Adam_S

FWIW

The really obvious play, I think, would be to wait until whatever reserves Russia can scrape together have been sent to the Donbas then to hit them in the South towards the Black Sea.

If true this is rather bad news for Russia as it would entail the complete encirclement of all Russian forces around Izyum.

Doesn't look like the Ukrainian advance near Kharkiv is slowing down any.

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If whatever reserves Russia has left get sucked into fighting around Kharkiv and Izyum, there's going to be a whole lot of bugger all left around Zaporizhia down to Mariopol.

Apparently 3 Ukrainian brigades were involved in the breakthrough near Kharkiv.

Looks like a couple of brigades worth have just popped up around Kharkiv.

Sizeable gains for the Ukrainian army if true. If they get across the river then the entire Russian position around Izyum is looking dodgy.

The Gavins are rolling in Kherson! Russian forces are doomed.

"Will swap artillery shells for food" is a trade that works pretty well for both parties when you think about it. Makes you wonder what happened to the tons of old Soviet shells they were supposed to have hanging around though.

I came here to post the same thing. Perhaps some of those old cold war rounds weren't as well stored as might have been hoped.

I guess that supporting a decent sized maneuver force to a significant operational depth might be beyond the logistical capabilities of either side at this point. When the Russians tried early in the war, the presence of large numbers of ATGMs also made this pretty dicey. Punching a battalion sized armored group through the front lines somewhere is probably doable, but what next? Without infantry and artillery support, that armor is toast but if you bring everything else along too then you've just added a much bigger strain on extremely limited logistics. Both sides seem to be having to feed reinforcements in piecemeal too to replace casualties which I guess makes it harder to amass any real operational reserve. The defender also gets to take advantage of interior lines and an extensive rail network to bring reinforcements to a threatened sector. It really is like WW1 all over again. With both sides short of manpower it's becoming more and more of an artillery duel too - Western quality versus Russian quantity.

You know, it would be a heck of a platform for those brimstones they got from the UK.

Speculation on the Twitterverse over a possible HIMARS/ATACMS combo sighting.

This is apparently the result of the Ukrainians latest efforts.