Russia/Ukraine Megathread V6

[Darkballs]

A few more points on the feint theory:

-Kiev was always gonna need to be defended. It's the capital, and it's within striking distance of the Northern border. Moving troops from Kiev to the fighting in the east is somewhere near a 270 mile trip. If those troops up and left to join the fight in the Donbas, well you'd have plenty of time to see them coming, intercept them, or just strike south into the capital once they left.

-To that effect, you just need like one BTG sitting on the border to freeze those assets (which the Ukrainians wouldn't move anyway, as they aren't retarded). And if the Russians need to push south, you could either blitz fast, If the UK's had left, or you make a slow coordinated push and actually take the surrounding towns and villages. You don't bypass them just to get stuck and watch your supply lines get cut.

-What you don't do is just drop a bunch of your "best" airborne troops in the middle of it all without the supplies to actually hold their objectives unless support can reach them. That alone should show you the intent. Those brigades (or whatever the fuck the russians call them) don't get dropped with just a single mortar company and hardly any food, if you goal is to have them play a long term holding operation for the north of Kiev. I know the russians are dumb, but they aren't that fucking dumb. What they clearly anticipated was a quick strike and to have those follow up units swinging s.w. to reinforce/relieve them. It failed, for all the reasons we've seen their slow ass armor fail in every region.

-Because you know what would have been a hell of a lot better of a use for those airborne units than the worlds shittiest feint? It would have been to integrate them with the armor in the East. You know, that armor that had no supporting infantry to actually screen their advances? So they just wandered into towns in close formation, seemingly oblivious to the small tactical teams blasting them to fuck with modern guided munitions. A decent infantry could have scouted those positions first; pointed out where the Ukrainians were, and found better routes besides strolling right through pre-arranged artillery brackets. Or they could have at least joined the fighting and flushed out the outnumbered defenders and defended their armored assets.

Seriously, nothing about a feint makes any sense whatsoever.

 

[Darkballs]

Nope. Not making excuses for a piss poor battle plan...

And yes it could very well be a terrible analysis and a piss poor battle plan..

 

[Anewt]

Why not quote what I actually said?

Nope. Not making excuses for a piss poor battle plan... been saying it from day one. And yes it could very well be a terrible analysis and a piss poor battle plan..

 

[Darkballs]

Why not quote what I actually said?

Nope. Not making excuses for a piss poor battle plan... been saying it from day one. And yes it could very well be a terrible analysis and a piss poor battle plan..

Well that's not better.

And the rest was what you just copied and pasted from an article with no thoughts of your own. A really poorly written article, I might add, that suggests it was possible to abandon Kiev, when it sits only 40 miles from a russian controlled border, to potentially push units some 300 miles eastward.

There is no tactical situation where it would have made sense for the Ukrainians to utterly abandon Kiev and shift all their resources East. And that's what the article essentially suggests: That if they'd known the Russians would suck so badly, maybe then they could have....

The point is, you can't even flesh out your own logic for justifying a feint. You just keep copying and pasting from shitty articles and proclaiming "I have a source," as if that, and your inability to explain it, makes your feint hypothesis correct.

If the only thing the Russians wanted to do was to keep units in Kiev fixed, they didn't need to do anything other than keep a small (relative to the invasion force) group of armor hovering 40-miles away. That's it. With that done, Ukraine can't just shift units east without really exposing themselves. The russians could THEN push south, or much more quickly get units into position before Ukraine could recall the units they shifted so far away to return.

What you absolutely don't do, is drop your most precious infantry in the middle of it all, and then hope and pray supply columns and armor can break off from a different major assault point, in an absolute must-break-through scenario to reach said troops.

So no, a feint, or holding pattern, doesn't hold up to the reality of what the russians actually did. As where the actual reporting, does explain it. They made a legitimate grab at Kiev, with a shit-tier battle plan. They dropped units directly into the outskirts, and then planned to have their armor link up with them in 48-hours. But they made the same miscalculations they made everywhere else. The quality of the troops and supplies actually dropped were subpar; the Ukrainians put up much more resistance around the city than they were expecting; and those units sent to reinforce them, failed to do so for the same logistical reasons you saw throughout the invasion force.

Nothing you post suggests feint. It all suggests a genuine attempt to take the capital, executed poorly.

Christ, I could give a boot PFC in SOI a map of Ukraine with a Lego set, point out the Kiev is right by the border and ask "I want to fix their forces there, what do I do?" And if that lad responds with "Air drop our best infantry into subdivisions with no support," I would immediately kick him square in the balls for being so daft.

