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Britain Claims To Have Helped With The Ukrainian Invasion Of Russia
Yves Smith is discussing the Washington Post report on Russia-Ukraine negotiation to end the infrastructure attacks:
An Admission of Russian Long-Term Weakness or More Complex Calculation?
I had previously discussed the WaPo piece here.
Yves suggests that the negotiations, if they really have happened as described, were an Ukrainian ruse to distract Russia from the Ukrainian preparation of the Kursk oblast incursion. The talks were useless for Russia, she says. She doubts that Russia would favor to stop the attacks on the Ukrainian electricity generating and network capabilities. She suggests that the Ukrainian attacks on Russia create little damage. It disagree with that view.
The winter will already become very difficult for Ukrainian civilians. There is no need to increase the damage on Ukrainian infrastructure beyond the already achieved level.
The Ukrainian attacks have so far created repairable damage in Russia. But that may not be the case forever. One day one of such attacks could in fact create some real catastrophe. The attacks are also binding lots of Russian resources. One needs a huge number of soldiers and equipment to give at least some protection to the most exposed sites. The Russian economy is currently short on men. Not diverting some 100,000 men for local air defense purposes can make a difference.
I believe that Russia was genuinely interested in making such deal. But the Ukrainian attack on Kursk oblast blew it apart.
There are new suggestion on how the Ukrainian incursion into Russia was prepared for.
The Times in London claims that it largely followed a British plan (archived):
When footage of British Challenger 2 battle tanks being used by the Ukrainian army for its counterinvasion of Russia emerged on Tuesday, Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence were ready.
For the previous 48 hours, officials and political aides working for Sir Keir Starmer and John Healey, the defence secretary, had been in talks about how far to go to confirm growing British involvement in the incursion towards Kursk.
The stakes were high. Unseen by the world, British equipment, including drones, have played a central role in Ukraine’s new offensive and British personnel have been closely advising the Ukrainian military for two years, on a scale matched by no other country.
The U.S., in contrast, has claimed not to have known about the Ukrainian plans and there purpose. This leads Kit Klarenberg to develop a theory:
Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg – 15:02 UTC · Aug 18, 2024
"🧵: I speculated earlier was probably Britain behind Kursk suicide op. Lo and behold, a Times article confirms this. More broadly, contents amply underline Kursk latest effort by London to keep the US in the proxy war – and it appears Washington has finally had enough of this.
Times reveals up top heavily promoted footage of British Challenger 2 tanks in Kursk was a conscious, deliberate decision made by new PM Keir Starmer and his defence secretary John Healey. British equipment is said to have "played a central role" in the "counterinvasion".
…
Starmer and Healey reportedly made the decision to advertise London's involvement "to be more open about Britain’s role in a bid to persuade key allies to do more to help." In other words, to encourage/pressure the US et al to double down on this unwinnable, nightmare quagmire.
…
However, US reportedly unhappy with Kursk incursion, because it scuppered peace talks. Kiev's purported culpability for Nord Stream bombing is, it seems, being used to justify ending German aid to Ukraine. And the US is blocking Kiev from firing British-made missiles at Russia.
Kit's theory is that the Washington Post story about the blown negotiations as well as the latest "Nord Stream done by Ukraine" rumor reporting by the WSJ are expressions of U.S. anger over the Ukrainian government and its Kursk invasion.
The Times also reports that Britain is pushing its allies to provide more weapons and to allow their use against targets deep inside of Russia:
In the coming weeks Healey will attend a new meeting of the Ukraine Defence Co-ordination Group, where Britain will press European allies to send more equipment and give Kyiv more leeway to use them in Russia. Healey spoke last week to Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, and has been wooing Boris Pistorius, his German opposite number.
Germany, whose Taurus missiles have a similar 155-mile range to Storm Shadow but a more powerful warhead, has been the country under the most pressure to move. However, it was revealed yesterday that Germany has actually frozen military aid to Ukraine because of a domestic budgetary crisis. Pistorius had asked for £3.4 billion of additional supplies but that was rejected by the finance ministry.
A previous leak provided that the long range Taurus missiles are complicate and have to be programmed just-in-time by German officers. There is no support in Germany for allowing such a deep involvement in attacks on Russia.
To me it seems that Britain has promised to Ukraine that it would get its allies to agree to the usage of longer range weapons against Russia in exchange for Ukraine to launch the attack on Russia.
