Here’s the ninth episode from Adjutants Lounge, all rights are Ben and Phil.

Half an hour transcript for everybody, the rest for paid subscribers. Might release for free to everybody in future, might not.

Full audio for free here

Transcript

00:00:00 Ben Skipper

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Oceans Lounge. We're continuing the series of the Russian way of war. I'm joined by Neil Pointer today because Hello, Neil, by the way, for you to join me. Thank you ever so much. Because we, we we sort of.

00:00:11 Philip Blood

Hi, Ben.

00:00:17 Ben Skipper

We're looking at an event that happened in in the literally within the past week where the Russians.

00:00:26 Ben Skipper

Made a bit of a **** up of a river crossing at a place called and I do hope I got this right. Billow orawka, wow.

00:00:35 Philip Blood

Well done, Ben.

00:00:37 Ben Skipper

I tell you what, mate. Now those who you want to be the reason why I got Neil on stage to speak about is because Neil is and he was a royal engineer. He was embedded with armour in Germany and he knows about river crossings, so.

00:00:54 Ben Skipper

Neil, we, we've had a chat beforehand and it's been really interesting.

00:00:59 Ben Skipper

We've got, well, it's enabled us both to sort of look.

00:01:02 Ben Skipper

At the ground stuff.

00:01:03

Yeah.

00:01:05 Ben Skipper

Wow.

00:01:07 Philip Blood

Right. So where do we start? OK. So I'm going to assume that most of the listeners for this have not been sappers, have not been involved in armour and maybe not involved with the military. So excuse me if people have been.

00:01:23 Philip Blood

An assault river crossing.

00:01:26 Philip Blood

Opposed brackets opposed.

00:01:30 Philip Blood

Is one of the most complex, dangerous, risky.

00:01:39 Philip Blood

Affairs that one can undertake.

00:01:43 Philip Blood

It requires huge amounts of planning.

00:01:47 Philip Blood

From everybody.

00:01:49 Philip Blood

And it is a genuine for it to work.

00:01:52 Philip Blood

It requires genuine all arms cooperation.

00:01:58 Philip Blood

And that may be what we're talking about here. One of the themes that has come out from a lot of commentators and I'm.

00:02:10 Philip Blood

Merely regurgitating what others have said.

00:02:14 Philip Blood

Here this is not my own study, is that the Russian army thus far has not shown a great propensity for being.

00:02:25 Philip Blood

Able to cooperate.

00:02:29 Philip Blood

They have not.

00:02:32 Philip Blood

Shown that they can coordinate all the combat arms into one action.

00:02:39 Philip Blood

So let me let me sort.

00:02:41 Philip Blood

Of give you a breakdown of what we're talking.

00:02:43 Philip Blood

About here.

00:02:44 Philip Blood

It would seem that you the way you would normally go about this is if the division is trying to force a river.

00:02:52 Philip Blood

Crossing it uses 1 brigade. You know normal division would have three brigades. OK, let's use Russian nomenclature. They would call that a regiment. So we're talking about a motor rifle division.

00:03:06 Philip Blood

That will have if my got my memory serves ME3 motor rifle regiments and an independent tank battalion. I think in my head.

00:03:19 Philip Blood

Or independent tank company can't quite remember which now.

00:03:23 Philip Blood

But you're basically what you would do is use one of those regiments, which equates roughly to a brigade in UK and Western.

00:03:33 Philip Blood

You would use one of those regiments to force the crossing, and then the two other regiments will come through that regiment and expand out and assault from the Far bank from you know, once you've seized your bridge head, OK.

00:03:48 Philip Blood

That kind of seems what's happened here.

00:03:53 Philip Blood

Or what's being attempted.

00:03:55 Philip Blood

So you've got a number of factors here. One, you've got to have the engineering capability to.

00:04:03 Philip Blood

Force the crossing. You've got to have a crossing point. You've got to have the capabilities to do that.

00:04:13 Philip Blood

You've then got to create the security and safety around that crossing site.

00:04:21 Philip Blood

For the engineers to operate OK, this is not something that can be done from Under Armour with.

00:04:32 Philip Blood

Armoured bridges on tanks.

