[Cont.]
Also FYI, from what I heard about Russian stockpiles, they can keep those 100 a day air strikes going for the next 6 months, and this doesn't include their industrial capacity to restock in the meantime.

Ukrainians were jumping up and down and celebrating the hit on the Kherson bridge, which actually was duping an innocent to drive a truck bomb full of fertilizer over it.

EXPOSED: Before Ukraine blew up Kerch Bridge, British spies plotted it
http://thegrayzone.com/2022/10/10/ukrainian-kerch-bridge/

And one day later their energy grid was largely destroyed, which cut off their water pumping stations and military transport with trains which are mostly electric and they were crying.

You think Putin wont hit diesel locomotives yards, Ukrainian bridges and more substations, 750kw and 330kw transmission lines again next?

Also, Musk is backing out of footing the bill for Starlink support for Ukraine.
He proposed a peace-deal and the Ukrainian ambassador Andrij Melnyk told him to "F--- off", so he decided he best do what they say and told the Pentagon to start paying for it themselves.

Russian troops will outnumber Ukrainians soon.
They've almost completed the mobilisation, the reservists are either in training or pouring into the front.
Ukrainian defensive lines in Bakmut are about to fall.

Territory can easily be recaptured, but trained soldiers can't easily be replaced.
Russia will make strategic withdrawals to save it's men, but Ukraine just keeps throwing theirs into the meat-grinder.

This constant talk of Putin detonating nukes smells a bit off though.
I'm sure the US is up to something.

Hi AC,

100 a day for six months is Russian speak for six days. If Putin could keep up the precision bombardment for six months he would. And were advancements so easily made then why has there been so little progress by the Russian army? Hence Putin's targeting of civilian infrastructure. The video link I provided was to show you how devastating accurate fire can be, and that is the advantage that the Ukrainian military has been acquiring. Long range Himars munitions would have plenty of useful targets.

Evidence of Russian war crimes are plentiful and from a variety of independent sources, whereas evidence of Ukrainian war crimes are almost entirely from Russian state controlled media. But propaganda is an aspect of war, which is why I am more interested in the actual conflict. You can give whatever inflated opinion of the ethical conduct and ability of the Russian army you like, but the flattened cities, destroyed equipment, snails pace advances and huge personnel losses suggest otherwise. Oh, and the footage I have seen of the Kerch Bridge explosion is more indicative of something lower down, possibly a remotely detonated drone as has been suggested. A truck bomb getting through would make the security detail look like clowns, not a good look for tough guy Vlad and his "Best in the world at everything!" Russia.

There's footage out there of the moment the truck detonated on the bridge, have you seen it?
http://youtu.be/S-juPsPG6FE
Looking at the footage just now, it almost looks like there was a smaller second detonation around the pylons (at 52 seconds )

Russia has said that the explosives were hidden in rolls of plastic for use on construction sites, I can't exactly remember the weight, maybe 22 tonnes or 22,000 pounds, but I'm not exactly sure if I remember that correctly, certainly more than what any drone can carry, and not like the attack on the military base in Crimea, which was said to be a South Korean drones modified to drop mortar shells (which they dropped on fuel tanks)

AC,

It seems as though your sources are permanently wrong. Russia is running low on missiles or else it wouldn't be converting S300 missiles into inaccurate surface missiles. The 100 missiles a day for 6 months is a fantasy.

The latest tantrum from Moscow has reduced their stockpile even further. And for the $1bn in missiles used Russia has hit very few strategic targets with Ukraine shooting down more than half. What it has encouraged is the west to send plenty of even more sophisticated air defence systems, more HIMARS systems and a huge stockpile of rockets for them.

Ukraine's army is now between 700 000 to 800 000 with many of them receiving NATO training. Russia's army is presently being chewed up at an increasing rate and its new recruits have no training and crappy equipment.

Russia is likely to lose Kherson in the next few weeks as they face a massive build-up of Ukrainian forces and heavy weapons. They know this and are already evacuating personnel. That the Kerch bridge is badly damaged does not help their logistics.

The only minuscule gains that the Russians are making are in the Donbas where the Wagner group is smashing itself against the heavily fortified Bakhmut. The Wagner group has lost so many people that they are now recruiting from prisons.

Russia is losing and losing badly.

Hi AC,

I suspect that the explosives were under the bridge as it looks as if the two failed sections were lifted up by the blast. Maybe an autonomous sub?

The Russian military's war crime strategy of destroying civil infrastructure seems to be replacing the tactic of destroying the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainian military's strategy, aside from targeting command posts, seems to have changed to one of containment and encirclement along with the use of raiding parties and accurate targeting of Russian artillery. I get the impression that Russia has lost so many tanks and apcs that it has little offensive capability along a large front. It could retreat to a smaller front, not that Emperor Vlad would allow this, but even with such action the Russian forces would keep getting picked off by more accurate Ukrainian weaponry. That the Russian military has lasted so long is more due to the slow flow of weapons from the west. To be fair though, nobody realised how hard the Ukrainians would fight nor how damaging to the world a protracted conflict would be.

"The Russian military's war crime strategy of destroying civil infrastructure seems to be replacing the tactic of destroying the Ukrainian military."

It's only a war crime when someone other that the west does it?

In any case it might be one and the same.
Destroy the power grid, destroy the UAF ability to move troops and weapons and resupply by rail.
(not to mention that stranded trains full of troops and weapons are also much easier to hit than moving ones.)

"To be fair though, nobody realised how hard the Ukrainians would fight nor how damaging to the world a protracted conflict would be."

Over at RAND corporation they war-game everything, it's hard for me to think the US didn't have some idea where things would lead.

Ukraine is now in the wet season, Ukrainian offensives are becoming increasingly difficult due to soft soil and boggy conditions, and Russian / allied forces defensive lines are slowly strengthening due to arrival of reservists.

The war seems to be increasingly fought with drones, they say the Iranian designed Geraniums (Many call them Iranian drones, but in truth they may in fact be Iranian designed but produced in Russia)
cost as little as $5,000 to $10,000 a piece, with a payload ranging from 5 pounds to 30 pounds and with a speed between 180km to 200km, a million dollars you can purchase between 1000 to 2000 drones, so they are extremely cheap and efficient, and Ukraine has little in the way of defense against them.

They say Bakhmut is close to falling, and western support might dry up further after the US mid terms in November, whilst the EU is going to be in the midst of winter.

Also there's a significant amount of dissent starting to come from EU citizens in various countries.