Only that can explain this Zelenski complain about Starmer:
The Ukrainian president complained that British aid to Kyiv had begun to wane as his forces continued their unprecedented incursion into Russian territory in the Kursk region.
“Unfortunately, the situation has slowed down recently,” Mr Zelensky said, referring to UK military assistance.
Sir Keir has upheld a Conservative ban on using UK-made Storm Shadows to strike targets deep inside Russia, amid concerns it could lead to escalation with nuclear-armed Moscow.
“We will discuss how to fix this because long-range capabilities are vital for us. The whole world sees how effective Ukrainians are – how our entire nation defends its independence,” said Mr Zelensky.
It came as four former Conservative defence secretaries called on No 10 to do more to support Ukraine, with some demanding Kyiv be allowed to use Storm Shadows in the Russian offensive.
But it is not Starmer who is blocking the missiles, it is the U.S. of A. (archived):
Washington is in effect blocking Britain from allowing Kyiv to fire Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia, amid fears in the Biden administration of an escalation in the Ukraine war.
…
It is understood that although the UK wants to give Ukraine the freedom to do what they want with the long-range weapon, it requires consensus from allies, including the US, France and a third undisclosed Nato country. A government source stressed that the UK was not blaming the US for any delay, adding that such policy changes took time.
Combining all the above one can (re-)construct this story.
Britain, in a bipartisan move, wants to prolong the war in Ukraine. It suggested to and helped Ukraine to invade Russia even as it knew that this would interrupt peace talks in Qatar. It also promised to press its allies for long range attack permission against Russia. But the U.S. and Germany are still blocking such attacks. Zelensky now complains that Britain failed to deliver on its promise.
The U.S., miffed about the British involvement in a likely useless Ukrainian attack on Russia, is leaking about the Ukrainian/Russian negotiations in Qatar.
The above is largely based on the U.S. claims that it was not really involved in the planing of the Kursk incursion.
There are of course good reason to doubt those claims:
As the Ukraine war enters its most perilous phase, with Kiev’s forces fighting inside Russia, the United States is operating a formal “sensitive activities” detachment that is active in providing direct military support to the beleaguered country. The detachment, never before disclosed, is run by U.S. special operations forces, and with its Ukrainian counterparts, provides on-the-battlefield support, including near-real time targeting intelligence, operators say.
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An operator formerly deployed to the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group assigned to a sensitive activities detachment told me their work included the creation of clandestine human networks for intelligence gathering, as well as identifying Russian military weaknesses for targeting.
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A second operator also described having been tasked with providing near up-to-the-minute intelligence support to Ukrainian forces.
Those U.S. operators in Ukraine certainly did not miss the preparations the Ukrainians were making for their attack.
P.S. Bonus from The Times piece:
“It’s not just about the military support, but it’s about the industrial, economic, and diplomatic support,” the defence source said. “If Putin succeeds in Ukraine he’s not going to stop there. But also the economic implications of that are massive, because we all saw how heavily Britain got hit when he first invaded.”
Yes, the sanctions, intended to hurt Russia, were quite damaging to those who issued them. Nice to see that finally acknowledged.
https://t.me/chadayevru/3168
#notes_from_the_front
Watching the process of combat management during the offensive from the brigade command post, I understood how exactly the “hussars” were able to calculate and shoot down those very first “Abrams” and why they tried (without much success) to explain to the public that this was the result not so much of individual skill as of teamwork. The use of drones is echeloned by altitude – starting with a long-range aircraft hanging kilometers above the ground, whose task is to detect any movement with the largest possible field of view (as far as optics allow), and ending with “mavics”, whose function is to identify the target, its location, direction of movement and coordinate the work of fighter groups with fpv.
Moreover: there are also remote mining groups, whose task is to cut off certain directions of movement of equipment, driving the beast “to the flags”. Moreover, all screens of all devices — from long-range aircraft to disposable “kamikazes” — are duplicated at the commander’s command post, who simultaneously sees with the “eyes” of all participants in the process. And there are no unnecessary details here: if there is no “mavic” hanging over the position, the fpvs do not know where to fly.
