TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@social.cleverlibre.org
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian fascist invaders.
I am a 71 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
A horde of violent criminals have invaded Eagle Pass, Texas
From "The Analyst":
AVDIVKA UPDATE
Russian forces in the south west salient they created have effectively been cut off as Ukraine has regained the key fortified area of the restaurant services area.
Russia tried to send a column to reinforce their troops in Avdivka’s lower streets, but this was annihilated.
The Russians used a 2km waste water service pipe to get behind the restaurant and into south Avdivka. It’s very narrow and they had to crawl through it, so supplying and reinforcing the now cut off island they’re in in south Avdivka is near impossible, if not pointless.
The tunnel needs to be destroyed at both ends and it’s deep so this hasn’t yet happened.
Eradicating the Russians in the housing they occupied is well underway.
Overall the Russian operation was quite imaginative and it gave them a major gain - taking the southern defences completely and the Ukrainians by surprise. In some ways the Ukrainians should have expected use of the tunnel, or at least taken precautions to block it. It’s far more likely they just never expected it could be used if they even remembered it was there.
Russian success - and it was, there’s no getting away from that, it was a daring and imaginative operation, was simply not followed up. Senior commanders doubted its likely success and no one was ready to exploit it until it was far too late. By then the Ukrainians had snatched back the restaurant’s fortification, because nobody reinforced the Russian forces, and now the few remaining Russian troops are more or less trapped, and the whole thing has turned into a Russian disaster. It’s not something Ukraine will fall for again and they’re probably looking to make sure nothing like happens anywhere else either.
This could have been the most consequential move the Russians made in months.
If they had been ready to exploit the success and acted quickly, given it the support it needed, they could have surrounded Zenit and have broken deep into Avdivka. It would in all likelihood have been the beginning of a much faster end for the town which would have quickly become untenable.
Instead their own handful of competent people were as usual, let down by hide bound commanders with zero imagination. Ukraine has always worked well against such opponents and did so again. That they were just as quick to see what had happened and responded with lightning pace to retake the initiative says it all.
Yet another bad day for Russia!
Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦!
Daily Russian losses
https://t.me/WarriorsUkrainian/20479
Russia has assembled forces to attack Kupyansk - Forbes
According to the publication the goal is to retake a huge swathe of Kharkiv Oblast that the Russians briefly occupied in 2022, perhaps as a "gift to Putin" for the March (so called) "elections".
The information from Forbes about the force in the area corresponds with statements previously made by the Ukrainian head of the press service of the operational and strategic group of troops "Khortytsia" Ilya Yevlash:
"The Russian occupation army has concentrated a total of about 57K troops in the Lyman-Kupyansk direction, including about 500 tanks, 1100 armored vehicles, 530 artillery barrels and 200 MLRS.
Most of these forces are held in the Kupyansk direction:
40,000 soldiers,
500 tanks, 650 armored fighting vehicles,
430 artillery systems, more than 150 MLRS.
That is, together they are very powerful forces. And the enemy does not abandon its intentions to continue gathering its reserves, preparing them. That is, we do not see that the enemy intends to stop its actions. Our task now is to deter and knock out the enemy as much as possible", Ilya Yevlash said.
Forbes write:
It’s obvious what this army aims to do: retake a huge swathe of Kharkiv Oblast that the Russians briefly occupied in 2022—until a powerful Ukrainian counteroffensive liberated most of the oblast late that year.
Everything east of the nearest major river is the goal. “The Russian Federation plans to seize the entire Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts and part of Kharkiv Oblast up to the Oskil River by March 2024,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies explained. The river threads through Kupyansk from the north.
Why March? Because that’s when Russia will “vote” for “president” in a national “election.” In fact, Vladimir Putin is the only real candidate—and will maintain his brutal, dictatorial control over Russia and the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
A slice of Kharkiv would be an election-day gift to Putin from the Russian army in Ukraine.
Some or part of around 10 Ukrainian brigades, anchored in the north by the 3rd Tank Brigade and south by the 4th Tank Brigade, defends Kupyansk and surrounding settlements. It’s a significant forces with perhaps 20,000 troops and hundreds of tanks, fighting vehicles and howitzers.
But people and vehicles aren’t the problem for the Ukrainians. The problem is ammunition. The United States was one of the biggest donors of 155-millimeter shells for Ukraine’s best big guns—and pro-Russia Republicans in the U.S. Congress cut off aid to Ukraine last fall.
Since then, Ukrainian forces’ daily allotment of shells has fallen by two-thirds to just 2,000 rounds. Russian forces meanwhile fire as many as 10,000 shells a day, thanks to a steady supply of ammo from North Korea.
“Artillery shortages and delays in Western security assistance will create uncertainty in Ukrainian operational plans,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. warned, “and likely prompt Ukrainian forces to husband materiel, which may force Ukrainian forces to make tough decisions about prioritizing certain sectors of the front over sectors where limited territorial setbacks are least damaging.”
