Russia - threadbanned users in OP

If Prigozhin has gone, or rather been deported, to Petersburg, maybe he was sent by Lukashenko as part of an agreement with Putin to con Prigozhin into surrendering. Shows you there's no honour among thieves.

And of course Likashenko ends up in Vlad's good books. No so sure how much that's worth ☺️

I mean the US would if it held some advantage. Generally the US should be able to ensure air superiority at all times so it does not come up. If they were not such a position they would adapt their tactics.

It really doesn't suggest anything. They've done this much with something like 75% of their forces not even being used. They're poking and prodding the defensive line in order to do a few things:

1. Bait Russia into using its own reserves in certain areas. Effectively a staring contest to see who blinks first.
2. Expose russian artillery positions. And then delete them with accurate HIMARS and counter battery artillery fire when they make a peep.(We've seen god knows how many videos recently of artillery systems being knocked out over the past few weeks). Even if you only half believe Ukraines numbers on this that's still hundreds of artillery pieces destroyed over the past few weeks. How long can russia maintain that loss rate?
3. Force Russia to move around supplies between warehouses. They then track these movements and storm shadow or HIMARS the warehouses/supply routes.

Its death by strangulation. At some point in the coming weeks/months cracks will appear(A defensive line with minimal artillery support and dejected russians with no ammo is little more than a ditch to cross) and UAF will attempt to drive a sledgehammer through some points on the line. Then we'll truly see if the counter offensive can succeed or not. Until that point we won't know.

I'll admit early on I was optimistic that these defensive lines would just fold the second they saw the first Leopard rolling over the horizon and we'd be treated to another Kharkhiv style route. But seems I was wrong. We've all been spoiled by past events. But it doesn't mean that this operation is a failure yet. If by September nothing much has moved on the front line then I reckon we might have cause for worry. Until then I'm not gonna lose my **** over pictures of a few broken Bradleys or give in to the narratives of those who see catastrophic failure in every negative snippet of news no matter how exaggerated or verified. That's how losers think(assuming of course they're actually rooting for the good guys).

I've played my fair share of competitive sports against people with that mindset. And they're rarely right.

Good

But are they losing that much equipment and men daily,up until recently you were saying they were loosing 70 + artillery pieces now it's 150 per week and yet we are only seeing minor gains ,it was claimed on this thread weeks ago that the Russians were collapsing across the the whole front but in that Time the Ukrainian have struggled to make any real change across the front,

It's not adding up

I know nothing about military tactics so I can't say anything about the accuracy of what Reisner says. But I've just read the article and there appears to be much misinterpretation of what he actually said- presumably lost in translation . Here's the main thrust of his interview:

He says that the "first phase" of the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed. He attributes this to what he regards as a more typical "US army" approach of a mass attack with lots of equipment and compares it to the Russians' attempt to take Kyiv last year. He doesn't mention NATO tactics at all. He describes how the Ukrainians have had to switch tactics from unsuccessfully trying to take territory field by field using columns of tanks, to the more successful but much slower tactic of using infantry moving on foot through shelter belts between fields. Although he anticipates more intensive Ukrainian activity in the run up to the NATO summit next week, he doesn't foresee any significant Ukrainian breakthrough without a functioning air force and long-range ATACMS missile systems.

Nopw rogber, I would doubt that very much, even without Zelensky recently affirming that there will not be any negotiations or even discussions until Putin has departed from all of Ukraine . inc Crimea. if neccessary, Ukrainians will fight to the last man and woman rather than submit to Putin. They know only too well what to expect from him .

To be fair I reckon most people who use that description don't realise how much it annoyed the countries in question. It was just the way that they were often described in certain countries. Nobody meant any disrespect by it - a bit like people calling Ukraine "the Ukraine" which is pretty rare nowadays but was extremely common a decade ago. Directives like this from the AP will help with that.

Cluster munitions a game changer ?

Disappointing….

I disagree.

They will work great against well dug in infantry.

For sure they will work very well over a concentrated area. I saw what one of them did that landed in a street in NIS in Serbia during the NATO bombing. It caused massive damage up and down both sides of the street. You can add to the damage what the un exploded ones do when they. they get triggered. BTW, Chinese and Russian Cluster Munitions have the highest failure rate IE: Most lethal.

I see Russia have another war crime primed and waiting.

This time it's explosives on the roof of the Power Unit No.4 at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

This will cause worse devastation than Chernobyl did.

Worst case scenario has already been provided for by experts and in that scenario we're nowhere near a Chernobyl level event.

Would be great to hear how you came to the opposite conclusion.

The media have been all over this like a fly to ****. Idiots like us love a catastrophe and that is exactly why they're sharing images with white dots as potential mines. It was only earlier today that the planet labs images had nothing on the roofs of the reactors.

Either way, if you think a Chernobyl level event is possible due to a few explosions on the roof of a reactor built for such a thing then you're clueless. I'm clueless too, but I just had to read a bit...

The only concern in what you have described is an internal issue for Russia. It doesn't matter how many men or machinery they pull from said motherland if the Ukrainians can't get close enough to see it.

Well they still have the T34s.

So you think they're moving them into Ukraine for the craic so ?

Not because they're struggling to contain things as they are ?

That isn't what I said at all. Just agreeing that the counteroffensive isn't going as well as planned, which the Ukrainians and US also state. The entrenched lines being refortified from within Russia means nothing for now, unless from the potential uprisers within.