Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 8
September 8, 11:00 pm ET
https://isw.pub/RusCampaignSept8
Ukrainian successes on the Kharkiv City-Izyum line are creating fissures within the Russian information space and eroding confidence in Russian command to a degree not seen since a failed Russian river crossing in mid-May.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Despite being outgunned and outmanned, Kiev troops sometimes fight like demons. I suspect Russia was counting on the Donetsk and Luhansk militias to do more of the fighting. Seems Russia is forming a Third Army (ThirdCorps) to reinforce the Donbas militias.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:I suspect you are blowing smoke. This is what Phillips Payson O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who is not bullshitting, has to say on the war. He is the author of How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II.
Originally posted by SignyM:
I suspect Russia was counting on the Donetsk and Luhansk militias to do more of the fighting.
Ukraine Is Waging a New Kind of War
By Phillips Payson O’Brien
The fight to retake the city of Kherson plays to the Ukrainians’ strengths, not the Russians’.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220909133941/https://www.theatlantic.com
/ideas/archive/2022/09/ukraine-counteroffensive-battle-of-kherson/671364/
Ukrainian officials, defending their country against Russian aggressors, began doing something in July that seemed odd, even counterintuitive: They started speaking loudly and regularly about their plans to liberate Kherson—a key southern city that Russia seized only a week after invading Ukraine on February 24. Indeed, the Ukrainians telegraphed their intentions in a way that the Russians could not mistake. This was like waving a red cape at an angry, incompetent bull. Almost immediately, rumors proliferated that the Russians were racing reinforcements to Kherson to prepare for the Ukrainian attack.
Goading the Russians into doing so seems to have been the Ukrainians’ exact goal. Fighting in Kherson plays to Ukrainian strength far more than to the Russians’. Russian occupiers in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas, where the war had been concentrated from April until July, can operate very close to the Russian border, seem to have solidly functional rail lines, and are currently trying to pressure the Ukrainians from two sides at the tip of the fighting around the town of Siversk. Fighting in Kherson, by contrast, nullifies almost all of Russia’s advantages in the Donbas. The Russians are at the edge of their supply lines, while the Ukrainians can maneuver around them. Kherson is deeper into Ukraine than the Donbas, so Russian aircraft have farther to travel to reach the front lines, and that clearly makes them nervous; they prefer to fly mostly over Russia itself or its ally Belarus. Finally, the entire Russian fighting force in Kherson depends for its supplies on just a small number of bridges that span the wide Dnipro River. In recent weeks, the Ukrainians have attacked those crossings almost nightly, severely hindering Russia from moving supplies to their hard-pressed troops in Kherson. The longer the Russians have to fight with limited supplies, the more the battle will turn in Ukraine’s favor.
Though Vladimir Putin had the reputation of a strategic genius when he started this war six months ago, the Ukrainians have exposed him as a plodding and unimaginative thinker who miscalculated enormously. Since then he has resorted to ponderous, unthinking offensives that have secured minimal gains at a very high cost. The Russian army, wildly overrated before the war by military analysts who hailed it as one of the most fast-moving, technologically sophisticated, and powerful in the world, turns out to be profoundly flawed. With ever-changing carousels of generals in charge, it has shown itself to be inflexible, uncreative, and unable to learn.
Ukraine has been on a more impressive trajectory. At the start of the war, the Ukrainians fought a surprisingly strong defensive struggle around Kyiv. Using attacks on Russian logistics and a strategy of denying the Russians access to Ukrainian cities, stringing Russian forces along the roads, and contesting the control of the air, they neutered the Russian drive on Kyiv in just a few weeks. Since then, the Ukrainian military has demonstrated the ability to adapt and develop new ways of countering the Russians. The sinking of the Moskva, the expulsion of the Russians from Snake Island, and the strikes on Russian facilities in occupied Crimea, an area previously thought too difficult to attack, show that the Ukrainians can plan a
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All kinds of interpretations but one commentator made the parallel to Palmyra in Syria. As I recall, it was taken by the Russians but was left to the Syrians to hold. Then the Russians focused on Aleppo which allowed ISIS to re-take Palmyra while the Syrian troops ran away.
I don't follow military affairs too much, but there were criticisms of the Syrian Army that I recall, and that was the Syrian Army wasn't really a national army, it was a group of poorly-trained, cobbled-together and ineptly-commanded local and regional militias. And that if you moved a militia from... say, Afrin to Palmyra... and they thought that Afrin was under attack, they would decamp back to Afrin.
