Ukraine Shock

[Khandro]

Have you, like me, been building up a mental picture of the Ukrainian gains in this dreadful war?

This morning I fell upon this map which gave me something of a shock !

https://ibb.co/1GnHgZ8

[ichkeria]

Brilliant Jourdain :-)

[Khandro]

ichi; I know it means much to you on a personal level, but you seem to be only interested in any 'positive' news, even though it, like all news from the war, is mostly unverifiable.
Any bad news you dismiss as being 'pointless' or 'nonsense'.

I hope you are always correct, but I fear there is an element of wishful thinking in your posts :0(

[Canary42]

"The first casualty of war is truth"

[Old_Geezer]

It looks nothing much like the maps shown by by news media sites. Are you sure it's accurate ?

[ichkeria]

Khandro that map - sorry to labour the point - is meaningless on its own.
In fairness to the ISW I am sure it is meant to be read in conjunction with their daily report.
Just looking at colours blobs in a map with no context tells one nothing

[ichkeria]

So my original point to you was twofold :

1. The stuff about the map
2. The counteroffensive since 4 June has indeed been slow and no one is claiming otherwise and never has. So you should not be so surprised

[tomus42]

You need to read a few more bits of the dreaded MSM khandro instead of doing your own research all the time.

You may get a more balanced view of things.

What is the timeline of that map? Does it show territory regained since the war started, since the counter offensive started, in the last week, or in the hour before the map was drawn. A bit more info is required.

[ichkeria]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66654125

Pskov. More attacks feared there it would seem

[ichkeria]

I’ve been looking again at some of those ISW maps and they do seem to love pushing them out! With little commentary. The trouble is they are very small scale and don’t really tell you a lot. But there isn’t much changing at the moment anyway. Russians have made modest gains towards Kupiansk as part of their rather desperate offensive there. Likewise Ukraine rather more than that to the south: but they don’t really say a lot on their own.

[Khandro]

ichi; I too have been trying to find a map which clearly shows Ukrainian advances into Russian held territory to date & I can't find such a thing, but of the several I've looked at don't show much more than the one I have indicated.

This is why I made the allusion to WWI, where long, heavy fighting produced little territorial gains. Of course modern warfare is now different & that is why Ukraine needs significantly more air power

[ichkeria]

There’s a lot more to it tho than just territory gained thus far since June 4.
I’d watch this space: the clock is ticking on Tokmak ;-)

[Khandro]

tomus, //You need to read a few more bits of the dreaded MSM khandro instead of doing your own research all the time.

You may get a more balanced view of things.

What is the timeline of that map? Does it show territory regained since the war started, since the counter offensive started, in the last week, or in the hour before the map was drawn. A bit more info is required.//

Indeed, and if you can find such a map we would be grateful, and "balanced view" is all I ask.

[Zacs-Master]

Hard, maybe impossible, to find a balanced view on a war which polarises aggressive communism and the freedom of capitalism.

[ichkeria]

Multiple IL-76 transport planes ablaze at Pskov.

Nice work

[ichkeria]

It’s not a communism v capitalism war of course.
Rather one of genocide and imperial conquest by remnants of the world’s last empire.

[ichkeria]

That map appears to show the gains made by Ukraine since June 4 tho it’s impossible to tell.
The larger blob is the area shows progress in Donetsk the smaller one the beginnings of the salient in Zaporizhzhya heading towards Tokmak.
But tells us next to nothing about the actual war. The ISW do actual text bulletins and you’d be better reading those.
The real story of the counteroffensive is a sustained “shaping” operation by Ukraine along the entire front line to test and attrit Russian forces, probing for weaknesses and having them shift their stretched resources to the next hotspot. For example they’re best troops from their offensive in the NE to the Tokmak area.
The maps also don’t show the bridgeheads established by Ukraine at Kherson south of the Dnipro, nor the small gains by Russian forces in the NE

[Zacs-Master]

‘It’s not a communism v capitalism war of course.
Rather one of genocide and imperial conquest by remnants of the world’s last empire’

You’ve just described communism. Or at least aspects of it.

[Khandro]

ichi; //The ISW do actual text bulletins and you’d be better reading those.//

I do read those ISW bulletins, but it's reading bulletins which have led to a false belief that the advances are greater than they really are.

I think maps give the more comprehensive picture, & I'm afraid it looks to me that there's a long, long way to go.

One can't make the judgement as to whether one life is better than another, but the fact remains that a lot of the lives lost on the Russian side have been those of criminals (certainly of the Wagner Army) given amnesty and money to fight, whereas the lives lost & severely wounded on the Ukrainian side belong to their finest men. :0(

[ichkeria]

Not sure that you’ve been reading then khandro :-)

[ichkeria]

Not sure “what”
There certainly is a long way to go,
A top military analyst who plots the conflict forensically reckons 4 more years.
One hopes not but it could be