Just one initial observation. The Ukrainian offensive in the Slovyansk region is devoid of markers indicating Ukrainian troop movements. I think it must be the 25th parachute brigade despite what I'd read (and which this map shows) that the unit was disbanded.
Either the unit was not disbanded or only the brigade headquarters was disbanded, or perhaps just the battalion that failed in the initial attempt was disbanded. But the unit must be involved because pictures from the recent operations show BMD-1 tracked armored vehicles in action, and those are part of a Russian-style "parachute" unit.
Also, for the Ukrainians, the map shows the 80th airmobile brigade as coming from 13th Corps' area. I'd been confused about that unit when I read about it before, thinking it must have been an aviation unit of helicopters rather than a maneuver unit.
Anyway, the map looks better at the Post website.
UPDATE: Some further thoughts. In their 40,000 or so (as the press had reported) invasion force, Russia has close to 70 maneuver battalions set for the invasion. This compares well to the 60 maneuver battalions that we had from the Army and the Marines, and the British added 10 more for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. [2003 numbers corrected from original]
The numbers don't seem to match, however. Russian brigades are mostly composed of 4 maneuver battalions. Some brigades have 3. let's say an average of 3.9. If a mechanized brigade has 4,300 troops, I'll assume armored and parachute brigades have fewer. I'll call it 4,000 troops per brigade for the sake of argument.
So if Russia has 17.5 brigades, at 4,000 troops per brigade, Russia would have 70,000 troops poised to invade.
But some brigades clearly contribute component maneuver battalions only. So the numbers would be a little less. If you just count battalions and assume a battalion is 600 on average, you get a bit over 40,000. This matches the publicly stated invasion force total. But that is too low since it doesn't count the support units and headquarters units that go along with brigade and higher echelons of command.
We had more total troops for the Iraq operation, but we needed support troops to launch an offensive around the world rather than from our own soil as Russia could carry out. So their logistics are simpler. Those support troops that remain in Russia just wouldn't be counted in their totals as ours were counted.
Oh, and this map doesn't show Ministry of Interior troops. I'd assumed that tens of thousands of these forces organized as infantry formations would be available to occupy cities for fight in them, or to guard road and other transportation assets.
This is getting long, so I'll continue on operations in a separate post.
