until you zoom out
Strategic genius is splitting your already taxed forces for a pointless death or glory push into enemy territory
The gamble is that Russia will pull troops from the front in Ukraine, to protect that northern border. But I guess we'll see how that pans out
Bad gamble on basic math, Russia has enough arms and troops to maintain the current line of contact, stop this push, and keep healthy reserves.
I mean, if it's like any other Ukrainian strategy, not very well
If anything won't this allow Russia to mobilize more troops now that Russian territory is being attacked? I'm just a random dumbass so take this with a grain of salt but to me it seems like this incursion will be short term gains at the cost of medium-long term losses for the Ukrainians.
Russia isn’t mobilizing more troops but they are utilizing reserves they would otherwise not have used in the war such as counter-terrorist forces, national guard, conscripts, local police, etc.
Most of Kursk will be cleaned up by irregulars like this after the Russian airforce destroys all the heavy equipment
well that was a stupid gamble because Russia hasn't done that and has much vaster reserves than Ukraine and can match them all day long while still overwhelming them in Donbas
They are furiously masturbating over gains on an unscaled map which had separate homes in villages clearly visible.
History will remember the battle of The Street With The Gas Station On It
Didn't see the top blip at first so I thought this was a joke about how the five oblasts should never have been Ukrainian
Thank you for reminding me to clean my screen. There was a little speck of dirt overlapping that yellow bit that made it look twice as large.
Bigger than any weekly gains anywhere in the past year
Still too small to be of any strategic consequence
that's because Kursk isn't heavily fortified hilly and forest area like the Donbas that has been entrenched, mined and trapped for a decade. Russia's gains here are extremely notable since this is basically the hardest type of territory to take, and they're doing it while winning in attrition as well.
Kursk raid has been into empty flat fields with no entrenchments. Easy come and easy go.
Doesn't this mean Belarus is obligated to enter the war because of their defense pact with Russia? Or how does this work
Invoking CSTO at this point would probably break it, hence the SMO and not a war.
Im just wondering if Ukrainian army can even hold the area that they've taken as from what I recall, they lack manpower. So how long until this just becomes another battle of the bulge like situation?
US has <1000 HIMARS and can only fire 6 normal artillery or 1-2 "state of the art" ballistic missiles
This would bankrupt their inventory lol
Giving a single overseas country ~18% of one of your best artillery systems and 100% of yearly production is insane btw
Also Russia is firing 10,000 rockets every DAY. Those 9 waves of 1k isn't that much
The US mobilized thousands of tanks to invade Iraq during the Gulf War. You don’t see the difference here?
Cause they were using it themselves. Big difference between giving it to another country
Also just completely ignoring Russia is at least one full generation ahead of any other country when it comes to air defence
Idk why I'm having this military debate I don't even have any interest or research this, it's just so wrong come onnnn
10000 artillery shells, yes, but certainly not precision guided rocket projectiles that can surgically strike critical infrastructures behind enemy lines.
If the tactic is to overwhelm Russia's air defenses with a massive salvo of rockets, the fact that the tiny number of rockets Ukraine could launch are precision guided is irrelevent.
Ukraine is using their scare himars missiles to strike at bus stops and shops in Donetsk instead of "surgically strike critical infrastructures behind enemy lines." so they either have more experience in what those missiles can actually do than you or think bus stops are critical infrastructure.
a synchronized launch of 2000 state-of-the-art HIMARS rockets
Just on a practical level alone, Ukraine got sent at most around 40 of those systems and each one can only fire a 6 rocket salvo.
The US would need to send almost 5x-10x more HIMARS systems than they did. They wiki says over 540 built so at best you're talking sending like 60-80% of all HIMARS systems to Ukraine.
Considering how many of these are not even in the US...
But sure there are other things the west could have done I agree.
and dealing significant blow to the bulk of the Russian military, if not triggering a rout completely.
This is how Ukraine can still win!
It's a massive advance for such a short time in this war. I don't know if it will be worth the losses and diversion of personnel and resources for Ukraine. Some part of the Russian military really fucked and some part of the Ukrainian military did a real good job with this one if they can hold onto it or make Russia pay dearly to take it back.
It was two of the better armed Ukrainian strike brigades against literal conscripts. And I am not saying that as a perjorative, it's just that is how you run defense-in-depth when you have a 'border front' as long as Russia's. Conscripts are expected to retreat or surrender until military assets actually equipped to deal with whatever is happening can be mustered and the situation is contained. Unlike with the Donbas, there hasn't been 6-8 years of entrenchment going on so there is no reason to expect it to look exactly like the Donbas front.
The Ukrainians appear to be basically doing a really heavily armed raid, which is unlikely to do any real permanent damage, unless they can start fucking the natural gas pipelines in Sudzha to the Czech and Hungary, but is meant to fuck with Russian morale and increase Ukrainian morale. Which idk how it has worked, because it is not like there is any accurate polling on attitudes outside of the war watchers.
I don't think anybody 'fucked up', it's just another occurrence in the conflict.
unless they can start fucking the natural gas pipelines in Sudzha to the Czech and Hungary
That pipeline starts in Sudzha and then travels through the territory of Ukraine. Ukraine could destroy this (turned off) pipeline at any time if they wished to. This is a red herring and not the objective of the raid. The objective was to seize the NPP and blackmail Russia with it
The fuck up for me wasn't the performance of the border guards who as you pointed out seemed to have performed as needed given the intended Blitz to the Kursk NPP was slowed enough to give the Russian forces time to organize and halt the progress of the Ukrainian special forces. For me the fuck up was Russian intelligence not catching the build up of special forces on their border in such quantity with all the vehicles and supplies they would end up assaulting with. On the other side, the Ukrainian military was somehow able to hide this operation from the Russians and executed their mission about as well as anybody could've realistically expected. Apparently the military leadership in Ukraine thought is was a foolish thing to try to do and clearly wasn't successful in accomplishing what Zelensky wanted.
Sorry for the crazy late reply.
No the mission was to take the NPP and they failed and got routed. They never even got close to their objective. They sacrificed all of their equipment and best troops for a 2 week long PR victory and an acceleration of the ongoing collapse of the Donbas front. This was a very risky all-or-nothing hail mary and it failed before even reaching like 15% of its goal. It will result in thousands of dead Ukrainians for absolutely no gain whatsoever
Most of the fighting in Donbass is in or around the Ukrainian defenses and trenches they've built since 2014. Likewise Ukraine failed their offensive last year because the Russians built their own defenses.
This is the biggest reason the war seems to be slow, and the fact there is way too much urban fighting. Almost every little village needs to be completely destroyed. The open fields both sides capture are easy exactly because because they're a trap for massive artillery and drone attacks.
is currently acting like they'll be in Moscow by Christmas
