When we heard that the very precise attack in Izyum had killed Russian Major General Andrei Simonov, everyone checked it off as yet another one. But it turns out that the General harvest came very close to getting the biggest of all.
The extent of the injuries are, as usual, not clear. First call was that he had been hit in the shin/calf area and the shrapnel had been removed, there being “no threat to life”
But he has been medevac’ed to Russia and you don’t do that for a “flesh wound”. Especially not when your local general has been killed along with a few others. You strap up the wound and you “take charge” like a General should.
If true, “legs and hips” is another order of serious. And let’s not forget that the Moskva was fully evacuated safely, then under tow to port and only then, about 3 days after the event, it sank with most hands.
Non-zero chance that he is dead or very seriously compromised.
Hence my headline. The Ukrainians keep sending the message, “we know who you are and we know where you are and we can fucking well kill you to order, now go home”
Most of us have been salivating over the arrival of the new equipment and the potential for a major counter attack to shove the Russian out. I don’t think that will happen. This is not that kind of war.
I think we are going to see this level of precision and deadliness applied in a surgical manner; the Russian occupation will be carved into manageable pieces and chewed up by standoff weapons mostly. And those Russians still able to get back across the border, as happened in the Kyiv/Sumy front, will bug out en masse at some indeterminate moment. There may even be the “Highway of Death” scenario reprised from Gulf War 1, right up to the Russian border where, if they are lucky, the Russian remnants might find a road or two not blocked off in front of them.
But whatever the actual is, I think we have entered the “beginning of the end” phase and I would not expect this to still be going as a war beyond summer solstice.