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Kyev seems about to be captured

justoneman said:
Who said it was supposed to be defeated by now? It's just TV talking heads. Ukraine is a vast country with millions of people.
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You have to be oblivious not to have caught the Russian change in tactics.

Clearly Putin thought he was simply going to walk over the Ukrainians and topple the government in a matter or days. How do I know? Because he changed tactics from one of fighting Ukrainian military and territorial guard forces to indiscriminately bombing and shelling Ukraine cities and civilians into the stone ages and agreeing to humanitarian corridors and then simply bombing the shit out of them too.
 
Craig234 said:
I wouldn't call three miles closer in a day to within nine miles glacial.
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Considering they have so far been largely engaging Ukraine forces in the field, that is glacial.

Craig234 said:
As I said, the estimates were 1-2 weeks to surround, and that my opinion is that it might not take nearly that long to go the last 9 miles.
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Once they are in the city proper, yes, those last nine miles are going to be literal hell. I've been going around threads and few people seem to understand how ****ing difficult modern urban combat is. Taking a city like Kyiv is going to be incredibly costly to Russia. It will not be quick. It will not be easy. And they will lose thousands, maybe tens of thousands of troops.
 
Nomad4Ever said:
Considering they have so far been largely engaging Ukraine forces in the field, that is glacial.
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That 12 to 9 mile progress in a day wasn't in the field, it was Kyev suburbs IIUC.

We'll see. I'd hope it's slow going and something prevents Putin getting it done, but I don't think it's lookin good. The longer term is looking better that Russia can't hold Ukraine.
 
justoneman said:
Who said it was supposed to be defeated by now? It's just TV talking heads. Ukraine is a vast country with millions of people.
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Putin's plan was 15 days.
 

Then can we let Russia back in the G8 like Trump suggested?
 
He has no hope of holding Ukraine which is another reason why he has turned to destroying it.
 

With the amount of anti-tank weapons delivered and to be delivered to Ukrainian forces, Kyiv will be a bloodbath for Russian troops.
 

The “Z” marking are friend/foe markings.
 
BlueTex said:
With the amount of anti-tank weapons delivered and to be delivered to Ukrainian forces, Kyiv will be a bloodbath for Russian troops.
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They'd have a pretty big problem if they led with tanks. That's not what I'd expect.
 
BlueTex said:
With the amount of anti-tank weapons delivered and to be delivered to Ukrainian forces, Kyiv will be a bloodbath for Russian troops.
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Yep. Ukraine has the second largest army in Europe (second to Russia), and virtually all of Europe, the US, and a few countries from the rest of the world have just been emptying their armories into Ukraine.

The other side of that coin though is the Russian army is just far worse than any analyst assumed they would be before this conflict started.

Russia Doesn't Train Troops for Urban Warfare. It's About to Learn the Consequences in Ukraine.

"Russian combined-arms doctrine has generally advised against making cities primary objectives."
www.military.com

Now that we have seen both the unexpected effectiveness of Ukrainian forces and the quite frankly shocking incompetence of Russia's military...honestly I see this turning into a long protracted stalemate.
 
If anything, estimates have consistently underestimated Ukraine's ability to block the Russian advance.
 
Craig234 said:
They'd have a pretty big problem if they led with tanks. That's not what I'd expect.
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Russia has just totally abandoned doctrine as far as I can tell. Air attacks without a supporting ground force, group forces without air support, tanks without infantry, infantry without tanks, supply lines without air defenses, desperately dropping paratroopers way ahead of where they can be supported...

Tactics wise this has just been a shit show so far.
 
jnug said:
He has no hope of holding Ukraine which is another reason why he has turned to destroying it.
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Perhaps a topic for another thread- but then again we have enough on Ukraine.

But to your point, I keep wondering what Putin really believes the end game to be here? I don't see it ever ending well (for him). Even if he/they take all of Ukraine, the world is not simply going to accept that and there will be punishing sanctions from every angle. I don't think the Ukrainian people are going to accept it so Putin will have another Afghanistan on his hands. And he may anger enough of his own people that they get him out of office one way or the other.
Thoughts?
 
The Russian military seems to have gone decidedly backwards.

