No doubt in carefully targeted tranches.
Maintenance on these older tanks should be easier for Ukraine. Their mechanics are trained on the same era Soviet tanks.
The link in the quote reports on the new 155th Mechanized Brigade. It’s very heavily armed and should be effective against Russian units. My 2nd quote is from that report.
Always good news when POW’s come home.
Guardian live feed
Looks like Ukraine shot down a helicopter with a sea drone launched missile. The claim is that this is a first.
The video doesn’t show a helicopter was shot down. Just shot at.
Kinda looks like it was hit, unless the helo was ejecting flares.
Russian Mil bloggers are also saying a helicopter was shot down so it seems there is some confirmation
Should know in a few days if this is a successful counteroffensive.
ISW is already reporting on the Kursk counteroffensive. Hopefully Ukraine will force Russia to divert more resouces into Kursk.
Link Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 5, 2025 | Institute for the Study of War
A post was merged into an existing topic: Why do military reporters always tell us about companies, battalions, divisions, etc? Why can’t they report the numbers?
I don’t know what useful information these two NK soldiers can provide Ukraine, but just the fact that they have been captured and are well-treated could be good propaganda.
If they are re-patriated to NK, they will probably be executed.
Or be used for counter propaganda.
Some discussion of possibilities here
I’m pretty certain that none of the NK soldiers fighting alongside Russia in Ukraine would ever be allowed to go home. They’ve been “contaminated” by contact with the outside world. They might even get notions that their government has been lying to them all their lives.
‘Irreversibly (or irrevocably) contaminated’, as the Peacekeepers called it in Farscape. Like Aeryn Sun, they may come to understand their longevity would be increased by accepting Western hospitality.
Moderating:
All this speculation about the North Koreans really doesn’t belong in this thread. Please start a new one if you all wish to continue. But drop it from here.
In the final days of the Biden administration, the US has announced a barrage of new sanctions on Russia that will greatly increase the leverage that Donald Trump will have in negotiations with Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
US Treasury targeted the regional clearing platforms – payment platforms – set up by Russia and China to facilitate cross-border payments for oil and military goods that enable them to evade the financial sanctions imposed by the US and its allies.
The Treasury also relisted about 100 entities from Russia’s energy, defence and finance sectors in a move that brings those sanctions under a US law that requires that Congress has to be given 30 days to consider any delisting. That’s been described as an attempt to “Trump proof” the sanctions by ensuring that Congress can frustrate, if it wishes, any attempt to weaken the sanctions.
The US State Department, also on Wednesday, sanctioned more than 150 new entities and individuals, focusing on Russia’s defence industry and its international suppliers, including Chinese companies that supply “dual-use” technology to Russia.
Ukraine is to receive a new, rapidly developed bespoke air defence system called Gravehawk as part of the support announced by Keir Starmer as he visited Kyiv on Thursday
The system, roughly the size of a shipping container, has been developed by Britain and Denmark to allow the Ukrainians to shoot down aerial threats using retrofitted air-to-air missiles launched from the ground – meaning, according to the British government, that it can use Ukrainian missiles already in their armed forces’ possession to shoot down Russian missiles and drones. The British government revealed that two prototypes of Gravehawk were tested in Ukraine in September, with 15 to be sent this year