 

[Anewt]

Well that's not better.

So why did you take the time to make two different quotes and remove 6 words in the middle? Odd.

No you're not. You're coming up with the dumbest tactical battle plan to excuse a piss poor performance or to seem contrarian for the sake of it.

Nope.. thought this way since day one.. hence I'm not coming up with a battle plan to excuse a poor performance...

Hence the statement.

 

[Karelinator]

 

[curryjunkie]

seen those rigs before

 

[AWilder]

Because they withdrew.... completely and Ukraine still took days to reoccupy.. you're telling me that Ukrainians allowed bucha and irpin to suffer. Because they were waiting for russian transports?

jesus christ mate, you're quite the dense one.

 

[Yotsuya]

If any of you guys know hacking then could you please upload this inspirational video to every cellphone in Russian military base in Izium.

 

[Yotsuya]

Ballsy!

 

[Anewt]

jesus christ mate, you're quite the dense one.

the russians at the airport got barely any resupply. They held it because the Ukrainians let them hold it. Ukrainians were probably hoping for that fleet of transports to arrive so they could destroy it with manpads and artillery.

Bucha and irpin are to the south of the airport.. closer to Kiev.

Your theory is they allowed Russia to hold the airport to the north.. yet couldn't do anything closer to Kiev to stop the Russians killing people in Bucha....


Does that really make sense to you mate?


On 22 March, the head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Pavlyuk, stated that Bucha and Hostomel were under the control of the Russian army and that no Ukrainian offensive actions could be taken there at the time. The main task of the Ukrainian military was to prevent Russian forces from crossing the Irpin River.[71]

 

[AWilder]

Bucha and irpin are to the south of the airport.. closer to Kiev.

Your theory is they allowed Russia to hold the airport to the north.. yet couldn't do anything closer to Kiev to stop the Russians killing people in Bucha....


Does that really make sense to you mate?


On 22 March, the head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Pavlyuk, stated that Bucha and Hostomel were under the control of the Russian army and that no Ukrainian offensive actions could be taken there at the time. The main task of the Ukrainian military was to prevent Russian forces from crossing the Irpin River.[71]

 

[Videer]

River crossing in one composite image, such beauty.

 

[Anewt]

Nice logic

 

[AWilder]

River crossing in one composite image, such beauty.

their most effective feint yet!

 

[MMA Time Soldier]

So much keyboard Generaling going on based off propaganda from both sides. We likely won't get a true picture of what is going on for a long while.

 

[aries]

If you have a relatively large partisan movement sure. Does such exist in Ukraine? There are no indication that it does.

No I don't think they have that capability. Take the invasion the Donbas. One of the main reasons they chose to take over the Donbas, apart from the high percentage of Russians living there, is because it borders Russia so they could ship arms and personnel straight over the border. And they've been struggling there for 8 years.

This is just one example but it highlights their ineptitude, when a group of separatists first moved in to one town in the Donbas region, early in 2014, they took over an opera house thinking it was the town hall. The locals noted that the supposed Pro-Russian local 'Ukrainian' separatists all had strong Russian accents. So much for being covert and professional.

And the support in the region by the Donbas population for the separatist movement in 2014 was only about 5% according to polls at the time. They just didn't have the support of the local population and I doubt they do now. I don't think they have the ability to conduct effective partisan operations deep into Ukraine because they can't even use locals who would blend in. And that's in an area close to the Russian border like the Donbas. To operate deeper into Ukraine would just make logistics even harder for them. They stick out like a sore thumb, show a poor level of proper planning and preparation. And that seems to be still evident with the amount of bungling and logistical fuck ups demonstrated by Russian forces in Ukraine today.

And this is from Russia's oldest newspaper
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014...rkiv-theater-thinking-it-was-city-hall-a33739

 

[MIKOM]

Suggestion for the naming of the next version of the thread.

Russia/Ukraine Megathread V8 - Please sit down if you feel feint.

 

[AWilder]

Suggestion for the naming of the next version of the thread.

Russia/Ukraine Megathread V8 - Please sit down if you feel feint.

 

[Denter]

So much keyboard Generaling going on based off propaganda from both sides. We likely won't get a true picture of what is going on for a long while.

Agreed. And even if we do get a cool video of an ambush somewhere, there's survivorship bias, plus what video is chosen to amplify a certain message, plus what is the most telegenic. There are thousands of encounters per day, most of them aren't getting filmed and they aren't uploading the ones that don't work out.