“The stalled Russian advance to the north of Kyiv is a perfect example of “poor planning and poor execution”, Western officials have said.
Russian ground forces “are not performing in the way they believed they would, how they previously have trained or how they would pride themselves to be”.
The column of Russian armoured vehicles, now thought to be some 40 miles long, has been stuck for days to the north of Kyiv.
Ukrainian counter-attacks are reported to have pushed the frontline further away from Kyiv in towns to the west of the capital, which have seen heavy fighting over the past few days.
American-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles have destroyed Russian tanks and blocked the road, according to US officials, adding to existing problems of vehicles without fuel.
A Western official said that the “enormously large traffic jam” was partly the result of damaged or destroyed vehicles blocking the road, presenting Russia with “a real problem passing logistics forward to enable that force to actually move at pace”.
They said: “That force has really not made any significant progress now for a number of days.””
Comment: These really look like mostly trucks to me. pl
Russian tanks stuck in the mud ‘an example of poor planning’ for Ukraine invasion (telegraph.co.uk)
This footage shows close combat between Russia and Ukraine troops in Kherson. Not high res.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/8W9UPLkJ3kBn/
Stuck in the mud.
There is a black river
That spills from an urn
A languid writher
You follow its twist and turn
From high above it lies still
Ready to deliver
Like black ink in a quill
Its words to paper.
Column seems to end at the Hostomel airport .
the trucks are not stuck , they can turn around or take another road .
Parj
Why don’t they?
They are for loading material.convoy ends at chernobyl.just a guess
The Russians seem to be making lots of tactical blunders (why are they losing tanks in penny packets?)
But, strategically they seem about to trap the majority of the Ukrainian army, kettled facing Rostov
Then what?
JD
I think they advance to the line of the Dniepr. IMO they then halt and recognize a local government of ethnic Russians. In the Kiyiv area they seem IMO to be intent on destroying the Zelensky government, disarming the Rump of Ukraine and creating a buffer state between them and NATO.
Agreed The Dniepr is the obvious stop line.
Going into Kiev itself is a losing proposition.
I say this cautiously, but I am by no means sure that if things go well on the left bank that the new state-building project will not at the river inevitably spill over into the right bank. I would think that west of Krivoy Roq could be the region where a line of control was placed to run on a straight line north from Odessa up to Kiev. (Assuming there is continued good progress in the south.) The western boundary of the new state of Novorossia, if you will, would be far west of the river. Krivoy Rog is an old Cossack region, a lot of it is Orthodox, and it is perhaps the most important steel manufacturing center in Europe. (?) Certainly, it is one of them. You can get from there by taxi to Donetsk in five hours going, of course, east and over the river, maybe at Dnipro, for 150 Euros. So the steel industry of the left bank also has gotten and gets its iron from this twenty- mile long mountain of ore good for the next hundred-plus years at Krivoy Rog. In return, Krivoy Rog gets its coal from the Donets/Luhansk region. This is one case where the left and right bank need each other. Keep them together.
Those do appear to be mostly trucks. Telegraph photo editor is perhaps not to smart. But:
Plenty of pics on twitter showing Russian tanks, APCs, and other equipment stuck in <'General Mud'
And it is not just Javelins taking out Russian armor as the Telegraph says. The Ukrainians have also successfully been using other ATGMs and even rocket propelled AT grenades:
– Soviet made 9M113 Konkurs still in the Ukrainian inventory.
– Ukrainian made Stugna-P
– RPGs, ranging from old RPG-7s up to newer RPG-22s.
– Brit NLAWs
– and they have captured stocks of new Russian 9M119 ATGMs
Leith
The pics of destroyed armor are not necessarily in the column.
Pat –
Definitely not.
Colonel, even on modern highways, shouldn’t the tactics learned in VN about “roads & trails be applicable here. Specifically to the Bitchute link from optimax @1:36, the APCs are rolling along the highway with no flank coverage. The Russians on the berm should have been mince meet if the APCs were rolling with flanking forces on the sides. Maybe going more slowly and much more lethaly. BTW, I was a bit too young for VN, but I did get to participate in numerous training exercise out of Ft. Stewart and then with an Improved Hawk unit in Germany – precursors for sure to opfor. I don’t know s…, but those guys ran deep into trouble, without their bubbas.
cobo
Logistical movement in VN was largely limited to French built roads. That was why the Rome plows cut back the forest and anti-folliants were sprayed.
Right now the with the spring thaw, the mud is too deep to put out offroad flanking forces. That black Ukrainian soil is rich in hummus causing most anything to sink in that does not have wide balloon tires. Like those Ukrainian farmer’s tractors that are towing captured Russian equipment.
German Panzers had the same problem in WW2.
Adding to the mud problem is the poor condition of a lot of Ukrainian roads. Heavy use will turn them into a heavily rutted mess. Burning vehicles on the roads just accelerated the damage. North of Kyiv, the Ukrainians flooded the area from the Kyiv reservoir. The Russians pushed mechanized forces and supply convoys into a flood plain. Didn’t something like this happen in Europe in WWII?
I’ve seen pictures of Russian trucks tusing wood for makeshift armor.
