Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ukraine’s “Counter-Offensive” Major Belly Flop

mmm mmm, warm russkie fire

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1773508808263778658?s=20


opps, russkies shot their own Su 35

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1773503421280043435?s=20

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1773503424480387175?s=20

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1773503426040602952?s=20


russkies go boom

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1773471425094922576?s=20

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1773444735908126726?s=20

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1773190487999967378?s=20

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

Riley Bailey, Kateryna Stepanenko, Angelica Evans, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan

March 28, 2024


Ukraine is currently preventing Russian forces from making significant tactical gains along the entire frontline, but continued delays in US security assistance will likely expand the threat of Russian operational success, including in non-linear and possibly exponential ways.
The continued degradation of Ukraine’s air defense umbrella provides one of the most immediate avenues through which Russian forces could generate non-linear operational impacts.
Russia’s ability to conduct opportunistic but limited offensive actions along Ukraine’s international border with Russia offers Russia further opportunities to constrain Ukrainian manpower and materiel, but Western aid provisions and Ukrainian efforts to address manpower challenges would ease the impacts of such Russian efforts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to make sensationalized statements as part of Russia’s ongoing reflexive control campaign, which aims to deter further Western military aid provisions to Ukraine and deflect attention from the growing Russian force posturing against NATO.
Putin’s March 27 statements are neither new nor surprising, and best illustrate how the Kremlin routinely overwhelms the Western information space, often with irrelevant or decontextualized truths rather than with outright misinformation or disinformation, to shape global perceptions and advance its own long-term objectives.
The Russian Investigative Committee unsurprisingly claimed that it has evidence tying Ukraine to the March 22 Crocus City Hall attack amid continued Kremlin efforts to link Ukraine and the West to the terrorist attack to generate more domestic support for the war in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed concern for heightened ethnic tension in Russian society following the Crocus City Hall attacks and may be falsely blaming Ukraine and the West for the Crocus City Hall attack in order to divert domestic attention away from ethnic tensions.
Ukrainian drone strikes against oil refineries in Russia are reportedly forcing Russia to import gasoline from Belarus.
An independent investigation found that international information operation campaigns linked to deceased Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin remained active, despite the Russian government shutting down media companies and organizations overtly linked to Prigozhin after his death.
Senior Russian officials are intensifying their victim-blaming of Armenian leadership as Armenia continues to distance itself from security relations with Russia after the Kremlin abandoned Armenia to its fate as it lost Nagorno-Karabakh.
Russian forces made confirmed advances near Donetsk City.
Russia continues efforts to source ballistic missiles and other weapons from North Korea for use in Ukraine.

Feeling especially chirpy tonight huh?

50 plus more of NATO officers were paid a visit by DR kinzhal today. Some high ranking Polish and Brit officers entered eternal sleep

I think everybody is better off when the Russians have a project.

.
Be nice if they would stick to things they're good at.
Like growing potatoes and making vodka.

Everyone will be better off when Ukraine is allowed to sue for peace. They have no path forward. The EU is broke. NATO is broke and so are we.supporting this bastar-d child is no longer viable.

That would make sad Alcoholics like you burns and toothouston happy

.
Always enlightening when NATO reporting name Ribbentrop chimes in to show off his wisdom.

Hehehe

You completely miss the reason there has been no air superiority over Ukraine. Modern air defenses are too effective to fly over. The Russians have always put their money into air defense not projecting air power as we have. Even the remnants of air defense remaining in Ukraine make the use of aircraft in and near Ukraine extremely risky. Our front line aircraft are incredibly powerful yet still extremely vulnerable. Stealth aircraft were shown to be vulnerable way back in the nineties. We the USA would suffer unsustainable catastrophic losses if we had to fly over a modern air defense. Modern warfare has rendered our methods of mobile armored attack under the cover of air superiority obsolete. War has now returned to attrition warfare. Ukraine is approaching the finale phase where they’re completely depleted and can no longer control their skies and deny Russian air superiority , materially support the army , and replace lost manpower. We the west cannot replace the war material being used by the Ukraine. The deindustrialization of the USA and Europe has left us collectively unable to support even this limited war in Ukraine. Our stockpiles are depleted and our ability to replenish them severely limited. Only our Navy still remains supreme. But even our Navy cannot survive near a peer like China or Russia. We can rule the open ocean but no longer near modern coastal defenses.

