This wouldnt explain a few key issues, such as the limited nighttime use of certain VDV units, like the 45th Orp, which are known to operate at night and drop at night. Further, Russian special forces certainly operate at night, and Syria has shown the Russian Airforce does hunt at night.
My thoughts exactly. That and the dash for the airport. Why on earth would you try to take an airport just outside the capital on day 1 if you've got no intent to exploit that bridgehead immediately?
We're also seeing them attempt to block large towns, and then move past them, instead of stopping to clear them. It seems likely that many of the units not yet committed are meant for that purpose.
Im wary of gauging losses based on either involved party releases or social media. Russia seems to have done very little to indicate losses for either side in the sense of footage etc. Consider their awareness of footage use in Armenia-Azerbaijan, as well as their own use of it re Syrian operations.
www.axios.com
www.reuters.com
www.politico.eu
Well, in my initial post I reference deep battle theory and the operational level. If what I have posited is correct, the VDV assaults on such positions are exactly what you'd expect to see actually. I would go so far as to say that Russian desperation or panic/pressure would have seen them actually using heavy fires to take out the airport in the face of a failed or partially failed VDV assault on it.
Oryx blog is updating their casualty tracker, and backing it up with photos. Same with lostarmour. For lostarmour, filter by date for Ukraine as the conflict. Ukraine is definitely losing more, just not the kind of catastrophic "more" that one would expect. Of course these two sources use a relatively high standard of proof, but the proportions on lostarmour are still telling.
lostarmour.info
We're only on the third day of the war. They landed multiple air-assault forces deep into enemy territory, trying to seize airfields. The logical thing is that they want those airfields to land things they can't airdrop. And yet we don't see those larger landings, instead we see mechanized ground forces rushing to their relief. This indicates that the air-assault operation probably failed. Yes of course, this is what anyone would do, if in that situation. The point is that they're in that situation. Instead of An-124s and Il-76s landing with armored vehicles and artillery to back up the paratroopers/SpN/SOF, we have mostly additional units rushing on the ground. If the goal was never to land anything, and just to deploy tactical blocking units west of Kiev, why land at the airfields to begin with? Drop them in any field. If the goal was to destroy the airbases, that could have easily been done with missile strikes or bomber strikes.
As OPSSG said, the longer Ukraine puts up a credible fight, the more aid they will get from the west. The faster they collapse, the less. If Russia can end this in a week or two, it will be a fait accompli, a new reality that the west will have to face. If Russia gets bogged down for a month against organized resistance, not the occasional potshot but still functioning army units, that will be a different story.
The evidence is several destroyed Russian troop columns, and multiple lost vehicles. Ukraine isn't performing well, just better then one would expect. To me two destroyed engineers columns and one destroyed artillery column are signs that Russian reconnaissance or flank security (likely both) are failing. Otherwise the Ukrainian unit moving to ambush the column would have gotten spotted and hit. I suspect this is a planning failure, since the capabilities both UAS and regular recon, are there.
Limited to what? There are Russian troops on the right shore of the Dnepr. Mairupol' is being sandwiched in from both sides, once it falls there's your land corridor to Crimea. Kharkov and Sumy are under siege, and the northern axis has reached the Kiev suburbs. The next steps will likely involve LNR forces from the south and Russian forces from the north linking up in the Kharkov-Sumy area, units on the LDNR front line retreating to Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk, and anything that can still move around Kharkov-Sumy likely pulling back towards Kiev. Mariupol' will probably be blockaded initially, and Russian troops will head north-west from there. The main question is timeline, and how many losses Russia will take doing this. What countours of a more limited operation do you see here? That they might not land in Odessa? That they might not push past the Dnepr beyond the Kiev outskirts? That they might not assault Kiev and instead use this as a negotiating position?
The west is not going to fly transport jets with weapons into Ukraine. They will fly them to Poland and truck in L'vov across the border.
I dont know that Ukrainian Il-76s wouldnt be flying in and out, for a start
They flew out to Poland and haven't returned. The airfield where they were based was hit by a Russian missile strike, and is likely now in Russian hands since it was near Melitopol'.
The absence of the airfield near Kiev might be one of multiple reasons for that.
There were multiple reports with video footages of the Russian mechanized groups trying to buy petrol from locals. I assume they try to move fast, that causes logistic issues. They also actually skip some towns after encircling them to move forward, but it also disrupts logistics to some extent.
I wouldn't make any assumptions to any change of plans they might have. I do feel at least East of the Dniper and a full land corridor, including Odessa is within their primary objectives.
They won't fly them in, I agree. Trucks are still targets, but also, if the they feel confident in sending trucks in, then Ukraine must have a pretty good air defense network still setup around Lyviv.
Or their fuel trucks got destroyed. Some of the engineers vehicles we saw hit were fuel trucks.
There are many options including having Ukraine provide the trucks or at least the drivers, or signalling to Russia in advance that there is a corridor where foreign military aid will travel in unarmed and clearly marked trucks, and any strikes against them would be unwelcome. When Poland said they were sending aid to Ukraine, it came with footage of a truck column.