Returning to the “Abrams”, those same ten million prizes were almost entirely spent on purchasing drones. The explanation is simple: in order to advance with an acceptable level of losses, approximately 4 million rubles are required for five days of combat work. To purchase what is not provided for by the standard order of forces and means along the line of the Ministry of Defense. Without this “bonus” it is also possible to advance, but the level of losses will most likely be unacceptable: that same “grinding down”. At the same time, we are not talking about weapons or ammunition: the main deficit that saves the lives of fighters in the offensive is precisely the “eyes” and “ears” of all types. Not only drones, but also thermal imagers, rangefinders, drone detectors, jammers, etc. And, of course, communications. The biggest deficit and the most important factor of superiority in this war. I wonder, officers ask me, why it is easier for the state to pay much more substantial death benefits than to save on losses in this way? Alas, I did not have an answer to this question.
https://t.me/chadayevru/3169
#notes_from_the_front
Especially for developers and manufacturers of drones. I can now say for sure which machine will be a bigger hit in demand than our Vandal. It is an inexpensive, serial, EW-resistant and fast long-range aircraft with a range of 30-50 km, with good optics and a thermal imager. One that could be used in the “upper echelon” in the echeloned combat model I have given, and at the same time the operators’ hands would not shake from the risk of losing it. If we cannot do it ourselves, it would not be a sin to reverse engineer the “Furia”, it is quite good in this class. But the absence of such a machine and the forced need to use the “Orlan” for these tasks, which, generally speaking, is about something else, is striking.
https://t.me/chadayevru/3181
Practical conclusions should be drawn from the Kursk situation. The proverb says that smart people learn from other people’s mistakes, ordinary people learn from their own, and fools don’t learn at all. It is important for us to be at least second, not third.
Yesterday I held a meeting at the Ushkuynik Scientific and Production Center on a new project, which is currently called “Zorkiy Zabor”. The idea is to create a system of continuous monitoring of the nearest border area using various tracking systems, including UAVs (but not only), which would not cost a fortune. At the same time, I believe that the beneficiaries of such a system should be primarily the civilian authorities of the border regions, and not the General Staff, where the generals initially ignored intelligence reports, and then, when the invasion took place, took the position of “this is not our task at all, the FSB border service should have dealt with this.” This means that it should be a predominantly civilian system, with maximum involvement of the population of border territories, their preparation, training and equipping with the necessary equipment, primarily communications – we have already demonstrated how this works in the Archipelago in the summer during the civil exercises “Borshevik”.
There are still no customers in the center for such a system, but this is a matter of communication – we will try to convey the corresponding idea to everyone who can be reached. But in the regions there are – at least in Belgorod, Kursk and on the same Sakhalin, where there is, in particular, such a point as the Southern Kuril Islands. And we also have, for example, Pskov very close by …
Posted by: anon2020 | Aug 21 2024 10:15 utc | 406
21.08.2024 (13:10)
Russian Defence Ministry report on the progress of the special military operation (21 August 2024)
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation.
The units of the Sever Group of Forces in Volchansk and Liptsy directions have engaged 43rd mechanised and 92nd assault brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 36th Marine Brigade, and the 13th National Guard Brigade near Zolochyov, Liptsy, and Volchansk (Kharkov region).
The AFU losses were up to 100 Ukrainian troops, three motor vehicles, one 152-mm D-20 howitzer, and two 122-mm D-30 howitzers.
The units of the Zapad Group of Forces have captured more advantageous lines and positions, inflicted losses on manpower and hardware of 14th, 43rd, 66th, 116th mechanised brigades of the AFU, and the 110th Territorial Defence Brigade close to Tabayevka, Peschanoye, Petropavlovka (Kharkov region), Stelmakhovka, Chervonaya Dibrova (Lugansk People’s Republic), and Torskoye (Donetsk People’s Republic).
Six counter-attacks of the 115th AFU Mechanised Brigade’s assault detachments, the 110th Territorial Defence Brigade, and the 12th AFU Azov Special Operations Brigade have been repelled.
The AFU losses were up to 470 Ukrainian troops, one tank, four motor vehicles, one U.S.-made 155-mm M198 howitzer, and one 152-mm Msta-B howitzer.
The units of the Yug Group of Forces have improved the tactical situation, inflicted losses on manpower and hardware of 28th, 30th, 32nd mechanised, 56th motorised infantry, 72nd air assault brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the 116th Territorial Defence Brigade near Pereyezdnoye, Grigorovka, Orekhovo-Vasilyevka, Chasov Yar, Kurdyumovka, and Konstantinovka (Donetsk People’s Republic).
