Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

2022-2024 Russo-Ukrainian War

Collapse
This is a sticky topic.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Notice how the Ukraine government/news services are focusing on shelling that bridge? You might have missed that the Russians have captured the 2d largest power plant in the country.


    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...ce-2022-07-27/

    KYIV, July 27 (Reuters) - Russian forces have taken over Ukraine's second biggest power plant, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday, following an earlier claim by Russian-backed forces to have captured it intact.

    Seizing the Soviet-era coal-fired Vuhlehirsk power plant in eastern Ukraine would be Moscow's first strategic gain in more than three weeks in what it calls its "special operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" its neighbour.

    "They achieved a tiny tactical advantage - they captured Vuhlehirsk," adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in an interview posted on YouTube. read more

    .....

    Ukraine has spoken of launching a major counter-offensive in the south to try to retake cities such as Kherson. Rendering the bridge unusable for Russian forces is seen by Western military analysts as something that would make it much harder for Moscow's forces to operate smooth supply lines and defend land they have seized.
    Not sure controlling the power plant is a Tiny Tactical Advantage"

    Comment


    • Getting a little power hungry. When this is all over Ukraine will need massive loans to rebuild.
      Probably not a good idea to piss them off or accuse them of being "War Criminals"

      https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/26/ukra...skyy-aide.html

      Major U.S. and European banks should be prosecuted for “committing war crimes” over their financing of trade with the Russian regime, according to a top aide to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

      Oleg Ustenko, economic advisor to Zelenskyy, said the Ukrainian government believes banks, such as JPMorgan, HSBC and Citi, are aiding the Kremlin’s war efforts in Ukraine through financing companies that trade oil with Russia.

      “Everybody who is financing these war criminals, who are doing these terrible things in Ukraine, are also committing war crimes in our logic,” he told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble Tuesday on “Capital Connection.”

      JPMorgan, HSBC and Citi did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on those allegations.

      Asked directly if he wants to see these banks prosecuted for war crimes, Ustenko said: “Exactly.”

      More in the link

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Gun Grape View Post
        Notice how the Ukraine government/news services are focusing on shelling that bridge? You might have missed that the Russians have captured the 2d largest power plant in the country.

        Not sure controlling the power plant is a Tiny Tactical Advantage"
        The same report (I was just about to post it) states that Russia has announced a 'massive' redeployment of troops to the southern front' i.e. Kherson. Make of that statement what you will. Perhaps the Kremlin figures that given the local geography & almost constant NATO surveillance there's no point in trying to hide large scale troop re-deployments into southern sector Ukraine so they might as well get some propaganda value out of it.

        Of course 'massive' is also relative term given Russia's chronic manpower shortage. Anyway if (big if) that statement is true Ukraine better hurry up and destroy both those key bridges asap - little help please NATO?
        Last edited by Monash; 28 Jul 22,, 02:46.
        If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Gun Grape View Post
          Notice how the Ukraine government/news services are focusing on shelling that bridge? You might have missed that the Russians have captured the 2d largest power plant in the country.

          https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...ce-2022-07-27/

          Not sure controlling the power plant is a Tiny Tactical Advantage"
          3.6 gigawatts out of Ukraine's total capacity of 54 gigawatts pre-war, well, that's not nothing. 7% of Ukraine's total electricity generation.

          Was that power plant intact or even operating anymore though? The Russians captured the city next to the plant on May 22, and were right on the edge of the plant for nine weeks. There was constant fighting there over that nine-week period, and photos from June show the plant burning.
          "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

          Comment


          • Kherson: Ukraine stepping up counter offensive to retake city - sources

            Ukraine's campaign to retake the occupied Kherson region is "gathering pace," Western military sources say.

            A key bridge into the city of Kherson was forced to shut after being damaged by long-range Ukrainian rockets originally supplied by the US.

            It means thousands of Russian troops are now in danger of being cut off from the rest of the occupied territory.

            Strategically located west of the Dnipro River, the city was the first in the war to fall to Moscow's forces.

            Ukrainian forces fired at Kherson's Antonivskiy Bridge using a Himars artillery rocket system on Tuesday, which according to Western military sources left the crossing "completely unusable."

            Only a pockmarked wreck remains of the half-mile long bridge, one of two key routes spanning the Dnipro River which have both now been hit.

            Moscow depended on the crossings to resupply their troops stationed west of the river, and are now at risk of becoming isolated from the rest of Russia's occupying forces.

            Military sources described Kherson as "politically the nearest Russia has to a jewel in the crown of its occupation" - and its loss, they say, "would severely undermine Russia's attempts to paint the occupation as a success".

            Moscow is now "moving the maximum number of troops in the Kherson direction," said Oleksiy Danilov, who is secretary of Ukraine's National Security Council, on Wednesday evening.

