A few thoughts:
- an analyst noted that the areas of red showing the extent of Russian advances we are seeing on various news media is misleading. The Russians are apparently restricted to advances along major highways, and haven't been venturing onto minor side roads on into the countryside, which leads me to:
- regarding 'that' convoy, I reckon the Ukrainian military would be well served by launching small unit shoot 'n scoot strikes along its length under the cover of darkness (not sure about the level of access to NVGs in the Russian mil- I suspect it'll be reserved for use by their elite units, not rear echelon truckies). As others have stated, the focus should be on fuel bowsers, anything carrying ammo or food, so no need to use the advanced weaponry we've supplied. This would necessitate the Russians having to put in place considerable force protection resources along its length, and would also deny these troops sleep. Same goes for other lines of advance.
- the longer Russia take to get their forces in place, the more of the kit we've promised will be available to the Ukrainians. I'm hoping they're building reserves of food, medical supplies etc in the cities too.
- final thought: how many troops would you realistically need to lay siege to a city the size of Kiev and keep them adequately supplied and keep those supply lines open? Then multiply that across all of the cities across Ukraine. To me, 180000 sounds nowhere near enough.
- final final thought. I reckon both sides are probably going to have to continue without any significant use of air power or helicopters, given the numbers of air defence systems present in the country on both sides. This is going to be a primarily a ground war. In this respect, the fact those EU countries decided not to supply those aircraft is probably now moot.
Last edited by dead_pan; 2nd Mar 2022 at 08:57.