With Kherson falling in the next month or so, what's the next most important city? Are we going to see a further push towards Zaporizhzhia? Or will we see a push far south, towards Crimea? I believe the Ukrainians will look to regain pre-war borders before pushing into Donbass and Crimea, I could be mistaken though.
Melitopol Banzai!
Ruzzian HQ in Melitopol was destroyed on Thursday
https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-11-04-22/h_150a8688e7b2af06a222b6b2397aadfc
Russian headquarters in occupied city of Melitopol "destroyed," says mayor
From CNN's Tim Lister
The Russian headquarters in Melitopol in southern Ukraine were attacked and destroyed on Thursday, according to the city's mayor.
Melitopol has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the invasion.
"The enemy headquarters was destroyed yesterday, where the FSB special forces personnel were located; there are killed and wounded," Ivan Fedorov said in a briefing.
"There was a barracks and equipment. It was one of the hardest targets in terms of reaching it, in terms of the air defense and the location."
etc civvies suffering bleh bleh
Sounds like an elaborate ruse, to be honest.
They wouldn't announce anything like this if they actually lost. It would be something like "there is no panic" back in September.
If the Ukrainians gained position even just a bit closer to the rail line that goes past Melitupol, the Russians west of that place would be in even deeper shit.
perhaps it isn't an appeal to the west but an appeal to their own generals to notify them and the planet at the same time that the situation is hopeless and to please stop sending them to their deaths
You're joking, right? Either that, or a Z bot.
stranger things have happened, and recently at that. do you not remember the russians at dudchany begging for air support over telegram?
This is from their officials. That's the only reason to suspect it.
Melitopol is the key to win the war for the ukies. If they're able to reach it from the north, they can split the russian forces in two, leaving the biggest part in Kherson/Crimea besieged and isolated.
Besides the polical win of recvering more territory, they probably wished that the russians hadn't retreated from the place yet until they could mount their offensive from Zaporiyia
Taking Tokmak disrupts the rail supply, and Melitopol can be initially skipped over in favor of pushing to the coast and cutting off the highways. I wouldn't be surprised if the Ukrainians bypassed Melitopol and encircled it.
Once Ukraine secures the west bank I doubt they immediately attack across the river, it will take a while to have the capacity to reliably transport troops across it, and they more than anyone else know the dangers of pontooner memes. After moving troops around a little I see either reinforcing the Luhansk front or a push towards Melitopol/the Azov coast.
Cutting off the land route between Dumbass and Crimea would be funny because then Puccia would have to admit that the Kerch bridge isn’t in any condition to fully supply the military’s needs on the peninsula.
They’d have to start delivering stuff by ferry, and we all know what the quality of Puccian watercraft is like…
Melitipol logistics and command posts just got HIMARed in the last 24-48 hours, so that RR hub is fricked for months. They're already pinching the area off logistically.
Can anyone talk to the current situation in Ukraine? How are their civilians dealing with the lack of heating and power? I hate to rely on third party information, like Germany claiming a migrant surge from Ukraine. Is the power outage really such a big problem or is it Russian propaganda? Is the power even out? And if so, could this pose a problem for UAF pushing the Russians back?
Polbro here with a workbuddy (remote work software agency) who is staying with his parents in Kyiv since he went back in July. He still has been working again almost full time. I check in about the happenings there once a week or so with him. He said during the day they have power for the most part with 5-30 minute interruptions and more scheduled blackouts at night or nightly interruptions. In Kyiv they just have basically told the public this will be the short-term norm as it's mostly happening by the maintenance briefly requiring them to cut power rather than a fully unexpected loss of power. He's said it has gotten way better over the last couple weeks as maintenance is working on it pretty much 24/7 to restore it.
Our company is actually probably 40% Ukie when it comes to our developers and they are pretty much given a pass to get their full time pay for up to 30% of regular milestones being met. Our company also gave them all one of those nice battery packs with a portable foldable 100w solar panel. Ukies are fine
Yeh, as expected, not much impact on the military, some rationing for civilians.
I’ve been in 3rd world countries where it’s worse than that as a regular thing (like rotating daily blackouts of 3h/day, and the hostel ran a generator during those)
it's not falling
it's a long bait by russkies, but ukies seem not to fall for it
Russians need to hold Kherson through the winter months (campaign window cuz hard ground) for the same reason Ukrainians had to hold Mariupol for as long as possible.
Its a force sink. Ukrainians have ~20 battalions on that front. If the Russians withdraw, that frontage could be held by 5 or less (because huge water obstacle with just a few crossing points). That means 15+ battalions can be shifted to other fronts which will cause serious problems for them as on a number of fronts the Russians are barely holding as is. If they can hold until the spring thaw which slows down operational tempo they buy time to reorganize their lines and bring more mobilized forces into the line.
Not even a zigger but Kherson isn't falling anytime soon. Ukies simply don't have the equipment.
>With Kherson falling in the next month or so, what's the next most important city?
Moscow
>check geroman twitter nothing but Russian gains.
>reservists or active duty troops not used yet aside from existing dpr, Wagner and chechens.
This war got boring tweets from Sprintermonitor, ZOKA,thehumanfund5, mdfzeh and IOSTOCONPUTIN is just Ukrainians getting fricked 24/7 wake me up when the next offensive starts or its below 32 degrees Fahrenheit in ukraine.
>With Kherson falling in the next month or so
This has been the cope for the last 3 months. I get the memes but this is just annoying to see at this point.