Bear with me, I'm getting there...
At some point, Russia gave up trying to reform the whole Syrian Army and created a whole new division with new recruits and new commanders.
****
I see much the same dynamic in Ukraine. Russia has not actually committed a large number of troops to this "SMO". Much of the fighting is being done by the Luhansk and Donetsk militias. And bc the fighting is being done by local troops, they have a large say in what happens next. It's been mentioned more than once that the fight for Mariupol was stretched out by several weeks when Donetsk city came under shelling and a part of the military force in Mariupol left to defend Donetsk.
And when it would make more sense to advance on Bakhmut, the attacks are redirected to Avdivka, which is a heavily fortified settlement that is shelling Donetsk city.
Anyway, "Russians" were NOT in control in this region of Kharkiv. There were some militarized Russian police, but this was mostly in the hands of LPR forces. The questions "Why didn't you lay minefields?" and "Why didn't you create reinforced defenses?" or "Why didn't you ask for more artillery?" should be directed to the LPR.
Possibly this is Russia's attempt to train up the militias to national army standards by letting reality bitch slap them with failure, or winnowing out poor commanders. I suspect that Russia will pull their bacon out of the fire and possibly turn this into a cauldron. And maybe this was necessary but it sure looks bad. In the meantime, expect a massacre of "collaborators" by Kiev's army, a la Bucha.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:And possibly you made up this story in your head. Please quote somebody who actually knows rather than you creating Russian fan-fiction.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Possibly this is Russia's attempt to train up the militias to national army standards by letting reality bitch slap them with failure, or winnowing out poor commanders. I suspect that Russia will pull their bacon out of the fire and possibly turn this into a cauldron. And maybe this was necessary but it sure looks bad. In the meantime, expect a massacre of "collaborators" by Kiev's army, a la Bucha.
By the way, Signym, those dead bodies at Bucha were killed by Russians. Here is what an actual source looks like, Signym: Bucha Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre
But if wikipedia is not to your taste, there are many more references at https://www.google.com/search?q=Bucha using a single word "Bucha".
‘I again urge Russia to stop this illegal aggression,’ the former United Nations secretary general tells The Independent. Ban Ki-moon says perpetrators of Bucha massacres must face justice: ‘If not today, tomorrow’. Former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon has spoken of his horror at the slaughter of hundreds of Ukrainian citizens whose bodies were dumped in mass graves by Russian troops.
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/world/ban-ki-moon-buc
ha-ukraine-zelensky-b2162125.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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T
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You are not okay in the head, 6ix. Neither is Trump:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Shut up, meat popsicle.
Your time is over.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
Yup. Whatever you say, retard.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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SECOND:
Google?
Wikipedia?
Shirley, you jest!
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Despite being outgunned and outmanned, Kiev troops sometimes fight like demons. I suspect Russia was counting on the Donetsk and Luhansk militias to do more of the fighting. Seems Russia is forming a Third Army (ThirdCorps) to reinforce the Donbas militias.
It's a rout comrade signym. Told you so.
T
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Quote:There are two explanations for dead civilians at Bucha:
Originally posted by SignyM:
SECOND:
Google?
Wikipedia?
Shirley, you jest!
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
1) Russia's - the civilians were killed by Ukrainians.
2) Ukraine's - the civilians were killed by Russians.
You could pick one depending on which side is your personal favorite. Here is an example of option 1) Russia's - the civilians were killed by Ukrainians.:
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Possibly this is Russia's attempt to train up the militias to national army standards by letting reality bitch slap them with failure, or winnowing out poor commanders. I suspect that Russia will pull their bacon out of the fire and possibly turn this into a cauldron. And maybe this was necessary but it sure looks bad. In the meantime, expect a massacre of "collaborators" by Kiev's army, a la Bucha.
Alternatively, you could go to Duck Duck Go https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Bucha
Duck Duck Go says the truth is option 2) Ukraine's - the civilians were killed by Russians:
Quote:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/4/will-the-bucha-massacre-wake-u
Duped by the Kremlin’s announcements that said Ukraine needed to be “liberated” from neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists, Russian troops found themselves among a “stormy sea” of hostile civilians, he said.
They resorted to killing adult males and raping women as the only way to “suppress resistance and achieve a collective nervous breakdown”, he said.
“[It was] physical and psychological destruction of a will to resist,” Kushch said.
p-the-world
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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