Looks like Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire, might be getting a flying lesson soon. He has dared to speak out against the war:
Even calling this a war pisses me off. It’s a fucking invasion of a sovereign nation.
Are there any ideals being fought for? Is Ukraine a threat?
That’s what wars are 
. Nobody calls WW II “Hitler & Co.'s invasion of various sovereign nations” (catchy as that may be). War is just war, the word implies no particular righteousness on anyone’s part. You can fight them over soccer games or ostensibly some rando’s ear. At some level they pretty much all suck, even the “noble” ones.
Russia’s initial response? Suppress the rights of their own people. They’re going beyond Kursk.
Apparently they suspect partisans are providing intel to Ukraine.
Yeah, I know. It just really pisses me off that saying it’s a war sounds like it somehow justified on Russia’s part.
Russia need to pay dearly for this. Though I feel sorry for the citizens of Russia.
Who, by the way, are not allowed to call it a war.
Ukraine needs to keep civilian casualties as low as possible. Treat the people in the towns as neighbors. Which is what they were prior to the war. Ukraine needs International support and being seen as following modern rules of war is important.
I am beginning to think Ukraine may want to hold Russian territory as a bargaining chip at peace negotiations.
There are other benefits. They’re already reporting less Russian attacks along the Ukrainian frontlines. The Russians will have to use troops to fight in Kursk and protect their long border with Ukraine.
I expect further incursions into Russia. I think there’s still more that Ukraine has planned. The next few weeks could be very interesting.
The Russian will feel the pain and destruction of fighting inside Russia. Maybe that will further destabilize Putin?
while I agree on keeping the civil casualties to a minimum, I’d like to see the UKR starting to hit military (and infrastructure) targets close or in Kursk city (airfields, power stations, bridges (can all be done at 4am)), and create some sense of urgency in the population and so (by proxy) to turn up the heat on putin and the mil. administration.
It will create pressure and be destabilizing … and it should be … and the UKR should maximize this angle of warfare.
Perception will play a big part in this war. If it feels like the conflict is turning against Russia Putin will be put under extreme pressure. If he is overthrown it will happen suddenly and I hope something like this is a catalyst. The Ukrainians should consider digging in for the long haul.
Apparently Ukrainians are bringing heavy engineering equipment with them. Digging defenses? destroying bridges and infrastructures?
Most of their forces seems fully mechanized and moving fast behind Russian lines, maybe they want to occupy a large portion of land and make the Russians pay heavily to retake it. Or a kind of “search and destroy, then retire” operation.
If the Russians launch an offensive elsewhere, Ukraine may be forced to pull back and re-allocate.
I’d heard this very thing in a podcast at lunchtime today. It seems Russian telegram channels are reporting Ukraine is bringing in equipment geared towards sustaining supply lines and as noted heavy engineering equipment, presumably for construction of defensive positions and fortifications. It appears they may be planning to stick around and make the Russians pay dearly for land they captured on the cheap. Probably would help them with cease fire-peace negotiations, as noted above.
They’re almost in cheap artillery range of the Kursk NPP. I wonder if the transmission lines themselves are vulnerable. If they are, then making sure power is disrupted might be a good priority while not wasting precious long range guided bombs. Is it possible to do trunk transmissions entirely underground? If not, then it might take a long time to repair main line transmission towers. This is important because the Kursk NPP provides quite a large percentage of Russia’s power, specifically to the industrial region of Kursk.
I couldn’t see any information on how vulnerable transmission was from either Google Maps or a search.
If you’re talking the typical western design of tall latticework towers with wires strung between the upper reaches, unguided artillery is very very ineffective. You can dump a lot of rounds in the general area and not get the hit that takes out one tower. Much less several.
Old timey naval artillery was specifically designed to take out targets with that profile.
Planning the operation and keeping it secret is impressive.
Apparently the border guards were the only defense. Then it was open highway to Sudzha.
Apparently making the rounds in Ukraine:
At a loss for what to do about the incursion at Kursk, Putin meets with his closest advisors. “What can we do?” he asks. Medvedev suggests holding a seance to speak with Stalin to ask for advice, and dutifully the ghost of Stalin appears. Putin says to the ghost, “Joseph Vissarionovich, Nazi tanks are advancing on Kursk and our defensive lines are collapsing! What should we do?” Stalin replies, “Is simple, do what I did. Send in best Ukrainian units, and ask Americans to increase arms shipments.”
its smarter to take this “cheap” undefended turf and let the RU struggle against the heavily defended terrain in UKR …
For every 100km2 you lose in UKR, you gain 1000km2 on the other side in RU, with way less casualties …
RU is not overrunning anybody - last time RU overran somebody in this war was early march 2022
you probably want to target the electric substations that convert the voltages … normally fairly close to the NPP … also there will be a lot of expensive and hard to replace transformers, etc… that also respond better to ordnance.
right there (change layer to satellite):
It may be a long time before we find out, but… I am so curious whether the Ukrainians got help from the U.S. in planning this incursion.