Perhaps most importantly, Ukrainian workshops are building explosives-laden first-person-view drones—tens of thousands of them per month. As artillery ammunition becomes scarce, Ukrainian brigades are flinging more and more FPVs at the Russians: sometimes thousands per day all along the 600-mile front.
But the FPVs range just two miles or so—too short to target artillery that might be 15 or miles from the line of contact. Drone-operators have made quick work of small Russian assault groups that, for months now, have been probing the Kupyansk sector.
"But can a swarm of two-pound drones, even thousands of them, defeat 500 tanks and 650 fighting vehicles as they attack behind a wall of artillery fire?", Forbes ask.
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy at the front lines.
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/zelensky-visited-frontline-positions-in-the-village-of-robotyne/
Problems The Commanding Genertal plans to solve in 2024.
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/zaluzhnyi-names-key-problems-of-armed-forces-of-ukraine-to-be-solved-in-2024/
The head of the Ukrainian Army.
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/zaluzhnyi-unmanned-systems-are-crucial-in-modern-warfare/
From "The Analyst":
RUSSIAN STRATEGIC WEAPONS PRODUCTION FALLS SHARPLY
Russian is very much dependent for its great power status on its nuclear weapons. A recent review of what they have claimed and lauded compared to the somewhat starker realities, show a strained industrial base. Facing lack of private investment, a shortage of state funds, insolvency, manpower shortages caused by mobilisation, international sanctions and an inability to overcome technical delays on one side. On the other state giants such as Roscosmos which make sections of the strategic Sarmat missile for instance, have lost 50% of their workforce due to lack of state funds and resources, and the complete disappearance of foreign contracts for satellites and space launches. On top of that rampant corruption has reared its head with no less than six serious cases of multi-million dollar level fraud haunting the company. Most of those cases are bogged down in corruption as those up the chain and down it, do their best to sideline investigators.
One of the suppliers who provide the primary stage of the Sarmat missile, Proton-PM, is on the point of bankruptcy, unable to pay its suppliers and barely getting by let alone supplying dozens of missile sections. Only one missile is actually expected to enter service this year, despite it being a high priority.
The second stage producer, Chemical Automatics Design Bureau, is actually bankrupt and going through the court process to dissolve its business. The reason? ‘A chronic shortage of working capital’. That’s no state or bank funds and interest rates being so high it can’t afford to borrow. Add to that the state is terrible at paying its bills and these companies cannot survive.
The Kazan Aviation Plant is supposed to be upgrading ten of the old 1980’s Tu-160 strategic bomber to ‘M’ standard and has only delivered one. The company is also supposed to be building ten new ones to the same standard having restarted the line.
So far only one test plane has been delivered and the most they can produce is 1.25 per year - if they get the approval in 2024. A second aircraft is said to be under testing. The target was to build ten per year through to 2027. That seems beyond impossible at present. The government just doesn’t have the money. In addition the modernised plant was supposed to have been finished in 2020 but COVID delayed it. Then sanctions hit in 2022 and the availability of machine tools and equipment from western sources dried up.
The latest Borei-A class SSBN is also way behind schedule - two more were supposed to be laid down. The Knyaz Pozarsky was supposed to enter service in 2023 but will only just manage late 2024 - and even then she may have no missiles unless another Delta-IV class is decommissioned to provide them. The eleventh and twelfth in the 16 planned submarine class, each of which carries 16 SLBM’s, were due be laid down for completion in the 2030’s but it hasn’t happened. They haven’t been cancelled but if they don’t get started then the experienced labour force will likely be considered mobilisation fodder and their skills permanently lost.
So we see above how in real life the sanctions on technology and mechanical/engineering equipment, technology and finance have seriously impacted Russian nuclear weapons plans. This equipment should never have been sold to them in the first place and should never be ever again.
Imagine too, how deep these problems run in Russian military industries generally. Over time the economic costs have and are hitting ever deeper into the Russian military industrial complex. Despite their best efforts to get around it, huge capital intensive and high tech industries are buckling under the strain. Government funding is clearly stretched - even for their pet projects that are considered next to god in terms of national prestige and importance.
It may not look like it every day, but slowly and surely the sanctions are digging deep. We need to pile on the pressure. Not letting up. It DOES make a difference!
⚫ I think there’s a very important fact outsiders misunderstand about Iran:
Iranians do not view the IRGC as Iranian or as being from Iran. And there is nothing in all of creation that can make them loyal to it.
They do not view it as a part of their culture. They do not view it as coming “from” their history.
They view it as an imposition from the west which harboured Khomenei in exile and dumped him on their doorstep.
The IRGC outlaws parts of Iranian culture that were a normal, daily occurrence for centuries. Even during the highest heights of Islamic rule in Iran.
It is a cult in every sense.
The best way you can support Iran is by separating these two entities.
One is Iran. The other is the jailer.
@Chelseahartisme
🇮🇱 @israel_report
I look more like Elvis than Donnie. And, trust me, I look nothing like Elvis.
The Russian armored column that was destroyed by drones.
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian fascist invaders.
I am a 71 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
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