The AFU losses were more than 700 Ukrainian troops, three motor vehicles, one U.S.-made M777 howitzer, one 152-mm Msta-B howitzer, two 152-mm D-20 howitzers, one 122-mm D-30 howitzer, two U.S.-made 105-mm M119 guns, one Croatian-made 122-mm RAK-SA-12 MLRS launcher, and two electronic warfare stations.
One ammunition depot has been destroyed.
As a result of active actions, the units of the Tsentr Group of Forces have liberated Zhelannoye (Donetsk People’s Republic).
In addition, Russian troops have launched strikes on formations of 23rd, 53rd, and 151st mechanised brigades of the AFU, and the 15th Brigade of the National Guard close to Shcherbinovka, Tarasovka, Zhuravka, Kalinovo, Dzerzhinsk, and Grodovka (Donetsk People’s Republic).
Six counter-attacks by 47th and 150th mechanised brigades of the AFU, the 14th Brigade of the National Guard, and the Lyut Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian National Police have been repelled.
The enemy losses were more than 630 Ukrainian troops, 12 Kazak armoured fighting vehicles, U.S.-made 155-mm M777 and M198 howitzers, one 152-mm Giatsint-B gun, one 152-mm D-20 howitzer, one 152-mm Msta-B howitzer, and four 122-mm D-30 howitzers.
The units of the Vostok Group of Forces have delivered strikes at manpower and hardware of the AFU 58th Mechanised Infantry Brigade, 106th and 125th territorial defence brigades near Vodyanoye, Ugledar, Prechistovka, and Velikaya Novosyolka (Donetsk People’s Republic).
Four counter-attacks of the AFU 72nd Mechanised Brigade and the 125th Territorial Defence Brigade have been repelled.
The AFU losses were up to 130 Ukrainian troops, one infantry fighting vehicle, five motor vehicles, one 155-mm Braveheart self-propelled artillery system, and one UK-made 155-mm FH-70 howitzer as well as one 122-mm D-30 howitzer.
The units of the Dnepr Group of Forces have inflicted fire damage on the 65th Mechanised Brigade of the AFU and the 39th Coastal Defence Brigades close to Malye Shcherbaki and Novodanilovka (Zaporozhye region).
The AFU losses were up to 30 Ukrainian troops, five motor vehicles, and two 152-mm D-20 howitzers.
Operational-Tactical Aviation, unmanned aerial vehicles, Missile Troops and Artillery of the Russian Groups of Forces have destroyed one POL depot as well as clusters of AFU manpower and hardware in 131 areas.
Air defence systems have shot down seven French-made Hammer guided aerial bombs, one Neptune-MD anti-ship missile, 15 U.S.-made HIMARS projectiles, and 63 unmanned aerial vehicles.
In total, 639 airplanes and 282 helicopters, 30,255 unmanned aerial vehicles, 575 air defence missile systems, 17,348 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,416 combat vehicles equipped with MLRS, 13,470 field artillery guns and mortars, as well as 24,977 units of special military equipment have been destroyed during the special military operation.
Posted by: Rhymerez | Aug 21 2024 11:58 utc | 411
21.08.2024 (14:30)
Russian Defence Ministry report on repelling an invasion attempt of the AFU on the territory of the Russian Federation (21 August 2024)
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue to repel the AFU attempt to invade the territory of the Russian Federation.
The units of the Sever Group of Forces supported by Army Aviation and artillery have thwarted attacks launched by enemy assault detachments in the direction of Komarovka, Korenevo, Malaya Loknya, and Russkaya Konopelka.
As a result, the Armed Forces of Ukraine losses were more than 45 Ukrainian troops killed and wounded, two of them captured, two tanks, one U.S.-made M113 armoured personnel carrier, and six armoured fighting vehicles.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue reconnaissance and search operations to locate and eliminated the enemy small sabotage and reconnaissance groups attempting to get to the depth of the Russian territory.
n addition, air strikes, artillery fire, and actions of the defending troops have engaged manpower and hardware of the AFU the 22nd Brigade, the 115th Mechanised Brigade, the 82nd Air Assault Brigade close to Apanasovka, Borki, Vishnyovka, Kositsa, Nizhniy Klin, Snagost, Sverdlikovo, and Kazachya Loknya.
