The distance from the Belarus frontier to Kyiv is 100km, and it would have been foolish to fight along the borders. There isn’t even a natural barrier along the north-axis, hence the dynamic that played out in the WW2 Battle of Kiev in 1941. The fact that the Russians gained a lot of ground early is no surprise at all.
The difficult fact for Ukraine is that their two largest cities are little more than an hour’s drive from the frontiers, Kharkiv is even closer to the border than Kyiv.
The tale of the tape is pretty grim too, the numbers don’t even capture the full imbalance. Russians are using T-72 variants and T-80s, most of the Ukrainian tanks are upgraded T-64s. Air superiority was probably established within minutes with those cruise strikes.
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Air defenses were obliterated last night, they have mostly just manpads left and they ARE shooting down helos landing. The Rusians are executing high risk landings under fire and their attack is absolutely overwhelming. They have total air domination. In short, you are much too harsh. This is a Great Power against a power with far less military technical capabilities. Ukrainians are fighting back harshly as documented above, but they must have several thousand CAS by now. Be careful with your judgement.
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Hindsight now but with an enemy with such overwhelming air superiority that was always likely to have suppressed installations early doors, flooding as many MANPADS into the theater as possible might have been a better tactic and trained as many people on their use as possible; the air battle equivalent of guerilla warfare.
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It is the literal equivalent of David Vs Goliath. And 99/100 cases, The Goliath always wins in a quick TKO
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I do believe that this is only the initial force that Russia has kept forward. Their full strength won’t even be needed.
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Ukraine now admits loss of control (we have seen this earlier). The question now is , can they stop the landing of the VDV regiment inbound ???
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Maybe needed, but their full strength is far from deployed.They still have axis to start attacks from. They want to soften them up and then execute several encircle maneuvers and then boil and destroy the kettles (yes, I know I am talking about humans but this is Russian military jargon)
I cannot vouch for accuracy of course, no one can.
No - and it is also clear that Belarussian forces are involved, both ground and air units. So that skews the odds even more dramatically. Even if the Belarussian forces aren’t driving forward aggressively, they are acting as a pinning force along a 500km frontier, albeit one with a significant obstacle.
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Zenit is playing Real Betis this afternoon. It is going to be interesting to see how the crowd reacts.
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More on the protests in Russian cities:
By the way, the Russian intelligentsia, those on twitter, usually very much behind Kreml, seems in shock. Few in Russia expected this war and warring against their brethren hurts psychologically.
Very stiff Ukrainian resistance despite their soldiers now living in hell.
@Arminius @Magnus I know the Ukraine and Russia aren’t evenly matched. But my take on the developments, specially the pending capitulation of Kiev is
- Ukraine didn’t prepare properly (Russia has been massing troops and equipment for a month) and hoped that the western powers will manage to deter an invasion.
- They thought the Russian invasion will be restricted in the east and they will not seek total occupation.
I’m rather disgusted and enraged with what’s happening.
Yes, but maybe you understand that they were in a mobilisation trap ?
As long as an attack was uncertain, Russia dominated the situation with their build up and threats, effectively putting Ukraine in the good old mobilisation trap. Mobilise and your enemy will attack etc.
But we don’t know, while politically Ukrainians were saying one thing, I know for a fact that the military prepared. But as to how much, I can’t say. I just know that there was a military line and a political (stave of war line)
Also, modern warfare is insanely fast. But I get your points.
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I am not sure I agree. There is significant fighting outside Kyiv and Kharkiv, where it appears Russian forces have hit the first real prepared Ukrainian lines of defence. I don’t have much doubt about the outcome, but the Ukrainians are not rolling over. They just didn’t mass significant forces in forward positions. Considering they would be quite familiar with Russian offensive doctrine, that is not remotely surprising.
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