I’m not kidding. They are using this time to cut down trees for wood to protect their trucks. It’s going to work out great with those Molotov cocktails 👍🪵🔥
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/t7c25y/russian_tusing_wood_to_protect_their_truck/
The purpose of the birch shields or other makeshift pallets is to touch off or actuate the explosion of an RPG warhead before it hits the truck itself. I doubt it would work 100% except maybe to save the life of the driver, vehicle could still be a mobility kill. We did similar with jury-rigged steel plate on HMMWVs in Iraq for the same purpose. Philippine Armed Forces used wood shields in the Mindanao insurgency to protect against Moro RPGs. But I think they used teak or some other hardwood.
That long convoy stuck on the road for days has to be a massive screw up. I doubt they planned on being held up in Hostumel and Bucha. With trucks clogging the entire width of the road, nothing can move in either direction. Russia canceled one of their own MSRs. Brilliant self own.
I always thought their trucks had great off road capabilities. Maybe if they had decent tires, that would be so. Apparently they’re of poor quality to begin with and sitting on vehicles in open storage areas don’t help them any. Add fuel shortages to that and shit moral and we have a 40 mile clusterf*ck.
Got a small freeze coming in the Kyiv area for Wednesday through Saturday this week, might be cold enough to freeze the mud for a couple days tops. After that an extended warm spell.
https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/Kyiv+Kiev+Ukraine?canonicalCityId=0b66fcc8c4490e8b96bcf6af087a80df429e7ce442645cf1a27546703dbd551a
A freeze now will just put a thin crust on the mud. That will beguile some additional armor to go offroad and get mired down in the mud. Unfortunately Putin has forgotten, or perhaps never knew his own country’s history.
But eventually it will dry up. May? Late April?
Majority of deaths when Russia (U.S.S.R.) was in Afghanistan were due to poor hygiene from what I read. Pathetic during the modern era of warfare. On the other hand, we just got curb stomped in Afghanistan ourselves so there’s that.
They do look like a rag tag bunch but being a retired combat engineer officer not that long ago I seriously doubt our forces are any better. Likely far worse outside of CAS. Our military is a facade of what it once was but end of the day it does not matter. If the UN wants to look away then what’s really stopping them? They have some float on being sloppy and not testing Chinese tires first.
Babeltuap
Our people would not die of logistic incompetence.
They just did in Afghanistan evacuating. Failure on many levels. You want to know how bad it is COL Lang. I retired 8 years ago. Since then I have been requested 4X in the last year to return. I’m an old man by military standards.
It strikes me that the outcome here turns on which is more applicable: “Quantity has a quality all its own;” or “It shouldn’t have taken four of ya Charlie.”
Kiev’s population stood at just over 3 million before it all turned sour, they will get through a bunch of groceries in a week. For the moment that is the responsibility of the Zelensky government not a Russian responsibility, perhaps the trucks have been assembled as a resupply column should responsibilities change. Assembling such a column shows either gross incompetence or the assurance of total air superiority and control of the local land area sufficient to prevent raiding parties.
Tidewater mentioned Krivoi Rog and I would agree, in fact suspect that the forces moving along the Western Dneiper bank will eventually meet up with those West of Kiev moving South. Whether we then see a concerted move into Galicia and by whom will be a political decision rather than a military one.
So far there are no obvious moves towards Krivoi Rog (aka Kryvyi Rih on current maps). Of course that could change in a heartbeat.
Russian troops west of the Dnieper in the the south seem to be focused on Mykolaiv. But there is a road thrust from there NW to Voznesensk, but that might be special forces going after the Yuzhnoukrainsk Nuclear Power Plant.
Something similar going on in the north. There is an attack to the west that has reached Malyn in Zhytomyr Oblast. Which possibly is trying for the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant? Or maybe to permanently cut the rail and highway links from Poland to Kiev? Perhaps it is part of a pincer movement as there appear to be an attempted advance from Belarus towards that area also.
I, too, suspect that Russia is aiming to capture (all?) the Ukrainian nuclear power plants. Just saw new (maybe) evidence in my Yahoo feed: “Russia, without evidence, says Ukraine making nuclear “dirty bomb” (link below, though the article doesn’t say anything that the headline doesn’t). True or not, if Russia believes it, it matters. OTOH, of course, this could be just more PsyOps or maskirova.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-without-evidence-says-ukraine-060619443.html
Elkhern –
Putin undoubtedly has Naryshkin’s SVR manufacturing false evidence of Ukrainian nukes. Kind of like Cheney had Wolfowitz and others try to do about two decades ago.
It will all be BS. A nuke or even a dirty bomb can’t be made in secret. Plus Ukraine’s old nuclear facilities can only produce a minimal amount of needed material.
Instead of making up nuclear fairy tales Putin should ask for observers from the IAEA or some other international observers. Zelensky would have to agree or lose cred with the West.
Aerial photos of convoys shows many trucks with engineering support equipment. Lots of pontoon bridging equipment.
Some news about the convoy
it probably was the not yet needed artillery
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/satellite-images-appear-show-russian-convoy-near-kyiv-has-dispersed-redeployed
would still be strange logistic