Operational-Tactical Aviation have attacked the concentration areas of AFU reserves in Sumy region: 22nd and 41st mechanised brigades, the 82nd Air Assault Brigade, the 92nd Assault Brigade, 103rd, 106th, and 129th territorial defence brigades as well as the 69th Rifle Battalion in the areas of Belopolye, Boyaro-Lezhachi, Glukhov, Krasnopolye, Novye Virki, Pokrovka, Pisarevka, Mogritsa, and Yunakovka.
The AFU lost up to 300 Ukrainian troops and 26 armoured vehicles, including six tanks, three armoured personnel carriers, 17 armoured fighting vehicles as well as two motor vehicles, four artillery guns, and two MLRS launchers.
??Since the beginning of hostilities in Kursk region, the AFU losses amounted to up to 4,400 Ukrainian troops, 65 tanks, 27 infantry fighting vehicles, 27 infantry fighting vehicles, 53 armoured personnel carriers, 316 armoured fighting vehicles, 133 motor vehicles, 31 artillery guns, five SAM launchers, nine MLRS launchers, including three of HIMARS system and one MLRS system, six electronic warfare stations, as well as four units of engineering vehicles, including two counterobstacle vehicles and one UR-77 mine clearing vehicle.
The operation to neutralise the AFU units is in progress.
Posted by: Rhymerez | Aug 21 2024 12:33 utc | 419
1) USA’s regime (deep state, MIC, etc) have planned this proxy war since the 1990s. As Zbigniew Brezinsky stated, it’s about advancing to Russian borders and make a war with western money and weapons, but only eastern men/cannon fodder;
2) the successive enlargments of NATO all go in that direction. It’s not about the safety of a single European. Ir was only about threatening Russia and get ready for this proxy war;
3) the CIA coups (+USAid, NED, Fulbright, Adenauer, and all other NGO’s interference and corruption, and all western MSM lies and propaganda), aome soft (the “orange” coup in Kiev in 2004), some hard (the “maidan” coup with nazis in Kiev in 2014) are all part of this plan. The coups in Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, as well as the total corruption of politicians and military in Moldova, Finland, Estonia, etc;
4) The “Expanding Russia” report by RAND Corporation in 2019, explains all of this. USA’s genocidal imperialist is ready to destroy millions of lives and entire countris just for its advantage. This report explains the proxy war in Ukraine, the chaos in southern Caucasus, the coup attempt in Belarus, the cut of NordStream, the sanctions, everything is there. This Pentagon’s think tank is what decides the policies in the entire west. The elections are now a total farce;
5) we can see clearly how USA works in the support for the naZionist genocide in occupied Palestine. The diplomacy pretends to want peace, while the deepstate/pentagon/cia deliver more weapons and plan assassinations and terrorism. USA blocked all peace proposals in the UN-SC, and is now bonbarding Yemeni civilians and Iraqi resistance as we speak;
1+2+3+4+5=6) USA is still the same regime as it was when it completely destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq, Serbia and Libya, Syria and those 3 countries in southeast asia: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
USA’s regime has solely evil intentions. As Nazi Germany, it even has “justifications” for genocide and nazi glorification. Since 1944 USA’s regime has assassinated more than 20 million humans and the number can go as high as 30 mullion, directly or indirectly.
USA did the NordStream terrorism and the “news” about Ukrainian saboteurs are just FakeNews to divert our attentions.
USA is the main guilty for genociee in Palestine and its “peace proposals” are just fake news to fool the naive people.
USA is the regime that planned, provoked, started, restarted, and now prolongs and excalates the wproxy war in Ukraine against Russia.
This is USA’s nature. USA’s regime, an authoritarian racist fascist colonial genocidal empire, is “the only indispensable nation on earth” in the words of that nazi called Obama. It doesn’t matter what puppet you chose in the elections, a white old conservative man, or a young black woke woman, the regime’s nature doesn’t change. It’s doesn’t matter what any of the western MSM press writes and says, it’s all fake news or manipulative propaganda and PsyOps.
