Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Lot of pro-Russian accounts on Twitter freaking out about this withdrawal.

Can't wait for the Russian TV clips!

Explosions reported in Oleshky district of Kherson region after missile strikes at Russian military equipment

carry on regardless

I think it was sarcasm given the 3 days comment.

It's hard to see how and with what Russia can advance, which means indiscriminate shelling instead.

An already bad week for Russian army even with its lots of hiding loses and damage including the naval base in crimea, so a kherson withdrawal should be followed by a complete cessation of all hostilities and a declaration that all the nazi's and satins have been eliminated successfully ending the special op

Or

If this goes on it will be 100k less Russians by December, on a positive note will be a record year for ladas

Two things have me baffled about this ‘Special Operation’

(1) why to Russian side makes some of their announcements- especially ones not in their favour eg Kherson withdrawal, the demise of the Kherson deputy head in a car crash, some of the withdrawals in the Kharkiv region.. There is probably some truth in most /all of them. What is the ulterior motive in making them. PutinRussia do normally make such announcements because there are a definite of Weakness/failure AND Putin/Russia DO NOT DO WEAKNESS/FAILURE

(2) the digging of three lines of trenches just inside Chrimea to stop Ukr from advancing. It beggars belief. First of all , with strategic bombing., they can be rendered totally ineffective . The spy in the sky can show where the concentration of Ru soldiers are along the trenches - so killing two birds with the one stone comes to mind. I can see the Ru running from these spots and ‘not returning’ out of fear

And anyway, re WW 11 , the current war is fought more between military assets rather than between soldiers on the ground, so the Ukr can operate with its artillarybehind the Ru lines and even further South.

in all of the above , the constant DRONE attacks by RU is the one area that the UKR will have to find a way to substantially render them ineffictive

I love around 5:10. He knows very well the reality of this war.

I wouldn't trivialise almost 80,000 dead on just the Orc's side as a war just between assets. You probably should have look at some telegram channels if you think soldiers on the ground aren't fighting each other. The Ukrainians are being very intelligent and using every tool possible to avoid man on man when they can, but there is an unavoidable amount of close skirmishing going on, such as when they assaulted a Wagner base in close-order fighting and eliminated over 200 of them.

Ukraine are well aware of the need for air defences, it's been the absolute number one priority for some time.

It is still just propaganda though, designed as much for international as domestic audiences. We can be quite sure the AFU deal with what they see on the ground and not the Russian TV screens.

On a related matter and for the intelligence types here, one of the consequences of the autumn/ winter season I presume is that there is less information from remote sensing and the 'eye in the sky'. What typically are weather patterns there in terms of precipitation and cloud cover this time of year? Satellite imagery was evidently in use during the summer to help track Russian military movements, but that will be less predictable now. I guess other technologies will be less affected.

We are past the point where weather or cloud cover are a serious impediment to imaging of military conflicts and such. Synthetic Aperture Radar SAR satellites can image through cloud cover in very high detail - day or night. This is a commercial SAR image:

Commercial systems like Iceeye have less than 1m resolution:

Those are train cars in Oklahoma. The US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) would have far higher resolution assets available to it than that.

This is some very bad news:

A week ago It looked like they had agreed to supply the RQ-9 Reaper drones, given this is less capable, it almost certainly means those have been scuppered as well.

So much for those sound bites about supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs. This whole awful war is largely the US's fault in the first place, the very least they should do morally is supply some better stuff to reduce the further loss of life after the terrible losses suffered to date.

The guy in the purple tie was doing more gulping than Homer Simpson!

This war is becoming more and more pointless by the hour.

Interesting.