22292

Combat around Solidar has reached absolute carnage, seen some footage and its pure hell. Russia is pouring on right now. I think Ukraine needs long range weapons, ATACMS and just about anything artillery we can send them, fuck this.

22293

Oh, snap.

22294

I agree. Open up the spigots as far as I’m concerned, let them have whatever they need.

22295

I like this guy, short and concise too.

22296

According to Russian channels we should see mass surrender of thousands. Of course these same channels said that Soledar was captured three days ago, so . . .

22297

That’s implying Solidar has fallen, just by the image? The “pocket” is Solidar?

22298

Soledar has fallen. Three days ago. Or maybe now. Or maybe there’s still fighting. Take your pick! Bakhmut has also fallen multiple times.

Who knows what’s going on, aside from it being hell on earth down there right now.

22299

Ukraine has a history of letting exhausted Russian troops over-advance, then counter attack and push them back beyond where they started (since they gave up their defensive lines).

Fingers crossed that happens here - but it could be that Russia managed to hit upon a strategy that allows them to capture a single small town with only a few weeks work and thousand of lives.

Not exactly a recipe for replicable success.

22300

They’ve been working on Soledar for months, it’s just that they pulled back from Bakhmut and reallocated more forces there.

22301

Some are questioning the wisdom of Ukraine’s insistence of fighting for Bakhmut:

There is better, higher ground west of the city (it lies in a river valley).

22302

I guess it could be, if you’re willing to sacrifice a huge number of your working-age males. If you can manage to keep them all from slipping out of the country in the dead of night. And if you can properly equip and supply them all.

A lot of ifs.

22303

Weather is holding which might be a factor. I assume both sides can operate in 30-40 degrees more or less as normal.

22304

An interesting thread on Soledar/Bakhmut.

I don’t know how good this guy’s analysis is but what I found interesting down thread are the huge numbers of convicts fighting for Wagner, and the large losses Wagner has sustained in this battle.

22305

Definitely has felt like UA has been on it’s heels since Kherson and the focus and fighting in Bahkmut. While the front is frozen, the attrition is rough.

UA needs something to get some momentum again.

22306
22307

I don’t think the weather has been very conducive to maneuver and the Ukrainians can’t afford to throw infantrymen into assaults like Russia is doing. It might make sense for them to sit tight while A) the ground conditions improve and B) they’re able to receive and train on additional armored vehicles to conduct their attacks with.

My crappy and probably totally inaccurate understanding is that NATO uses artillery and other long range support (probably much more on air power as opposed to arty for a NATO war, but this is Ukraine) to create openings that are exploited with rapid attacks and I don’t think it’s very feasible right now, given the conditions. And I think it would be a lot more effective to do that with Bradleys and Marders instead of the Humvees and M113s they were shown to be using in Kherson and Kharkiv (yikes!!).

22308

Russia is “on the brink” of taking over a town that has zero strategic value.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and mistake this for some great military victory on the part of Russia.

22309

I feel like some orcs are going to go through some things if they make it home…

22310

Stuff about Tanks and Elon Musk being wrong.

22311

I suspect there’s some high level commanding going on - there’s been amazing high level commanding on the Ukrainian side the whole time - and that’s they are trading lives for enemy ammunition and time. There’s no way Ukraine fights like Bakhmut every battle for the rest of the war, but at some point somewhere there going to have to take some body blows. This doesn’t work if Russia is an industrial powerhouse - it might work if Russia is a corrupt petrostate indebted to all its neighbors.