Originally Posted by
ORAC
These are the Identified Russian left bank defence lines I was referencing…
The 3rd line is reportedly where the artillery is focused by the Russians, which is capable of making a mess in Kherson out to the western ring road. That would make any spotters or drones in the city pretty troublesome. Pushing the Russian arty back towards Crimea would be a nice move, and that will take a lot of ISR coverage to be effective. There is the range, the targeting is out aways. Without removal fo the arty, the city will be difficult to enter safely. Hope there is a stack of good surveillance going on.
With the change of leadership in the field recently, it is possible that a reality check did occur, and the point got through to upper management as to the disaster they are undertaking. The M-14 road will become untenable pretty quickly if the invaders vacate the west/right bank, the E-105 bridges into Crimea has been beaten up previously, if they also close, Crimea becomes pretty untenable in all respects, the Kerch bridge is getting ready for another bad day. (I still question that the attack was done by the Ukrainians, I favour an exuberant own goal, although there have not been many disappearing FSB guys in the last month). The whole land bridge from the NE to the SW along the Sea of Azov is at risk of being untenable to do resupply in the near future.
Between petulantly shooting his own men in the front for being repulsed by Ukraine, and holding the federation together by withdrawal, it would seem that a reasonable value proposition is bugging out and returning to Russia politely, with whatever forces can be retained. There is a point in time where the remaining force vs the forces required to maintain the federation will intersect, and that seems to be coming up fast. To that end, a negotiated departure from Ukraine where the deportees are returned, and those that have committed war crimes are banned internationally from travel, might start to be attractive to both sides. The cost to Ukraine is catastrophic, but they will recover with the assistance of the global community, and should be a vibrant EU member. The effect of going into recovery of Ukraine is positive to all economies, apart from being morally supportable. A Marshall Plan for Ukraine is a bargain for what they have accomplished. As Russia never keeps its word, they do need a full security guarantee if they let Russia leave without being mauled. Of all of the items that were on the table, most of them are in the end will not affect Ukraines future, whereas losing more people to make a point will just add more pain. Getting Russia to leave has primacy over all matters, the rest while important in their own right are noise to achieving the signal aim, Russia, go home. Vlad may hang in there until the run off happens in Georgia, hoping that a GOP Senate will mess with support for Ukraine. Perhaps it would, but there is an underlying signal that the US still supports Ukraine more than it supports a Democratic ticket back home. Putin may not make it that long though, he seems to be starting to have a growing tiff with Prigozhin, might be interesting to see who ventilates who first there,
"lie down with fleas, you get dogs".
There is some neat SSAR stuff out there, out of Canada and the USA, that fits on pretty small packages, would be nice on some old, tired, RQ/MQ-1's, to give some incentive for Russia to return the guns to Primorski Krai and other desirable parking lots.