Ukraine 21: On the Attack with a Giant Phallic Spear

[DireWolfSpirit]

Ukraine really has tremendous momentum. What does Putin do when the wheels fall off his mobilization?

[Corvinus85]

The mobilization is going splendidly well. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/half-mobilised-men-russian-region-sent-home-commissar-fired-governor-2022-10-03/

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The military commissar of Russia's Khabarovsk region was removed from his post after half of the newly mobilised personnel were sent home as they did not meet the draft criteria, the region's governor said early on Monday.

 

[Werthead]

The press messaging and briefing over the last week from various sources (most notably Patreus over the weekend, who still has his ear in a lot of places) appears to have established a pattern of sorts.

• NATO and the west believe that another mass Ukrainian success like in Kharkiv could "force" Putin into an escalatory act.
• The two options on Putin's table are detonate a WMD on Ukrainian territory (either targeting a military formation or a demonstration on Russian-claimed territory in the - highly mistaken - belief that will not trigger a response) or target logistics hubs in Europe with conventional weapons, probably hypersonic missiles. One suggestion is that Putin may believe that a strike on a logistics hub will be less escalatory than detonating a WMD on Ukrainian soil (suggestions that he might detonate one on Russian soil as a warning have been dismissed: that would just be Russia testing a weapon on its own territory and would be meaningless), as he believes that the weapons supplies to Ukraine mean that NATO is an active participant in the conflict already, which is an erroneous belief (if NATO was a direct participant in the conflict, Russia would already be pointedly aware of that fact).
• NATO and the US in particular have delivered private assurances to both the Kremlin and their Russian military counterparts with whom they have direct contacts (surprisingly, a lot) that both actions will entail a direct NATO response against Russia, with a range of options available depending on the severity of Russia's act.
• Some of these options include "sinking the entire Black Sea Fleet, rendering every airfield in Crimea unusable and then air-striking every Russian military position in Ukraine into oblivion," at the lower end of the response options, running up to "NATO sending a hundred thousand troops into Ukraine." There seems to be some satisfaction that Russian military and at least some political leaders have accepted that this will happen. There have probably been assurances that attacks on Russian soil itself will be limited to long-range artillery, AA systems, and stand-off aircraft inside Russian and Belarusian airspace, so as not to cross Russia's nuclear response doctrine.
• NATO and the US believe that they can achieve air superiority over Ukraine from Russian forces in literally hours, if not immediately, given that Russian aircraft right now can barely operate over the front.
• There is no longer any real belief or confidence in NATO circles that Putin will order a WMD strike against NATO targets, or that these orders would be followed if issued, and trying to do so would trigger a coup or political crisis.

Obviously some risks remain there, but the messaging from NATO and the United States seems to suggest their patience is nearing exhaustion, and either any kind of strike on a NATO country or even a severe escalation in Ukraine itself will trigger NATO's involvement, and that involvement will not be at the "blowing up a single arms dump somewhere" levels of response.

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I'd be more concerned that Russia may have a cunning plan. If Ukraine extends too far in a narrow strip then the advancing forces risk being cut off, encircled and slaughtered.

Russia's forces along the front are pinned. One of the reasons why Ukraine did not attack earlier is that Russia had built up mobile reserves behind the Kherson front and were actually rotating troops off the front line (but not as quickly as the Ukrainians, who have been trying to make 24 hour rotations the norm), even if they were just pulling back to reserve positions. It looks like they increased their attacks all along the front, pulling the reserves on to the line itself or left back in Kherson City, and between the two points are are precisely two guys: Jack and Shit.

They could try to pivot to meet this thrust but it's hard to see where they could pull the troops from without giving the Ukrainians a gap they can exploit on the front. They either need to give ground on the front to withdraw to a more defensive line, but apart from the Inhulets (which is already crossed in multiple places) the only line is the Dnipro itself, which means giving up Kherson.

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Also, as a rule the Ukraine plan has not been particularly characterized by taking risks or overextending, or having particularly bad Intel. There's always a first time, of course, but I doubt seriously that they'll make a major blunder.

I don't want to feed the idea that the Ukrainians are only winning because outsiders are telling them exactly what to do, but having a real-time feed to dozens of satellites examining every inch of the battlefield probably helps. I remember seeing some speculation that Russia may only have 4 satellites to observe the battlefield and these may be older and lower-res, and their military intelligence has far too many areas to look at and not enough coverage.

