KevinC
22092
Posting this as an item to keep an eye on. If anyone sees confirmation or developments in this area elsewhere, I’d love to see the link. I’m chucking salt over my shoulder in the meantime.
If the AFU can put that land corridor under fire control, things could get pretty uncomfortable for Russian forces in Crimea. The Kerch bridge still isn’t fully repaired/usable. And if the ground is freezing it could allow some mobility for a Ukrainian advance. Lots and lots of “ifs”, though.
Grifman
22093
I considered that but sometimes it’s hard to tell :)
Djscman
22094
What a great name and, I assume, rhetorical skill. It’s hard to argue with something Cleverly said.
James Cleverly said “I’d like a chili-cheese dog with everything.”
Makes it sound so dignified.
The UK defence secretary also said last month that he was open to the idea of providing longer range weapons to Ukraine, which would probably be the Storm Shadow cruise missile. If there’s been some kind of breakthrough in NATO internal negotiations about what weapons systems are “acceptable” to transfer to Ukraine, then maybe that becomes more likely.
As a bonus, Storm Shadow is close to end-of-life anyway; so why not get some use out of it?
spiffy
22097
Haven’t read much about it, but I’m concerned on the continuing arms deals with Iran. Seems like Russia hasn’t had too much success with its air force, so trading fighters for guided missiles sounds logical.
I’m hopeful the extra air defences Ukraine is getting will shoot down a lot of them, given they are focusing on hitting infrastructure around cities, which makes positioning the defence fairly easy. I am however worried that Russia has seen how badly HIMARS is hurting their actual army and are going to reply in kind on Ukraine military forces, where air defences would be spread way too thin to be able to knock them down. How good are those missiles?
Do the continuing sanctions on Iran and Russia not allow some kind of operation to prevent the arms exchange? Surely hundreds/thousands of missiles can’t be hard to track in a clandestine sort of way, although I suppose downing miltary transports over unfriendly countries sets another dangerous precedent.
abrandt
22098
I’m not sure those missiles are accurate enough to do what HIMARS has been doing, but they would certainly keep the terror bombings going. And a lot of the air defenses can’t shoot them down at all, so if Iran does provide them it’s going to be a rough time for Ukraine. Hopefully continued pressure on Iran keeps them from actually going through with it. They don’t particularly want to suffer due to Russia’s war.
The thing to remember about HIMARS is that it’s useless without timely targeting intel. Ukraine has built a flexible enough command and control system (both in terms of the automated tooling, and human decision-makers) that identifies high value targets and directs fire onto them as quickly as possible. The evidence is (according to RUSI) that the Russian army can’t do this. So even if they have weapons with enough precision (and I’m not sure that they do), they don’t have the systems in place to, say, direct fire onto an intercepted cell-phone signal before the cell-phone moves.
One of the details about the next US military aid package is that Ukraine has worked out how to fire western Sea Sparrow SAMs out of ex-Soviet Buk launchers. Ukraine has a bunch of old Buks, and Sea Sparrow is in service in something like 20 Western militaries. So we are sending them Sea Sparrow soon, and there will be large stocks available from which to send more.
Grifman
22100
I think given current trends, it is inevitable that Ukraine will receive Western tanks:
For the Poles, I’m sure it is a pretty clear cut case of helping themselves by helping their neighbor. Not to mention the historical lack of love lost between Poland and Russia.
Shouldn’t all the NATO countries donate weapons to Ukraine? Russia is NATOs chief enemy. Weaken them by proxy through Ukraine. It makes NATO stronger, I would think.
KevinC
22103
Yep, and they are. Some more than others, of course, but I’ve been impressed with NATO’s response to this crisis.
Such a grave miscalculation by Putin. He thought his invasion would fracture the alliance and instead it has reinvigorated it and even brought Finland and Sweden into the fold (fuck off, Hungary Orban).
Poland really fucking hates Russia, so if anyone is going to donate MBTs, it’ll be them.
Poland’s also on a huge weapons-buying binge and are replacing those Leopards with a mix of American and South Korean tanks. Those Leopards were meant to erode Russian armor anyway.
It’s a good thing the Poles have that historical hatred of the Russians, because otherwise they might find a lot of common ground in their disdain for the rule of law, gays and women.
Grifman
22107
There are multiple reports from both sides that the Russians have broken through defenses to the north of Bakhmut at Soledad… Things are not looking good there.
There’s a town in Ukraine called ‘Soledad’? That’s like a whole story of its own.
KevinC
22111
Hoping that it ends up like the reported Bakhmut breakthrough in December. But if memory serves, that town is where Russia has shifted their focus after getting pushed out of Bakhmut so seems reasonable.
Any idea why Russia wants the salt and gypsum mines there?
