ON THE ZAPORIZHIA FRONT | See the meticulous animation of @Stevius21 which shows the repositioning of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the axis between Novoprokopivka and Verbove, overtaken by Robotyne
The Ukrainians have reorganized part of their system in the Robotyne sector. The 116th Bde is now on the front line and relieves the 46th Air Assault Bde which can concentrate on Novoprokopivka. The 117th Bde replaces it in the reserve role. The 82nd Airmobile Bde repositions north of Verbove.
[question] Do you also know if it is true that only one third of the Ukrainian troops dedicated to the counter-offensive are engaged? Because on your map, I see much more than 3 brigades, but we were talking about barely more than 10 brigades for this task.
[answer] A lot of things have changed since then, we must not forget the Novosilka sector where many brigades are engaged. There are still reserves left: the 117th, 60th and 61st Bdes to which must be added most of the armored divisions remaining behind.
https://twitter.com/Stevius21/status/1711445160008065027
Comment: Just found this French language Twitter account. This guy Stevius21 is doing a bang up job of mapping the order of battle in the Zaporizhian front. Not only does he plot the units deployed, but he also charts the major equipment of each unit. By descending through his timeline, you can see how the deployments changes since the beginning of the counteroffensive. There are also charts showing the units and their equipment. It’s a remarkable effort.
Some units, like the Scala Battalion has been at the front since the beginning. A year ago, this unit was one of the first to enter Izium. It spent the Winter and Spring on the Bakhmut front. It’s obviously taken casualties, but it has managed to stay combat effective over more than a year of being in hard action. Damned impressive considering this is not just a reconnaissance/drone reconnaissance unit. It is also an assault unit. The 3rd Assault Brigade still on the Bakhmut front has displayed a similar resiliency. One might say nigh indestructible.
Stevius21 also seems to have a handle on what units remain in reserve. Given the deployed units he mapped along with the reserve units he listed, it appears the Ukrainian Army has gained brigades since the Spring. At that time, there was talk of only being nine brigades available for the counteroffensive. They are not about to reach a culminating point, not advancing very fast, but far from reaching a culminating point. At this rate, they’ll be still on the counteroffensive next Spring.
TTG
These are the nine NATO equipped brigades that I read about 47th, 33rd, 21st, 32nd, 37th, 118th, 117th, 82nd and ??
The 47h, 33rd, 118, 82 (and I thought 117 but they are not listed on this map) are in Robotyne. I read that the 21st, 32nd, 37th were deployed in other areas.
The question remains, was the purpose of these brigades to achieve a breakthrough or exploit one? The 82nd wasn’t deployed until 8/15. That leads me to believe that they wanted to exploit a breakthrough but needed to commit it early to try to gain momentum.
Does Ukraine have more? Don’t know.
Christian J Chuba,
Stevius21 answered thusly for the reserves,
“There are still reserves left: the 117th, 60th and 61st Bdes to which must be added most of the armored divisions remaining behind.”
I don’t know how many of the newly created storm brigades have been committed.
Average age of Ukraine Soldiers is now 40. I was going to post a link but probably best to let others discover reality on their own. When I was on the Lincoln in the early 90’s the average age was 19. I could not imagine 40 year old men running around on that flight deck working 15 hr days without a day off for a couple months in peacetime. In a vicious land battle I don’t even want to think about it.
babelthuap,
At first I was surprised it was that old, but I remember the average age of climbers who summit Everest is 39. The average age on an SFOD A is mid-30s. When I was in, it was older since no one could even apply for SF training until first succeeding in the conventional Army. Now you can apply at recruitment.
TTG –
Name the strongest humans by profession. I bet you can’t.
Answer: Butchers and sailors.
Because intense strenuous episodic labor builds strength more effectively than anything else.
I lead toward babelthuap’s pov, simply on the basis of observation of athletics – the are very few Satchel Paiges.
If you’re talking Everest in contemporary times I’m not impressed at all. Oxygen, and all the prep and stimulants and it’s been done thousands of times already, there’s mystery or danger sans storms.
There are some very exceptional people in terms of aging and ability to do physical stuff, but they are rare. Only ones I’ve known have been US marines who had longevity in their genes. You likely are such an individual from the brief accounts you’ve given. You can’t judge people by such a standard. In fact if you look at the stats and I’m sure you have, for most of history people simply did not live to an old age. So I don’t think mother nature designed us to, if you know what I mean.
Here’s something that shocked me. I became suspicious and angry at doctors over the last ten years telling everyone, me included, that “85 is the new 65!” More angry than you might suspect because I know darn well they are wealthy whores fronting for cuts in social security and retirement benefits and they want it all privatized so their investment accounts prosper. So I looked up the social security life expectancy charts for people born in America during the very early fifties. For me, a male, my life expectancy was 66.7 I think. Then I confronted the damned doctor with the data in hand.