[broken one]

44 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 I remember seeing some speculation that Russia may only have 4 satellites to observe the battlefield and these may be older and lower-res, and their military intelligence has far too many areas to look at and not enough coverage.

Yeah, I've heard somewhere that probably about 40 satelites are at Ukraine's service, while Russia has probably only about 5 which may support their army in the conflict. They scan surface in visual light spectrum and/or in radio spectrum (radar).

If I got it right - It is important how often scanning satelites reappear above the same places. The more "visits", the more current is the picture. So, in comparison to Ukrainians, Russians cannot see too much and/or have out of date information.

[Which Tyler]

 

[Maithanet]

I can't find the tweet, but some Russian officials said that they aren't claiming the parts of Kherson and Zhaporizhia oblasts that they do not control.  They also admitted that they aren't really sure where the borders are.  Seems like a pretty serious problem for a nation to have, particularly when they are making nuclear threats about defending "Russian" soil. 

[Maithanet]

Here's the tweet

 

[The Wondering Wolf]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

They also admitted that they aren't really sure where the borders are.

It seems the Ukrainian army will kindly show them where the Russian borders are.

[Kalbear]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

I don't want to feed the idea that the Ukrainians are only winning because outsiders are telling them exactly what to do, but having a real-time feed to dozens of satellites examining every inch of the battlefield probably helps. I remember seeing some speculation that Russia may only have 4 satellites to observe the battlefield and these may be older and lower-res, and their military intelligence has far too many areas to look at and not enough coverage.

Agreed, and apologies if I implied otherwise. Ukrainian intel has been enhanced by NATO cooperation and it helps tremendously to have allies who are competent at intel gathering and war planning, but Ukraine has been doing a ton of educating NATO themselves and have been highly innovative and competent on their own. One of the best examples of this is their use of civilian intel to collaborate where forces were, where they were moving, and how many - the crowdsourcing of military information in a useful way is an incredibly difficult thing and doing it well is remarkable. The use of drones to coordinate action, dictate action and attack via off-the-shelf components is another major innovation. 

Also, @Werthead, you really did miss your calling as a war correspondent and analyst. Great work.

[Werthead]

Apparently Kadyrov has announced he is sending his three sons, aged 14, 15 and 16, to fight with Russian forces in Ukraine, because that's a normal human statement to make.

My guess this is a mistranslation and he meant against Russian forces, and he's now switching to backing the winning side which, to be fair, would be 100% on point for him. Expect to see confused Ukrainians watching Chechen allies showing up 3 weeks after the battle ended to make social video posts about the victory.

[Kalbear]

Don't want to give it too much credit because I've only seen a few things here and there, but the east front appears to have had a lot of quick successes in random towns along the Oskii. Reports of Ukraine in several towns with basically no resistance - they just drove up and planted the flag - along with a general view of Russians taking fire once and running - seem to indicate either a major Russian withdrawal or a major Russian failure. General freakout of Russians over social media is amusing if not particularly accurate. 

In addition to that, more reliable sources indicate that the Kherson offensive has gone really far - both down the west bank and then further west to retake a few villages. Still needs more confirmation, but looks pretty reasonable so far. 

 

 

 

[Werthead]

Current estimates are that the Ukrainians outnumbered the Russians 5:1 at the spearhead of the Kherson offensive, and heavier reserves have moved in behind them. The Russian forces in Davydiv Brid and Arkhangelsk are in severe danger of encirclement, and if the Ukrainians take Beryslav, they can cut the road and water links at Nova Kakhovka. Then it's game over for everything north and west of the Dnipro. They'll have to retreat.

Holding Kherson is completely untenable and to be fair the Russian generals have been telling Putin that for about two months now, and he's personally overridden them each time. This puts the fiascos in both Kharkiv and Kherson on his shoulders.

At the same time the fighting for the Ukrainians is still going roughly in Bukhat, and there's been some speculation as to why the Ukrainians have not reinforced that position. Some ideas they want to try to get east of Bukhat to the north and then sweep down behind them to cut the majority of Wagner forces off in one sweep, but they need to get a move on there.

[Kalbear]

Oh, Elon Musk - is there anything you will not drop your uninformed, shitty opinion on? 

 

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

If I was a Ukrainian ambassador who wanted to troll Elon Musk and help Ukraine's war cause, I would kindly ask Elon Musk to supply the Russian army with Tesla cars. 

