12:16
We had some discussion in the thread for a while after the start of the spring offensive that the Russians would get stuck in the forest belt between Slovyansk – Severodonetsk. That is exactly what is happening right now, and in some places they will make progress if they concentrate their forces, but if you look at the Izyum offensive that preceded this attempt (more of the same), they did not get further than the forest belts because over open farmland the losses were too high and they had to withdraw. At that time, the Izyum offensive was prioritized.
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If one tries to learn from history how the extent attempt at Severodonetsk will play out here, it will be a wedge from the north somewhere where they don’t get stuck and drown, and an attempt to take communities south of the forest belt, but they have exposed flanks both from Severodonetsk and from the west. A wedge up from Popasna is also possible, but I think they have a harder time gathering BTGs there that choose to fight, and there it is a directly exposed advance over fields as soon as they leave the protection of the city (quite wiped out now but there are probably some walls and other things left that can be used as cover).
I don’t see how they can get very far there either. It will be chaos, traffic jams and dead Russians as usual but portrayed as an existential threat to Ukraine for about a week.
13:23
Anyone who has physically seen Gerasimov after he was supposed to take full control down at Izyum?
I think we can write him off because if he had been in such condition that he could have been made up and propped up at some point, it would have been done even if he had been sitting and moving strangely in the chair.
Now he was fired on paper, but whether he was alive, dead, lightly wounded, severely wounded, or scattered in a potato field, we don’t really know, and my money is on him being in poor condition if he is alive.
He was Russia’s Chief of Staff 🙂
13:40
For a change, I wrote these three posts outside the thread because I wanted to keep the reasoning together but it became too long, I have polished them and not read the thread enough as if it’s a double post, sorry. There is probably a fairly broad consensus about Russia’s capability, I think, they have pushed in what they can and achieved very little, and I have guessed that they might be able to muster 100 more BTGs with offensive capacity over time, then it’s the end of tanks/IFVs and it will be infantry in goose-step WW1 style or trench warfare, unfortunately infantry works quite well in deep defense as there are now signals that the Russians are preparing on the southern front but you have to use all the newly painted barrels for something.
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That Russia has limited offensive operations to 10%-20% of the (original) front right now also seems quite clear. I think I’m starting to read about Izyum and that it is beginning to be interpreted as a Russian loss in the making and I myself see the area west of the Oskil river and north of Izyum as a cleanup operation over time. The fun part is to speculate in the swamp and I think Izyum was quite clear when it played out but I understand it takes a while in the fog of war before reports start coming in so it’s hard to discuss when there is nothing to discuss.
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There is a discussion that Ukraine is stretched to the max here and the reason we don’t see offensive operations is because they don’t have the capacity. I do not share that opinion at all but am very aware that since nothing is happening at the southern front or Kherson, I have a hard time getting support for that assumption, so the reasoning below is highly speculative (so far 😊) but want to post the last leg, the first two were Russian capability and Ukrainian combat value. I feel it might be an idea to develop my reasoning so continued overly positive posts might become a bit more understandable because now the nerve is really tingling again.
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My interpretation is that for Ukraine not only to win the battle but the whole war, they are forced to conserve their maneuver brigades. Rounds 1 and 2 were crushing losses for Russia, now they have topped everything else by starting to drown and swim, but as long as the front does not collapse into a general flight or Putin falls (those two bubbles), there will be a round 3 and Russia wins that if Ukraine has exhausted its army, it’s not more complicated than that. My clear opinion is therefore that Ukraine is thinking about how they will be able to defend their very long border with Russia when they have retaken their territory and they can only do that with a functioning army which means intact maneuver brigades. Then Ukraine has won the war. It is in that light you should see Zelensky’s statement about mobilizing 1 million men.
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Unfortunately, they also need to take Donbass proper and Crimea because a frozen conflict is exactly what Putin hopes for right now. It will of course only be frozen until he has built up something he thinks has some punch again and then it is still war on Ukrainian soil, an open wound that Putin will poke at constantly as long as he is not denied it. Capabilities like artillery, drones, and night combat equipment will be decisive to push away Russians in defense and these have been delivered in large quantities. They are preparing to take back their territory by force. I have guessed that they would use the window after the Russians’ catastrophic spring offensive and until they have brought up reserves to go on the offensive but we have not seen that yet and there are many factors we do not know, my opinion is that one of them is not that Ukraine is finished but as said, I have no sharp evidence to back it up.
