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

[Fez]

Seeing rumors of a Ukrainian offensive along the Kharkiv front. Unclear if it's anything big or just a few small strikes. Certainly seems that a few Russian soldiers on Telegram are having a bad time though.

[Werthead]

The Russian pontoon bridge at Dar'iivka has been destroyed, after the bridge itself was taken out. This is one of the most important crossings over the Inhulets.

Some videos showing Ukrainian tanks on the offensive in Kostromka, showing armoured spearheads are being launched with close infantry support (i.e. exactly what Russia was not doing during the Javelin Spring). Kostromka (not Velyka Kostromka, which is to the NE) is SE of Suhkyi Stavok and due S of Davydiv Brid. Ukrainians in Kostromka means Davydiv Brid is now encircled on its W, SW and S flanks. If Arkhangelsk falls, and reportedly fighting continues there, Davydiv Brid will also be pressured from the NE. Some Ukrainian chatter that partisan activity is very heavily concentrated on Beryslav on the Dnipro, just NE of Nova Kakhovka. The Ukrainians might be exploring the idea of slicing the Kherson salient in two by driving to Beryslav. Everything to the north and NE would be cut off (~10,000 Russian soldiers), they'd have to surrender or swim the Dnipro.

Yes, I'm seeing reports of a Ukrainian thrust along the Kharkiv front, with a major push at Balakliya, but also renewed Ukrainian assaults around Izium.

Meanwhile, we have some breaking monkey news from the Kharkiv front:

 

[Maithanet]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Things are getting "very interesting" right now. There are already units low on ammo, food or water (or all three).

Oh I know.  It's quite possible that the Russians are collapsing faster than the Ukrainians anticipated (or they're setting modest goals in order to "exceed" them.  Regardless, I thought it was an interesting timetable for the offensive.  That the Ukrainians think that even with stubborn defense, holding north of the Dnipro will become untenable by the end of the month.  That would be (by far) the largest advance either side has made since the first month of the war. 

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Seeing rumors of a Ukrainian offensive along the Kharkiv front. Unclear if it's anything big or just a few small strikes. Certainly seems that a few Russian soldiers on Telegram are having a bad time though.

Zelensky is apparently going to make a statement today about the Kharkiv situation, so I doubt it's just a little raid. 

[Zorral]

Syllabus of my Ukraine lecture class
"The Making of Modern Ukraine," Fall 2022
Timothy Snyder
Sep 6

Quote

 

Dear Friends, this semester I am teaching a lecture class at Yale devoted to the history of Ukraine. The lectures are being made available on a Youtube channel: the first one is here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?

They will continue to be published over the course of the autumn. A number of you have asked for the syllabus, so I am placing it here. I hope it’s of interest. By the way: I will have a long article on Ukraine, war, and democracy appearing in Foreign Affairs this week. More soon! Best, TS

Topics:

Often the most important historical factors are the ones that are most difficult to see.  Ukraine tends to exemplify the major trends in European and world history, but sometimes in a form so radical that they escape notice and classification. Ukraine provides an early example of European state formation and an early example of anti-colonial rebellion.  We will begin with brief reflections on ancient history and geography, and cover the middle ages and the early modern period, but will concentrate upon the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, and will conclude with the current war.  Topics there include the Kyiv state, early modern Lithuania, and Poland during the age of discovery.  Ukraine also provides an intense example of the confrontation between modern national politics and extreme colonial alternatives from the far right and far left.  Modern topics therefore include Russian and Austrian empires; Jewish and Polish urban society; Romanticism and modern nationalism; the Bolshevik Revolution and its Ukrainian counterparts; Soviet modernization and terror; Nazi occupation and the Holocaust; and ethnic cleansing.  Finally, contemporary Ukrainian history poses in striking form the question of the functionality and durability of the post-imperial state.  The last few topics are thus: the late Soviet Union; problems of post-Soviet rule, the Orange Revolution and Maidan and the war of 2014; and the present war.

September 1 (Thursday), Ukrainian Questions Answered by Russian Invasion (1)

Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation, chapter 1.

September 6 (Tuesday), The Genesis of Nations (2)

Rudnyts'kyi, "The Role of Ukraine in Modern History"

September 8 (Thursday), Map Quiz

September 13 (Tuesday), Geography and Deep History

Rudnyts'kyi, "Ukraine between East and West"

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapter 1.

September 15 (Thursday), Before There was Europe

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapter 2.

September 20 (Tuesday), The Kyiv State: Vikings, Slaves, and Law

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapters 3-6.

September 22 (Thursday), The Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapter 7.

September 27 (Tuesday), The Rise of Muscovite Power (Paul Bushkovitch)

Robert Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy 1304-1613, London: Longman, 1987, 1-29, 84-115, 143-178. 

September 29 (Thursday), The Jews of Ukraine

Dan Shapira, "The First Jews of Ukraine," in Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern and Antony Polonsky, eds., Polin, vol. 26, 2014, 65-78.

