even understand what you're missing. Not saying that as a slam, but when you talk about risk, you are inherently talking about highly subjective issues. Some people don't even see risk where others do. It might be more helpful to spell out what you see is a risk, what you see as not a risk, and also whether the risks are worth taking.

That's where you get all the people saying "I'm not political, I don't pay attention to that stuff, I don't think about things that don't affect me directly." LOTS of people know they cannot speak their minds freely. Also note the military-age men who are very clearly NOT going off to volunteer right away now that their country has been invaded, but all saying "of course I'll defend the motherland if the military calls me up." LOL, right. You're no supporter of the regime, that's just going along to get along.

Since the beginning, "I want peace" has been a pretty common saying on these videos.

It's about as close as people can get to being outwardly anti-war without catching a charge.

Nailed it.

Watching Daemon argue with folks who are basically cheerleaders for Ukraine (not a slam, I'm a cheerleader too) is like watching dogs argue with cats. Daemon keeps saying his stuff, cheerleaders keep saying their stuff, and they're both talking past each other. Frankly, I'm glad Daemon hasn't just quit these discussions as useless, because he DOES add a lot of value (which pro-Russia trolls do not). I wouldn't blame him if he did. One thing he adds in forcing people to articulate outcomes and defend costs. We can disagree about whether a given cost is 'worth the risk' but some of the straight-up cheerleaders don't want to bog down in heavy details like that. What's funny is that sometimes we can't articulate outcomes. How many weeks are we into Kursk, and we still don't know for sure what the intended outcomes were supposed to be?

56 in the screen name seems to be an indicator for multiple users

Good eye.

Ok. The majority in this thread are strongly pro Ukraine, myself included. Some of us are "enthusiastic" beyond objective reason.

When objective reason is used it gets treated like a pro Russian position which is a rhetorical sign of weakness quite frankly and not a good look.

This site has a long and apparently proud history of chasing out SMEs who don't conform to the popular opinion.  We should stop doing that. This place is better with more SMEs and with more discussion not less.

Challenging the group think is a healthy thing.

Fair.

Ok thanks

I'm skeptical.

The Russian military has repeatedly shown itself to be functionally retarded. They couldn't deploy their one aircraft carrier without it breaking down or catching fire, so it had to be constantly escorted by a tug everywhere it went. They use social media for battlefield communications. They haven't adopted palletized logistics. They are eluded by other common military technologies... like the GI sock. The list goes on.

The question is "Why did Russia leave their border (and their flank) unsecured in an active war zone?"

The potential answers are:

A) The Russians are playing 5D chess.

B) The Russians are incompetent.

I'm going to have to B on this one. Option A doesn't make sense, and even if it did, Russia hasn't demonstrated they're capable of complex strategy.

Yes, Russia is bigger. Yes, Russia has more resources. Yes, Russia has a 4:1+ population advantage. But these guys are morons.

LOL

You want to compare the Russkie "SMO" to OEF? Okay...

The US invaded a land locked nation 7,300 miles away, achieved tactical supremacy basically immediately, and never really struggled with logistics.

In 20 years in Afghanistan, the US lost 2,420 KIA.

The true failure was in the idea that an illiterate nation that normalized raping little boys, marrying prepubescent girls, and Dark Age ideology in general was going to suddenly adopt secular western democracy. There's no fixing that.

Russia invaded a nation with which they share a border. Not only did they never achieve air superiority over this nation, but they're losing air superiority over their own nation. The KA-50 and Su-34 in particular are endangered species. Ukraine is trashing entire Russian Air Force bases now. Russia lost the core of the Black Sea Fleet to a nation without a navy. Russia has visually confirmed losses of 3,300 tanks and 4,500 IFVs.

Russia was struggling to sustain logistics before Ukraine had the ability to target them. Guys in the field were doing without important resources, not due to enemy fire, but due to theft, incompetence, deferred maintenance, and retardation. And now Ukraine has the ability to target Russian logistics near and far.

Russia loses more KIA every few DAYS or so than the US lost in 20 YEARS in Afghanistan.

Any thoughts on Belarusian troop build up at the northern border?

Potato farmer must have a death wish.

In addition to Ukrainian front line units being pulverized daily with FABs from the air, there are missile strikes all over Ukraine as we speak. The mayor of Kyiv just posted about power and water going  offline. https://t.me/s/vitaliy_klitschko

Strikes are down significantly.

Does it happen to have something to do with an airfield that housed dozens of jets being hit along with hundreds of Fabs?

There is a middle ground well in between "5D chess" and "incompetence", and your inability to conceptualize Russian military rationale in favor of a western first world lense is where you lose that.

A lot of what they do that we find ridiculous from our perspective are conscious decisions based on priorities and resources available. They have proven their willingness to apply risk and effectively take massive losses in certain areas in favor of heavy emphasis in others.  We see this methodology with their ground forces daily but at no point does this ever seem to resonate.

How many times have we heard "the Russians are doing X, that's absolutely crazy, they are going to fall apart any day now..."

None of which disputes what he wrote.

That's not how air superiority works.

Excellent post.

And yet they still don't have air superiority, and Ukraine is flying sorties over Russia proper...so not sure what this has to do with what he said.

You dismiss the area Ukraine has seized/threatened in Kursk as "farming towns," but that's exactly what Russia has been going after in Ukraine.

