Ukraine 18: Pump up the S-300’s… Dance Dance…

[Maithanet]

28 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Belarusian units fighting for Ukraine seem to be spearheading raids along the Russian lines in Donbas. They seem to be feeling out the strength and defence in depth of the line.

There's been a massive increase in Ukrainian artillery fire on Polohy, which is located south-east of Zaporizhzia City. Russian forces there taking a pounding. This has been a weak sector for some time, and it's surprising the Russians haven't reinforced it. Breaching the line at Polohy would create significant difficulties for the Russians and give the Ukrainians freedom of advance towards Melitopol (to the SW), Berdyansk (to the S) or Mariupol (to the SE). It would also create a continuity of a battlefront between the current offensive in Kherson and the ongoing attacks around Donetsk City and force Russia to defend a very large front at a moment when its manpower is being stretched.

I've seen speculation that Melitopol might be a target for Ukrainian recapture because of the heavy partisan activity around the city (giving Ukraine freedom of action behind Russian lines) and the relative thinness of the defenders. The Ukrainians have also been bombing the hell out of the main road leading SW to Crimea. It would also create a tight vice around the Russian forces in all of Kherson Oblast and might encourage a general retreat to Crimea. However, the pressure Ukraine would need to exert would be considerable, and what reinforcements Russia could bring in via Mariupol and Rostov is unknown. Possibly too ambitious an operation at this juncture.

I think that Ukraine is looking for (and finding) opportunities across the wide front.  But I think that Ukraine decided months ago that north of the Dnipro is the best opportunity for them to score a meaningful strategic and political victory at (relatively) low cost.  They assessed what went right for Ukraine in March outside Kiev, and the big takeaways was that the Russian supply situation collapsed when they couldn't keep close to rail links.  This made the number of Russian troops and powerful guns more or less irrelevant.  That, combined with stubborn resistance from trained troops and ample artillery supplies, allowed them to smash a force with superior equipment. 

Recreating such an approach for an offensive is hard.  But north of the Dnipro is a rare such opportunity.  The Russians poured in additional reinforcements, but that doesn't really solve the problem for Russia.  Ukraine is seeking to wear down the Russian forces and exhaust their supplies of ammo, medicine, and other equipment.  There is no rail connection over the Dnipro, and even south of it, there's significant risk of getting blown up by HIMARS if they create any sort of supply cache.  There is no truck connection over the river either, as Ukraine bombs the bridges every single day to ensure they aren't repaired.  The ferry and pontoon system is also bombed, and likely inadequate anyway.  Over time, the Ukrainians will (hopefully) reduce the Russian force to a shadow of itself, where it will be forced to choose between retreating without their heavy equipment or total destruction. 

Ukraine has found/created a battlefield where the Russians are at a significant disadvantage.  That doesn't guarantee victory.  Mounting an offensive against an army with more tanks and guns is extremely difficult.  But the theory of how the Ukrainians want to win makes sense, we just have to hope they have the strength to pull it off.   

[Maithanet]

New War on the Rocks Podcast with Michael Kofman.

He is pretty cautious about the Ukrainian offensive.  His description of the offensive largely matches what I described in my last paragraph, that the Ukrainians are seeking to put Russia in a bad spot north of the Dnipro and then compress and isolate the Russian forces so they cannot support one another. 

However, he did say that there was little to no chance that this war ends in the next couple of months.  I found that surprising.  I understand that there's little chance either side will win such a decisive military victory that the other side cannot continue the war.  However, the idea that Ukraine could win a decisive victory in Kherson over the next month doesn't seem crazy, and it is possible that would have far reaching implications, perhaps forcing or convincing Russia to seek peace.  But perhaps I'm just an optimist at heart that there is still a possibility that this war doesn't grind down to the bitter end. 

[Maithanet]

Also, did anyone mention the recent analysis that estimated 120k civilians killed in Mariupol?  One city of half a million people, but people didn't have a lot of time to flee (or a lot of great options on where to go).  It makes me think that the civilian death toll of this war is going to be much worse than previously imagined. 

[Werthead]

Interesting news: the Russian 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade and the 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade have been disbanded. The two units have been so badly mauled in combat they were reduced to less than 20% personnel capable of combat. The survivors have been transferred to other units.

