Here we go again-Ukraine once again

[Commander Wallace]

^ There really are no words.

[mapuc]

Won't change his plane..

First his plane was the entire Ukraine-This failed.
Then he reduced his plan to secure Luhansk and Donbas area.-This failed somehow
Now he has once again reduced his plan to secure Donbas.

I'm pretty sure that in a month or so the only thing Putin has left to secure is Crimea.

Markus

[Jimbuna]

Biden warns Putin not to use tactical nuclear weapons

US President Joe Biden has warned Russia not to use chemical or tactical nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

Speaking during an interview with CBS News, Mr Biden said such action would "change the face of war unlike anything since World War Two".

He would not say what response the US would make to the use of such weapons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin put the country's nuclear forces on "special" alert following its invasion of Ukraine in February.

He told defence chiefs it was because of "aggressive statements" by the West.

Nuclear weapons have existed for almost 80 years and many countries see them as a deterrent that continues to guarantee their national security.

Russia is estimated to have around 5,977 nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

It, however, remains unlikely that it intends to use such weapons.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62936643

[Schroeder]

I hope the west will start to send modern MBTs soon. Ukraine needs more firepower and I really don't see why we can send self propelled howitzers, AAA and multiple rocket launcher systems but no MBTs.

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Biden warns Putin not to use tactical nuclear weapons

US President Joe Biden has warned Russia not to use chemical or tactical nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

Speaking during an interview with CBS News, Mr Biden said such action would "change the face of war unlike anything since World War Two".

He would not say what response the US would make to the use of such weapons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin put the country's nuclear forces on "special" alert following its invasion of Ukraine in February.

He told defence chiefs it was because of "aggressive statements" by the West.

Nuclear weapons have existed for almost 80 years and many countries see them as a deterrent that continues to guarantee their national security.

Russia is estimated to have around 5,977 nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

It, however, remains unlikely that it intends to use such weapons.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62936643

I can already foresee what the argument for pro-Russian will be

USA used nukes in WWII so Russia has the right to use them too.
Or
USA should not point fingers
+ Many more arguments

Markus

[Dargo]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Won't change his plane..

First his plane was the entire Ukraine-This failed.
Then he reduced his plan to secure Luhansk and Donbas area.-This failed somehow
Now he has once again reduced his plan to secure Donbas.

I'm pretty sure that in a month or so, the only thing Putin has left to secure is Crimea.

Markus

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last weekend: Russia is not against negotiations with Ukraine, but Kiev is disrupting things. You can then interpret that as: Russia is opening the door to a negotiated solution here. But then again you have Dmitri Medvedev, the Vice President of the National Security Council, but above all also ex-President and ex-Prime Minister. Who says a day later: there is only one way to negotiate, and that is if Ukraine agrees to total capitulation on Russian terms. Well, then you don't want to negotiate, you just want Ukraine destroyed according "the plan". It is the paradox we see today. How fast things are moving militarily in Ukraine, so slow are political developments in Moscow. There are no fault lines there. At most, there are some hairline cracks. Of course, no one knows what is really going on in there. But let's do some old-fashioned Kremlinology. There are no indications that anything substantial has changed in the past week. What there is reason to suspect is a lack of clarity about the direction to be taken.

[Jimbuna]

"They were tortured with electric current and soldering iron": Resident of liberated Kupiansk told SSU about Russian torture. VIDEO

Everyone who was interrogated by employees of the FSB of the Russian Federation, who settled in occupied Kupiansk, had to go through bullying.

"There was always a lot of shouting from this room," recalls a resident of Kupiansk, who was illegally imprisoned by the Russian occupation forces.

During the interrogations, the FSB officers "knocked out" from the local residents the names and addresses of the participants of the anti-terrorist operation, territorial defense fighters, and people who had a pro-Ukrainian position. They threatened execution on a minefield and massacre of families that remained under occupation.

"During the first interrogation, they beat me for 40 minutes with electric shocks, shot at me either with a pneumatic gun or with a gas gun, I don't know - I was in a bag... They beat me with bats or iron pipes," says a victim of Russian torture. Some had crosses burned on their bodies with soldering irons.