13:48
Now it becomes too extensive to discuss all the materiel so I will do as with Russian BTGs and focus on one weapon type, I was sitting and pondering the barrels delivered and what we probably don’t know is how much guided ammunition they have, but ammunition has been delivered in enormous quantities. Anyone after a quick Google search can figure out that guided ammunition is the new black, so I would be very surprised if they haven’t sent what they can of guided ammunition here. We also know that the technical marvel Ukraine has managed to connect drones with fire control so they can now strike targets in real time which should increase accuracy and reduce waste. I’m not an artillery ammo expert but a 777 delivers a huge bang with base bleed and zone base bleed does a lot of damage even in a shallow pit. If it’s fixed positions, the artillery can also zero in on dug-in targets and get good hits. We learned to adjust fire after hits in the military service and I guess they still do that but with drones?
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The blog has posted videos where they chase a platoon in real time running around until the last guy alive with the most energy gave up and sat down sulking. There are also new videos of columns with 15-20 vehicles taking 50% losses over a few kilometers of road, the videos are edited but we have the distances so over a relatively short time one can guess. Also videos where they lob a grenade into a trench and wait until the Russians choose life and run into the reinforced position, and then they put one right into that position and take them all out at once. In the videos we have seen, it is often barrages in groups of 3 for some reason, now I’m not an artilleryman but can one guess that it is the size of a battery and a volley?
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We know that 777s are deployed in Donetsk and all other front sections are closer on the transport route than Donetsk. Izyum was probably a beta test of a larger operation. 777 can move long distances quickly and should be able to move between front sections in a couple of days. A Ukrainian artillery battalion has 12-18 barrels and of the 90 777 howitzers the USA has provided, about 80% were delivered over a week ago and they had trained around 350 key personnel and +200 in training so it seems fully manned. Pretty quick to google this.
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Simply put, Ukraine now has 5 separate artillery battalions with 777 howitzers and they can deliver 12-18 guided shells at a given time. Now I guess they don’t do that because there is a risk that several lock on the same target depending on ammunition but if we put this THEORETICAL capacity against a dug-in full-strength Russian BTG and for a THEORETICAL reasoning, they have 40 fighting vehicles and 200 men in their pits, rear, command post and artillery.
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In my world, if you get up early and don’t dawdle with coffee breaks, you have made this BTG pretty tired of life before lunch. Ukraine can thus with just 777 perform 5 such half-day shifts. Now it won’t go like that because then the war would be won in a week but there is an enormous strength in this artillery we have not yet seen except up at Izyum. Then the latest locust swarm straight down into the river up at Severodonetsk probably had quite a lot of artillery involved one can guess.
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Now of course there are many targets to strike here and for me FIRMS suggests that they are working on rear, artillery, city positions, maintenance, air defense so far except at Izyum. There is still a lot of artillery to work down at Donbass proper and the Russians have almost endless artillery and I can understand that they want to defend themselves against it now that they have started to deny the Russians even airspace in Ukraine.
Ukraine has stated that they need 300 artillery pieces and seem to have received, in addition to the 90 777s from the USA, about a hundred more, someone might have the exact number but that is a summary of everything, eastern artillery and western artillery of various models. Anti-artillery radar has also been delivered but probably takes time to train on. Ammunition should come with the delivery from each country I think? Now it is only the USA that has gone public with that number.
We have probably only seen the beginning of what will happen here when they move around with their five artillery battalions and pinpoint an area like up at Izyum.
13:54
I thought I’d take a stab at Ukraine’s numbers, we don’t know Ukraine’s losses and have to make assumptions but we do know their army size at the outbreak of the war and a bit more. I think it’s important to both compare numbers against each other and then compare capability/capabilities. No attempt to relativize what the Ukrainians endure on the front lines where the Russians are concentrating forces; it’s not fun to be in that pit at the very front.
One thing I think you constantly see on film is that a Ukrainian soldier has one single purpose when opening fire: effect on the target. If he’s in an anthill, he doesn’t care as long as the shot hits. The Russians hold the weapon past a corner and empty the magazine in Ukraine’s direction.
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The Russians’ combat value might deserve its own post but there are many signals now that they’re starting to have trouble getting soldiers to leave their foxholes and things like this spread like wildfire, “if they shirked their attack, then damn it we don’t have to die,” once the ball is rolling it goes fast and the best units are used up. Of course, all this is rumors but it has gone so-so so far so it’s not unlikely that there’s some bubbling under the surface here. On the list of things bubbling so far 😊
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We also know that since 2000-2002 Ukrainian officers began receiving training in the USA and since 2014 the training effort in Ukraine has been absolutely massive. If you ask me, you can get very far with 8 years of training and a lot of Soviet-style doctrines and Russian thinking should be filtered out. We should be able to see them as a Western army with Eastern equipment. I believe the way Ukraine has fought has been a constant ebb and flow of fire movement at all levels and it’s not easy to maintain over time so they really deliver and have shown high coordination between branches and different units. We’ve all done group projects and know how easy it is…
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Below is quite loose and has a range but I’m trying with sharp numbers for the sake of the exercise. The link below from ISW is not bad, since Ukraine has produced many tanks and IFVs, my guess is that the maneuver brigades have been fairly fully staffed. They have also been preparing for war since 2014. Their maneuver brigades are quite armor/IFV-heavy, around 6,000 men and have 4, sometimes 5 fighting battalions. Even their airmobile and what we think of as lighter units have a lot of fragmentation protection and some heavier companies or battalions.