Like a body puncher that wears down his opponent before a final knockout blow is exactly what is happening in this war.

Since the initial incursions by both sides, the Russians have engaged in an active defense strategy, also known as a war of attrition. The objective is not territorial gain but the systematic destruction of the enemies armed forces. This strategy also has the advantage of minimizing casualties as it is usually more costly to attack than defend. In the meantime , destroy command and control, energy and munitions depots via heavy, long range strike weapons.

To categorize this conflict as a stalemate, by Western MSM ,is wishful thinking. Although engaged in active defense, the Russians are incrementally gaining territory. Witness the Ukrainian defensive belt at AdvIevka is now under Russian control.

Some forget, the vaunted Ukrainian counter offensive was beaten back with the loss of 71,000 Ukrainian KIA.

Russia has air superiority and near air supremacy, superior ISR, awash in heavy, long range strike weapons, armor and above all, manpower. The green rat is in desperate straits and a cornered rat may do anything to survive. The recent terrorist attack, organized and supported by Ukrainian nationalists, is a stark example.

I could be mistakeN but I believe, as soon as the Russians conclude that the AFU is weakened enough, they will move on Kharkov, Zaporozhe, Odessa and Kiev.

Putin has also warned that foreign airbases employed to launch F16S or otherwise, are fair game to be eliminated.

MAGA!

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, and George Barros

March 29, 2024


The Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP), a Kremlin-controlled organization and a known tool within the Russian hybrid warfare toolkit, held the World Russian People’s Council in Moscow on March 27 and 28 and approved an ideological and policy document tying several Kremlin ideological narratives together in an apparent effort to form a wider nationalist ideology around the war in Ukraine and Russia’s expansionist future.
The ROC MP intensified Kremlin rhetoric about Russia’s war in Ukraine and cast it as an existential and civilizational “holy war,” a significant inflection for Russian authorities who have so far carefully avoided officially framing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as any kind of “war.”
The ROC MP called for the codification of elements of the Russkiy Mir and may be gauging public support for the formal inclusion of ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians in the Kremlin’s concept of the Russian nation.
The ROC MP heavily emphasized Russia’s need for traditional family values and an updated migration policy to counter Russia’s ongoing demographic crisis.
The ROC MP appears to be combining previously parallel Kremlin narrative efforts into a relatively cohesive ideology focusing on national identity and demographic resurgence that promises Russians a period of national rejuvenation in exchange for social and civic duties.
Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stressed that materiel shortages from delays in Western security assistance are constraining Ukrainian forces and forcing Ukraine to conduct a strategic defense.
The Russian military likely expanded the target set for Russia’s strike campaign against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure to include hydroelectric power plants.
Russia vetoed an annual United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution extending a monitoring panel tracking adherence to UN sanctions against North Korea on March 28.
The Kremlin appears to have succeeded in pressuring Telegram to further censor extremist content following the March 22 Crocus City Hall attack, highlighting the Kremlin’s ability to pressure significant actors within the Russian information space to act in its interests.
Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Donetsk City and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area amid continued positional engagements along the entire line of contact on March 29.
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) is preparing for Russia’s semi-annual spring conscription cycle, which will begin on April 1.
Russian occupation authorities continue law enforcement crackdowns, including against the Crimean Tatar ethnic minority, to consolidate control over occupied Ukraine.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/51...urce=ground.news&utm_medium=referral


War a real threat and Europe not ready, warns Poland's PM
10:40 am today
By Paul Kirby, BBC News


Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has delivered a blunt warning that Europe has entered a "pre-war era" and if Ukraine is defeated by Russia, nobody in Europe will be able to feel safe.