00:04:35 Philip Blood

Definition of a.

00:04:39 Philip Blood

Strategic obstacle or or a really good obstacle is that you it's big enough to not.

00:04:45 Philip Blood

Be crossed by first line engineer assets. This is clearly not quick scan. This must be at least 4040 metre span.

00:04:56 Philip Blood

Frontline bridging assets. You're probably looking at maximum.

00:05:00 Philip Blood

20 to 25 metres.

00:05:04 Philip Blood

So this is a deliberate crossing. This requires time. It requires time literally for the engineers to construct your bridge.

00:05:14 Philip Blood

Now just looking at the photos the Russians have used, what we would call Ribbon Bridge, which is sections of bridge that fold out off the back of lorries. And then you literally they they float, you join them together and gradually build your bridge across the river. That means you've got engineers in the open.

00:05:34 Philip Blood

They've got to be in the open, they've got to connect them.

00:05:36 Philip Blood

They've got to.

00:05:36 Philip Blood

Join them. There's cables to be pulled and lots of swearing to go on. You know, as one Brigadier who came to watch a bridge build in Germany said, I've realised tonight that.

00:05:49 Philip Blood

The.

00:05:50 Philip Blood

Sappers really only know two phrases. That's ****.

00:05:53 Philip Blood

And towards the gap, you know, but it's a practical thing. You're in a flowing river. I don't know what the flow rate is on that bridge on that river that we're look.

00:06:06 Philip Blood

Yeah.

00:06:08 Philip Blood

It's meandering around. SO1 suspects it's not.

00:06:10 Philip Blood

That fast but.

00:06:12 Philip Blood

You've still got to do it now. That means you've got to create.

00:06:15 Philip Blood

A bubble if you can around those engineers while they work.

00:06:22 Philip Blood

Looking at the photos.

00:06:26 Philip Blood

I'm my immediate thought was.

00:06:30 Philip Blood

That they've almost been ambushed as they were crossing.

00:06:36 Philip Blood

Because some of those tanks that are destroyed on the Ukrainian bank.

00:06:43 Philip Blood

Look like they've been destroyed by direct fire weapons, not artillery.

00:06:50 Philip Blood

And I'm wondering if the Ukrainians.

00:06:52 Philip Blood

Pulled a sucker punch here.

00:06:55 Philip Blood

Now let me back out of this, because there's another thing that we have to come at from the engineering point of view.

00:07:04 Philip Blood

So through due diligence and searching, Ben managed to find where this crossing point is.

00:07:10 Philip Blood

And I took one look at the map. Once I blew it up and went oh.

00:07:14 Philip Blood

It's about the only decent crossing point for miles.

00:07:19 Philip Blood

I think the Ukrainians knew that as well. Indeed, there is a Twitter feed or a thread rather which purports to be from the Sapper who did the wrecky. From the Ukrainian perspective.

00:07:34 Philip Blood

Because if the Ukrainians are smart, they're gonna go. Where do we think they're going to cross now? Looking at the blown up map of the air and actually, rather than the map, the satellite photograph.

00:07:46 Philip Blood

It's a whole series of marshes and Oxbow lakes for miles and miles and miles, and almost the only point where the Russians could get a Direct Line onto the main river without going through an Oxbow lake was this point.

00:08:05 Philip Blood

It's the only direct access route.

00:08:07 Philip Blood

And I think the Ukrainians went.

00:08:10 Philip Blood

Well, should we just let them come across?

00:08:14 Philip Blood

And then we'll ambush them.

00:08:18 Philip Blood

Excuse me.

00:08:20 Philip Blood

It it's I mean that's obviously purely conjecture. I suspect that once thus settles, et cetera, and assuming that the Ukrainians win, I think this is going to be dissected as a how not to.

00:08:38 Philip Blood

For years and years and years, because I think, you know, in terms of what the Russians would call maskirovka or concealment.

00:08:48 Philip Blood

It stinks because it's about the only place they could cross.

00:08:52 Philip Blood

So in terms of deception?

00:08:55 Philip Blood

It's.

00:08:57 Philip Blood

Really tough to do because.