Judith Kalik, "Jews, Orthodox, and Uniates in the Ruthenian Lands," in Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern and Antony Polonsky, eds., Polin, vol. 26, 2014, 131-146.

October 4 (Tuesday), Polish Power and Cossack Rebellion

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapters 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

October 6 (Thursday), The Global Age of Empire

October 11 (Tuesday), Russia: Empire and Peoples

Rudnyts'kyi, "Intellectual Origins of Modern Ukraine"

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapters 13, 14, 16, 17.

October 13 (Thursday), First Exam

October 18 (Tuesday), Habsburg Curiosity

Rudnyts'ky, "Ukrainians in Galicia under Habsburg Rule"

Amelia Glaser, "Between Nation and Class: Nataliya Kobrynska's Jewish Characters," in in Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern and Antony Polonsky, eds., Polin, vol. 26, 2014, 183-195.

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapter 15.

John-Paul Himka, Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century, Edmonton: CIUS, 1988, 1-36.

Snyder, Red Prince, entire.

October 25 (Tuesday), Marxisms and Revolutions

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapters 18, 19

Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997, chapters 18, 19.

Rudnyts'kyi, "The Ukrainian National Movement on the Eve of the First World War"

Rudnyts'kyi, "The Fourth Universal and its Ideological Antecedents"

October 27 (Thursday),  Poland's Ukrainian Question

Rudnyts'kyi, "Polish-Ukrainian Relations: The Burden of History"

Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War, entire

November 1 (Tuesday), Ukrainization to Famine: The Soviet 1930s

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapters 20, 21.

Matthew D. Pauly, Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and State Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014, conclusion.

November 3 (Thursday), Colonization, Extermination, Ethnic Cleansing: the 1940s

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapters 22, 23

Yekelchyk, Stalin's Empire of Memory, chapters 1-4.

November 8 (Tuesday), Cold War and Neostalinism: The Khrushchev and Brezhnev Years

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapter 24.

Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation, chapter 9.

Rudnyts'kyi, "The Political Thought of Soviet Ukrainian Dissidents"

Yekelchyk, Stalin's Empire of Memory, chapters 5-7 and epilogue.

Ivan Dzyuba, "On the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Murders in Baby Yar" (and accompanying materials), in Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern and Antony Polonsky, eds., Polin, vol. 26, 2014, 381-389.

Nov 10 (Thursday), Before and After the End of History

Nov 15 (Tuesday), Oligarchies in Russia and Ukraine

Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapter 26.

Serhy Yekelchyk, The Conflict in Ukraine, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, chapter 4.

Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, New York: Public Affairs, 2014, Act 1: Reality Show Russia, 1-77.

November 17 (Thursday), Maidan and Self-Understanding (Marci Shore)

Shore, Ukrainian Night, entire.

Pomerantsev, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, 208-238.

November 29 (Tuesday), Comparative Russian Imperialism  (Arne Westad)

December 1 (Thursday), Ukrainian Culture in the Twenty-First Century

Snyder, "The War in Ukraine has Unleashed a New Word," New York Times, 22 April 2022.

December 6.  (Tuesday) The Colonial, The Post-Colonial, and the Global

Snyder, "The War in Ukraine is a Colonial War" New Yorker, 28 April 2022.

Snyder, "Integration and Disintegration: Europe, Ukraine, and the World."

December 8  (Thursday).  Second Exam

December 13 (Tuesday by 5:00pm) Memoranda due    

 

 

 

[Werthead]

More info on the attack on Balakliya. The Ukrainians had been skirmishing with the Russians over smaller villages to the west for some weeks, but the Ukrainians gathered a significant force and punched through into the town, taking the Russians by surprise. They attacked on a broad front to envelop the western and northern sectors of the town, attacking through the neighbouring village of Verbivka to the north. Apparently they've captured a large Russian ammo depot in that sector intact. HIMARS dropped the bridge between Verbivka and Bayrak to the south, leaving a Russian formation completely cut off on the south bank. They are surrounded and the Ukrainians have demanded their surrender.

Also apparently negotiations in the Izium sector, the Russians negotiated a ceasefire to remove their dead.

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, Werthead said:

Apparently they've captured a large Russian ammo depot in that sector intact. HIMARS

There are large Russian ammo depots intact in Kherson?

[Werthead]

5 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

There are large Russian ammo depots intact in Kherson?

That's in the Kharkiv sector, not Kherson. I was wondering about that. It's possible they missed it. Or maybe the intact thing was incorrect and they blew it up and then captured it.

I am wondering if they'd witheld from bombing Kharkiv heavily to keep the surprise of the attack intact.

[Maithanet]

2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I am wondering if they'd witheld from bombing Kharkiv heavily to keep the surprise of the attack intact.

Helluva risk if so.  I get the impression that the main things that are going for Ukraine at the moment are precision strikes in the Russian rear and the abysmal supply situation across the Dnipro.  This would be taking advantage of neither of those. 