"I don't want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past," he told European media. "It's real and it started over two years ago."

His remarks came as a fresh barrage of Russian missiles targeted Ukraine.

Russia has intensified its bombardment of Ukraine in recent weeks.

Overnight into Friday Ukraine's air force said it had shot down 58 drones and 26 missiles and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said energy infrastructure had been damaged in six regions, in the west, centre and east of the country.

Ukraine's national energy company has announced emergency blackouts in three regions of the country - Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kirovograd - and has urged consumers to limit electricity use. The provider, Ukrenergo, blamed "the massive Russian attack on Ukrainian power plants overnight".

Tusk, a former president of the European Council, said Russian President Vladimir Putin had already blamed Ukraine for the jihadist attack on Moscow's Crocus City Hall without any evidence and "evidently feels the need to justify increasingly violent attacks on civil targets in Ukraine".

He pointed out that Russia had attacked Kyiv with hypersonic missiles in daylight for the first time earlier this week.

He used his first foreign interview since returning to office as Polish prime minister at the end of last year to deliver a direct appeal to Europe's leaders to do more to bolster its defences.

Regardless of whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump won November's United States presidential election, he argued Europe would become a more attractive partner to the US if it became more self-sufficient militarily.

It was not about Europe achieving military autonomy from the US or creating "parallel structures to Nato", he said. Poland now spent 4 percent of its economic output on defence and every other European country should spend 2 percent of GDP, with the European Union as a whole mentally prepared to fight for its security.

Since Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine, relations with the West have reached their lowest ebb since the worst days of the Cold War, although Putin said this week that Moscow had "no aggressive intentions" towards Nato countries.

The idea that his country would attack Poland, the Baltic states and the Czech Republic was "complete nonsense", he said. And yet he also warned that if Ukraine used Western F-16 warplanes from airfields in other countries, they would become "legitimate targets, wherever they might be located".

This is not Tusk's first warning of a pre-war era. He gave centre-right European leaders a similar message earlier this month.

However, he revealed that Spain's Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, had asked fellow EU leaders to stop using the word "war" in their summit statements, because people did not want to feel threatened. Tusk said he had replied that in his part of Europe, war was no longer an abstract idea.

Appealing for urgent military aid for Ukraine, he warned that the next two years of the war would decide everything: "We are living in the most critical moment since the end of the Second World War."

What was most worrying now, he told journalists from some of Europe's biggest newspapers, was that "literally any scenario is possible".

He remembered a photo on the wall of his family home in Poland that showed people laughing on a beach at Sopot, near Gdansk where he was born, on the southern Baltic coast.

The image was from 31 August 1939, he said, then a dozen hours later and 5 kilometres away, World War II began.

"I know it sounds devastating, especially to people of the younger generation, but we have to mentally get used to the arrival of a new era. The pre-war era," he warned.

Despite his chilling remarks, Tusk was more optimistic about what he called a real revolution in mentality across Europe.

When he was Polish prime minister for the first time, from 2007 to 2014, he said few other European leaders beyond Poland and the Baltic states realised Russia was a potential threat.

He praised several European leaders and highlighted the importance of security co-operation between Poland, France and Germany - an alliance known as the Weimar Triangle. And he pointed to Sweden and Finland, once paragons of pacifism and neutrality but now members of Nato.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's newly appointed commander-in-chief General Oleksandr Syrskiy admitted in a rare interview that Russia was outgunning Ukrainian forces "about six to one" on the front line.

"The defence forces are now performing tasks along the entire vast front line, with little or no weapons and ammunition," he warned in an interview with the Ukrinform news agency, saying the situation was "tense" in some areas.

Syrskyi said Ukraine had lost territory it would "undoubtedly have retained" with "a sufficient number of air defence systems and artillery shells", and said the country hoped to receive more aid and missiles soon.