00:09:00 Philip Blood

Assuming they had to cross in this sector.

00:09:06 Philip Blood

There's.

00:09:07 Philip Blood

Just as a quick scan, certainly I'm not sure what scale I'm looking at here actually.

00:09:12 Philip Blood

What's what's the scale?

00:09:16 Philip Blood

OK, so that's about 500 metres. Let me just pull out a bit more.

00:09:21 Philip Blood

Yeah, I mean.

00:09:26 Philip Blood

For about 10 kilometres on either side of this spot.

00:09:31 Philip Blood

It's.

00:09:33 Philip Blood

It's bad news and it's bad news, primarily on the Russian side.

00:09:39 Philip Blood

So in terms of access to a crossing point.

00:09:45 Philip Blood

It looks really, really tough.

00:09:50 Philip Blood

So whether what's happened here is that the Russians have gone. That's the only place we can really cross.

00:10:00 Philip Blood

And what it also does is and as I was saying to Ben in the build up early, you know normally you would not cross a regiment or a brigade on one crossing point.

00:10:12 Philip Blood

Maybe this explains why there's only one crossing point.

00:10:15 Philip Blood

Because there is only one crossing point.

00:10:20 Philip Blood

You know, there's so much here that's unknown.

00:10:23 Philip Blood

But it really looks like.

00:10:26 Philip Blood

They've been ambushed and it's almost as though the the the Ukrainians have said no, come on.

00:10:31 Philip Blood

We're going to let you build your bridge, and then we're going to hit you as you try.

00:10:35 Philip Blood

And come across the bridge.

00:10:38 Philip Blood

There is a load burned out vehicles. If you look at the photographs about this.

00:10:46 Philip Blood

Literally at the point of exit.

00:10:48 Philip Blood

Of the bridge.

00:10:49 Philip Blood

Where they would come off.

00:10:52 Philip Blood

Clearly, if you look at some of the others, some vehicles did.

00:10:55 Philip Blood

Make it across.

00:10:59 Philip Blood

But it would be extraordinary to actually hear an account.

00:11:03 Philip Blood

Of.

00:11:04 Philip Blood

What happened? The series of events of this battle?

00:11:08 Philip Blood

But from an engineering perspective, I'm looking at this and going this is a flipping nightmare.

00:11:14 Philip Blood

Because.

00:11:15 Philip Blood

I'm just on the ground. I'm going. I'd be going, you know. Bring it here because I've done this, you know. Bring it here. You know you wanted to cross this river. Well, there's only one place we can do it.

00:11:32 Philip Blood

And I can just see.

00:11:36 Philip Blood

The Brigadier, who I used to report to looking.

00:11:38 Philip Blood

At me and going, what do you?

00:11:39 Philip Blood

Mean only one place.

00:11:43 Philip Blood

You know pretty good, but this is really hard.

00:11:47 Philip Blood

So.

00:11:49 Philip Blood

I think they've been ambushed.

00:11:53 Philip Blood

I I think this was predictable where they were.

00:11:56 Philip Blood

Going to cross.

00:11:58 Philip Blood

According to that.

00:12:00 Philip Blood

Ukrainian engineer thread.

00:12:04 Philip Blood

They did predict where it was, where it was going to happen.

00:12:09 Philip Blood

Engineer Reki works both ways, by the.

00:12:11 Philip Blood

Way on this.

00:12:13 Philip Blood

And.

00:12:15 Philip Blood

And they've gone. Yeah, they basically the this is the only place they can cross.

00:12:19 Philip Blood

So set them up.

00:12:22 Philip Blood

Let's ambush them.

00:12:24 Philip Blood

Let's just not prevent them from crossing. Let's destroy them.

00:12:29 Philip Blood

In a pre set ambush, as they try to cross.

00:12:34 Philip Blood

Now.

00:12:36

OK.

00:12:38 Philip Blood

Let let's talk about the theory of it from a a a crossing point. You know a crossing scenario.

00:12:46 Philip Blood

I mentioned all arms cooperation.

00:12:52 Philip Blood

This needs huge air cover. It needs armoured helicopters and the traditional way of doing it.