Dr: “Oh no, that’s wrong, life expectancy in the USA is almost 80 or higher.”
Me: “Oh really? Well you are a damn ignoramus with an MD aren’t you, because that number refers to people born right now this minute. With the present state of medicine, hygiene etc. Not to people born when I was born. Males born in the US born when I was live to be 66 plus some little fraction, and you’re a doctor and don’t even understand the first thing about life expectancy. So stop making me feel so damn guilty about feeling bad you heartless (unprintable unpredictable).”
George Foreman won the heavyweight world title at a very advanced age. Jack Nicklaus won the Masters at 46. Those are not everyday human beings, they are supermen. (and boxing is notoriously corrupt).
F&L,
Infantrymen and SF hump rucksacks up and down hills in all weather every day for years. That and doing three second rushes also qualifies as intense strenuous episodic labor. Officers only do that into their mid-thirties at best. NCOs maintain that regimen into their forties. Beyond that the wear and tear do catch up with you.
Hillary conquered Everest in 1953 at the age of 33. Yes, he used oxygen, but his equipment beyond that wasn’t all that fancy, wool and ventile cotton. In your thirties, your mind paces your body better than at nineteen. Endurance is better and that’s why many mountain climbers and explorers are in their thirties.
At seventy, I’m still felling trees. At thirty, I humped the Shouf Mountains and engaged in hand to hand combat… and won. But that’s just me.
TTG
That’s not the sort of episodic labor that old time sailors and butchers do. They laze around doing little to nothing and then suddenly either pull like mad on thick heavy ropes to hoist sails, or with their hands and arms accept a delivery of carcasses , haul them in, and cut massively huge sides of meat into cuts with hand tools. Then it’s back to doing nothing. The key thing is extremely strenuous bursts, followed by lots of time off whereby the tissues knit stronger fibers and connective tissues. It doesn’t build beautiful physiques or huge endurance and stamina, but those guys are unbelievably strong. Sorry, I should have been more clear. I’ve seen and interacted a bit with first rate ranger level infantry and marine corps fighters in peak condition up close. They are certainly awesome and fearsome people, no debate. Your observation about how a life of hard physical work will eventually take its toll is spot on and really unappreciated by the flat asses who pontificate and sip their soy milk over avocado toast checking their hedge fund accounts while deciding which sex change doctor to recommend on guysWithiPhones to Joe Biden’s brother.
Meanwhile back in Dodge – a gas pipeline connecting Finland & Estonia was blown up. The culprit? Haha. The big boys will appoint a culprit of choice, how else. The difference between this & North stream is not only the size of the physical & economic damage (much smaller) but more importantly, the victim here is a NATO country or countries, so Article 5 applies which it didn’t in the case of North Stream. Fyi.
F&L,
Now I see where you’re coming from and I understand the science behind it.
The supposed Russian connection in both pipeline cuts was the presence of that hydrographic research vessel. No proof, just suspicion so no clamoring for Article 5 talks.
F&L,
Here’s the latest estimates.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
This one is better. Life expectancy is actually up, well mRNA boosts may affect that, due to a lot of factors.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Body.html
F&L,
Maybe that Doctor of yours is Harvard educated. If so he must be correct. So don’t argue with him.
Timothy Leary was a Harvard man. Good solid thinking thinking right there, no? I think Harvard is one of those places where they believe there are 385 genders; must be true.
Sorry, just chapping on you…..couldn’t help it.
I’m a few months shy of 60 and I box in the “masters” league (“masters” means old guys, not masters of the sweet science of boxing). Have a bout in a couple of weeks. That said, I’m a shadow of what I was in my 20s; or even in my 40s. Slower reflexes for sure. I work out damn near every day, weights, push-ups, pull-ups, abs, lots of jump rope and other cardio, heavy bag, sparring and pad work – but I don’t recover fast from a tough work out or a tough fight. Aches and pains seem to just linger on and on and get worse.
I can’t imagine humping an 80 pound pack every day + body armor + weapon, being cold, wet, sleeping on the hard ground every night, eating crappy rations (my insides would be wrecked). No freaking way I could endure life in the field on an extended FTX, even without the added stress of actual combat (artillery exploding all around, bullets snapping by, death and destruction everywhere). IMO, combat is strictly a young man’s game and the belief that 40 year olds and up could do it and remain combat effective seems ridiculous to me. If the average age is 40, that means that some material percent of Ukro conscripts are over 40. I call that scraping the bottom of the barrel because it’s all they have left.
A 30 something that can climb Everest without O2 is an outlier, not the norm, and you don’t make decisions for populations based on outliers. There are a lot of dead older men and women frozen up there.
Eric! Stop that boxing now! A shrewd blow to the head and you’re a vegetable. I have an infant who works in your line. She sees people who were hale and hearty one moment. A bad fall, a knock on the head, and that’s it. She tells me off often enough about the chain sawing and if you were within range she’d confiscate your gloves.