Analysis
The latest warning from Poland's Prime Minister echoes what his neighbours in the Baltic states have been saying for some time; if Russia can get away with invading, occupying and annexing whole provinces in Ukraine then how long, they fear, before President Putin decides to launch a similar offensive against countries like theirs, that used to be part of Moscow's orbit?

Defence spending per capita is noticeably higher in the Nato countries bordering Russia than it is in western Europe.

Vladimir Putin, who critics say has just "reappointed himself" to a fifth presidential term in a "sham election", has recently said he has no plans to attack a Nato country.

But Baltic leaders like Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas say Moscow's word cannot be trusted. In the days leading up to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed Western warnings of the imminent invasion as "propaganda" and "Western hyperbole".

for all you Putler puffers, the church says it's all right...


https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/r...ia-vladimir-putin/2024/03/29/id/1159097/

Russian Orthodox Doc Declares 'Holy War' in Ukraine

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Friday, 29 March 2024


The Russian Orthodox Church this week approved a document declaring its country's self-described "special military operation" against Ukraine as a "holy war" being waged to protect Russia's "spiritual space."

The declaration was made in a document approved during a gathering of the World Russian People's Council, which brought religious, cultural, and political figures together at the Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, reports Newsweek.

"From a spiritual and moral point of view, the special military operation is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people, are defending the single spiritual space of Holy Russia," said the document, released under the heading of "special military operation," the Kremlin's official term for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The document added that the war was waged to protect "the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West, which has fallen into Satanism," and declared that once the war is over, "the entire territory of modern Ukraine should enter the zone of Russia's exclusive influence."

"The possibility of the existence of a Russophobic political regime hostile to Russia and its people on this territory, as well as a political regime controlled from an external center hostile to Russia, should be completely excluded," the declaration said.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who heads the Russian Orthodox Church and the World Russian People's Council, is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In February 2022, when the invasion of Ukraine began, Kirill declared that Ukraine and Belarus remain part of "Russian lands" and condemned Ukrainians fighting back against the invasion as "forces of evil." He also presented the war as Russia's battle for Christianity's future.

Other representatives in the Orthodox faith, however, including the U.S.-based Orthodox Public Affairs Committee (OPAC) have condemned the war and after the invasion of Ukraine began, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) cut its ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, told Newsweek earlier this month that in places where Russia has arrived in Ukraine, it has worked to "exterminate all other religions besides the well-controlled and weaponized Russian Orthodox Church."

Meanwhile, the Institute for Religious Freedom, based in Kyiv, said last year that Russia's military has destroyed, damaged, or looted almost 500 religious buildings, with the numbers continuing to climb.

Shevchuk said it is a challenge for his church not to become militant or "fall to the same temptation the Russian Orthodox Church fell into and become an instrument of hatred."

DR kinzhal just paid a visit to more NATO mercs last night



In Syria 4 Apaches crashed in March

https://x.com/a7_mirza/status/1774022172148711485?s=46

DAY 766

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Angelica Evans, Kateryna Stepanenko, and George Barros

March 30, 2024


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated that delays in American security assistance have forced Ukraine to cede the battlefield initiative, not contest the battlefield initiative, and continue to threaten Ukraine’s defensive capabilities.
Russian missile strikes destroyed one of the largest thermal power plants in Kharkiv Oblast on March 22, as continued delays in US security assistance degrade Ukraine’s air defense umbrella and increase Russia’s ability to significantly damage Ukraine’s energy grid.
Russian forces are demonstrating technological and tactical adaptations and are increasingly using unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) on the frontlines of Donetsk Oblast.
The Russian military is reportedly forming mobile fire groups to mitigate against Ukrainian drone strike threats but will likely struggle to field these groups at the required scale in the near term.
Russian authorities continue to escalate legal pressure against migrants in the wake of the March 22 Crocus City Hall attack, prompting both Russian authorities to increase deportations and migrants to voluntarily leave Russia.
Positional engagements continued throughout the theater on March 30.
Russian mobilized personnel continue to suffer high casualties while fighting in Ukraine.