There's a bunch of hubbub about Ukraine being potentially about to lose places like Niu-York, and that's a town with a population under 10k.

Russia has captured something like 0.4% of Ukraine's territory so far this year, and we're going into September. The biggest hit was... Avdiivka? A city with a pre-war population of 31k?

Maybe you're right, and my Western mind can't fathom why Russia would throw thousands and thousands of bodies at little Ukrainian towns while deliberately allowing Ukraine to hit their flank on a vulnerable stretch of the Russian border.

But I think it's a hell of a lot more likely that Russian assessments of Ukraine's disposition and/or their own readiness were dead wrong (again).

It will be interesting to see who has taken what come the new year.

...Pokrovsk, which had a prewar population of about 60,000, is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region. Its capture would compromise Ukraine’s defensive abilities and supply routes, and would bring Russia closer to its stated aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region.

Pokrovsk officials were meeting with the residents to provide them with logistical details on the evacuation...

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ukrainian-authorities-urge-civilians-evacuate-pokrovsk-russian-troops-112886852

The city of Donetsk proper has been under Russian control since 2014.

Avdiivka is 3-4 miles outside Donetsk, and it fell in February. The Battle of Avdiivka lasted over 4 months, and estimates of Russian KIA range between 16k and 47k.

The distance from Avdiivka to Pokrovsk is about 25 miles.

Hrodivka puts Russia 8-10 miles outside of Pokrovsk.

Big picture, we're looking at about 20 miles in total line movement in this region since the beginning of the war, and 15 miles in the last 6 months.

At the current rate of advance, we're looking at another 2-4 months for the Russians to reach Pokrovsk, and that's not accounting for seasonal changes.

Once the Russians get to Pokrovsk, they have to take it. I think Pokrovsk would be the biggest city Russia has attempted to take since Bakhmut (71k pre-war). Bakhmut cost Russia 10.5 months and ~30k KIA.

Can Russia take Pokrovsk? Of course they can. But will the juice be worth the squeeze?

6 minute Peter Zeihan synopsis of recent developments in the Ukraine war. I'd be interested in hear a few people's thoughts. Despite Zeihan's self-important tone, he has a particular knack for explaining complex issues in a way almost anyone can understand. Choppy audio but it is subtitled.

I haven't read too much of this thread, but I see military experts all over the internet asking what the objectives are, etc. My view is that:

1. Trump is more pro Russia than the Democrats
2. Before Biden dropping out, looked like Trump would win
3. Trump swore he'd have a brokered truce/peace/armistice before he was inaugurated, not unlike the hostages being released before Reagan was inaugurated.
4. This seemed like a very real possibility to Zelenskyy, et al, which was bad news if they dropped the new border where it stood, after so many lives lost.
5. Taking back much of the Donetsk region in the interim would be impossible given all the mine fields that direction, and the force build up there by the Russians.
6. The easiest way to take land, prisoners, and give Russia a black eye before Trump negotiations started in earnest was to take as much of the Kurch Oblast as possible, which has proven true so far.
7. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is a huge loss for Ukraine thus far (if Russia retained it long term), and taking the Russian one in Kurch Oblast would be a good match to trade in negotiations.
8. Kurch Oblast is important to Russian agricultural production, and considering one reason to conquer Ukraine was to get the Eurasian breadbasket there, losing much of the Kurch region has to sting a bit.
9. They are taking out launch areas that threaten Ukraine, and simultaneously establishing deeper launch sites for their own drone and artillery attacks. It will be a valuable trade for Russia to get back these lands.
10. The way Russia fights is to obliterate towns with artillery and missiles and bombs,  and then move infantry in to conquer the rubble, not fighting house to house from the start. Imagine them doing this to their own towns in the Kurch region. That is not going to play well in Moscow and elsewhere. What a humiliating position to be in if they were to use this typical, blunt force strategy.

If this has been the plan, it seems to be going well. But the enemy has a say as well, so saber rattling from Belarus was not too unexpected, especially since they broadcast loud and clear they had nuclear weapons not long before this special operation (LOL) into the Kurch Oblast. Nothing is a done deal till the fat lady sings, so who knows how it will end given Putin's ego. However, perhaps this overall strategy is the classic one big push, of a limited time period, directly in anticipation of serious peace talks once the U.S. election is done. They are accumulating large bargaining chips that will be difficult to hold long term. This a typical Soviet strategy, and of course, Ukrainians were once Soviet as well. Both sides should be motivated to end the carnage I imagine.

Town population isn't the key variable here.

Russia is going after creating gaps in the line that will allow them to break through and start segmenting and flanking the various strongholds. Those towns are the keys to that. There is no line in Kursk to break.

Has there ever been a war this long that nobody knows who is winning?

Yes.

Never. Most are over by Christmas.

Has this guy been right about...anything? It makes me not want to even watch him.

Yes, but not recently.  He is better at demographics than geopolitics.  In fairness, the information space is more polluted with crap since this started than anything we've ever seen.

LOL Problem is he does predictions that take years to materialize so it's not like you can "fact check" him cause by that time, everyone's forgot about it or moved on to something else. He's been wrong on a few cartel takes. And if you watch his other take on the border crisis he states how the current influx of illegal immigration is a good thing and is helping fill our vacant jobs that would have been a problem and thus lowering inflation.