"The conditions of detention of illegally imprisoned Ukrainians were also terrible: 8 people were held in a small cell designed for 2 people. Such actions of the Russian occupying forces fall under the signs of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment. This is clearly stated in the UN Convention against Torture of 1984, of which, by the way, the Russian Federation is also a party," the SSU noted.

Currently, the Security Service is carrying out operational and investigative actions to identify all residents of the deoccupied territories who suffered from the torture of the Rashists. Source: https://censor.net/en/v3367796

[Jimbuna]

Total combat losses of Russia since beginning of war - about 54,250 people, 216 helicopters, 2,202 tanks, 1,306 artillery systems, and 4,701 armored vehicles. INFOGRAPHICS

The Russian occupiers, who invaded the territory of Ukraine, continue to suffer losses. As of the morning of September 17, the loss of enemy personnel are approximately 54,250.

The total combat losses of the enemy from 24/02 to 16/09 are approximately :

personnel - about 54,250 (+200) people were liquidated
tanks ‒ 2202 (+3) units,
armored combat vehicles ‒ 4701 (+11) units,
artillery systems - 1306 (+4) units,
MLRS - 312 (+0) units,
air defense equipment - 168 (+1) units,
aircraft - 251 (+1) units,
helicopters - 216 (+0) units,
UAV of operational-tactical level - 911 (+3),
cruise missiles - 236 (+3),
ships/boats - 15 (+0) units,
automotive equipment and tank trucks - 3571 (+21) units,
special equipment - 121 (+0). Source: https://censor.net/en/n3367768

[Dargo]

And then Zelensky decided to scrap his first plan: the months-long preparation of the Ukrainian counterattack
At breakneck speed, the Ukrainian army captured thousands of square kilometers of territory from the Russians in recent days. But to what extent was this really a surprise? Behind the scenes, Kiev had been working out the plans for months, with the help of the United States. Months ago, the strategy behind Ukraine's rapid military victories in recent days was already taking shape. That happened, US officials say, in a series of intensive talks between Ukrainian and US officials on how to proceed with the war.

The counteroffensive - which was readjusted this summer after emergency consultations between senior U.S. and Ukrainian representatives - has exceeded expectations. Ukrainian forces have destroyed the Russian command and appear poised to cash in on their advance in the northeast and another operation in the south. Work began shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told his generals that he wanted to make a dramatic move to show that his country could push back the Russian invasion. Under his command, the Ukrainian army designed a plan for a broad assault in the south to recapture Kherson and cut off Mariupol from Russian forces in the east. Ukrainian generals and U.S. officials believed that such a large-scale attack would result in enormous casualties and that it would fail to recapture large swaths of territory quickly. The Ukrainians were already losing hundreds of soldiers a day in what had become a murderous conflict. Russian forces suffered similar losses, but continued on, destroying Ukrainian cities in the eastern Donbas region.

The Ukrainian commanders, long reluctant to share details of their plans, began to open up more to U.S. and British intelligence officials and asked for advice. Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, and Andrii Jermak, a top adviser to Zelensky, have discussed planning the counteroffensive several times, according to a senior government official. General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Army Summit, and senior Ukrainian military leaders regularly discussed intelligence and military support. In Kiev, Ukrainian and British military officials continued to work together while the new U.S. defense attaché, Garrick Harmon, held daily talks with top Ukrainian officers. Time was of the essence, American and Ukrainian officials believed. For an effective counterattack, the Ukrainians had to act before the first snow, because then Russian President Vladimir Putin could use his control over gas supplies to pressure Europe. This account of the run-up to the counteroffensive is based on interviews with several senior U.S. representatives and others who knew about the secret talks between Washington and Kiev. These were conversations that helped Ukrainian commanders shape the battle. Many talked to us on condition of anonymity.