Zelensky Sacks Closest Ally:

The Ukrainian president has dismissed a long-time aide, Sergey Shefir, as well as several senior advisers.

Sherif was one of the few remaining officials to have served alongside Zelensky since day one of his presidency, assuming his post in May 2019. Before getting into politics, he was a long-time close business associate of Zelensky, with whom he had co-founded the Kvartal 95 (District 95) comedy studio.

Twenty border guards from a border unit based near the village of Vinogradovka in the Odessa region abandoned their posts and fled to Moldova after learning of their leadership’s plans to send them to the front.

This guy has some insight because, obviously.

"Odessa Will Fall", Elon Musk Warns Ukraine:

Kiev should pursue a “negotiated settlement” with Moscow before it loses all access to the Black Sea, the billionaire has stated.

The entrepreneur stated in a post on his X platform on Saturday that “any fool could have predicted” that Kiev’s much-touted counteroffensive last year would fail, adding that even if Kiev had followed his recommendation to “entrench and apply all resources to defense,” it would be “tough to hold land that doesn’t have strong natural barriers.”

some russkie scrap


https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

By Jakub Janovsky, naalsio26, Aloha, Dan, Kemal, and Alexander Black

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned.




Russia - 15093, of which: destroyed: 10645, damaged: 695, abandoned: 823, captured: 2930


Tanks (2873, of which destroyed: 1901, damaged: 154, abandoned: 285, captured: 533)
Armoured Fighting Vehicles (1275, of which destroyed: 873, damaged: 35, abandoned: 99, captured: 268)
Armoured Personnel Carriers (416, of which destroyed: 280, damaged: 18, abandoned: 26, captured: 92)
Towed Artillery (356, of which destroyed: 205, damaged: 46, abandoned: 5, captured: 100)
Multiple Rocket Launchers (363, of which destroyed: 273, damaged: 34, abandoned: 2, captured: 54)
Self-Propelled Artillery (709, of which destroyed: 553, damaged: 41, abandoned: 7, captured: 108)
Multiple Rocket Launchers (363, of which destroyed: 273, damaged: 34, abandoned: 2, captured: 54)
Surface-To-Air Missile Systems (216, of which destroyed: 157, damaged: 31, abandoned: 4, captured: 24)
Aircraft (107, of which destroyed: 99, damaged: 8)
Helicopters (135, of which destroyed: 103, damaged: 30, captured: 2)
Naval Ships and Submarines (22, of which destroyed: 16, damaged: 6)








Trucks, Vehicles, and Jeeps (3176, of which destroyed: 2475, damaged: 84, abandoned: 47, captured: 570)
Reconnaissance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (337, of which destroyed: 196, captured: 141)
Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (14, of which destroyed: 11, captured: 3)
Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicles (53, of which destroyed: 37, damaged: 5, abandoned: 1, captured: 10)
Infantry Mobility Vehicles (239, of which destroyed: 171, damaged: 14, abandoned: 3, captured: 51)
Command Posts And Communications Stations (274, of which destroyed: 183, damaged: 4, abandoned: 2, captured: 85)
Engineering Vehicles And Equipment (453, of which destroyed: 246, damaged: 17, abandoned: 38, captured: 152)
Self-Propelled Anti-Tank Missile Systems (44, of which destroyed: 18, damaged: 1, abandoned: 4, captured: 21)
Artillery Support Vehicles And Equipment (116, of which destroyed: 60, abandoned: 2, captured: 54)
Anti-Aircraft Guns (51, of which destroyed: 32, damaged: 1, captured: 18)
Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft Guns (25, of which destroyed: 14, damaged: 1, abandoned: 2, captured: 8)
Radars (63, of which destroyed: 41, damaged: 12, captured: 10)
Jammers And Deception Systems (77, of which destroyed: 58, damaged: 11, captured: 8)