Some reports that Putin has given a directive for the administrative borders of Donetsk Oblast to be fully captured by 15 September, which seems a pretty tall order and maybe impossible (given that, right now, Ukrainian forces are hitting the outskirts of Donetsk City itself). It seems likely now that the newly-formed 3rd Army Corps is going to be sent to reinforce a renewed offensive in Donbas. However, the Ukrainian defence estimates are that the corps is only 15,000 combat effectives in strength, ten thousand less than western estimates, so, er, good luck with that.

There's been simultaneous, large-scale Ukrainian attacks tonight on Tokmak in Zaporizhia Oblast and Kozats'ke in Kherson Oblast, just upriver from Kherson. Russian targets in both areas have been hit hard, and a large ammo depot in Tokmak has been destroyed. This is the "interesting" area my Ukrainian friends have suggested keeping a closer eye on. Also renewed fighting in Izium, and after-the-fact reporting of a massive Ukrainian artillery strike outside Izium that destroyed a large cluster of Russian vehicles a few days ago.

There's heavy cloud cover over the entire Kherson region, so air operations have been scaled back for both sides. It's also made it easier to spot Russian drones. One was downed that they think might have been used as a spotter for Kalibr cruise missile strikes from the Black Sea.

2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

New War on the Rocks Podcast with Michael Kofman.

He is pretty cautious about the Ukrainian offensive.  His description of the offensive largely matches what I described in my last paragraph, that the Ukrainians are seeking to put Russia in a bad spot north of the Dnipro and then compress and isolate the Russian forces so they cannot support one another. 

However, he did say that there was little to no chance that this war ends in the next couple of months.  I found that surprising.  I understand that there's little chance either side will win such a decisive military victory that the other side cannot continue the war.  However, the idea that Ukraine could win a decisive victory in Kherson over the next month doesn't seem crazy, and it is possible that would have far reaching implications, perhaps forcing or convincing Russia to seek peace.  But perhaps I'm just an optimist at heart that there is still a possibility that this war doesn't grind down to the bitter end. 

Kofman has been pretty downbeat about the whole war since fairly early on, and continues to be so. I think he's trying to be realistic and caution the overly-optimistic analyses coming from elsewhere, but generally speaking Ukraine has performed better than he's thought it would at every stage of the war. He was pretty certain that the entire Donbas would be overrun months ago with east and the fact Russia only barely managed to scrape taking Severodonetsk and was basically gifted Lysychansk (possibly mistake in retrospect) and have not moved much beyond seemed to really surprise him.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Kofman's analyses are useless or he is being far too downbeat, but I think he has pretty constantly undersold Ukraine's chances in this conflict.

As for the duration of the conflict, the problem is the ground frost settling in, which is pretty harsh in Ukraine and runs from around mid-to-late October to April or May, and will severely hamper military operations for both sides. That limits the window for large-scale military operations to less than eight weeks from now, maybe closer to six. There is a feeling that there will be a literal "frozen conflict" over the winter and into the start of next year, and then renewed offensives from both sides in the spring.

Ukraine can probably still achieve limited military progress over the winter, though, by targeting very small areas and trying to retake them.

2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Also, did anyone mention the recent analysis that estimated 120k civilians killed in Mariupol?  One city of half a million people, but people didn't have a lot of time to flee (or a lot of great options on where to go).  It makes me think that the civilian death toll of this war is going to be much worse than previously imagined. 

That does seem a lot. I've seen figures of 87,000 killed and maybe 40,000 deported to Russia, which would be horrendous in itself.

I think for Ukraine in total, yes, the casualty figures are going to be horrendous, and low six figures is maybe the best of what can be hoped for. Including casualties from all sides, I suspect we're well past 200,000 by now.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Amusing:

 

[Fez]

Kadyrov has released a weird video today where it sounds like he's stepping down from his position. No idea what it might mean, or how much it relates to his support for the war versus internal Chechen issues. Seems rather surprising though; dictators and mini-dictators generally don't step down with no visible pressure on them.

[Werthead]

27 minutes ago, Fez said:

Kadyrov has released a weird video today where it sounds like he's stepping down from his position. No idea what it might mean, or how much it relates to his support for the war versus internal Chechen issues. Seems rather surprising though; dictators and mini-dictators generally don't step down with no visible pressure on them.

That's bizarre.

There's been renewed political infighting in Chechnya for a while now and the different factions are getting rowdy, and Kadyrov has surprisingly taken a conciliatory tone with them (not punishing factions who have sent soldiers to fight for Ukraine, for example). It might be he suspects the situation is about to blow up and he'd rather peace out with his millions, even temporarily, until things settle down and he can sweep back in.

[Knight Of Winter]

Just have to say that, following this war for the last few months, I found media coverage of it overall pretty disappointing and biased - and not in the good way. For example:

- if Russian offensive fails, it's "great success for Ukraine" or "turning point in the war". If Ukrainian offensive fails, then it's "let's forget that offensive ever happened and ignore it"
- if Ukraine is gaining ground, then "Ukraine is gaining ground". If Russia is gaining ground, then it's "Ukrainians are putting fierce resistance" or "Russian advance has been slowed down"
- or how about the Russian army itself? Are they existential threat to Ukrainian sovereignty? Or are they disorganized and corrupt mess with unmotivated soldiers, low morals, common desertions, laughably incompetent generals and terrible logistics with their resources just about to run out? Which out of the two it is - because both can't be correct.

Obviously, it depends a lot on which media one is consuming - and if your particular experience has been one of objective and unbiased reporting, then great for you. From my perspective however - as someone who is trying the get the clear picture of what is actually going on in the war - I found my media reports to be lacking. It seems that they're unable to differentiate between rooting for Ukraine (which is a moral necessity, to the point of it being too redundant to mention) and reporting news in a biased manner (which is unprofessional and bad journalism all around).

 

[horangi]

5 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Just have to say that, following this war for the last few months, I found media coverage of it overall pretty disappointing and biased - and not in the good way.

 

Interesting, if anything, the US media tends to be pretty conservative in reporting Ukraine military progress.  Most of the reporting focusing on civilian toll of the conflict.  I find it typical that the various open source collectors are able to point out significant events several days before they show up in the US media, if at all.  As for the Russian army being both an existential threat and disorganized mess, they most certainly can be both at the same time.  As the old quote goes "quantity has a quality all its own," as the Soviet army demonstrated in a previous continental spat a few years back. 

[Werthead]

47 minutes ago, horangi said:

Interesting, if anything, the US media tends to be pretty conservative in reporting Ukraine military progress.  Most of the reporting focusing on civilian toll of the conflict.  I find it typical that the various open source collectors are able to point out significant events several days before they show up in the US media, if at all.  As for the Russian army being both an existential threat and disorganized mess, they most certainly can be both at the same time.  As the old quote goes "quantity has a quality all its own," as the Soviet army demonstrated in a previous continental spat a few years back. 

Same in the UK. The BBC, Sky News and everybody else is focusing overwhelmingly on the civilian cost of the war and what they can see where they send their reporters. That's understandable, but it's frustrating because there's a lot more accurate, up-to-the-minute reporting going on in the OSINT community which is proving very accurate.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Just have to say that, following this war for the last few months, I found media coverage of it overall pretty disappointing and biased - and not in the good way. For example:

- if Russian offensive fails, it's "great success for Ukraine" or "turning point in the war". If Ukrainian offensive fails, then it's "let's forget that offensive ever happened and ignore it"
- if Ukraine is gaining ground, then "Ukraine is gaining ground". If Russia is gaining ground, then it's "Ukrainians are putting fierce resistance" or "Russian advance has been slowed down"
- or how about the Russian army itself? Are they existential threat to Ukrainian sovereignty? Or are they disorganized and corrupt mess with unmotivated soldiers, low morals, common desertions, laughably incompetent generals and terrible logistics with their resources just about to run out? Which out of the two it is - because both can't be correct.

Obviously, it depends a lot on which media one is consuming - and if your particular experience has been one of objective and unbiased reporting, then great for you. From my perspective however - as someone who is trying the get the clear picture of what is actually going on in the war - I found my media reports to be lacking. It seems that they're unable to differentiate between rooting for Ukraine (which is a moral necessity, to the point of it being too redundant to mention) and reporting news in a biased manner (which is unprofessional and bad journalism all around).

 

Because there is a reason to be neutral about an unjustifiable Russian invasion of the sovereign nation-state of Ukraine while Russia targets Ukrainian civilians for murder and kidnapping?

[DireWolfSpirit]

Nothing wrong with a lot of the civilian toll getting exposure.

The best war reporting in the U.S. has traditionally been Democracy Now's. They even label their daily telecast the "War and Peace Report" and usually will have reporters on the ground where the networks wont even attempt to get into.

One caveat though, they do consider it important to go to the recieving end of missiles and hear testimony from civillians. A Generals story is not the only, or always even the most important, story in a war.

That said, I havent been a steady consumer of the news on this conflict. The protracted grind and loggershead of the contest has left me weary and wishing for it to be resolved.

[Knight Of Winter]

1 hour ago, horangi said:

Interesting, if anything, the US media tends to be pretty conservative in reporting Ukraine military progress.  Most of the reporting focusing on civilian toll of the conflict.  I find it typical that the various open source collectors are able to point out significant events several days before they show up in the US media, if at all. 

Interesting about US sources being conservative in terms of Ukrainian war progress - my experience with local and international news has been different. There's another cool topic you breach here - namely traditional media dragging behind open source sources in terms of speed and/or reliability - unfortunately I don't know enough to comment on this further.
 

2 hours ago, horangi said:

As for the Russian army being both an existential threat and disorganized mess, they most certainly can be both at the same time.  As the old quote goes "quantity has a quality all its own," as the Soviet army demonstrated in a previous continental spat a few years back. 

But does Russia have a quantity on its side? As far as I know, it doesn't - for both sides have something approximating 200k soldiers fighting for them. Now, yes - if Russia were to make general mobilization, it would have great numerical advantage, but so far that hasn't been the case.

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

That's understandable, but it's frustrating because there's a lot more accurate, up-to-the-minute reporting going on in the OSINT community which is proving very accurate

Perhaps this would be a good time to ask you, since you seem to well informed and always up to date with regards to war news. Where do you get your information regarding the war; what are your sources if you're willing to share them?

27 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Because they is a reason to be neutral about an unjustifiable Russian invasion of the sovereign nation-state of Ukraine while Russia targets Ukrainian civilians for murder and kidnapping?

Sigh....read again.

"It seems that they're unable to differentiate between rooting for Ukraine (which is a moral necessity, to the point of it being too redundant to mention) and reporting news in a biased manner (which is unprofessional and bad journalism all around)."

[Zorral]

Myself, I always want to hear perspectives non-US and UK on the Ukraine invasion and war.  It seems to me that some of those perspectives from nations such as Croatia are particularly valuable in terms of attempting assessments in areas that particularly are centered in the civilian populations. Countries who aren't the US and the UK have not very long ago experience what these invasion horror shows are for the civilian populations.

 

[SeanF]

21 hours ago, Werthead said:

Interesting news: the Russian 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade and the 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade have been disbanded. The two units have been so badly mauled in combat they were reduced to less than 20% personnel capable of combat. The survivors have been transferred to other units.

Some reports that Putin has given a directive for the administrative borders of Donetsk Oblast to be fully captured by 15 September, which seems a pretty tall order and maybe impossible (given that, right now, Ukrainian forces are hitting the outskirts of Donetsk City itself). It seems likely now that the newly-formed 3rd Army Corps is going to be sent to reinforce a renewed offensive in Donbas. However, the Ukrainian defence estimates are that the corps is only 15,000 combat effectives in strength, ten thousand less than western estimates, so, er, good luck with that.

There's been simultaneous, large-scale Ukrainian attacks tonight on Tokmak in Zaporizhia Oblast and Kozats'ke in Kherson Oblast, just upriver from Kherson. Russian targets in both areas have been hit hard, and a large ammo depot in Tokmak has been destroyed. This is the "interesting" area my Ukrainian friends have suggested keeping a closer eye on. Also renewed fighting in Izium, and after-the-fact reporting of a massive Ukrainian artillery strike outside Izium that destroyed a large cluster of Russian vehicles a few days ago.

There's heavy cloud cover over the entire Kherson region, so air operations have been scaled back for both sides. It's also made it easier to spot Russian drones. One was downed that they think might have been used as a spotter for Kalibr cruise missile strikes from the Black Sea.

Kofman has been pretty downbeat about the whole war since fairly early on, and continues to be so. I think he's trying to be realistic and caution the overly-optimistic analyses coming from elsewhere, but generally speaking Ukraine has performed better than he's thought it would at every stage of the war. He was pretty certain that the entire Donbas would be overrun months ago with east and the fact Russia only barely managed to scrape taking Severodonetsk and was basically gifted Lysychansk (possibly mistake in retrospect) and have not moved much beyond seemed to really surprise him.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Kofman's analyses are useless or he is being far too downbeat, but I think he has pretty constantly undersold Ukraine's chances in this conflict.

As for the duration of the conflict, the problem is the ground frost settling in, which is pretty harsh in Ukraine and runs from around mid-to-late October to April or May, and will severely hamper military operations for both sides. That limits the window for large-scale military operations to less than eight weeks from now, maybe closer to six. There is a feeling that there will be a literal "frozen conflict" over the winter and into the start of next year, and then renewed offensives from both sides in the spring.

