Russian invasion of Ukraine

[ICTChris]

8 minutes ago, TxRover said:

North Korea. I expect the Norks have huge stores of Soviet era artillery shells, and will be quite happy to convert them into exchange, hard currency, petroleum products or foodstuffs.

 

 

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

19 minutes ago, TxRover said:

Norks

[Newbornbairn]

51 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Those vehicles are designed to be amphibious but apparently sunk when they were driven into water.

In the 90s when the Wall came down, the West got a look at the Soviet equipment up close. Those vehicles were supposed to assault NATO over the Elbe, Weser and Rhine. They discovered 80% of them would have sank because they were in such a shocking state of repair.  Nothing's changed it would seem. 

[LongTimeLurker]

Also lots of talk at the moment from normally sensible information outlets (i.e. not the likes of tpyxa news that are often for light entertainment purposes only) of the Russians leaving Svatove in Luhansk oblast:

 

[ICTChris]

Russia has launched precision strikes on several power stations, one in Kharkiv.

I’m *sure* there is a great military need to cut the power for Kharkiv and it’s not simply ‘revenge’ for the crushing defeat. 

Edited September 11, 2022 by ICTChris

[dorlomin]

Russia targeting power generation and water supply. Its an escalation. Its also more petulant than effective. Seems they do not have any valuable military targets they can hit right now. 

 

[Newbornbairn]

[welshbairn]

44 minutes ago, dorlomin said:

Russia targeting power generation and water supply. Its an escalation. Its also more petulant than effective. Seems they do not have any valuable military targets they can hit right now. 

 

Looks like they're listening to the hardliners, like this guy. When the West invade countries they always start with targeting civilian infrastructure like power stations and transport links, lumping them in with command and control for press statements. I'm a bit surprised the Russians haven't done more of that, the targeting in places like Odessa and Kiev has seemed a bit random and ineffective.

Quote

A special military operation (SVO) must be made anti-terrorist, former member of the commission on biological weapons, military expert Igor Nikulin, said on September 11 in an interview with Izvestia.

“It's time for the NWO to rename the anti-terrorist operation. We are fighting a terrorist fascist regime in Ukraine. They fire at civilians, they shoot at the ZNPP, although this threatens a nuclear catastrophe for the whole of Europe,” he said.

In addition, Nikulin recalled that Ukrainian militants are also attacks committing provocations and terrorist on the territory of the Russian Federation - just remember the murder of political scientist Daria Dugina, he pointed out.

Nikulin added that he sees the need for constant symmetrical responses to the shelling of territories liberated by the RF Armed Forces or the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics (LDNR).

“I believe that for each arrival in the DPR, LPR or liberated territories there should be an arrival in Kyiv, Lvov, Vinnitsa, etc. Wherever a wolf's lair is found, everywhere it is necessary to hollow. It is necessary as Israel has been fighting terrorists for 70 years. There is experience, we must take it into service,” the expert said.

He also noted that it is necessary to destroy the supply lines of the armed forces of Ukraine (AFU).

“The Americans are delivering HIMARS missiles by rail... Why do they still have roads?” the expert stressed.

Nikulin added that instead of releasing captured Ukrainian soldiers, it is necessary to send them to work on the restoration of Donbass.

“The prisoners are not to be released anywhere third - they are taken prisoner for the time, they return home, they are again mobilized. They are needed for corrective work, let them restore everything that was destroyed, ”the expert concluded.

Earlier on September 11, military expert Yuriy Knutov said that Kiev continues to strike at the peaceful cities of Donbass and territories controlled by the Russian Federation in order to demonstrate alleged successes to the West and achieve an increase in military assistance.

On the same day, in an interview with Izvestia, political scientist Bohdan Bezpalko called for a powerful response to the shelling of civilians by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to Bezpalko, Ukraine should not be able to carry out logistics, supplies and supply of fuel and electricity.

Russia has been conducting a special operation to protect Donbass since February 24 . Its key goals are the denazification and demilitarization of the Kyiv regime. Moscow emphasized that with the help of a special operation , Russia was stopping the war that Kiev had waged for eight years against the civilian population of the republics.

https://iz-ru.translate.goog/1393867/2022-09-11/voennyi-ekspert-predlozhil-zhestko-otvechat-na-provokatcii-vsu?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=op,sc

[dorlomin]

Power grids are enormous machines. Arguably the biggest machine in every country. But that are designed by nature to be redundant. A portion of your power stations will be down for maintenance at any one time and there will be "spinning reserves" ready to turn into power generators and take up the slack of a failed generator. You will also have load followers that will exist to turn on and off for a few hours of peak power a day and base load power aimed at running all day and night. 

