Comments by "" (@tomk3732) on "How is the war going? — Mid July 2023" video.

LOL, and yet Ukraine managed to break through last year near Kharkiv all without air superiority. The problem is Russians are diged in, they have (as per Ukraine) 10:1 artillery superiority and were expecting the attack. Sending few F-16s would not make any difference at all.
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Ukraine offensive has failed & it is ending right now. Russia is now doing as many advances now or more than Ukraine. Saying the "offensive by UA" can still succeed is a massive cope. In the last 24h Russia has made significantly more gains than Ukraine. For example, Russia managed to finally operationally encircle Avdiivka. They also managed to cross Oskill river and held on to a bridgehead near Zerebrianski forestry. Especially operational encirclement of Avdiivka is huge - it feels like Avdiivka is the next Bakhmut. 13:07 - Russia loves attrition - so I would certainly NOT mark Ukraine goals as attrition - these are Russian goals - which they succeeded in.
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The whole offensive is stupid. They should have stopped it at week 1 after it was clearly failing.
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@nvelsen1975 Genral Zaluzny - commander of UA forces stated on video 10:1. I think it is more like 5:1. I.e. Russia as clearly seen from the map is smashing Ukraine attacks quite well. I mean in the last 24h Ukraine on video lost few dozen vehicles - on bloody video! In one run you can count 11 smashed vehicles. in Just one column.
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@jimdake6632 Soviet doctrine - if we cannot fly, no one flies.
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@dougcoombes8497 What opposite - look at the map and look at the videos from the front and look at say hard economic data. All these are rather reliable sources. Why deny these?
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@mariaf.6601 Economic data shows Russia is doing super good and on the map you do not see Ukraine capturing anything of any strategic value - in fact you are now seeing Russia capturing stuff - in the last few days - shaping operation for next Bakhmut.
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@Its_shiki_time4876 Yes, on your part. In manouver welfare which Ukraine claims to employ you always advance fast at the start and this was the UA plan as well. This is seen all over WWII - where the first 24h - 72h is decisive. For example, during D-day the first 24h were decisive. After first 24h allies knew they won. Their forces advanced up to 10km deep and diged in. At that time they started to unload supplies and additional troops. The reason why first 24h - 72h are the most important is you simply want to make sure your pressure point is maximal and your enemy has no chance to bring in reinforcements. You can also go deep beyond enemy's defensive line. To counter this enemy should build multiple defensive lines in a deep defense doctrine. We see success of both Russia and Ukraine with fast attack - Ukraine had success during Kharkiv offensive by piercing weak Russian defense in first 24h followed by very quick deep strike. Without any major defensive lines behind main line Russians did not have defense in depth. All attempts to retreat and form defense failed as Ukrainians were too fast. Reserve Russian units only formed defense behind a river many km to the rear (due to UA mistake of turning north). If you do not go fast like you say, enemy will bring reinforcement in time and the battle turns into attrition war. Attrition war favors Russia and is their way to fight.
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@pinkyfull In Kharkiv Russia had two brigades over like 100km front line and no defense in depth at all. It took this for Putin to finally realize he needs mobilization. Its not like Putin did not make mistakes.
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@celebrim1 Ukraine also does not have pilot nor mechanic fleet to do so. Nor number of bases nor air defense systems.... Also Russia has best and largest air defense network on earth.
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@celebrim1 Russian air defenses are considered by almost everyone including me to be the best in the world. This does not mean it cannot be defeated or losses will not happen. S-400 is not used to take out small drones. Israel does not fly through Russian supplied air defenses at all - they are not that stupid. They use terrain masking and a good mission planning even vs. 50 year old systems Syria has & that is only when they have to be close - most of the time Israel uses stand off weapons. Location of slightly newer Syrian air defenses is well known by the Israeli as Syrians are not exactly good at hiding stuff. Remember that Israel managed to destroy in the past 100s of missile sites without almost any losses - while at the same time NATO over Yugoslavia later on with better tech could not really touch the same old systems. Using ME as an example is foolish as one could say that M1 Abrams tank is total junk as in Iraqi hands it was junk. They lost 60 in 3 days. To ISIS in pickup trucks.
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@mariaf.6601 Economy growing at fastest rate in Europe according to World Bank. There is no budget deficit - Russia - like China - have a surplus. This is not the west ;) Imports and exports are doing well - heck exports to many places in EU have... grown. Most companies stayed in Russia - only about 7% left. Exchange rate is fine - Chinese value yuan low as well - it boosts economic growth and lowers cost of war. Remember they have positive trade balance - in difference to the west. So lowering your currency makes pp pay more for the war. They can always sell some surplus currency to push ruble up - but why?