Ukraine can probably still achieve limited military progress over the winter, though, by targeting very small areas and trying to retake them.

That does seem a lot. I've seen figures of 87,000 killed and maybe 40,000 deported to Russia, which would be horrendous in itself.

I think for Ukraine in total, yes, the casualty figures are going to be horrendous, and low six figures is maybe the best of what can be hoped for. Including casualties from all sides, I suspect we're well past 200,000 by now.

15,000 should be considered a large division, rather than a corps.

 

[Maithanet]

1 hour ago, Knight Of Winter said:

 

But does Russia have a quantity on its side? As far as I know, it doesn't - for both sides have something approximating 200k soldiers fighting for them. Now, yes - if Russia were to make general mobilization, it would have great numerical advantage, but so far that hasn't been the case.

Russia has more tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery pieces, apcs, mobile air defenses, missiles, basically all of the high tech stuff to fight a modern war.  In some cases the Ukrainians have gotten better stuff than the Russians have from NATO (like himars) but never in quantities to match what the Russians have.  For example the Russians have about as much equipment (tanks, artillery, apcs) north of the Dnipro as all countries have given Ukraine in the past eight months.  And that's just one smallish portion of a thousand mile front.

Ukraine has more total infantry (much of it lacking weapons and training), more manpads, and I believe more recon drones.  That's about it.

[Jace, Extat]

16 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

 

Ukraine has more total infantry (much of it lacking weapons and training), more manpads, and I believe more recon drones.  That's about it.

Ukraine has more heart. That will win the day.

[Knight Of Winter]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Myself, I always want to hear perspectives non-US and UK on the Ukraine invasion and war.  It seems to me that some of those perspectives from nations such as Croatia are particularly valuable in terms of attempting assessments in areas that particularly are centered in the civilian populations. Countries who aren't the US and the UK have not very long ago experience what these invasion horror shows are for the civilian populations.

I doubt you'll find much you'd find surprising. There's a large pro-Ukraine sentiment amidst media, politicians and general population. Media usually reports some mixture of Ukrainian, Russian and international sources, along with analysis from various domestic military experts. Pretty much the only things that's missing (compared to e.g. this forum) are information from open-source news and analysts posting on various social media (Twitter etc.).

And you guessed correctly that there is ample space given to damage to civilian targets - in terms of civilian deaths, exiles, war crimes committed and cities razed. 

28 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

snip

Useful information. Thanks  

 

[A True Kaniggit]

14 minutes ago, Firebrand Jace said:

Ukraine has more heart. That will win the day.

You watching The Replacements right now?

[Werthead]

Apparently the Russians have bombarded one of their specops units in Kherson. Bit of confusion, but it sounds like they called in artillery coordinates to a command post and the staff there used the coordinates they were calling in from for the strike rather than the coordinates they were given. Rookie error.

There's also reports of a firefight between Buryat and Chechen soldiers in Vasylivka a couple of weeks back. Apparently, Chechen forces were trying to "liberate" supplies already secured by the Buryats. The Buryat soldiers had fought their way to the town in the first wave of the invasion and the Chechens - who in classic style showed up weeks or in this case months later to take selfies and TikTok videos - had shown up and started trying to take charge. 

Vasylivka is on the front line in Zaporizhzhya Oblast and is an important target for the Ukrainians, a "hinge" town on the south-eastern Dnipro (where it widens into a substantial lake). If it fell, the Ukrainians could hang a right and advance directly on the Energodar nuclear power station. Verbovoye, which has been under heavy attack for the last few days, is just to the east. It looks like tempers there are getting frayed under the pressure.

3 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Perhaps this would be a good time to ask you, since you seem to well informed and always up to date with regards to war news. Where do you get your information regarding the war; what are your sources if you're willing to share them?

Rob Lee, OSINT Technical, Kofman, several Ukrainian sources, Jomini of the West (though his updates are now sporadic), Oryx and several other OSINT sources via Twitter, plus the UK MoD and US DoD reporting (their intelligence has been impressive). Over the course of the conflict I've weeded out sources that were breathlessly pro-Ukraine to the point of uselessness and others that were far too pro-Russian.

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

15,000 should be considered a large division, rather than a corps.

I think the idea was to try to get it up to Corps size over the winter, but Putin has ordered them into action far too early.