Even in its Cold War heyday, it was wildly overestimated. That started to change when we started to get intelligence from defectors that every driver of the Soviet T-64 (main battle tank for Russia in the 60's) was given a hammer as standard issue, just to get the damned thing in and out of gear and that there was a serious hunt on nationwide for left handed gun loaders as your typical right handed loader could not get out the way fast enough. They were getting hammered into the back of the turret. On any given day not more than a third of a typical Soviet tank battalion was operational even with the hammers. Then came the news that their ICBM's could not hit a barn door with a base fiddle.
 
lwf said:
If anything, estimates have consistently underestimated Ukraine's ability to block the Russian advance.
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While Ukraine's forces have performed better than expected, I think the early estimations (even from people such as Gen Milley) that Ukraine would fall in 72h was that nobody could have possibly predicted how much the Russian forces would fall on their faces.

My personal guess is that Putin has behind the scenes prioritized putting people who are loyal to him over people who are competent. I think the on the ground Russian forces are getting top down orders to accomplish missions they simple cannot do with the resources or time frame they have been given. I don't think the higher ups want to hear about setbacks or that something can't be done. I think Putin genuinely believed they would roll Ukraine and may have even shot down planning for a longer conflict. Russia has been extremely slow to adjust their tactics, even in the face of massive losses:
What did we get wrong about Russian air superiority? Prior to the invasion, we assessed that Russia would establish air superiority within seventy-two hours of conflict. This has clearly not materialized. Here is what we got wrong:
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1 - Failure of initial strikes. Russian air and missile strikes at the start of the conflict failed to inflict serious damage on Ukrainian air defenses, and the Russians have struggled with that error for two weeks now.
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Russia Crisis Military Assessment: How will Russia stage the battle of Kyiv?

Russia’s own force miscalculations and fierce Ukrainian opposition have dashed the Kremlin’s hopes of a lightning victory over Ukraine.
www.atlanticcouncil.org
 
Reactions: lwf

But about the issue of anti-tank weapons, Russia has been doing best with remote bombing, not tanks, and can be expected to do more of that.
 
First off, the advance you're talking about is to the East, whereas the convoy is in the west. That is because the terrain to the east is flat and the Ukrainian army does not have enough forces to form a defense in the Eastern flank so they're relying on stopping the Russian formations in Kyiv itself which is why the Russians have made such progress. Now that they've reached the outskirts, resistance will significantly strengthen.

As to your second point, source? Supplying an entire army by air is not efficient and costly, and its unclear whether Russia have enough air capabilities to do so in the first place. Ongoing advances and shelling does not indicate there's no logistic problems. I have only seen probing attacks so far on Kyiv.

I'm more inclined to believe experts on how long it takes tbh. There are always plenty of factors into play, and it is yet to be seen whether Ukrainian counterattacks can derail this effort.
 
I agree with you. Putin has made the often fatal mistake of surrounding himself with sycophants and yes-men.

 
Buckeyes85 said:
But to your point, I keep wondering what Putin really believes the end game to be here?
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Right now his plan seems to be to go 'full China'; to prevent Ukraine from being a prosperous, pro-west nation on his border and threatening to take back Crimea, while he goes 'full totalitarian' in Russia, making Russia more independent from the world and more immune to sanctions, and trying to build an anti-democracy alliance with China.
 
SonOfDaedalus said:
Then can we let Russia back in the G8 like Trump suggested?
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Well, they hadn't tried to take over Ukraine in a few years before than happened and everyone had pretty much accepted their takeover of Crimea.

Actually, that's a little unfair of me. Everybody was happy with the takeover of Crimea except Vladimir who figured he wanted more.
 
I think the 72 hour time frame was bs in the first place. Ukraine is vast, and their army is decent and equipped with western weapons. Kyiv would not have been taken that quickly, its simply too large and there were simply too many units stationed in the vicinity. Milley is braindead.

I do think the Russian High Command acknowledged the possibility of such a situation, yet they hoped it would never pass. It would also be unfeasible to suddenly change their doctrine, something that they've been using since the USSR. The Russian doctrine is also "casualty-averse", so none of this is that big of a surprise.
 
Putin turned generations of Ukrainians into freedom fighters for a decade.
 
ChickenTendies said:
I think the 72 hour time frame was bs in the first place.
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I agree. The only way I could possibly have seen that happening is they expected to Blitz Kyiv, capturing the Ukrainian government, and have them surrender ending organized military resistance.

I agree with this too. The point I was making was only that I believe the Russian military structure has a very "top down" decision making process; or at least more so than the American military is. For example, our logistics are bottom up. Unit commanders are responsible for requesting the resources they need, then those resources are sent to them. Russia's logistics are top down. High command decides how many resources will be needed for an operation then distributes those down.
 
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