00:13:00 Philip Blood

Would be that.

00:13:00 Philip Blood

Before you even launch your engineers at doing the crossing.

00:13:05 Philip Blood

You assault the Rafael River bank with infantry in.

00:13:10 Philip Blood

Votes.

00:13:12 Philip Blood

You know, it literally is as per a bridge. Too far, assault boats being carried down to the Riverside by the infantry. They climb in and they row across.

00:13:24 Philip Blood

That's literally what you do.

00:13:28 Philip Blood

And you would secure your crossing points so that there is no possible observation or direct fire possible. That's what you want that that's what you want. So you want it unobserved by, you know, direct visual Overwatch.

00:13:47 Philip Blood

And no direct fire weapons.

00:13:50 Philip Blood

So you clear the bank, probably.

00:13:54 Philip Blood

Ideally you're talking to at least a kilometre distance from the site. You know you want. You want a good clear site to be able to work with so that there's no interference.

00:14:10 Philip Blood

Now of course the problem is here.

00:14:12 Philip Blood

If the Ukrainians appears to have done their wrecky, they've already de effed. Sorry, defensive fire DF is a pre set artillery target.

00:14:25 Philip Blood

You DF a a location. I think the the Ukrainians have gone. Yeah, we know they're.

00:14:31 Philip Blood

Coming across here.

00:14:33 Philip Blood

So we'll just, you know, maybe even zero in the guns before they get.

00:14:37 Philip Blood

There.

00:14:39 Philip Blood

UM, but OK.

00:14:43 Philip Blood

Here's here's my guess about one of the things that I'm seeing.

00:14:48 Philip Blood

Some of those tanks that that have made it to the Ukrainian bank.

00:14:55 Philip Blood

Look like they've been destroyed by weapons similar to javelin, in that we've got the turret blown off. Now why do I say that?

00:15:06 Philip Blood

If a tank gets hit, a direct hit from an artillery shell.

00:15:13 Philip Blood

There's very little of the tank left.

00:15:17 Philip Blood

What you can see is Hulu.

00:15:23 Philip Blood

Now what this tends to suggest is that the charges have gone off inside the tank as in the ammunition, and you get, I forget what the nickname is for it, but basically the turret launches off the top.

00:15:39 Philip Blood

That tends to suggest a direct fire weapon. Smaller warhead, not so much direct damage, and the turret just blows off the top.

00:15:50 Philip Blood

It doesn't look like they actually cleared it for direct fire weapons.

00:15:55 Philip Blood

Now I'm guessing that that is a complete surmise on my part, but there is a really set procedure to doing something like this. You have your assault river crossing by infantry.

00:16:10 Philip Blood

You then clear the banks, you clear the direct fire, you counter battery the hell out of any artillery.

00:16:22 Philip Blood

Ohh, by the way, you know bit of rivalled humour from Commander Allied rapid reaction call yesterday. Apparently the Polish have been doing an exercise of doing a big river crossing and there was a gorgeous tweet.

00:16:38 Philip Blood

From him going ohh. And look, we of course we would suppress depth fire with our core artillery and and deep strike weapons. Ohh no finger pointing there now that's a really heavy hint as to what didn't happen.

00:16:54 Philip Blood

You know, I think.

00:16:55 Philip Blood

The Russians did not.

00:16:58 Philip Blood

Counter battery to any effective level.

00:17:03 Philip Blood

And this place has been turned into a.

00:17:06 Philip Blood

Shooting house. You know it. It's it. A fox has got let loose in.

00:17:10 Philip Blood

The hen house here.

00:17:12 Philip Blood

And and you know, certainly people are surmising the best part of two battalion groups have gone down here.

00:17:19 Philip Blood

Well, that's a regiment in a regiment. Soviet Soviet. Ohh, did I say Soviet? Ohh. Solve at the tongue. Yeah. Russian Motor Rifle Regiment 3 battalion groups. You know, people have surmised that's the best part of two battalion groups being destroyed here.

00:17:40 Philip Blood

That's about right.

00:17:42 Philip Blood

You put two across.

00:17:44 Philip Blood

Well, you, you know, but I I.

