More light armored Russian vehicles shot up, Ukrainians firing away but no dead bodies? The Russians just walk away, they must be the real ghosts.
The crisis actors were still in their dressing rooms getting the bloody bandages put on before they go out to lay in the road.
The Russians have the city surrounded.
They are currently probing neighborhoods with recon units to assess the defenses.
Later they will move in and sweep the city, door to door.
Taking and holding one neighborhood at a time before moving on to the next one, and so on until the entire city is cleared.
Default Russian tactics since Chechnya.
This is a new Russian unit which has been brought in for this city. The previous Russians there have bypassed the city and moved on. These new guys may be green troops. There were several similar incidents just like this in other surrounded Ukrainian cities today - Russian recon patrols driving into ambushes and losing their vehicles and some troops in the process.
To me, driving around until you get shot up seems a dumb assed tactic when you know for certain your enemy is already inside the city. What is achieved other than losses?
Has anyone else noticed something? These are all second line Russian formations with all of the old obsolete Russian gear - mostly 1990's era equipment. Putin seems unwilling to risk having any of Russia's new equipment fall into NATO hands during this war. It still outclasses the Ukrainian gear, but just barely. There is no sign of Russia's state of the art anti-NATO combat gear on the battlefield. None of the newer tanks or aircraft. Just some of the newer attack helicopters which Russia has actually had for more than a decade now.
Good analysis. It makes sense, make them use up ammunition, maybe even believing they can win then bring in overwhelming forces that send them running.
It would be amusing to discover that Putin and the leader of Ukraine secretely got together and decided to stage a fake war, so that Ukraine could surrender without suffering any real consequences.
We'll see.
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