Yesterday I posted a picture of a Leopard 2A6 tank, 4 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and a Soviet era mine clearing vehicle all caught up next to each other in a minefield. There is now also better video of that scene as well as others.
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For unknown reasons the Ukrainian command later decided to add five more Bradleys to the scrap exposition:
Military Advisor @miladvisor – 18:06 UTC · Jun 9, 2023
⚡️👇9x 🇺🇸M2 Bradley,🇩🇪Leopard 2A6, armoured recovery vehicle lost by Ukrainian forces.
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It is the same Leopard tank in the same position. I believe that the ‘armoured recovery vehicle’ @miladvisor mentions is an incorrect identification of the mine clearing vehicle that can also be seen in the previous picture.
All of those vehicles seem to have some mobility damage, i.e. they lost a track or two due to mine explosions. One of the added Bradleys seems to be on fire. Then its neighboring Bradley decides to also burn and explodes.
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Someone had sent half a company into a minefield where it was damaged and stopped. He then sent the second half of the company to the same place where it met the same fate.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” (No, that is not an Einstein quote.)
Here is a first person view video from the Ukrainian side of what, I believe, is another group of four Bradleys in a minefield. Finally someone throws smoke grenades so some of the soldiers involved can be evacuated.
Simplicitus tries to put some rationality cover over the Ukrainian decision to attack the strongest defense position of the Russian forces:
This is all to say that Ukraine has almost no time left to make a big splash. They have no option apart from gaining one final big flashy triumph they can hail as a victory to be sold to their souring Western audience, whose support is slowly drying up, and who’s getting ready to throw in the towel.
And the only way for Ukraine to get such a huge and relatively ‘fast’ triumph is by severing the Crimean landbridge. It’s the only objective in the entire conflict where Ukraine can deal one big deathblow to Russia’s jugular in a very proportionately small amount of moves. No other possible combination of captures or assaults in Donbass can have such an effect.
I find that hard to accept. One attacks where one has the highest chance of success, not where some foreign political calender tells one to go. How that is then (over-)sold to the ‘western’ public is a completely different question.
Throughout the last night the 47th brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces tried to attack the Russian lines.The 47th is supposed to be elite, as it was trained and armed by NATO countries.
Two columns of the brigade were hit and stopped before they could reach the line of contact. What was then left to attack failed to break through.