00:17:46 Philip Blood

Where's this salt boat? I don't see any assault boats on the front. On the Ukrainian bank.

00:17:53 Ben Skipper

It's.

00:17:55 Ben Skipper

We, we, we, we, we were joking. We weren't joking.

00:17:57 Ben Skipper

About it. But but we weren't discussing this, it's.

00:18:01 Ben Skipper

As as I was saying to Neil, when.

00:18:02 Ben Skipper

When when I.

00:18:03 Ben Skipper

Looked at this, the first impression I got was they've rushed this.

00:18:07 Philip Blood

Now.

00:18:07 Ben Skipper

It's all and, and I think they've been years gone quite cleverly by the Ukrainians because the Ukrainians gone OK. If I was the Ukrainian commander on the ground following, you know what?

00:18:17 Ben Skipper

You've said, Neil.

00:18:18 Ben Skipper

Right. This is the place. OK, let's make it look like we don't know it exists.

00:18:23 Ben Skipper

Have the DF set down so you know let them. I mean I noticed as you as you come in with an about 100 and 52150 metres of the river.

00:18:33 Ben Skipper

There are a few of the smaller that whether the the shells of tigers, those little sort of.

00:18:39 Ben Skipper

Tigers. Yeah. TAGR's they they're. They're like little humvees. You know, the Ivy coat box choice. Yeah, that. Yeah. They're like those Humvee type things. So the Russians have been using an awful lot. Looks like they've got some of those forwards. And they've been taken out.

00:18:45

OK.

00:18:55 Ben Skipper

There's a couple of cops is there. So I think what's happened is like you.

00:18:59 Ben Skipper

The Ukrainians let them cross. They've got armour. They've sent these sort of high mobility, formal force out. They've got about 250 fifty metres from the edge of the sure they're not going to be racing, not be charging anything, taking the time.

00:19:14 Ben Skipper

And they've just been duffed.

00:19:18 Ben Skipper

You know.

00:19:19 Ben Skipper

And and go back to what you saying as you look at the riverbanks, I don't see any Z SU anti aircraft assets. I can't see anything where the truck mounted or track mounted.

00:19:32 Ben Skipper

There's just no anti aircraft cover.

00:19:35 Ben Skipper

There's there's no. There's no indication that there's been air support from from Rotary or fixed wing or from the Russians, because if there had been, I think there'd be a little bit more destruction in the area because then they are misinterpreted what was going on on the ground. You've got those lovely shell strikes within the actual ribbon bridge. One has one section has got 2.

00:19:55

Yes.

00:19:56 Ben Skipper

Section 1. There's a massive armour we've Neil showed a picture earlier on of five T 72 ones. I believe they might be submerged. I mean the the top hatches were open.

00:20:07 Ben Skipper

So the crews got out.

00:20:10 Ben Skipper

So you know what I'm trying to think? What exactly of the Russians?

00:20:14 Ben Skipper

I don't know if you and then you mentioned it, but they've actually also tried.

00:20:17 Ben Skipper

It three times, yeah.

00:20:19 Philip Blood

Well, as I say, there's, you know from the engineer perspective.

00:20:24 Philip Blood

It's a bloody nightmare in that area. There's so many Oxbow lakes.

00:20:30 Philip Blood

And therefore 1 can only assume it's quite marshy as well.

00:20:36 Philip Blood

Because it's quite low light, so this is this is all floodplain.

00:20:42 Philip Blood

And you can see on the map it's really it's very distinct.

00:20:47 Philip Blood

So there's, like there's a a floodplain area that's and and then it abruptly stops on both sides. And I'll give you a sense if I can just like 2. Hang on, 200 floor and six and 800, it's about.

00:21:02 Philip Blood

12 This this, this.

00:21:04 Philip Blood

Area of floodplain.

00:21:06 Philip Blood

With all these Oxbow lakes, it's about 1200 metres deep.

00:21:13 Philip Blood

And this is the only place that I can see.

00:21:18 Philip Blood

Where you can get a Direct Line in a fast.

00:21:22 Philip Blood

And over, because what's interesting is because of the nature of the river, there is no Oxbow lakes on the Ukrainian side, all on the Russian side. So it's all about access to the crossing point now.

