” … by targeting the ammunition supply chain, they hope to starve the enemy of shells.
The Himars have certainly been working overtime since Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister, announced their arrival on the battlefield on June 23.
On Monday morning alone, Ukraine had claimed three more strikes on ammunition dumps in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions.
The chaos continued on Tuesday, with thick pillars of smoke rising over Donetsk, the regional capital occupied by Russia in 2014, as the Ukrainians targeted the railway station and a nearby vehicle repair workshop.
Deprived of the ability to lay down thousands of shells a day, the theory goes, Russia will be unable to replicate its grinding advance through the Luhansk and its assault on Donetsk region will stall.”
Comment: Just guessing but it probably works like this – A liaison team from DIA passes satellite-based targeting to Ukrainian HIMARS. This sounds promising. You can’t hide that much artillery ammunition. pl
Introducing the West’s new weapon working overtime to tilt war in Kyiv’s favour (telegraph.co.uk)
“This sounds promising. ”
Yes, this is very promising of an escalation by Russian retaliation toward US intelligence channels.
jld
laughable.
As you are fluent in French, remember the adage.
“Rira bien qui rira le dernier”
je m’en fous
The Russians are claiming that they have destroyed two HIMARS launchers and are trying to pass this off as evidence:
https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1544623363041251334?s=20&t=KI8HnEadA7IDXIi3bGyp1w
Racan,
This may ratchet the “long range precision strike” war up to a new level. I’ve read that the US has promised 8 HIMARS by mid-July – so 2 down and 6 to go if Russian reports are accurate. I would imagine that the Russians will be willing to risk aviation losses to go after these systems.
James
or they might just buy them from the Ukrainians like they allegedly did with a couple of French Caesar howitzers.
Seriously though, Ukraine needs many more of these systems to make a lasting impact before the Russians figure out how to counter them.
Also two ammo dumps for their rockets, IF true.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-says-it-destroyed-two-us-supplied-himars-rocket-systems-ukraine
Russia has also claimed they destroyed twice as many Bayraktars as Turkey has produced. I’m sure these tall tales are meant for internal consumption. That video that supposedly showed the destruction of two HIMARS was pretty pitiful. Whatever they were shooting at, they missed. They surely could have come up with a more convincing video.
“Ukraine’s defence minister, announced their arrival on the battlefield on June 23.”
Why announce anything this important out loud? Wouldn’t shut up and deploy them be a better strategy?
Whitewall,
It became readily apparent they were in country pretty quickly. My guess is that it was good for the Ukrainian people to hear that they were indeed there.
Lots of PR in place? On both sides? With one side cut off rigidly in the West? One in the East?
Your guess surely might be one aspect. What about: Impression management? As concerns the US, honoring the sponsor? Did good, thus lets talk about it a lot? So others feel guilty?
No doubt: Rattling is part of the trade, our Ukrainian embassador surely rattled a lot since 2014. He reminds me a bit of Grenell.
Outgunned as they are, the smart option was to go after RU ammo dumps instead of RU artillery batteries. Ukraine’s General Zaluzhny said that in just one day “45,000 shells were used by the Russians only in the Izyum-Popasnaya area. This is 360 guns, no less … And then ours fired a thousand or two shells in response.”
360 guns, about 60 batteries, in such small areas mirror Stalin’s WW2 ‘hubcap-to-hubcap’ artillery strikes. Poor bastards on the receiving end of that had to take high casualties no matter how inaccurate the barrages.
Over a trillion in damages and counting at a cost of 5 billion a day from a bankrupt country printing money on the verge of hyper inflation. I love it when a plan comes together (cigar smoke, BA Baracus in background). Maybe we can honor the Minsk agreement when CERN finishes the time machine…meh. Food and energy supply chains are fragile things. Once it is broken, even slightly creates severe havoc on people worldwide. Best course of action is to FLOOD the market with gas, oil, coal. FLOOD it. It will break Russia but for some reason we can’t figure out basic economics.
Not specifically about the war,
but about a female mathematician from Kyiv who was just awarded mathematics highest honor:
With her homeland mired in war,
the sphere-packing number theorist Maryna Viazovska
has become the second woman to win a Fields Medal in the award’s 86-year history.
(The first was an Iranian woman.)
The article contains some personal details about her family and their life in Ukraine, like:
‘Viazovska’s parents, grandmother and other family members remained in Kyiv.
As Russian tanks drew ever closer to her parents’ home, Viazovska tried every day to convince them to leave.
But her 85-year-old grandmother, who had experienced war and occupation as a child during World War II, refused, and her parents would not leave her behind.
Her grandmother “could not imagine she will not die in Ukraine,”
Viazovska said,
“because she spent all her life there.” ‘
In this quite polished six-minute video
Maryna gives an accessible introduction to her work, and discusses some aspects of the war and her personal life:
https://youtu.be/yAyuipqM5uQ
Stuff coming up for sale on the dark web is one thing but this is a whole new level
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2022/07/05/ukraine-has-sold-two-french-donated-155mm-caesar-howitzers-to-russia/