            The BBC has not been able to independently verify this claim.

            Elsewhere in eastern Donetsk, advancing Russian forces captured the country's second largest power station - the Vuhlehirsk coal-fired plant.

            In Kherson, Russian-installed officials confirmed that a Ukrainian artillery strike had seriously damaged the Antonivskiy Bridge, forcing its closure to traffic.

            Speaking to Ria news agency, deputy city leader Kirill Stremousov said ferries and pontoon bridges would now be used instead to maintain links across the Dnipro River with the rest of Russian-occupied territory.

            For days the Ukrainian military has targeted the bridges using highly effective rocket systems supplied by the US.

            According to Western military sources, the attack is part of a Ukrainian counter effort to isolate Russian troops, with the ultimate goal of recapturing the entire region.

            If it proves successful the ambitious campaign would provide a much-needed boost for Kyiv by retaking from Russia the most significant population centre it has so far captured since the invasion began - the city of Kherson.

            The southern city, which had a population of 290,000 before the war, is currently administered by Moscow-backed officials after falling early on in the war.

            According to Tass news agency, city officials there have moved forward in recent days with plans to hold a referendum on formally joining Russia - with authorities forming an election committee in preparation.

            The US has accused Russia of preparing to annex parts of occupied Ukraine illegally.

            In his nightly Wednesday address President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed that Ukraine would eventually rebuild the Antonivskiy Bridge as well as other crossings in the Kherson region.

            "We are doing everything to ensure that the occupying forces do not have any logistical opportunities in the country," he said.

            Russia captured Kherson with relatively little resistance in the war's early days - and the failure of Ukraine's security service to destroy crossing points over the Dnipro River at the time is believed to have last week led to Mr Zelensky's dismissal of the agency's director Ivan Bakanov.

            ---------------------------------------------------------

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
              A couple of holes made a slab look structurally unsound. Will defeinetely need micro rebar mix for fast fix but don't know any factories in Russia or in the UKR for that matter. Still, nothing unrepairable and relatively fast
              It looks as if even if it is repairable, and relatively fast, the Russians aren't fixing it. They are instead procuring ferries and beginning attempts at a pontoon bridge nearby. Which themselves, I think, would be good targets for drones and HIMARS respectively.

              According to an advisor to the governor of Kherson Oblast, the Russians have tried and failed to procure local labor to fix the bridge, who have refused, and nobody's turned up yet to do the work.

              A couple of holes through those slabs look big enough for a mid-sized car to fall through, and I reckon in its current state, the bridge is unusable for heavy vehicles.

              I think one HIMARs salvo every night would be sufficient to keep it out of action. Keep compounding the damage. Maybe someone on the Ukrainian side came to the same conclusion you did, just keep hitting the same spot over and over again. I don't imagine those car size holes were done by a single rocket.
              Last edited by Ironduke; 28 Jul 22,, 15:35.
              "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

              Comment


              • This structural engineer makes a fairly compelling and detailed case that the bridge is out of commission for the rest of the war.

                https://mobile.twitter.com/zahed/sta...11470024310784

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Goatboy View Post
                  This structural engineer makes a fairly compelling and detailed case that the bridge is out of commission for the rest of the war.
                  No, you lay another bridge over the support beams. Of course, if every slab is damaged this way, that too is undoable.
                  Chimo

                  Comment


                  • Russian Casualties in Ukraine Surpass 75,000: U.S. Intelligence
                    Roughly half of the Russian troops initially sent to invade Ukraine are estimated to have been killed or wounded, indicating that the ongoing conflict has enacted a sizable toll on Russia.

                    Representative Elissa Slotkin on Wednesday told CNN that over 75,000 Russian soldiers have been either killed or wounded since Russia began its invasion on February 24. Slotkin made the remarks after attending a classified briefing on the war in Ukraine with Biden administration officials who described the Russian military as drained.

                    In the leadup to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia reportedly amassed 150,000 soldiers along the Ukrainian border. Since then, figures on Russian losses have remained nebulous. The new numbers, if confirmed, would mean heavy losses for Russia as Ukraine presses ahead with a counteroffensive.

                    Describing the figure as "huge," Slotkin told CNN that the Russian military has made "incredible amounts of investment in their land forces," over 80 percent of which she said are "bogged down" and tired.

                    Slotkin, who recently returned from a trip to Ukraine, told CNN the next three to six weeks could be critical for how the conflict unfolds.

                    "I think that what we heard very firmly from President Zelensky and reinforced today is that the Ukrainians really want to hit Russia in the teeth a few times before the winter comes, put them in the best position possible, particularly hitting them down south," Slotkin said.

                    A counterattack is currently underway in the Russian-occupied southern portion of the country as Ukrainian forces attempt to retake the city of Kherson. Regaining control of the city is expected to give Ukrainian forces a foothold to reclaim parts of the Black Sea coast.