00:21:35 Philip Blood

Here's the other thing.

00:21:38 Philip Blood

It's one thing to get the crossing over.

00:21:43 Philip Blood

To coordinate the movement of a brigade or regiment.

00:21:50 Philip Blood

The traffic control, the route clearance, it's, it's manic. This was hard enough in peacetime.

00:22:00 Philip Blood

I remember doing a couple of these on big FTX's in Germany.

00:22:07 Philip Blood

It's chaos.

00:22:10 Philip Blood

You you know, you need one thing to go wrong on the bridge site.

00:22:15 Philip Blood

And you've got backed up traffic for miles.

00:22:20 Philip Blood

You know, let's let's talk about it. You know how many BMP you, you, you know you're talking about in a battalion. It's something like, if I remember rightly, 4850.

00:22:34 Philip Blood

OK, that's one battalion.

00:22:36 Philip Blood

You've got companies of tanks, say 12 to 14. I think it was 12 in a Russian company. You know, you've got vehicles lining up and you're trying to do this, presumably at night.

00:22:42 Ben Skipper

Enthusiastic.

00:22:53 Philip Blood

Now here's the new spectre, of course. That's in in this war, not totally new, but we're really seeing it.

00:23:01 Philip Blood

The use of UAV's for observation.

00:23:05

Yeah.

00:23:06 Philip Blood

Now you want a nice target.

00:23:11 Philip Blood

A metal bridge against the river through thermal imagery.

00:23:19 Ben Skipper

Does it come up? So what?

00:23:21 Philip Blood

You know.

00:23:22 Philip Blood

And tanks in the open at the crossing point and coming down the route to it all lined up. Oh, look, they're lining up boys.

00:23:32 Philip Blood

You know, I mean, this is this is.

00:23:35 Philip Blood

You know you can have a, you know, we're saying those the damage is artillery.

00:23:42

Was it?

00:23:43 Philip Blood

Or is it UAV guided weapons?

00:23:48 Philip Blood

You know, who knows? You know, those are very precise hits on that bridge on those bridges.

00:23:55 Philip Blood

You know what? What did that? It could be artillery. I would be expecting actually thinking about it.

00:24:03 Philip Blood

If it was a direct hit from an artillery shell on a on a ribbon bridge, I'm expecting it to be no ribbon bridge.

00:24:11 Ben Skipper

Now this this is interesting because I don't know if you've seen some of the they they've been. I didn't realise these things existed until I saw a video yesterday because I know they've been. They've been using UAVs to drop small munitions on. Yeah, they've been using things called fish bombs.

00:24:24

Yes.

00:24:28 Ben Skipper

OK, I can see your face. What the Hell's right? OK, a fish bomb is something used by fishermen. For for perhaps look it up, because just intrigued. Disclaimer, I don't do fishing. I haven't got the patience to stand there with with the rod. Don't have it. But it it's like, you know, the traditional mortar round shape.

00:24:29

What?

00:24:43 Philip Blood

Yep.

00:24:48 Philip Blood

Yeah.

00:24:49 Ben Skipper

OK, you fill it full of feed for the chub or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cast it out. And as it hits the water, it hinges.

00:24:56 Ben Skipper

Open like yeah, like Buffalo.

00:24:58 Philip Blood

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Swim free. Yeah.

00:25:01 Ben Skipper

Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So what? The Ukrainians have been doing, they've been putting these on the bottom of UAV's and inside they've been attaching munitions, being anti personnel, grenades, anti.

00:25:12 Ben Skipper

So.

00:25:14 Ben Skipper

Talking about what you're saying and and initially in the lead up, I said, could it be 155 mil? Yeah, I'm sorry. You're 100% right. If it were, there would be.

00:25:23 Ben Skipper

No.

00:25:23 Ben Skipper

Bridge there for for you know. So have they been have either been using light guns very. I mean in this case exception like guns or they've been using these little UAV.

00:25:24

Yeah.

00:25:34 Ben Skipper

Drops just to add chaos to an already chaotic scene as you're describing it.

00:25:39 Ben Skipper

Well, the other.