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@mariaf.6601 the western world bank is good with money. So it would be strange if they lied to make Russia look good. Russia's reserves are growing, which is normal as they are surplus trade balance country. If they sold reserves we would know about it, they do not and let Ruble fall. How can you deny even western data about Russia? Who do you trust then, just propaganda. This is not some Chinese or Russian stuff. It's a western stuff. You are deep in belief that Russia is failing same as the idiots that were saying since April last year that Russia will run out of missiles or idiots that made jokes about chips from washing machines. So far nothing was shown to be true. With Ukraine pushing hard front lines stay static clearly indicating that they cannot push Russia out. Western economists show Russia is not going to collapse. What is your plan, to the last Ukrainian?
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DPICM is not that great against enemy artillery as it cannot damage things such as mobile artillery - i.e. mobile artillery is very resistant to DPICM. Towed artillery not so much - but good luck doing any major damage to towed piece with DPICM. Heck, DPICM cannot even take on hardened trenches - as these have sandbags which will resist DPICM or simply make DPICM irrelevant. If DPICM was so great we would only see DPICM - but its not - it is mostly good against soft targets such as trucks or troops in the open or troops in shallow trenches / fox holes. It is also not good in build up area - as houses will resist DPICM and apartment buildings are all but immune.
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@s4ss US as many others have zero caring about "submunitions don´t explode and great unintended minefields" - the main caring is a) is it effective. If it was so great all shells would be submunitions. So why they are not? "DPICM has a potential destructive effect on armored vehicles due to the shaped charge bomblet, but it may require a very large number of shells to have an effect against targets like tank formations to the point of futility;" Cluster ammunition is nothing new - Ukraine has already used it extensively - got more from Turkey and Russia used it extensively as well. Note that these bomblets are no more dangerous then so called petal mines so widely used mostly by Ukraine. All artillery systems (mobile) are specifically designed to resist such bomblets. Same as all field fortifications. This is an old weapon system - used since 1950s and a lot during 1960s. It is thus very well known.
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@s4ss But its not. It has a range of less than 30km - vs. 44km for regular rounds. Also the bomblets do not posses a lot of destructive power - we are talking about what, a single Oz of explosives? That is 6x less than hand grenade! M777 have survived single hits from older kamikaze drones (!) So when attacking artillery you mostly are attacking personnel or tow vehicle. As well as ammo storage. If dealing with self propelled stuff you are far better off to use regular artillery or use some kind of smart round. All bomblets that do not hit self propelled artillery due to their tiny charge - even if they fall right next to it - are harmless. All bomblets that do fall onto the artillery system may produce only small amount of damage - even if they penetrate they actually need to penetrate something of note - if they go over the bombardier they may burn his face - so what. This would be much better against say MLRS system where multiple tubes could be damaged leading to cook off. Again note 2/3 of the regular round range. Best use is infantry in the open supported by Humvees. I.e. Ukrainian infantry. Against a spread out platoon you can take 1/4 of them out of combat with a single round.
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@s4ss Base bleed can be applied to other types of rounds to increase range - here it is used as the round without it would have even less than 30km. The gun used is 52 caliber. Roof armor is good enough - even when bomblets penetrate they do not have a lot of power behind them. Let me put it this way - during WWII at the very beginning Poland used anti material rifle against tanks. In one episode such rifle kept firing at a tank. The tank finally stopped and crew bailed. The went to inspect the tank. They found out that ALL rounds fired at it penetrated and create nice 1 1/4" holes in the armor. The last round killed the driver and thus the tank stopped. Moral of the story is size matters. The bomblets will produce damage but you need a LOT of them to either cause cumulative damage or get lucky to hit and damage sufficiently something critical. Also since bomblets need to hit directly and any near misses are useless how many bomblets out of say 64 will actually hit the SPG? Bomblets should be distributed more or less evenly - and over wide area - say the area is 150 ft by 150ft. So we have one bomblet per 350 sq ft. So chances of hitting the SPG with even 1 are 50-50.
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In Kherson offensive Ukraine soundly lost. Badly. Here we have a repeat of this but on a larger scale. The offensive is almost over now. I expect Russia may go on a large counter before rains in September. The war may be over this year - but if Ukraine manages to drag it into 3rd year we may see some major Russian gains followed by strong push by the west for Ukraine to settle due to fears Kiev regime total collapse is close. I also expect full general mobilization in Ukraine soon.
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@enpakeksi765 Kherson was a loss when Ukraine tried to take it by force in a failed offensive. It was almost as bad as the current attempt.
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@enpakeksi765 Russia retreated from Kherson AFTER the offensive - as they could not do it under pressure. They retreated as it was expensive and risky to keep forces there over the river. Risk was clearly exposed by failure of the dam - which was attacked by Ukraine multiple times. The main bridge was also attacked multiple times forcing building of additional bridge which was also regularly attacked. Also Russia probably no longer was interested in threats to Odessa so keeping troops on the other side of the river lost strategic reason. Almost all decisions by Russia are cold and calculated while many of Ukraine decisions seem to be mostly drawn by PR value. Russia so far never fought in any position where it has no advantage - they retreat.