As for the modern battlefield, it looks to be a dismal sort of place. There was a youtube interview of a Brit who volunteered for the Ukrainians. He started his military career as soon as he got to Yavoriv. At just the time a salvo of missiles got there as well. Ran out of his barracks without stopping to dress, helped on his way by the blast. Quite a few of the volunteers decided there was no place like home after that.
Not our man though. He soldiered on. After that auspicious start he found himself on the front line. Not one of the more active sectors at that. Said the only way to cope was to accept you were dead before you went out. That was in the early days of the SMO. I’m not sure he ever saw a real live Russian to exchange fire with but he had plenty of narrow escapes. Now that drones and precision fire are more the rule I doubt they’d be escapes any more. The battlefield is no place for humans now.
I look forward to the day when their ingenious robot contraptions war with our ingenious robot contraptions and the only danger to humans is from RSI to the IT genius sitting safe at his keyboard. And this current war, murderous though it is, isn’t real all out conventional war anyway. If it were Berlin would long since have been rubble.
F&L,
Foreman and other people like him his age are exceptions. You know in your heart what I know in mine. There will be no rope a dope. This war is over with.
I have no skin in this game other than some of my stocks getting blocked. Not a big deal, 20% of my portfolio. Not happy about it. Nobody asked me to liquidate it. It got stolen. Nothing I can do about it. Neither can Ukraine. I lost. They lost. I accepted it and so will you over time.
F&L
it’s not just about type of physical activity (or lack of) but also about mental (chronic) stress and very importantly about what you eat and drink.
Genes are important but you can’t keep throwing bacon, eggs and sugar into your system and expect it to heal and function properly forever.
TTG, if you believe age in not a factor then you should believe it. If it feels right in your mind then by all means.
Being in couple conflicts myself I don’t believe it.I have seen it with my own eyes on land and sea. The older men, besides age have other issues. A nice life, a wife and family. They are not going to do the things you think they are going to do unless they are already in a dead end situation.
Maybe you have seen something different than me in battle which could be the case. I am going by what I have seen in battle with my own eyes.
My experience of the sea-change in the vibes here in NY since the Hamas attacks has turned me 180 from my lifelong wussy anti-gun attitude expressed in a reply to your post yesterday – in the space of a day. My apologies. Challenging vibes are appearing at the corner bodega which is owned and run by Arabs from Yemen. Not from them, they are eminently law abiding, but from the hangers-on who are also middle eastern and some of the Mexican workers too. Maybe it’s my imagination, but get a lode of the first video from down under at the Breitbart link.
Is Musk nuts regarding a civil war in Europe? I don’t know but there sure is a trend afoot. It reminds me of the huge rebellions around the whole Roman empire during the fall of Nero and especially the fall of Jerusalem in 66 AD under the general Vespasian and then his son Titus after his dad went to Rome to take over. It’s called the year of the 3 emperors in the classical history books, but what is little understood is that the Jews has extensive merchant networks throughout the empire then (in fact their percentage population of the ancient Mediterranean world was much higher then than now or even pre-WW2 era genocide, much higher) and it’s kept quiet but if you read Jewish history you discover that they were doing guerilla war all over the empire, even in the western parts such as Gaul where the initial breakdowns in military allegiances occured which you read about in classical sources. I’m far from being a historian, but this reminds me of it – enormous human migrations and slave transports due to captives and expulsion then as now. Too bad we no longer have Col Lang. It took many years for Rome to restore order under the Flavian dynasty. It didn’t really become stable until Trajan and Hadrian in the next century when Jerusalem was finally demolished for the 2nd time and the Jews were expelled permanently, until quite recently.
Rahr appreciated Musk’s words about the inevitable civil war in Europe
German expert Rahr: The creation of a European caliphate could become a reality.
https://tinyurl.com/4tb2f57f
Video: Muslims Chant ‘Gas the Jews’ in Sydney, Australia.
https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2023/10/09/muslims-australia-celebrate-hamas-attacks-gas-jews/
Tensions flare on college campuses.
https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4248401-tensions-college-students-israel-hamas-war/
And speaking of empire destruction, Peter Zeihan says what couldn’t be said here previously – that Germany is toast. I dislike his dishonesty so much I turned it off before the 2 minute mark. Blaming it on the Russians and Chinese .. he’d make a lifelong Mafia extortionist green with envy.
The End of Germany as a Modern Economy.
https://youtu.be/xmEhTFjQB1g
Babelthuap –
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu noted that the average age of mobilized Russian soldiers was 35.
Wrong thread but the previous is crowded. I think this might be propaganda with high probability, but include it for the heroes here who like these improbable stories. Usually when stories of extreme heroism arise in the media it’s not a sign of heroism, it’s a sign that things are going so badly that person need inspiration. The Jews have a long tradition of this – see the bible. Samson, David and Goliath? Sure thing.