[Which Tyler]

30 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Current estimates are that the Ukrainians outnumbered the Russians 5:1 at the spearhead of the Kherson offensive, and heavier reserves have moved in behind them. The Russian forces in Davydiv Brid and Arkhangelsk are in severe danger of encirclement, and if the Ukrainians take Beryslav, they can cut the road and water links at Nova Kakhovka. Then it's game over for everything north and west of the Dnipro. They'll have to retreat.

Beryslav?
You think that's realistic from this push?
Seem mighty optimistic to me, with 3 estuary crossings, and if we're right that Russia have a rally point, and actual defences set at Mylove (of course, what the Russians seem to call a rally point, or defences, may not mean terribly much)

[Fez]

5 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

If I was a Ukrainian ambassador who wanted to troll Elon Musk and help Ukraine's war cause, I would kindly ask Elon Musk to supply the Russian army with Tesla cars. 

It's so odd. If Musk had just shut up (I know, impossible for him) after donating all those StarLinks to Ukraine in the opening days of the war he'd be recognized as a civilian war hero and that'd have been the end of it. Instead, after like a month he decided it wasn't cool anymore to be pro-Ukraine or something.

[Werthead]

3 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

Beryslav?
You think that's realistic from this push?
Seem mighty optimistic to me, with 3 estuary crossings, and if we're right that Russia have a rally point, and actual defences set at Mylove (of course, what the Russians seem to call a rally point, or defences, may not mean terribly much)

It's a stretch, but they've covered literally 50% of that distance in two days and branched out to stop any rollback of the line. So it's possible, if optimistic.

[Which Tyler]

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It's a stretch, but they've covered literally 50% of that distance in two days and branched out to stop any rollback of the line. So it's possible, if optimistic.

Oh, it's possible - but would pretty much require the Russians to panic and run away (ala days 3-5 of the Kharkiv offensive); but to reach Dudchany, they've had to cross 0 rivers with 0 lengthy bridges to act as choke points; and have "only" had to breach the outmost line of defences and then run along the T0403 before the Russians regroup.
That next 25km or so requires crossing 3 rivers / estuaries, with 3 length bridges to act as choke points; and crossing both the secondary and tertiary lines of defence, including the (theoretical) rally point for those Russians who've spent the last 2 days doing their best Sir Robin impression.
They're also (surely) better troops than those holding Kharkiv, and (theoretically) should be as easily panicked.

If I were the Ukrainian general (and I'm not, nor any sort of military man) I'd be testing those secondary and tertiary lines, for sure; but I'd be expecting to regroup at Dudchany and secure that unnamed road heading NW from there. I'd then bring troops up from the Davydiv Brid pinning action, and try to take Bruskynske (or at least, sit close to the T2207 and shoot anything that tries to come up or down it), leaving a single route in and out for the Russians, through Borosenske (which can be reached from Bruskynske along farm tracks if you really want to set up a turkey-shoot).

[Kalbear]

12 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Ukraine really has tremendous momentum. What does Putin do when the wheels fall off his mobilization?

To answer this a different way - we're already seeing some issues with roads and transport for the mud. It hasn't gotten too bad yet, but it's gonna get worse and worse over the next two months. December is where it really gets bad historically though - almost double the average rainfall that November or October or September see - so chances are good Ukraine is going to have to slow down a bit then. 

That said, December also bodes very, very ill for Russia, thanks to rampant corruption making 1.5 MILLION sets of cold weather gear just...disappear. 

 

 

[Maithanet]

One interesting thing we've seen in this war is that while Ukraine had a severe corruption problem in both military and civilian life in 2014, the measures that it took to address them in the past 8 years have proven fairly successful.  Obviously they're not perfect (all militaries have corruption), but it has not been nearly the problem that a lot of western experts expected it to be. 

To give an example, Russian propagandists tried for months to hammer the idea that Ukrainian thieves were taking western assistance and selling it on the black market for individual gain.  The idea being that NATo shouldn't help arm Ukraine if the weapons are not being used.  But this effort has largely fallen apart, because NATO is able to see its equipment in use, and in the case of larger items like HIMARs, 777s, and APCs, can track them directly with satellites.  The weapons are not being smuggled away to Saudi Arabia or something, they are on the battlefield. 

Corrupt politicians like Putin (and Trump) love to accuse the other side of engaging in the same grifting that they and their cronies practice every day.  But like everything coming out of the Kremlin these days, it's just a bunch of lies and excuses.