Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[crazy canuck]

Reports that Russians are trying to buy shells from North Korea. 

[Syt]

Reports that Russians are trying to buy shells from North Korea. 

Are they doing it through a shell company?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[celedhring]

Reports that Russians are trying to buy shells from North Korea. 

Now that's a supplier I'm not sure I'd buy from...

[Legbiter]

Now that's a supplier I'm not sure I'd buy from...

High quality shells made from pot iron and despair...

[Tamas]

So... It seem like the Ukrainians have started an offensive near Kharkiv, smashing through militia and seeing great progress. It seems like they are threatening to surround Izyum.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1567459059527290882

Let's hope they don't stick their necks out too long.

Exciting stuff. Maybe the Kherson offensive was the decoy to make the schwerpunkt at Kharkiv easier?

[Grey Fox]

Neither are decoy. They seem to be going for both. They seemed to have planned this carefully and are exploiting the weakest spots on the Russian line to push into areas to cut logistics route.

The Russians holding Kherson are weeks away from abandoning ship without their armors. The fabled 3rd Army can't even help there.

[Barrister]

It's been hard to figure out what's going on over there. Fog of War is very real.

So the Ukrainians seem to have been telegraphing a push into Kherson for weeks and weeks.  So much so the Russians have moved significant forces there.

So two possibilities exist:

1. The push to Kherson is just a decoy in order to allow advances in other areas.
2. Telegraphing the push to Kherson was designed to entice the Russians to move more forces there, then hit the bridges across the Dnipro and then destroy the Russian forces who are then out of supply.

I think it's 2, but that's just an educated guess.  I think the advances around Kharkiv are just opportunistic, having noted just how few Russian forces were in the area.

[Sheilbh]

I think it's probably a bit of both. Russia's got a big front, logistical issues and shortages of supply and manpower.

Ukraine can have priorities like Kherson where they can make quite broad moves across a large area, probing for weaknesses. But if they can there will also be moments of opportunism perhaps that force a bit of a choice on Russia?

[Threviel]

It might be 3d chess. Attack Kherson, stall, attack somewhere else making the Kherson attack look like a feint, Russkis move out their forces from Kherson to the new attack, bam, attack Kherson again with more force.

I doubt the Ukrainians have the forces for that though.

[Barrister]

It might be 3d chess. Attack Kherson, stall, attack somewhere else making the Kherson attack look like a feint, Russkis move out their forces from Kherson to the new attack, bam, attack Kherson again with more force.

The one thing we do know though is that all the bridges across the Dnipro river have been hit and taken down, making it very difficult to move forces in or out of Kherson.

[Jacob]

Yeah, I have no clever insight or analysis but the momentum seems pretty good for Ukraine right now

[Barrister]

Take with a lot of salt, but some of my twitter follows (many of whom are Ukrainians in Ukraine, posting in English) suggesting the advance from Kharkiv towards Izyum is finding minimal Russian troops, which explains their ease of advance.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

That would explain why the collaborators/Russian bots are in overdrive: trying to sap morale in Europe as much as possible.
Too bad that shaving the lot of em is so much work, not to say illegal

[celedhring]

Take with a lot of salt, but some of my twitter follows (many of whom are Ukrainians in Ukraine, posting in English) suggesting the advance from Kharkiv towards Izyum is finding minimal Russian troops, which explains their ease of advance.

With the limited amount of troops the Russians have, and such a wide front, it's just impossible to man it properly - gaps will be there to be exploited. We'll see if they have a solvent depth defence and they can manage to counter.

[Jacob]

I guess the question is whether the minimal troop numbers is a deliberate action by Russian command to preserve strength or whether it is indicative of an uncontrolled collapse.