Translation from Ru Telegram. The channel is named after the doctor-professor in Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog who tried to turn a beast into a human being by transplantion of a human heart into the stray dog who turned into Polygraph Polygraphovich, a failed experiment, although the dog did indeed take human form. At the link you can see a picture of Inbal with her mighty wonder dog. Enjoy the fairy tales. Oh and next week they will discover Pavlov’s House, right?
——————————-
https://t.me/true_prof_preobr/164
This is the real heroine. Inbal Rabin-Liberman.
On October 7, only one border kibbutz was not damaged by Hamas terrorists. It is there that Inbal is responsible for security.
She realized very quickly what was happening. She literally raised all the residents of the kibbutz to their feet. She organized the defense of the settlement.
25 terrorists came to the settlement. When it was all over, there were 25 corpses at the entrance to the kibbutz. Corpses of terrorists. No people were hurt.
Two days after this, on October 9, Inbal had a birthday. She turned 25 years old. Thanks her.
Question:
1] That’s an OPSEC breach on both the Ukrainian and Russian side if true. So where does Stevius get his info? Although it’s good that he does not show the location of Ukraine’s Tank Brigades and Separate Artillery Brigades.
2] What is that center insignia in the unit symbol for the 3rd, 14th and 15th Brigade? I haven’t been able to enlarge it.
3] Why not isolate and go around Russian units in Verbove instead of assaulting there? It’s a small village, no key roads, with no apparent advantages in capturing it.
leith,
My guess is that Stevius is studying all unit Facebook pages along with Telegram and Twitter postings over time. He’s one hell of an order of battle analyst.
I think that center insignia stands for National Guard units which, as far as I can figure, are those recently created storm brigades. These three are the 3rd Spartan, the 14th Chervona Kalnya and the 15th Kara Dag Brigades.
“Why not isolate and go around Russian units in Verbove instead of assaulting there?” Why indeed. Given that the Ukrainians must operate in small dismounted units, deep flanking maneuvers are damned near impossible without being exposed to flanking counterattacks. But that’s only a guess on my part.
F&L –
A human heart was not transplanted into Bulgakov’s dog. My copy, translated by Mirra Ginsburg translation, says the pooch got the testicles and pituitary gland of a deceased gangster. I recommend the book. Satire. The analogy was that a good dog (Russia) was changed horribly by the implantation of the bolsheviks. The analogy is relevant today with Putin at the head of Russia. By the way Bulgakov was Ukrainian, a Russian speaker yes, but born and raised in Kiev.
Thanks. I saw the movie in Russian w subtitles, didn’t read the book. One of my favorite elements was the dogman’s name. Movie is very good btw. Nearly died laughing at Polygraph singing a hilarious song to the tune of Yablochka while playing an ancient stringed instrument.
Heart of a Dog (45 seconds)
https://youtu.be/VfYV4wRBAeA
Well, as some very heroic men were once known to say: Those of us who are about to die salute you.
That’s my version of … Here’s (that Russian genius) Anatoly Nesmiyan’s take on the Oct 7 attack on Israel. And surprise surprise, it almost agrees with mine, which sure isn’t popular here or anywhere else, hence my citing the noble Romans above. It’s a little rough around the edges and the translation may not suck as much as it seems because imo he has an unusual (and very entertaining, to me at least) style of writing or expressing himself. Oh well, Colonel W Patrick Lang in heaven, sir. You preferred a small team of brilliant eccentrics over a large team of mediocrities. Hence this.
https://tinyurl.com/5xze72jw
Project
October 11, 2023
It is probably possible to express a version of what happened on Saturday in Israel based on the results of the past few days. The further it goes, the more I personally stop doubting her. (Continues at link – it autotranslates).
Suggestive animation, very good.
The scale is missing. How wide (west-east) and deep (north-south) is the Ukr advance?
Seen on a map encompassing Ukraine, the indentation is tiny.
To sum up: a dogfight over one, maybe two, potato fields ((c), 2022, Observatus Geopoliticus).
I know small streams make big rivers.
d74,
Very true. That whole penetration is only around 100 square kilometers. There hasn’t been a lot of territory changing hands over the last year since the Kherson and Kharkiv offensives.
Taking a break from all the very serious (and deservedly so) stuff,
this video shows a young woman {Anna Kochanova) performing an awesomely impressive dance:
https://youtu.be/YoB4Vkvceo0
The spins! (Those more sophisticated than I call them pirouettes.)
This seems a good serious look at how Netanyahu’s policies prevented a compromise which might have prevented the current disastrous hostilities:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/09/israel-hamas-war-netanyahu-palestine-united-states-diplomacy-alliance/
An excerpt: