East Front-South(Zhukov/Rokossovsky)
Axis forces roll forward, probing the armored formations west of the river. These will be withdrawn, but for now they hold up. The main Axis push is around Kiev, where the Germans easily overwhelm 4 formations, including the Army defending Kiev proper. This allows for the encirclement of another mech corps. Again, unforgivable errors by me that will deprive us of decent formations that we just can't afford to lose. It is difficult to know when to make a stand, because the Russian forces are so easily displaced that one cannot always know if there is a threat of encirclement or not. Here, I believed at worst we could escape through the marshes, but the Italians cut us off, along with a German mech formations moving through multiple ZOCs.
The losses across all fronts of many of our very best units are incredibly demoralizing. What is worse is, we are extracting absolutely no price for the non stop destruction of these forces-the Germans and their allies continue to lose no formations and in most cases very few steps. We will survive until winter, but in the spring, my guess is it will actually be even less competitive, as we will have been so massively reduced in power while the Germans will actually be stronger, having had a winter to resupply and add formations.
The idea of a winter counter offensive, the lynchpin of Russian strategy, is absolutely laughable at this point.
By the middle of next summer, I believe it is inevitable that Russia will be unable to offer any significant resistance, and will at best exist as a rump state.
This, in addition to the ongoing slaughter in the BOA-which is sucking up huge amounts of resources while depriving the Axis of none, along with absolute Axis control of the Med, have me seriously considering waving the white flag.
I think this war is over.
