From the information you and others have provided/forwarded I tend to agree. What was interesting is the photo of the local terrain, in terms of height. From 2D photos you almost take for granted the land is flat.
What are your thoughts on the strategic value of holding the area?
This is topographic. Soledar is not flat:
In this map, you can by pressing a button to the right, change between map types. I now switched to topographic. Beneath Soledar is low lands so will be hard to defend I think.
Russian report from Bakhmut:
The two Brits were missing. One of the bodies is said to be one of them. The other is honestly also probably dead, but one cannot know for sure of course.
Yeah, I saw that on the RWA page a twitter thread attached to one of your posts. Sad if true, I hold so much respect for people who enter warzones to provide aid. I know for sure I would not be actively enrolling.
From today’s article.
“It’s always a similar pattern: First they say ‘no,’ then they fiercely defend their decision, only to say ‘yes’ in the end. We are still trying to understand why the German government is doing this to itself.”
A joke meme, but on point:
For those who wants to read up on the condition:
I honestly don’t think you will see a decision on German’s military that hasn’t been agreed and rubber stamped by the US. To some point, this is exactly what you want to see because in a military alliance like NATO you really can’t afford one member to go writing cheques that they can’t cash. I’m not sure about masochism as political behaviour but I suspect that there is an element of reluctance to be involved being seen as a political virtue domestically.
I’m curious as to how this pans out because, obviously, the Ukrainians will have to have been training with the new equipment somewhere. At the moment there is a live fire exercise going on in the Sennelager training range which is a British run facility. Ostensibly, this is a training exercise for British service personnel going to the Baltic but there is no telling what they are actually up to. Generally, all people are told locally is that things will be going bang.
American Abram tanks and other heavy material landed in the last couple of days in Rotterdam harbour to be escorted by Dutch military forces to eastern Europe reinforcing their troops in Polen.
That can come in handy for the Ukrainian.
I agree, I just think it is politically extremely stupid in terms of losing Soft Power and standing, since Germany will send them soon anyway, but first they need and require to be politically humiliated before they reach that step. It’s a remarkable act of self harm and quite humiliating to watch. The only ones who thinks this is prudent is SDP themselves as well as Die Linke and Putinist AFD. CDU wants a change, the other parties too. Die Grüne wants to preserve relations .
Habeack today said that Germany would allow Poland to send leopards. Soon Germany too will send tanks, but only after having been humiliated and made sure they get as little political capital as possible for sending tanks, while losing maximum. So first there is this akward need to be humilated prior to sending those tanks they are going to send soon anyway.
The obvious problem with supplying Ukraine with a large number of heavy armour, IFVs and even artillery, is training and logistics. That needs to be worked out. However, the leopard is easy to use compared to US Arbams, which is quite a lot more different compared to the Russian tanks than the lepard is, so giving Abrams to Ukraine is much more tricky. Also ammunition. The 10 UK Challenger tanks they may send is kind of bullshit, since Ukraine needs at least 40-50 for it to be useful since the Challenger uses a special type of ammo. But the leopard does not. If Germany at least allows shipment of it, logistics for the leopard is much easier, since so many European states have leopards, some of whom are willing to repair them like poland definately will be.
CDU representative Norbert Röttgen follows up on this in a good way. It’s better to hear it from a German politician than me, so:
That was CDU, now the Greens
Still fighting in Soledar and Ukraine still holds parts of it !
I fear for Mariupol pt2. tailing troops having to be left as rear guard and eventually encircled and hauled off to RU prisons or shot.
I think we are passed that stage already and that there was a rear guard that were left behind in the town centre. There were some ugly pictures that I am not allowed to post here, yesterday, from the town centre, with quite a lot of Ukrainian corpses (don’t ask me to post them, it was stuff I scrolled through and many corpses in such a state that mods won’t allow it). I don’t really doubt Wagner that much when they say they took around a hundred prisoners. That number is not unrealistic as such.
I was expecting that. I saw pictures as well of the bodies laying out in the fields being claimed as Russian, so the reciprocation would be similar.
The ones I meant were in Soledar town centre.
of course, the Ukrainians weren’t engaging RU Forces out in the open. that’s suicide.
That is exactly what I think of when I think of the Russian-Polish relationship, deep and abiding mutual respect. Or not…
