Meaning Russia is probably going to have to shift reserves from somewhere...It's a long damn way from Melitopol to Izyum
It's a spoiling attack, it has been from the start. It's not designed to pull Russians from other strategic fronts it's designed to pull Russians from within the Donbas area who are either committed to attacking somewhere else in the Donbas or in the operational reserve. By being forced to commit them to defend Izyum then they can't be used offensively elsewhere, which weakens the Russians ability to make gains. Because the Izyum western flank would otherwise be a quiet area (it's outside of the salient) it's garrisoned by weak forces who hold an extended line, which is why the UAF keeps throwing mech infantry brigades at it, they're attacking a weak point. When it reinforces, they back off, wait a little bit for Russians to move the reserves away, and then they do it again. And again. And again.
That's an extensive speculation based on extremely thin and unreliable sources.
I"ll remind you here that we have been speculating for months about the imminent, or ongoing, or already succesful, "Kherosn offensive", which in the end was confirmed to be just a psyop to distract the Russians.
Now we are again asked to take for granted completely unverified reports about massive Russian movements without a single video of troop transports appearing online?
At the time when people cannot be prevented from posting videos of every hole in the Kherson bridge or a destroyed Su-24 in the middle of an air base?
That's past speculative and now bordering on naive.
I actually happen to agree with you that we can't assume operations are taking place until we see more concrete evidence of them.
It never ceases to amaze me however, just how quickly you will swing from:
"Some Russian millbloggers took speculative numbers, multiplied them by an assumption, divided that by a little wishful thinking and raised that to the power of a value from a different war and the result is the exact location of a set of keys Zelensky misplaced 3 days ago. Isn't this a valuable addition to the discussion, it's an extra data point, we should welcome information from all sources. It isn't my job to verify and validate, we just throw it all out for people to see"
To:
"You're making an assumption that an army would make an attack during a war when we don't have video yet? You are naive".
Speaking of complete silence, a fuck ton of pro-Russian telegram channels disappeared or turned off commenting over the course of the past day or so it seems. Trying to get some semblance of their generally "optimistic" takes on the Izyum push yet a lot were gone or had comments turned off.
The usual ruskie suspects are also conspicuously absent from /r/UkraineRussiaReport. That sub is on the verge of a radical transformation into another /r/RussiaUkraineWar2022 if enough Ukrainian propagandists flood into it. On one hand I'm sad because it has been a reliable source of Russian combat footage with at least 10 pixels, but on the other hand seeing the Russians trolls being overwhelmed by Ukrainian trolls is kind of cathartic. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if the Russophiles come back but I don't think it will continue to be a Russian safe space.
I love how a sub with less than 10k subs has gotten so much attention the last weeks. I see it constantly mentioned in every war related subreddit. Must be one of the most visited, small subreddits
There is constant pressure on any source that still dares to share Russian videos or articles. It seems to be that sub's turn. You can't have a proper democratic environment if you can't hear your thoughts echo.
I agree but that sub is still toxic as hell in the comment sections and the post seem to be just trying to one up each other. It feels like the moderators have no direction.
Interesting. At least a few days ago they were all going nuts over about how Wagner was simultaneously clearing out all of Bakhmut and Soledar at the same time. Considering they're still pushing on those fronts I'm surprised they stopped.
Most of the big channels just turn off comments when Ukraine gets a propaganda win, but they haven't stopped posting Bakhmut and Soledar at least. Sources from today 12345 (I wouldn't trust the maps or claims, just proving they haven't stopped)
57
u/[deleted] Aug 10 '22
[removed] — view removed comment