                    After seeing Russian gains in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region earlier in the summer, Ukrainian officials have more recently adopted a buoyant tone in their public statements. In particular, Ukrainian forces have touted their success using U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to upend Russia's war effort, targeting Russian command posts and ammunition depots with long-range missile strikes.

                    Richard Moore, head of British spy agency MI6, said during last week's Aspen Security Forum that Russia was "about to run out of steam," while Ukraine still enjoyed high morale as it received powerful weapons from Western allies.

                    "I think our assessment is that the Russians will increasingly find it difficult to supply manpower and material over the next few weeks," he said. "They will have to pause in some way and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to strike back."


                    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a national speech on Tuesday that nearly 40,000 Russian service members had died or been injured in the invasion.

                    The Kremlin has been tight-lipped about casualties, with the Ministry of Defense only reporting troop losses twice in March, according to independent Russian media outlet Mediazona. A Russian lawmaker who chairs a defense committee told state-run media agency RIA Novosti in June that "we have practically stopped losing people."

                    Newsweek reached out to the Russian government for comment.
                    _______
                    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                    Comment


                    • That's clearly bullshit. With that casualty rate, the Ukrainians should have marched all the way to Moscow. Russian combat ineffectiveness is measured at 40% casualties (ours is 25%). At 75K, the entire invasion force would have been combat ineffective. Clearly not the case. If it was, there would have been no standing army between the Ukrainians and Moscow.
                      Last edited by Officer of Engineers; 28 Jul 22,, 19:50.
                      Chimo

                      Comment


                      • That's clearly bullshit. With that casualty rate, the Ukrainians should have marched all the way to Moscow. Russian combat ineffectiveness is measured at 40% casualties (ours is 25%). At 75K, the entire invasion force would have been combat ineffective. Clearly not the case. If it was, there would have been no standing army between the Ukrainians and Moscow.
                        too many unknowns. obviously it's not 75K KIA, so if you have say 15K KIA + 60K WIA, then of course a certain percentage of WIA can be cycled back into action.

                        with covert mobilization, use of DNR/LNR conscripts, and essentially shrinking the battlespace by 50%, Putin doesn't need a one-for-one replacement.
                        There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
                          No, you lay another bridge over the support beams. Of course, if every slab is damaged this way, that too is undoable.
                          It looks like that bridge is pretty well screwed for now. Those float bridges you got there, Ivan. It'd be a shame if Mister HIMARS finds out about it.
                          “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                          Mark Twain

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by astralis View Post
                            too many unknowns. obviously it's not 75K KIA, so if you have say 15K KIA + 60K WIA, then of course a certain percentage of WIA can be cycled back into action.
                            Show me an intel report that even says 40K new troops.

                            Originally posted by astralis View Post
                            with covert mobilization, use of DNR/LNR conscripts, and essentially shrinking the battlespace by 50%, Putin doesn't need a one-for-one replacement.
                            Our intel must be pretty screwed if we can't see the traffic for 40K new Russian troops.
                            Chimo

                            Comment


                            • Our intel must be pretty screwed if we can't see the traffic for 40K new Russian troops.
                              just as all of the Russian casualties didn't happen all at once, why should we expect the same of Russian regeneration efforts?

                              there was obvious regeneration following the failure of the Kyiv push and prior to the renewed assault in the Donbas. entire combat-ineffective BTGs were broken up and mixed with still effective BTGs. mercs were brought in. conscription kicked in for LNR/DNR. Russian conscripts going to garrisons to replace regulars going out to the area of operations.

                              moreover, the Russians weren't -that- stupid to attack in the first place without a sizable force in reserve. as it is, though, even with that and the shrunken war goals, it's clear they're still short on manpower. note that they haven't done anything more than company-sized attacks for the last three weeks.

                              in any case just because they don't have the manpower resources to put together a large offensive -- for the time being -- doesn't mean the Ukrainians can roll to Moscow. Russians still hold firepower advantage and air superiority, and the Ukrainians don't have a 3:1 manpower advantage either, for all their talk of a million-man army.
                              There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by astralis View Post
                                just as all of the Russian casualties didn't happen all at once, why should we expect the same of Russian regeneration efforts?
                                Ok, how about 10K or even 5K? Do we have any reports of a brigade size traffic to the front? Surely we can detect multiple regiments shipping their reserve battalions to their respective assembley areas before being transported to the front.

                                No matter how you slice it. We have ZERO intel of a 40K traffic. If the 75K casualty list is anywhere near true (and it is not), 40K troops (the bear minimum to maintain current combat operations) traffic in less than 5 months of combat is not unnoticeable.
                                Last edited by Officer of Engineers; 29 Jul 22,, 00:12.
                                Chimo

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X