@crest the only ones that can truly say if attacking energy systems versus oil industries is the better route remains between the combatants I'd guess. I certainly understand the strategy each is employing, regards energy/oil systems. As to winning fast enough or altering the wars trajectory, after 4 years Ukraine still keeps hanging around so they have hope at least.
The Russian-Ukrainian War Thread
There is no doubt some truth to that but that doesn't mean objective analysis of known information isn't a good predictor of results. Unknown information is always a possibility but it's not exactly a hard barrier given the amount of information that is available. From what I can see it's to greatly simplify things a matter redundancy and capabilities. Russia can take more hits and give more hits the math for a campaign of striking energy production (oil or electric) just doesn't work in Ukraine favour and the evidence we have supports that idea@crest the only ones that can truly say if attacking energy systems versus oil industries is the better route remains between the combatants I'd guess. I certainly understand the strategy each is employing, regards energy/oil systems. As to winning fast enough or altering the wars trajectory, after 4 years Ukraine still keeps hanging around so they have hope at least.
And yeah Ukraine is hitting way above the belt here, I don't think anyone it even the Russians dispute that, and that's taking into account Russian incompetentance early on.
The question that is relivent here isn't about how well Ukraine has done vs a much larger and objectively competent adversary those accolades have been earned regardless of how this ends. It's a question of how long they can continue to fight and at this point There is also a legitimate question as to the will to continue fighting. As in the national will not just leadership or individual units. I know your passion this issue so don't take that as a insult to the Ukrainian armed forces or population it's not if anything it's a compliment. But one would be wrong to not acknowledge that many in Ukraine now believe the of consequences of continued fighting are not worth the cost to the nation. And the price of peace goes up the longer the war continues.
The message i gather from alot of sources is that the general opinion is without outside manpower and continued Infact increased military and economic support there is no win option. Or at least it is a meaningfully large enough opinion that a strait up military to military victory over Russia is unlikely to occur.
There is a question to be asked about Ukrainians willingness to fight with allied reinforcement but there is little prospect for a strengthening of the Ukrainian army from this point, Infact objectively it is lossing co,bat power at a faster pace then it can replace it. In terms of both quantity and quality tho again that could change with outside support
In short Ukraine may still be willing to fight for years but there not willing to fight alone for that much longer At least not as a traditional military force. Unfortunately it's fairly clear that isn't coming
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KipPotapych
Well-Known Member
I believe this is beyond suspicion and basically factual. To go further, it is the US intel that is providing not only the targeting data, but also plans the routes of attack and basically everything else.I also suspect Ukraine is coordinating with western partners and carefully selecting which ships to strike.
As I wrote in one of my recent post, citing the article I am going to quote below, it is rather clear at this point that Ukraine on its own simply cannot inflict any significant damage to Russia. While they may have the tools, they lack capabilities, including intel, planning, etc. (the same is probably true for the Euros) Every year we get an excellent piece of journalism proving just that. This article from the NYT is, in my opinion, the undoubtedly best piece of journalism on the war in Ukraine in the past long while.
In the Trump administration’s first months, these strikes had been scattershot with negligible impact. Ukrainian military and intelligence agencies were competing, working off different target lists. Russia’s air defenses and electromagnetic jammers rendered energetics facilities virtually impenetrable. At oil refineries, drones were slamming into storage tanks, igniting blasts that grabbed headlines but accomplished little else.
In June, beleaguered U.S. military officers met with their C.I.A. counterparts to help craft a more concerted Ukrainian campaign. It would focus exclusively on oil refineries and, instead of supply tanks, would target the refineries’ Achilles’ heel: A C.I.A. expert had identified a type of coupler that was so hard to replace or repair that a refinery would remain offline for weeks. (To avoid backlash, they would not supply weapons and other equipment that Mr. Vance’s allies wanted for other priorities.)
As the campaign began to show results, Mr. Ratcliffe discussed it with Mr. Trump. The president seemed to listen to him; they had a frequent Sunday tee time. According to U.S. officials, Mr. Trump praised America’s surreptitious role in these blows to Russia’s energy industry. They gave him deniability and leverage, he told Mr. Ratcliffe, as the Russian president continued to “jerk him off.”
The energy strikes would come to cost the Russian economy as much as $75 million a day, according to one U.S. intelligence estimate. The C.I.A. would also be authorized to assist with Ukrainian drone strikes on “shadow fleet” vessels in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Gas lines would start forming across Russia.
Via the archive: https://archive.ph/XmE5f
In my humble opinion, everyone understands that Ukraine is going to lose (or, rather, had already lost) this war. It is now all about inflicting as much damage on Russia as possible while trying to commit it to best (Ukrainian) capitulation terms possible. Many examples, but here are two from the article cited above since it convenient:As to winning fast enough or altering the wars trajectory, after 4 years Ukraine still keeps hanging around so they have hope at least.
Now the battlefield balance had shifted, and Ukraine, Mr. Kellogg wrote, no longer had a path to victory. Still, he argued, America needed to arm the Ukrainians sufficiently to convince Mr. Putin that his territorial ambitions had hit a wall.
And
General Cavoli would be retiring on July 1, and he sent Mr. Hegseth what American officers called the “beginning of the end” memo. The Ukrainians were slowly losing, he wrote, and if the Pentagon did not provide more munitions, they would lose faster.
That is from Ukraine’s biggest supporters. Like I said, it is all about prolonging the conflict as long as Ukrainians are willing to accept the losses. And, frankly, I am not sure what they (Ukrainians) are thinking.