Putin has just had a meeting at the Kremlin with “War Correspondents”. ChrisO with a good translation covering the major points of Bullshit.
Full dodgy English translation of the transcript at the Kremlin’s website:
Meeting with war correspondents • President of Russia (kremlin.ru)
powerful message, spoke well. Sounds like a great leader of his troops.
Some further good commentary on the Ru defensive fortifications. A lot of info in the thread, here are a couple of snippets
https://twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1668649688176955393?s=20
Ukraine should build a tunnel under the dnipro and surprise the ■■■■ out of the Russians
I’m impressed with the $250B pound fund for the below…
Putin announced on national TV that Russia only lost 54 tanks during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Oryx has identified 10 Russian losses. Not often that the propaganda is 5x worse than the known data.
Update on Velyka Novosilka as of 2:00 PM GMT Eastern USA:
overnight it appears that Russian forces launched a counteroffensive against the central thrust of UKR forces and and the northwestern one managing to halt Ukrainian forces bringing up 127th GMRD as QRF
Despite this however it seems that Ukrainian forces in this center thrust composed of significant elements of the 35th Mar BDE and on the right side of the river the 68th Jaeger BDE backed by elements of the 128th and 129th TDF are holding despite some Russian gains in Urozhaine.
https://twitter.com/jrt_191/status/1668686033125253131?s=46&t=A5S-z5IJslFoC5SVN0Jodg
Those lines mean absolutely nothing to me
Timelapse satellite image of the disappearing water at the NPP.
https://twitter.com/tatarigami_ua/status/1668685854628257811?s=46&t=A5S-z5IJslFoC5SVN0Jodg
Blue squiggle is roughly the frontline. Red arrows are the Russian counter attack (which failed). Blue is where Ukrainian units are assaulting.
Basically, Ukraine is pressing this area from multiple directions. Russia is assaulting (why? They’ve got better defensive lines a few km away.) but they are only using small units, which t be Ukrainians are chewing up.
So whereabouts is Velyka Novosilka?
Doesn’t roll off the tongue as easy as “Where’s Wally”!
This main operation is the bulge on the middle right of the map.
This is where the 3 lines of defences drop to a single line, so it’s the easiest part of the line to break that’s moderately distant from Russia.
Most of the updates currently are focused on this area. There’s a Russian bulge, with a river running north-south splitting the middle. The Ukrainians are pushing this from all sides, liberating villages one by one down the river as they push towards the main defensive line which I think is about 10km ish to the south.
With all the maps and diagrams showing Russian defensive works I’ll add the cautionary note that just because the maps show defences and the works may actually be there, doesn’t necessarily mean they are effective positions. Their effectiveness will be determined by their layout in relation to the terrain, their actual quality (ie - how well spaced, depth of trenches, overhead protection, whether they are mutually supporting, etc), and most importantly the quality of the troops occupying them and their familiarity of the positions and their approaches. Troops retreating back to depth positions can be a recipe for chaos.
Does Russia have the troops to man the depth positions, and what discipline will their troops show if/when Ukrainian forces create break-throughs in the lines?
250B pounds certainly would be impressive. I think you mean 250M though (US$315M)
