...The Ukrainians destroyed or still have possession of (in their cities) all the Russian/Ukrainian railheads, save for Kherson and Berdyansk, since the first day of the war. So Russian rail logistics are not possible into Ukraine without either/both a major battlefield success and a major rail engineering effort the Russians did not think was necessary.

The Ukrainians have been slamming every fuel truck they can find with every method available to them, which is big trouble for the Russians as they didn’t have many of those to begin with, and brought only the ammunition & food for a three-day operation.

The Russians have ditched their original 3-day “special operation” plan and have definitely shifted to “set-piece” battles requiring significant preparation, as those are better suited to their poorly trained troops.

The weak link is in doing that is the Russians plain lack the force density in the Ukraine to defend their rear areas, and in particular the bridges over the Ukraine’s many rivers and streams.

The Russian inability to suppress Ukrainian’s integrated air defense system stems in part due to the pathetically poor planning of missile launches which have mostly expended their pre-war inventory of Iskander & Kaliber Ground/Sea/Air launched cruise missiles plus the 500km ranged Iskander ballistic missiles for limited results.

It is also due to the (unknowable before combat) collapse of Russian emitter locating systems for hunting SAMs, intensely used by the Soviets, and Support Jamming capability, also heavily used by the Soviets.

And finally, the tenth day of combat has been showing the vast under-performance of radar threat warning receivers, defensive jammers and infrared missile warning systems on the latest Russian jets. All these deficiencies were visible before this campaign (since 2015) but their severity was difficult to assess before combat operations started over Ukraine.

Planning for RuAF suppression of air Ukrainian defense was keyed to human agents with cell phones and visual/radio beacons to locate UAF mobile SAM batteries pre-war for attack. A few batteries were hit but most seem to have survived. Ukrainian ground forces know of this trick now and it will not be repeated.

The slowness with which the Russian Air Force (RuAF) are showing in deconflicting their aircraft and their mobile integrated air defense system, after losing by capture several intact (with their codes and IFF) Pantsir-S1 and Tor short range missile complexes means the Russians lack air reconnaissance coverage of their rear areas in the Ukraine west of the Dnieper.

This means the Ukrainians can slip company-sized mobile raiding forces into the Russians’ rear areas and take out the bridges required to supply the Russian set-piece attacks being prepared. And they are doing so.

This doesn’t stop Russian set-piece attacks, but it increases their preparation time and, in particular, upsets their timing so the set-piece attacks cannot be coordinated for mutual support. Each will be a one-off.

I.e., the Russian advance has been slowed down in a major way. This buys the Ukrainians time to do other things to defeat the Russians. The most important thing the Ukrainians need is time. They have to take it from the Russians with ground operations & airstrikes....