Morals aside, if you are going to hit a power grid you have to hit it hard and sustained to have an impact. Ukraine is not the UK, it is very poor so it likely lacks much of the resilience and redundancy of a western grid. But it will still have lots of redundancy in it. 

Every day we see ammunition stores burning from HIMARS and Excalibur hits, we see downed bridges and sometimes command posts taken out. 

If Russia had the capacity to take those out they would. They are currently experiencing tactical and operational level reversals of a very serious magnitude. They likely have a ticking clock of months of operational capacity left. Turning the lights off in Kharkiv for a few hours is not going to change that. Its petulant. 

This is like the V2 attacks on London. It sucks. But its not effective. How much money a week do you think it would take to hire HGVs to replace the rail capacity of Ukraine if it were really taken out? How much would it take to bring in HGVs from all over Europe to do the lifting of the rail network if Berlin, London and Washington opened the cheque book and said: Lets start hiring HGVs? 

If they could burn HIMARs stocks they would. If they could burn 155mm stocks they would. If they could destroy tanks they would. 

V2 2.0. 

[TxRover]

21 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Looks like they're listening to the hardliners, like this guy. When the West invade countries they always start with targeting civilian infrastructure like power stations and transport links, lumping them in with command and control for press statements. I'm a bit surprised the Russians haven't done more of that, the targeting in places like Odessa and Kiev has seemed a bit random and ineffective.

https://iz-ru.translate.goog/1393867/2022-09-11/voennyi-ekspert-predlozhil-zhestko-otvechat-na-provokatcii-vsu?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=op,sc

The point being missed by the hardline Russians is that with the Ukrainian forces now back to the Russian/Ukraine prewar border in the north, it would be relatively simple to knock out a number of Russian power stations, railway lines, etc with minimal civilian casualties. I think a simple message from Ukrainian leadership to Russian leadership on their willingness to match the Russian strikes with similar strikes inside Russia would not be inappropriate right now. While there would be immense fury within the Russian leadership, there is also a pragmatic understanding that war is war, and it is not an unreasonable response if they keep lobbing semi-guided weapons at Ukraine.

[Newbornbairn]

Why the Moskva was sunk - 

 

https://9gag.com/gag/aXnZRgP

[welshbairn]

14 minutes ago, Newbornbairn said:

Why the Moskva was sunk - 

 

https://9gag.com/gag/aXnZRgP

wid

[Newbornbairn]

 

[Clown Job]

It’s a shame we are having a news blackout this week 

[LongTimeLurker]

Andriy Melnyk was recalled to Kyiv recently:

https://newsrnd.com/news/2022-08-22-andriy-melnyk--recalled-ukrainian-ambassador-leaves-germany-on-october-14.SkfDa5tlJj.html

But does appear to still be the ambassador at this point.

Edited September 12, 2022 by LongTimeLurker

[Theroadlesstravelled]

What's "epic mintering" in Russian.

[ICTChris]

There are a couple of good podcasts on the Kharkiv counter offensive by Dmitri Alperovitch. First one with a Ukrainian reserve colonel Sergii Grabskyi.

https://podcast.silverado.org/episodes/like-ants-to-wet-sugar-how-ukraine-won-the-battle-of-kharkiv-t1YYUr8n
 

There is also one with Michael Kofman, who is an analyst on the Russian military with a US based think tank.

https://podcast.silverado.org/episodes/russian-northern-front-collapse-latest-on-ukrainian-counteroffensive
 

[LongTimeLurker]

Whether or not the Ukrainians are advancing into northern Luhansk oblast is probably the thing to keep an eye on today along with Snihurivka in Kherson oblast:

 

[welshbairn]

11 hours ago, Newbornbairn said:

 

The German guy is an academic rather than a politician by the way. He thought the Ukrainian leadership should have ran away and set up a government in exile in Berlin.

https://www.rnd.de/politik/russland-ukraine-krieg-experte-schlaegt-ukrainische-exil-regierung-in-berlin-vor-GQJEDGQWHFAOXMI33KIST6NDYE.html

[ICTChris]