20199

The withdrawal may be running into problems:

20200

More here - UA troops may be entering Kherson:

It should be noted the UA artillery should be having a free ride. All RA artillery should be either across the river out of range or on the move across. This could get bad for the Russians.

20202

It may not have been too smart to announce their retreat before they had actually accomplished their retreat.

20203

Yep. Occam’s razor would posit that he’s a paid Russian troll. Simplest explanation for all his posts.

20204

Ya think? Almost like they thought they could call a time out and UA wouldn’t capitalize on the opportunity. So now UA gets thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles. You want them to retreat? Sure, pull out of Donbas and we’ll let them go.

20205

Seeing lots of accounts who are reading telegram channels and such saying what Grifman posted up-thread: a whole lot of Russian troops (saw one person estimate 15-20k) on the wrong side of the Dnipro and getting pounded.

Which, I know has to happen. It’s war. And they’re the aggressor force, and may have done all sorts of pretty awful things during their occupation. But I can’t help but think of how horrific it must be to be stuck in that situation.

I know, I know. Fuck 'em, that’s why. ;) It has to happen, for strategic as well as a host of other reasons. It still gives me some pause, even so.

War is hell, as the man said.

20206

no pause. they can surrender.

20207

The analysis I’ve seen says this is a result of Political goals clashing with Military goals. The objective of the military announcing it was to hang this disaster on their heads and not on Putin’s. Presumably pre-announced so that it let people know in advance who they were supposed to put the blame on before the disaster actually unfolded.

20208

I’ll make a note that this is another great example of how they aren’t actually taking any of the steps necessary to actually start to turn this thing around militarily.

20209

As @Soapyfrog said, they can always surrender. I’d feel for them if they were defending their homeland or something along those lines where surrender wasn’t much of an option.

As it is, I hope they’re pounded into dust.

20210

I think we can all agree that the big Fuck 'em goes to the assholes in charge that put them there, but there’s also a least enough smoke to guess a level of fire that the troops are pretty goddamned awful, too. I reserve that judgement until we know better, but fuck somebody.

20211

Don’t feel sorry for those assholes. Really.

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20212

If what I am reading from multiple sources is true, there may be no one to man that new defensive line across the river. Again, if reports are true, this is just another example of total Russian incompetence.

You’d think a decent military, knowing how hard a fighting withdrawal across a river would be, would have taken their time and put together a well thought out plan, especially given how long the Russians should have been planning this. I’ve even read that some Russian units didn’t even know of the retreat.

More info in this thread:

20213

Compare that to the AFU’s withdrawal from Severodonetsk, which had US brass raising their eyebrows.

I will be curious to see if what Mike Martin is saying turns out to be the case, once the fog of war clears.

20214

They managed their retreat from Kyiv front pretty well early in the war. But I guess those were their trained troops. Now they’ve got a bunch of disorganized and untrained soldiers expected to perform an orderly retreat.

20215

They also have a lot less officers.

20216

And also before AFU was in a position to really press in an organized fashion. Compare Karkiv.

20217

I’m pleased to see Ukraine taking back Kherson, it is vital for their ability to retain more of their land.
When it comes to my figures on losses and whatnot, I am a bit lazy as I haven’t been assed digging it up, or I think the sources are somewhat unreliable, HistoryLegends dude on youtube says about 9000 Ukranian troops are perished in the Kherson offensives for example…

I don’t mind being wrong actually, I’m perfectly okay with that, and I will adjust my opinion on the subject. As far as I can tell, I don’t think we can get much stats on whats going on right now, its all under censorship.

Lastly, I’m curious about what happens in the latest stages of Russian withdrawal from Kherson, I doubt Ukraine will show much mercy, it could end up an absolute slaughter…

20218

When your sources are terrible, you repeat them like they are absolute facts.

When you have good sources, you misrepresent what they say.

Now you come and say actually you aren’t really all that sure about anything. Yeah we noticed. Thanks for berating us all about how WE’RE the ones who aren’t paying attention.

20219

I’m suspect a lot is going to happen overnight and we will begin to see things a lot more clearly tomorrow once it is daylight. If the RA is collapsing we should see obvious signs tomorrow.