elwaclaret wrote: ↑Mon Apr 18, 2022 1:08 pm
Missile launches likely due to reports out of Ukraine of British special forces again setting up training camps around the North… and to keep pressure on the North. The troops have withdrawn to the East, they are mainly trying to make sure Ukraine don’t send everything East to defend, as it increasingly looks if they did Russia’s attack would be creamed.
Not that
They clearly cannot stop Ukraine moving its units along interior lines of communication (far better than the Russian ones), and lobbing cruise missiles at railway yards and stations does not affect that in the slightest (railway repair will be No 1 priority for the Ukrainians)
Taking out the bridges is a whole new level of intent though, and I guess the reason they haven't done that is that the cruise missiles are not accurate enough, but don't discount some sort of special op to damage/destroy some of the more crucial bridges
Russia can't threaten from Belarus, because they haven't the supplies or the support
Russia can't threaten from the north, because they haven't the supplies of the support
Russia can't threaten from the south, because they are struggling to hold on to Kherson, and their threat of an amphibious invasion has now completely gone after what happened to the Moskva
The only place they can threaten from is from the east, and all they can do is hope to achieve some local superiority over the Ukrainians
They won't achieve that on the front facing Luhansk and Donestk, because that has been fortified for eight years plus
The only places they can threaten are betweeen Kharki'v and Severdonestk in the east, and between the Dneiper and Volchansk (spelling?) in the south
But even there, the lines have not moved for at least a couple of weeks, and we have seen just how good the Ukrainians are at building defensive lines, interdicting Russian supply and reacting to Russian moves
If Russia gets this badly wrong, and its a real possibility, then they could actually suffer the sort of defeat that means they might actually have to abandon Luhansk/Donetsk and possibly even the Crimea
That is the Russian problem at the moment. Can they realistically go further than they have already, or will that result in the possibility of them losing what they have spent eight years trying to hold on to?
Once Mariupol falls, they will be ready to talk, but will they give up enough so that the Ukrainians want to?