00:25:40 Philip Blood

Yeah, go on.

00:25:41 Ben Skipper

Sorry and the other thing, that's just as you're discussing this from an engineering point of view.

00:25:46 Ben Skipper

I I've I've looked at how bridge crossings were are made. The one thing that is absent.

00:25:55 Ben Skipper

And.

00:25:56 Ben Skipper

Hopefully you can answer this for me.

00:25:59 Ben Skipper

Where's the heavy plant? Because you normally have, as I understand it, you have a load of ********, you know blocks on on both landing points, your pontoon.

00:26:05 Philip Blood

Yeah.

00:26:08 Ben Skipper

Bridge or your ribbon?

00:26:09 Ben Skipper

Bridge. Yeah. Together there. You can't. Really. You. You need heavy. You know, the big old Volvo, JBS with the big three tonne buckets to move that.

00:26:18 Philip Blood

Well.

00:26:19 Philip Blood

Where are they right?

00:26:21 Philip Blood

Well, OK, so I'm just. I've just flipped to another photograph.

00:26:26 Philip Blood

Because this is floodplain, right?

00:26:32 Philip Blood

Those banks.

00:26:35 Philip Blood

Are really quite shallow.

00:26:39 Philip Blood

And they've come in, there's one.

00:26:41 Philip Blood

Particular photograph. Where is it? Where?

00:26:47 Philip Blood

OK, it's that one. I want that.

00:26:50 Philip Blood

OK, if I'm looking at a particular photograph which just to describe, you know, this makes great radio, doesn't it? Talking about a photograph I'm looking at, I'm looking at a photograph that's been taken. It's it's an aerial shot, but it's it's an the bleak and looking at.

00:27:09 Philip Blood

From the Ukrainian perspective, down the line of the Russian approach.

00:27:14 Philip Blood

And it's a pretty good approach route.

00:27:17 Philip Blood

It's a pretty good approach route now the simple fact is that what it looks like.

00:27:25 Philip Blood

In amongst the chaos that is on both banks but on the Russian bank.

00:27:30 Philip Blood

There's a lot of abandoned bridge components. I can see 123456 at least.

00:27:41 Philip Blood

UM.

00:27:43 Philip Blood

123456 and it looks like it needs at least eight to cross the river, and there are 1234789101112 pieces sections abandoned in the river, so they've thrown a considerable amount of engineer assets at this. OK one.

00:28:03 Philip Blood

The the site preparation vehicles might have been and gone.

00:28:08 Philip Blood

You know you don't want them clustering up the site, although may have been used to do the other prep. I mean, this is after what's been.

00:28:08

Right, right.

00:28:17 Philip Blood

Destroyed and abandoned SO1 presumes they've cleared out everything that still worked.

00:28:25 Philip Blood

So.

00:28:27 Philip Blood

There, there is signs of some sight preparation. I mean there is some if I'm looking at it, there's clearly actually. Sorry, let let me change my view here. There's three dosed sites. So they have done some slight preparation. The vehicles have left, but it's there, right? One presumes they've left.

00:28:51 Philip Blood

But this is.

00:28:54 Philip Blood

I mean, what's interesting here? I I.

00:28:58 Philip Blood

There's something in my mind that's going. This is a considerable amount of an engineer battalion that's been lost.

00:29:06

Here.

00:29:07 Philip Blood

In terms of assets?

00:29:10 Philip Blood

This is your divisional engineer battalion.

00:29:13 Philip Blood

If I think there was one of those.

00:29:18 Philip Blood

I think there's divisional engineer battalion. They've lost a lot of kit here. That's and and I can only assume there will have been a lot of casualties on that crossing.

00:29:31 Philip Blood

Trying to build it, I mean they it appears from one of the photographs they've attempted 3 crossings, there's there's definitely three crossing sites being attempted here, all within 100 metres of one another which you know.

00:29:44 Philip Blood

Again.

00:29:45 Philip Blood

OK, I've got to admire the valour to keep trying to do it. But and that shows the degree of urgency that this one site has.

00:29:57 Philip Blood

You know, normally for a brigade or regimental crossing you'd be looking at at least two.