1.) No Mobilisation on Convoy mostly because the drone and fighter run out of ammo. IT's a 6 days old war, US/EU only resupplying them 2 days ago, it's not surprise the Ukrainian had run out of bombs and missile.
2.) The Eastern State traditionally is not a strong supporter for the Ukrainian central government, also the difficulty to supply weapon to Eastern province. But despite that, unconfirm info suggest Kharkiv have form a 20,000 TDF,
3.) The south is open woodland, they aren't dense urban area like in the North, and the fact that Southern Urban cities (Mariupol and Odessa) has not yet fall means the progress is largely on the outskirt.
4.) Logistic is going to be a problem in the eastern city, as most of them are close to Russia border, making Russian interdiction easier.
5.) TDF are the reserve, they need to withhold regular troop on the West to hold down the West in order to get supplies in.
6.) Well, consider now 75% of the invasion force are mobilised, it will be hard to do hit and run, it would work in the early stage but not when they started to swing the number at you.
7.) At this point artillery are probably used as COUNTBAT, it would be wise to deploy it closer to Kyiv.
8.) At this point, precision strike are not going to be effective, as they started to mass their troop, in case you have not notice, there is a shift of Russian tactics, now they are more align to old Soviet style Armor Column attack, Precision Strike can be use to target Russian C&C and command structure, but nothing else. And even if they do, the sheer number will still dwarf them
9.) As I said before, now it's the traditional siege, they are going to thrust at Ukrainian defence with overwhelming number of Armor, at this point, you should reposition every available support fire to the rear, and absorb the first strike, then use artillery to mess up the second line.
10.) Don't think this is an Ukrainian C&C problem, this is what we called a static phase, basically Russia is going to come at Ukrainian with everything they got, sure, using support asset take out one or two unit here and there, you can do that, but it would not make any different as you are facing a giant head on assault, Tradition NATO playbook is hunker down, let the Amour rolled thru and then attack the infantry that followed with your unit and artillery support.
11.) I think they are now incapable to act on Intel, again, a combination of trying to preserve force and logistic issue..
12.) It wouldn't do much, as I said before, the Russian tried to disable Ukrainian airfield by launching missile on precision strike, we all know how that goes, and Russian have more advance missile.
13.) Well, as I said before, you can only do so much hit and run. once they are adapted to your strategy, you can't really do that anymore. Now it's way pass that, this is now a siege warfare. You need to be able to absorb damage now, which mean for Ukrainian, every unit counts
14.) That's Russian battleplan tho. The Russian south need to take both Dnipro and Mariupol and another Marine landing over at Odessa
15.) Russia changed their tactics since last night, no doubt, If Ukraine was smart, they should start resupplying the Kyiv. They can lose any city, but they can't lose Kyiv. Now this is going to turn into a siege warfare, which mean support, supply and troop have to be concentrated. I don't think there are anything Ukrainian can do but Hunker down and take the onslaught at this point,
1.) I meant that on 20th, US told them that Russia effectively telexed their commanders an attack plan, and Ukrainian pres didn't call for mobilisation, and draft. It cost them 3-4 days, and ability to do the last minute resupply.
2.) The East Ukraine holds the most remarkable actually, with a lot of armour kills, thus not much reports of fighting with armour there now, but about Russians doing hide & seek, in woods around Kharkiv, and retreating behind the border in few cases.
Donetsk direction had almost a half of all Ukrainian heavy units, because they were there since 2014. It seems it actually working, and well supplied to hold on for quite some time.
3.) I checked few maps, there are no woodlands in the south, as its almost all agricultural land, and very open fields. My guess they were very afraid of scattered ATGM teams, which effectively outrange Russian tanks, and waited for solid air cover to regroup in larger formations before the push.
And I guess, they are also afraid of a chance for cutoff, as I shown on a map few days ago.
4.) True, but they got there, just very slowly. Legacy Soviet logistics hurts Ukraine as much as Russians.
5.) Ukraine had a lot of initiative early on, they had an option to spare at least something to keep it for longer.
6.) Important to say that Russians had enormous early push
completely destroyed in woods north of Kiyv, after which they decided to avoid woods, and go through more open terrain around. Their force in Belo was already 40% spent around late 27th. Ukrainians definitely had an option to sent some men forwards at least to blow up some bridges, and let sappers to their job (mining.)
Look at google maps on Ukrainian Belorussian border, terrible terrain, dense woodlands, multiple rivers, and swamps. This is why they captured Chernobyl first of all things.
If they had them still pinned in woods, their attrition rate would've been much more favourable, and they would've won more time, even at the price of these forces.
7.) Do they need to save them for counterbat when they know that they will not have such opportunity in the future? It would've been the best to spend them early on to inflict maximum casualties on pinned enemy forces in first days. Instead, even now I see videos dated 1st of March of assorted MLRS, and tube artillery coming from the West of the country to somewhere without accompanying force. They probably think they still can reach Kiyv to meaningfully employ these MLRS.
8.) Indeed, I wrote on this seashift 2 days ago. It was Ukrainian overexuberance about getting precision weapons which clouded their vision about them having to fight world's No.2 military by size. These days, NATO military thinkers too are often forgetting the importance of raw firepower.
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13.) It seems to be the siege warfare now, but they had an opportunity to delay this a lot, and get more supplies to territorials in Kiyv, which are numerous, but lack heavy weapons.
14.) I think your are right, and they are not really afraid of scattered ATGM teams which harass them. They just wait for regroup, while absorbing the damage in the South. But... Ukrainians still can blow up more bridges there, and delay them by a lot.
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