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@enpakeksi765 Actually the main objective was or should be to destroy Russian forces on that bank of the river. You can see what dam did - if it happened when Russians were on the other side they would loose 30k of their best troops - or close to it. Russians moved out in good order. Ukraine can celebrate taking some land back but they know they cannot cross the river to get more land and they are looking at their new border. At most minor victory for Ukraine and a setback for Russians they cannot threaten Odessa for a while - through I would not count out Russia cutting Ukraine from the sea yet.
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@MrJdsenior Clearly ISIS is better at this as they taken Mosul - which is like 2nd largest in Iraq, despite being outnumbered more than 10 to 1 and out gunned around 100 to 1 in just 3 days. US lost to the Taliban and created a country that fell in ... also 3 weeks, despite being larger than Iraq (!) so the Taliban moved faster then US army in Iraq (!) US loss to the Taliban was due to repeat once and again failed strategy of fire bases. US did not learn from the British or Soviets at all and simply repeated their usual way of fighting - which is totally defensive. This lead the Taliban to control all around US fire bases while US took low losses as a result of not engaging. Once US started to roll back fire bases Taliban just took over & thus the 3 week advance. Since Russia mobilized we have not seen even a single Russian withdrawal being announced. Many people expect Ukraine to sue for peace this year. I.e. the war for Ukraine is lost and they need an exit. I expect Ukraine to fight a bit longer - but I doubt they will last till next summer. Russians do not have any WWII tanks left - they have so few T-34s they had to buy them from Asia for parade use. And what about Ukraine - they are out of tanks now. All Russia needs to do is keep going. Ukraine can only pro-long the war but clearly they cannot reach anywhere close to a "win". War is fully controlled by Russia - they can do offensives if they feel like or not - enemy is unable to sustain operations + the rest of the country is disintegrating. There is very real chance of a collapse of Ukraine as a country after the war.
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@KRDUC Yes of course - if they show they are fighting they get more for the fight. But this will not slow down their demise but speed it up. To slow down and wait for a miracle they should only defend.
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@wai828 Why is it unacceptable? Is it better for it to finally collapse? Winners do not surrender - losers are advised to negotiate their way out before total defeat where surrender is irrelevant as there is nothing to surrender.
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@wai828 Russian troops announced withdrawal from Kherson around September - google for exact date. Sure, Ukraine is stupid so let them fight to the end. Russia is winning according to all sane people looking at the war. Ukraine has zero room to maneuver. Most western assets are used up. And no more are on the way. Russia did not throw everything it has - Russia has lots and lots of room - they can mobilize more, they can ask for help from allies etc. They can defend or attack. Lots of room. Sure, Ukraine can still win - chances are about 0.1%. Chances of Russian victory are 99.9%. Would you bet on Ukraine with such odds? Germany could also still win in 1945.
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@wai828 Who cares they are determined? Defenders of Warsaw during uprising were determined - yet they got crushed. Insurgencies? Are you serious? Russia has majority in almost all areas. Who is going to go and rise - Russians against Russians? LOL! Ukraine did not achieve anything other than some tactical gains and now they are loosing initiative. Population belief is irrelevant - Germans believed in victory in 1945. So what? Winners like Ukraine don't surrender - clearly they are simply crushed. Same as winners in Nazi Germany. Ukraine achieves peace by negotiating an end of the war while they still have something to negotiate with. This is a huge win for Ukraine. Looking at Wagner Russia looks very solid. No one joined Wagner and no one is really sure this was a real deal. Especially the fact that Putin met Progrozin few days after supposed insurrection (!!!) Counteroffensive has failed. Putin has 76% support for the war - i.e. Russian people are with him. Russian economic data looks wonderful. There is less chance of Russian collapse than that of US. Ukraine on the other hand will need to be resolved by around April or March 2024 anyways as Biden - if he has even a hope of winning it - will need to remove shame of defeat before November elections way before said elections are held. There are clearly no weapons available to drag this for more than a year. Best solution is to get Ukraine to negotiate this year and sign by December 31st.
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@scipioafricanus5871 Yes, the 2016 - 2017 loss was far bigger! I mean US equipped and trained army - no more excuses of Soviet junk or poor training. And enemy was tiny + poorly armed.
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What??? Russian sources I read are all in as how stupid Ukrainians are and how badly they got beaten and how bloody this is for them. The usual losses are at least 4:1 and some are as high as 6:1 pointing out that most Ukrainian columns are destroyed before they even engage any Russians. In fact, a lot of sources are surprised at how well Russians did - almost everyone expected Ukraine to do better ----> in Russia!
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Yes, Russians love attrition - they know they can win this - Ukraine is fighting just as Russia wants them to fight.
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Yeah, too bad Ukrainian losses are much higher and Russians have much deeper reserves.
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