American officials were hesitant to assess the full impact of the counteroffensive, wanting to see how it progresses. For now, at least, Kiev has the upper hand. During an exercise this summer, things looked different. In it, U.S. and Ukrainian officials tested the potential success of a broad offensive in the south. The exercise, CNN reported, made it appear that such an offensive would fail. Armed with American skepticism, Ukrainian military personnel returned to Zelensky. It would prove - in retrospect - to be a decisive moment. "We conducted modeling and a series of tabletop exercises," said Colin Kahl, the Pentagon's policy chief, in a telephone interview. "That series of exercises suggested that certain avenues for a counteroffensive were likely to be more successful than others. We gave that advice, the Ukrainians took that and came to their own decision." The stakes were enormous. Ukraine had to show that this was not going to be yet another frozen conflict AND that it could retake territory from the Russians, which is important for the morale of its people and to increase support from the West. During August, at the urging of the Ukrainians, U.S. officials provided increasing information on the position of Russian forces, revealing weaknesses in Russian lines. The intelligence also indicated that Moscow would struggle to quickly reinforce its forces in northeastern Ukraine or move troops from the south, even as it discovered Ukrainian preparations for the counteroffensive. "We saw that the Russians were moving many of their best troops south in preparation for the other counteroffensive that the Ukrainians were conducting," said Kahl of the Pentagon. "So we had reason to believe that because of continued moral challenges and pressure from the Ukrainians, parts of the Russian military may be a bit more fragile than they appear on paper."

Instead of one major offensive, the Ukrainian army proposed two. With one, in Kherson, the concentration of Russian troops would likely take days or weeks to see spectacular results. The other was planned for the Kharkiv region. Britain, the United States and Ukraine evaluated the new plan together and tried to simulate it again. This time, officials from the three countries agreed that it would work, and that it would give Zelensky what he wanted: a big, clear victory. But the plan depended entirely on the size and speed of additional U.S. military aid, according to a General Staff officer in Kiev. Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that until recently had used only older Soviet weapons, had largely used up its own ammunition. Learning to use new weapons systems in the midst of war is difficult. But so far that risky move has proved successful. For example, more than 800,000 155-millimeter cartridges have been sent to Kiev. The United States alone has pledged more than $14.5 billion in military aid since the war began in February.

Before the counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces sent the U.S. a detailed list of weapons they needed to make the plan work, a Ukrainian officer said. Specific weapons, such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), have an extraordinary impact on the battlefield. The satellite-guided missiles fired by these launch vehicles, called GMLRS, each contain a warhead containing 200 pounds of explosives. They have been used by Ukrainian forces in recent weeks to destroy more than four hundred Russian weapons depots, command posts and other targets, according to U.S. officials. More recently, Ukrainian forces have used US-supplied HARM missiles for air strikes against Soviet-designed MiG-29 fighter jets. No air force had ever done so before. The missiles proved particularly effective in destroying Russian radars. "We see real and measurable progress in Ukraine's use of these systems," General Milley said last week in Germany at a meeting of 50 countries assisting Ukraine with military and humanitarian aid. "The Russians are having great difficulty resupplying their troops and compensating for their combat losses." Ukrainian and American officials argue that weekly or biweekly announcements of new arms deliveries by the Pentagon give confidence to top commanders in Kiev to plan complex, simultaneous offensives.

"The importance of Western military support lies not just in specific weapons systems, but in the security and confidence it gives the Ukrainians," said Jack Watling, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. He recently returned from Ukraine. "That is precisely what they can use in their planning." As Ukrainian soldiers entered areas in the northeast last weekend, Russian troops collapsed. In some places around Kharkiv, Russian soldiers simply walked away from the battle, leaving their equipment and ammunition behind, according to U.S. officials. The attack on Kherson, according to people aware of the plan, was not a feint or a diversion. And it succeeded in forcing Moscow to postpone mock referendum on whether parts of the Kherson region want to join Russia. But as expected, the counteroffensive there is proceeding more slowly, given the much larger number of Russian troops opposite in Kharkiv.

Ultimately, Ukrainian officials believe, their long-term success depends on objectives that were in the first, rejected strategy. Consider recapturing the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, cutting off Russian forces in Mariupol and pushing back Russian forces in Kherson across the Dnipro River, U.S. officials say. Russia is weakened. That the Russian army did not notice the buildup of Ukrainian troops around Kharkiv shows that it does not have solid intelligence. The army has been decimated and is struggling to resupply its troops, giving Ukraine an opportunity in the coming weeks, according to U.S. officials. Although Ukraine has the opportunity to retake more territory in the east, U.S. and Ukrainian officials say the south is the main battleground.

"Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are probably potential targets," said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a defense research institute. "We suspect we will see further operations by the Ukrainian military there." The plan that emerged from summer talks leaned heavily on U.S. intelligence and high-tech weapons. But American officials stress that credit for the offensive belongs entirely to Zelensky and the Ukrainian military, which led a relatively small force in Kharkiv to an extraordinary victory. "No one can declare victory yet" says Kahl. But, he adds, "I do think this really shows the world that the Ukrainians are capable of conducting complex, offensive operations."

https://www.demorgen.be/nieuws/en-to...nval~b538a0a4/

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Dargo

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last weekend: Russia is not against negotiations with Ukraine, but Kiev is disrupting things. You can then interpret that as: Russia is opening the door to a negotiated solution here. But then again you have Dmitri Medvedev, the Vice President of the National Security Council, but above all also ex-President and ex-Prime Minister. Who says a day later: there is only one way to negotiate, and that is if Ukraine agrees to total capitulation on Russian terms. Well, then you don't want to negotiate, you just want Ukraine destroyed according "the plan". It is the paradox we see today. How fast things are moving militarily in Ukraine, so slow are political developments in Moscow. There are no fault lines there. At most, there are some hairline cracks. Of course, no one knows what is really going on in there. But let's do some old-fashioned Kremlinology. There are no indications that anything substantial has changed in the past week. What there is reason to suspect is a lack of clarity about the direction to be taken.

When I think on Kremlin then Putin pop-up in my head-For me Russia is Putin or Putin is Russia.

Yes they have a government-This is only a charade as I see it. Even the Dumas which is a theater

Markus

[MaDef]

In Friday's comments, Mr Putin threatened a "more serious" response if Ukrainian attacks continue.

"I remind you that the Russian army isn't fighting in its entirety... Only the professional army is fighting."

Question: If the "Russian professional army" is having this much trouble in Ukraine, what does Putin expect to accomplish with conscripted troops who will have little training and no motivation to fight? It's my understanding that the Russian people aren't exactly clamoring to enlist in the army right now.

[Dargo]

Originally Posted by mapuc

When I think on Kremlin then Putin pop-up in my head-For me Russia is Putin or Putin is Russia.

Yes they have a government-This is only a charade as I see it. Even the Dumas which is a theater

Markus

The Czar is sent by God, but surrounded by charlatans.

[Dargo]

Originally Posted by MaDef

Question: If the "Russian professional army" is having this much trouble in Ukraine, what does Putin expect to accomplish with conscripted troops who will have little training and no motivation to fight? It's my understanding that the Russian people aren't exactly clamoring to enlist in the army right now.

Indeed, one might think that the military now realizes that this battle is hopeless. It isn't. On the contrary, there are signals that the Russian army feel humiliated and are bent on revenge, and that we see daily by the strikes on civilians.

[mapuc]

I hope that some Ukrainian officer get or got the same idea as I got day before yesterday.

On twitter I saw a short video clip showing soldiers-Paratroppers I think-Sitting in a transport plane. They were Ukrainian.

Came to think of two scenes from The Longest Day.

I'm talking about Robert.

Markus

[Andreas86]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Total combat losses of Russia since beginning of war - about 54,250 people, 216 helicopters, 2,202 tanks, 1,306 artillery systems, and 4,701 armored vehicles. INFOGRAPHICS

The Russian occupiers, who invaded the territory of Ukraine, continue to suffer losses. As of the morning of September 17, the loss of enemy personnel are approximately 54,250.

The total combat losses of the enemy from 24/02 to 16/09 are approximately :

personnel - about 54,250 (+200) people were liquidated
tanks ‒ 2202 (+3) units,
armored combat vehicles ‒ 4701 (+11) units,
artillery systems - 1306 (+4) units,
MLRS - 312 (+0) units,
air defense equipment - 168 (+1) units,
aircraft - 251 (+1) units,
helicopters - 216 (+0) units,
UAV of operational-tactical level - 911 (+3),
cruise missiles - 236 (+3),
ships/boats - 15 (+0) units,
automotive equipment and tank trucks - 3571 (+21) units,
special equipment - 121 (+0). Source: https://censor.net/en/n3367768

I read these updates daily on Ukrainian Pravda, and the numbers are absolutely staggering in this day and age. Truly insane. Surely some military figures in Russia must realize they cannot go on like this? Yet they act and talk like everything is perfectly normal, like they live on some other planet. Some more months and they won't have much armor left in Ukraine, if they do now.