Thermobaric weapons can also take out nicely clumped up troop convoys. See “Highway of Death” in Iraq.
I’d assume it’s professional military who are doing that. They’ll be concentrating on important points like that convoy.
Large numbers of anti-tank weapons have been pouring into Ukraine from many countries since the start of the conflict.
Ukrainian special forces command has announced that artillery crews will not be taken prisoner.
A stopped convoy that fails to protect its flanks can be devastated by a few platoons of men. If the Russians here were lazy/incompetent and did not get out of their vehicles and fan out in a defensive perimeter, they are easily surprised and destroyed.
The Ukranians are being sent a LOT of antitank weapons, and started with a pretty decent supply of them. You don’t need an especially large weapon to destroy most vehicles. Main battle tanks are hard to crack, but most Russian vehicles aren’t main battle tanks.
That is a war crime and I hope it’s not true.
It would be a mistake to tell soldiers there’s no option to surrender. They’ll keep fighting.
The US Marines took heavy casualties on Iwo Jima because the Japanese fought to the death.
I understand Russian artillery is deliberately targeting a lot of civilians and the men responsible would be hated.
In addition to weapons, we should probably send the Ukrainians some decent word processing software.
Russian attack helicopter shot down near Babyntsi village, Kyiv region.
Reported late on Wednesday:
Ukrainian troops with the support of aircraft destroyed columns of military equipment, three planes, two helicopters, and Russian manpower in Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv regions — Ukrainian Armed Forces report.
Retired American military guy with a background in motor pool management looks at pictures of Russian vehicles, and formulates hypothesis connecting apparently lax maintenance practices with their inability to leave Ukrainian roads and travel reliably cross-country.
Obviously we should take tweet-based analysis by random netizens with a grain of salt, but he sounds reasonably credible. If he’s right, then the inconsistent levels of mobility of Russian forces between the different regions can be largely explained by environmental factors exposing lack of operational readiness. And he concludes that Russia will quickly take and hold the drier parts of Ukraine, but they’re going to have serious trouble anywhere they’re confined to the roads.
For what it’s worth…
Took the Crew out for daily dog business this evening. Noticed … activity.… over NAS Fallon (Top Gun).
Normally see next to nothing this far away, but there was something going on. Lots of dark contrails and what I presume was an F18 doing a big circle over and over. When it turned away from me, even from as far away as I was, I could see the glow of the afterburner. A little orange dot that quickly disappeared as it banked to the North.
Excellent and balanced summary of the current situation.
UK Defence Intelligence update - 03 March 2022
It happens. I read a history of the taking of Pointe du Hoc on D-day. When the rangers made it to the top of the cliffs some of the Germans in the pillboxes attempted to surrender. As the writer put it, “The rangers were having none of it.”
Because…they asked Russia for a favor? 
If the news is true, it’s evidence that Russia, despite Putin’s repeated claims, intended all along to invade. But what is China’s malfeasance here? That they knew and didn’t say anything? Biden was claiming all along that we had intelligence showing that Russia planned to invade, so what would have been different if China had promptly told the world what they knew about Russia’s plans in early February?
It definitely would be a war crime to summarily execute surrendering Russian troops. But is it a war crime if Ukraine merely announces a “no prisoners” policy, but doesn’t follow through on that deadly threat? Not saying this is actually what Ukraine has planned, but what if this is psy-ops to spook Russian artillery crews into just abandoning their positions?
Given the low morale of the Russian troops, maybe Ukraine hopes that the announcement will discourage them (the Russian artillery crews) from even starting to fight in the first place.
Just about everything we’ve seen so far appears to be showing that Russian forces are very poorly supplied and maintained, very poorly led and organized, and largely unwilling to fight. Maybe this will change - but maybe it won’t. I think there’s a real possibility that, considering the above, Russia does not have the ability to defeat the Ukrainian defenders. We shall see.
Official figures from Ukraine:
Ukrainian news outlets were reporting that Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District, had been killed on Wednesday.
Media outlets cited a post on VKontakte announcing the death, written by Sergei Chipilev, a deputy of the Russian veterans group, Combat Brotherhood.
“It is with great sorrow that we learned of the tragic news about the death of our friend, Major General Andrei Aleksandrovich Sukhovetsky, on the territory of Ukraine during a special operation,” his post said, without specifying the circumstances.
Ukraine is offering Russian soldiers 5 million rubles if they surrender and say the code word “million”.
I don’t get the sense the Russians have been all that motivated by the leadership of the top brass.