War crime.
Hmm
I think it is technically legal. I believe they are using termite.
I believe the same unless something odd happens.
Reaching another defining point again. Russia seems to be throwing the kitchen sink at this salient and Ukrainian forces are being hammered. Contrasting news is showing Russian desperation in the activation of obsolete equipment and the numbers bear that out. I don’t follow all the sources but from afar this seems to me very much a win or bust action from Russian command. There will come a point where they won’t be able to sustain attacking impetus but they’re obviously playing it with that point being after their targets have been met. If Ukraine can hold out till before then…
Hold fast lads.
that’s what it looks like to me as well. the storm is hitting its peak, and UA just have to weather it and hope the waves dissipate. am hoping they can survive it and counter when it recedes.
To be honest, I have been surprised we have not seen T-64s before now. In 2014, the Separatists were mostly reinforced with old storage T-64s,so I don’t view that as a defining moment myself. I am also noticing more than a bit of hubris from western sources more or less claiming that the T64 is just scrap waiting to be destroyed. I disagree, it serves a battlefield purpose and if the Russians manage to get local superiority with armour it is mostly another tank. Most Ukrainian armour are T-64 I note.
The problem with Donbas is that the entire salient seems to be falling and that salient contains the bulk of the Ukrainian Defence Forces. If they have to evacuate it all, how far must they withdraw before they set up new fortifications ? Surely they would have to give up Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. That is awful if so.
very long and interesting thread
Yeah, hope he is right.
Finally a realistic number assessment of aicrafts lost by Russia.
Slightly different to the Ukrainian assessment
I have little interests in these court cases myself (they will be swapped, almost certainly, all of them, barring perhaps one singular particularly heinous sexual crime leading to fatality, I suppose), but it’s going on behind the scenes:
Yes, the Ukrainian numbers of aircraft downed have always been pure bogus though. I have consistently said so since the beginning. You don’t shoot down 200 aircraft but are unable to provide photo documentation for anything more than 25. Aircrafts are large, they leave remains. Oryx blog is probably very close to the truth there, and then you can add maybe 5-6 planes dropped in Russian held territory which they have been unable to provide photo or film for, but no more.
Losing 30-40 is still a significant loss though, and 50 helos hurts. But of course, it doesn’t hurt as much as in propaganda wonderland with 200 + and etc.
Alright, so what the Ukrainians seem to be trying to do is to hold the Severdonetsk-Lisichansk corridor, with all its fortifications and count on Russia being unable to advance further from Popasna. This seems risky. But the idea is then to let the offensive run out of steam,crashing against the UKR fortifications in the pocket and bleeding out, hmm. But what for the future ? As long as the Russians have a salients to attack, the pocket will be under great threat and it’s a damn critical pocket too, given the UKR defenders stationed there. If, I am just saying if, but if the worst happens and it gets cut off, it would result in terrible defeat as this is where significant portions of their army is.
Hmm
What’s the situation with supplying MiGs? Has that been abandoned entirely?
I think so, yes. There is messaging from inside NATO (according to Kyiv post) that NATO has decided that jets are too provocative and could come to close to a NATO country entering the war. And they are going to play safe.