Russia - threadbanned users in OP

How are people able to determine the offensive isn't going as planned? From the outset the Ukrainian officials have said it would be slow and little more.

Only the media and commentators have been bigging it up for clicks.

"You didn't see graphite on the roof!"

Slowly, slowly, SLOWLY at the beginning while the ‘road blocks ‘ are being removed and then faster and faster and even FASTER as the place becomes clear.

I'm not sure if they are amongst the list of banned munitions or not, but they should be!! Some military's drop them with little yellow parachutes, so they can drift ( its what happened to the one I saw in NIS.) Theoretically, the yellow makes them easy to see and safely dispose of. But that's a job for professionals....lots of kids and curious adults as well have been killed / maimed when they even approached them. From what I've heard ( according to my de-mining friends) They fall and land, and if they don't explode, they just lie there. Problem is that they are extremely unstable and literally anything can set them off. They do not have to be touched physically. The fractional change in temperature of your shadow on them will set them off. But if a couple of thousand of them were dropped over heavily defended Russian positions, they would play merry hell with Russian plans, for sure. And let them form part of the massive mine/uxo program that will have to be run post invasion years.

Yes, no one knows what will happen, and the focus is on the hardened parts of the reactor building, but what happens with less protected areas? Lots of unknowns, but one thing is sure, placing bombs or explosives anywhere near a nuclear reactor is not a good idea at any time.

Who's to say they are not the only detonators? What about inside?

The way I see this war now is the gloves are off. Both sides are going toe to toe until someone gets knocked out. From what I see Russia are losing far more soldiers but more importantly equipment.

If this trend continues Ukraine will be a graveyard for the entire Russian army. Obviously Russia will adapt and learn from mistakes but if Ukraine can really get a fleet of western jet's, ATACMS and attack helis on the go Russia could be in a very grim position come next summer.

If Wagner marched to Moscow this summer imagine what'll happen next summer.

Whatever makes the day interesting

One thing you have to understand about Russia, and how Prigozhin was able to move a large convoy of vehicles to within 150 miles of Moscow. In Russia, appearances are everything. Any large column of military vehicles seen heading for Rostoz would be considered completely normal, ( Rostov being a major military centre )and they passed plenty of checkpoints on the way, ( simply because there are many checkpoints on Russian roads, no matter where they are heading to) Plus no one was going to challenge that kind and size of convoy anyway. But then some one woke up and sent in the attack helicopter's etc, but that stopped when Prigozhin shot them out of the sky. I'm not sure if the convoy was attacked before it arrived at Rostov, or on the road from Rostov to Moscow. Same thing will happen anywhere in Russia where a large 4 x 4 vehicle, with blacked out windows will be stopped at a checkpoint. The driver will demand in no uncertain terms " Why am I being stopped? Don't you know who I am?" and in most cases, the policeman will salute and apologize before waving the car on. That's Russia for you.

Russia normal is already an oxymoron

Prigozhin is dead, the guy has a MASSIVE mouth and is not capable of shutting it, he's silent for too long. dead men can nag .

Can you imagine the state of mind of troops that have been on a front-line for 9 months without any rotation?! Any that survive are likely to be deeply broken and a real risk to civilians if returned to domestic life.

There has been a real lull in front line reporting in the past week. If you look at what's in the headlines it's mostly to do with the wider conflict: Prigozhin, Cluster Munitions & ATACMs chatter, Russian missile attacks on civilian centres. What's more there hasn't even been any Russian crowing about failed offensives.

That leads me to the conclusion that recent commentary that Ukraine have changed tactics seems to be true. From what I've read it goes something like this:

1. After the Ukrainains blew all of the Russian ammo dumps with HIMARs last year it forced the Russians to move them further to the rear with ammo being brought to the artillery units by trucks on an as-need basis
2. In their frontal assaults so far the Ukrainians have had the most difficulty with being targeted by artillery. Yes they're getting caught up in minefields but that mostly just slows them down and makes them easier to hit with artillery
3. Putting 1 & 2 together the Ukrainians have a new tactic of driving along the front-lines in parallel so that they are targetted by artillery but on the move
4. Russian military doctrine is that they open up their artillery in a situation like this and fire everything that they have until the target is destroyed or....
5. ....they run out and call for a re-up from their ammunition stores in the far-rear
6. The Ukrainians now have a window of opportunity while the Russians have to wait. Now is the time to attack directly
7. Also counter-battery will have picked up the position of the artillery and they can target that
8. The theory further goes on to say that the Russians have reacted to this by brining their ammunition piles closer to the front....
9. ....but that leaves them susceptible to being hit by the likes of HIMARs and Storm Shadow which is something that we really have been seeing a lot of in the past week

Saw a video espousing similar last night:

enjoy (7 mo old video but some of this equipment is way older than that)

Yes it is, none the less, that's the "Russian Way", and my query as to at what point the helicopters attacked, before they got to Rostov, or afterwards, on the road to Moscow? in other words, was Prigozhin only taken seriously after he left Rostov?. Because they sure as hell covered a lot of ground between Ukraine and Rostov, and met plenty of check points, and especially now with the war ongoing. Bear in mind that contrary to what is emerging now, on that day, there was an awful lot of fence sitters, waiting to see which way the dice would fall. Personally, I'd say that he could have pulled it off had he gone on to the Kremlin. Putin and other Government royalty had already left Moscow. But for some reason, he pulled out, so now we may never know what really happened on that day

Very interesting article about the mood on the front line in Ukraine, from soldiers and medics. Some optimistic, some pessimistic. And certainly a reminder that for those doing the fighting war is really a hellish business

I think Paris is about to surrender based on the Russian map of the campaign.

I think that figure includes the 1,000 destroyed Leopard 3 and 4 tanks.

Maybe Ukraine only really have the capacity to reasonably operate 100-150 Bradleys as they're currently set up.

But they have the 150 Bradleys on free refill like a Coke in WowBurger. Russia's going to have to destroy an awful lot more Bradleys before its more than a rounding error to the US.

This is why I'm hopeful about this war. Providing the orange idiot doesn't reappear. They'll be pretty set once the F16s/Abrams show up. Once the tap is in service that's the end of it. Even if the UAF only operate 20-50 F16s Russia would literally have to down hundreds of the things to make any real difference. And that won't be happening.

Bit disappointing not to see the ATACMS in this round though.

Sky news US correspondent says the US cluster bomb deal is clear sign the war isn’t going well for Ukraine but that they could shift the momentum significantly on the ground, wiping out heavily dug in Russian troops.

Considering how long the forces of putin had to prepare for the Ukrainian counteroffensive I think it is very unlikely that there was a rigid plan that the moskovyte defenses would have already been weakened enough for the Ukrainians to have serious momentum in their efforts to liberate their country back to the internationally agreed borders. I'm only looking at a limited amount of this war coverage on social media but to me it seems highly plausible that Ukraine is now quite content to turn the forces of putin into fertiliser where they stand rather than loosing more Ukrainian lives simply to see more moskovyte surrounded and forced to surrender or run away without paying for their crimes.