Someone in the Pentagon and in the State Department, green lit the Kursk offensive, and is now already planning the next stage of escalation. And this will only stop in 3 ways:
1) Russia wins in a clear and indisputable way with the total defeat of the UkraiNazi dictatorship;
2) the propaganda against Russia loses its effectiveness and the MSM start creating consent for the next proxy war (vs Venezuela, vs Iran, vs China, etc) and that forces the USA’s deep state to do another “2021 exit from Afghanistan” in order to prepare its means for that next war;
3) USA’s evil genocidal empire escalates non stop until the nuclear weapons start flying and we all die in the name of USA’s ambition of being the only “indispensable” nation on earth that doesn’t accept anyone else to develop enough to even be a rival, be it economically, monetarily, or militarily.
This is the analysis you should have done, ‘b’, instead of wasting your time and ours reading any garbage that the Washington’s (and vassals’) press writes about any of this.
People in USA that still have any trace of decency and use their own brain, people like Aaron Bushnell, Edward Snowden, Julien Assange, the university students and teachers protesting against genocide and being arrested by USA political police, etc. Please get together and do something for mankind’s sake. No, it’s not about forming a 3rd steong party, because that would only matter is USA was a democracy. It’s about thinking very seriously and start planning a regime change that “burn” the current regime to the ground, that imprisons the current lunaric corrupt genocidal imperialist war criminals in a gulag for the rest of their lives. It’s about making USA decent again. In the name of the memory of JFKennedy and MLKing and FDRoosevelt.
USA is still the same rotten evil regime that classified Nelson Mandela as a “terrorist”, supported death squads all over the Americas, and dropped chemical weapons to assassinate Vietnamese children by disease and starvation. Worse, this time USA is on the side of Nazis, Al-Qaeda, and is accomplice in an ongoing live streamed genocide. This sh*t has to end!!!
Posted by: Carlos Marques | Aug 21 2024 13:48 utc | 431
Posted by: Newbie | Aug 21 2024 14:48 utc | 448
Part answer to your question part targeted ramble, apologies for the length, hopefully it will help some posters with their self-assessment of the relative state of the two combatants across the front.
The factors needed to calculate the likelihood of an operational success or failure (advancing without achieving stated objectives is still a failure ) are quite straightforward. The tricky part is assessing the values of those factors, which can fluctuate sometimes on a daily basis. Open source analysis founders if it tries to over-extend past an assessment that includes which factors predominate and a general extrapolation of what is already known. In essence anyone using open sources (like myself) can approximate the known knowns and speculate on the known unknowns, military intelligence officers go up one level, approximating the known unknowns. Factors to consider
Logistics: determined by road net, (numerous factors type, construction, number etc) proficiency of staff involved, force multipliers (automated systems, level of mechanisation, computer assisted programmes etc). Level of effective interdiction.
Units involved: Linked to above, mechanised units consume far more than leg infantry and artillery consume not only a large weight of munitions, but they are bulky, ditto AD, ATGW’s. Then there’s POL (Petrol Oil Lubricants). Both categories are consumed at rates dependent on the intensity of any combat. Then everything else needed to supply men (think of what you’d need on an extended hiking trip in the wilderness) and don’t forget all the batteries! Mechanised units can live off their wagon for extended periods, or expend more in a normal supply cycle, but if they loose their transport they are relegated to inferior leg infantry (typically smaller squad size, living off their belt kits, or what they could grasp in the 2-3 seconds after emergency debussing). The list is literally endless, surface to say anything that shoots moves, communicates, operates, exists, needs regular supply.
Troop-capabilities both friendly & enemy
Time available
Terrain
Instead of listing all these factors readily available online (joys of the inter-webs the instant expertise function) you can look at a mechanised Marder company supporting 95th Air Assault in their attempt to slide along the front.
Have they trained or fought together in a combined arms team. If not they will be substantially less effective than a unit who does?
What is the overall unit combat proficiency, especially NCO’s
What is their current supply?
What is their replenishment rate?
What casualties have they suffered, what is their casualty evac like?
What is their replacement cycle for personnel and equipment?
Do they have advantages/deficiencies in combat capabilities v’s the opponents?
What fire support to they have?
What engineering capability?
What AD capability?
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and has to be applied to the ‘enemy’.
So, to finally answer your question obliquely, the current situation in Kursk is unsustainable for the Ukrainian forces, unless they make a major breakthrough, and even then that might compound their long term problems. Key factors, tenuous supply, effective interdiction, excessive casualty rate, burn-out of units from combat exhaustion low replacement rate,(men and machines) variable troop quality and morale, remote command, that’s just for starters.
Posted by: Milites | Aug 21 2024 16:22 utc | 452
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