[Arakasi]

Apparently this Kharkiv offensive caught someone with their pants down.

[Werthead]

Hmm. Fairly substantial amounts of Iranian 122mm artillery ammo have been seen arriving in Ukraine and being used by the Ukrainian military.

This isn't stuff intercepted by the US and given to the Ukrainians, it appears to have been bought and paid for by the Ukrainian government from Iran. Unclear if that breaches sanctions but I suspect the US would let that slide. More stunning is that Iran is selling artillery ammo to Ukraine at the exact moment it's selling drones to Russia to use in the same conflict.

[Jace, Extat]

8 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Hmm. Fairly substantial amounts of Iranian 122mm artillery ammo have been seen arriving in Ukraine and being used by the Ukrainian military.

This isn't stuff intercepted by the US and given to the Ukrainians, it appears to have been bought and paid for by the Ukrainian government from Iran. Unclear if that breaches sanctions but I suspect the US would let that slide. More stunning is that Iran is selling artillery ammo to Ukraine at the exact moment it's selling drones to Russia to use in the same conflict.

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

Hmm. Fairly substantial amounts of Iranian 122mm artillery ammo have been seen arriving in Ukraine and being used by the Ukrainian military.

This isn't stuff intercepted by the US and given to the Ukrainians, it appears to have been bought and paid for by the Ukrainian government from Iran. Unclear if that breaches sanctions but I suspect the US would let that slide. More stunning is that Iran is selling artillery ammo to Ukraine at the exact moment it's selling drones to Russia to use in the same conflict.

War is good for business as the Ferengi say.

[Werthead]

The Russians have sent air support to Kharkiv, resulting in at least one Su-25SM shot down this morning.

The Ukrainians appear to be driving hard on the M03 highway linking Izyum (apparently the more usual spelling in Ukrainian, so I'll switch to that) with Belgorod. Cutting that highway - which is what they tried to do in the early summer but didn't have the equipment and numbers they have now - will cut Izyum and that entire sector off from resupply, forcing the Russians to retire to Oskil and then probably behind the Oskil River. That will clear Kharkiv Oblast of almost all remaining Russian forces (some are hanging on along the border) and remove the lingering threat of a push on Slovyansk. It would also allow Ukrainian forces currently dug in heavily around Slovyansk to advance to the line of the Donets and then target Lyman, which has been a strategic goal ever since the Russians took it. That would put Ukrainian artillery in range of Severodonetsk.

There's also been a dramatic collapse on the north of this sector.

This map is already out of date, most of Balakliya has fallen. There are SOBR (special forces) from Samara and Bashkorostan holed up in Balakliya and have said they will fight to the death. The Ukrainians have apparently replied, "if you want to," and left them surrounded. 

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, Firebrand Jace said:

 

Goering went behind Hitler’s back to sell arms to the Spanish Republicans, in addition to the Nationalists.  Money is money.

[Gorn]

18 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Helluva risk if so.  I get the impression that the main things that are going for Ukraine at the moment are precision strikes in the Russian rear and the abysmal supply situation across the Dnipro.  This would be taking advantage of neither of those. 

It seems that the line on the Russian side was held by demoralised DPR/LPR conscripts who immediately fled, and lightly armed Rosgvardiya troops (police, basically) who weren't trained in using artillery. In the absence of opposing artillery fire, Ukrainians simply rushed the line with their tanks.

[Gorn]

 

Russia simply lacks enough warm bodies to cover the front line of this length. While I don't want to celebrate prematurely, it seems that the Ukrainian armor is simply driving through their rear around Izyum practically unopposed.

[Maithanet]

43 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Russia simply lacks enough warm bodies to cover the front line of this length. While I don't want to celebrate prematurely, it seems that the Ukrainian armor is simply driving through their rear around Izyum practically unopposed.

Conducting these operations on Ukrainian soil with the help of friendly civilians and partisans makes a huge difference.  As their troops drive by, they can just ask civilians if there are any Russians in the nearby village or if they've fled.  They'll tell them whatever they know, which is often quite a bit. 

[Werthead]

Going swimmingly well for the Russians on the ground

 

[Gorn]

Wesley Clark had an interesting appearance on CNN a few days ago, where he basically admitted that the offensive was wargamed in advance between Ukrainian and NATO generals, with NATO generals wargaming as Russians.

And Ukrainians said that their offensive planning includes even the possibility of Russians using a tactical nuclear strike.

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, Gorn said:

And Ukrainians said that their offensive planning includes even the possibility of Russians using a tactical nuclear strike.

Going further, the Ukrainians offensives are being carried out to prevent a tactical nuke having a huge impact.  Look at Kherson, the forces are all spread out.  Poking, grinding, exhausting the Russians, but not a massive 100 tank army rolling into the rear. 

Around Kharkiv it's a little more concentrated, but hardly an inviting target, and setting off a nuke right across the border with Russia is much less appealing than doing so around Kherson.