We have also seen infantry companies with assigned tank platoons so they have “diluted” the mechanized units with National Guard infantry I guess and that has obviously worked very well.
https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISW%20Ukrainian%20ORBAT%20Holcomb%202016_0.pdf
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A brigade in combat has 1-2 battalions in reserve and rotates at the front line and I think it’s clear on the unit maps that they have whole brigades in reserve behind active front sections. I’d bet my monthly salary that during rotations they fill the gaps. The brigades’ experience and command structure are intact and they top up.
For the sake of the exercise, let’s say Ukraine has lost 50% of the reported Russian losses, I think it’s max 30% or less but we don’t know. They haven’t had any maneuver brigade completely wiped out as far as I know. 15,000 dead and maybe 3-4 times as many wounded so +50,000 out of combat. I interpret the figure of 900,000 reserves as former conscripts and after 8 years of war they probably have quite a few with combat experience.
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This figure varies a bit but 25 maneuver brigades in combat and 7 maneuver brigades in (some kind of) reserve so 32, around 200,000 men. Add to that national battalions (Azov et al.) which in some places have proven quite capable, National Guard and finally territorial battalions. Some National Guard brigades are probably equivalent in combat value to the maneuver brigades. Assuming Ukraine has communication lines and command structure (they have control) over a force of 300,000 men is not unreasonable. You can probably calculate this in different ways but it should be in that ballpark. For the hedgehogs in the cities they have probably squeezed in the less organized territorial defense and National Guard brigades who have a task within a limited area and get to handle that, roughly.
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The problem is that Ukraine has an enormously long front to defend and now it’s almost cheating but the Russians can retreat and regroup in some area on their own territory relatively undisturbed so far. Then the Russians still choose where they will attack and Ukraine must try to concentrate what they have at that point without weakening or leaving openings elsewhere – a tall order to say the least.
When the initiative now slowly shifts to Ukraine, they can defend with “diluted” maneuver brigades and concentrate against one front section, e.g. the southern front.
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If we make the same assumption with tanks, Ukraine has lost 400 and now more than that has been delivered, Slovak workshops repair tanks and they have captured hundreds according to that link Klasa always posts. Now they also have a capability increase with night fighting equipment on tanks from Europe and it also works damn well if only the tank commander has image intensifiers to conduct night fighting. I don’t think Ukrainian maneuver brigades lack tanks or IFVs and that they are more likely replacing older ones with better rather than the opposite.
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Then we have a fairly large amount of SOF, in that term I include reconnaissance, pure Ukrainian SOF, special purpose, my Western SOF which I have zero evidence for, competent European volunteers and a couple of national battalions. If you look at the ISW link there is a lot of reconnaissance in the Ukrainian army so it’s not unreasonable to assume 10,000 – 20,000 men can conduct irregular warfare but the area is gigantic so far.
Add to that large deliveries of night fighting equipment and I think the war is won with artillery, drones, irregular warfare and the type of fighting we have seen so far, mostly offensives at battalion size but that they can coordinate between brigades on a front section. That a whole mechanized brigade pushes forward and thunders out from the forest edge I don’t think we’ll ever see. You can probably manage it but the risk of catastrophic losses is high. When they had gathered everything in some final exercise we had it was battalion combat and it’s not simple and above all, quite common that it was like an emergency response (orange) in any suburb on a limited area after an hour.
They start pressing on several front sections and where there is a breakthrough they exploit and continue forward and over time the country is retaken. The critical mass has been in Ukraine’s favor for a while, eventually there will be so many holes for the Russians to plug that they can’t manage it and if Ukraine manages it the Russians should be denied retreat to Crimea and Donbass proper in too large numbers but the artillery should also be able to make life in the foxholes pretty miserable going forward.
19:40
Yes, that’s interesting MickeUpppsala and those who don’t deal with the technical side of war should start thinking along those lines, which one can hope they do. There is still a bit too much belief that Russia will just be able to pull out if they want and then everything goes back to normal. I think it’s Solros2022(?) who presses this from time to time.
Citizens in the West are surprisingly unaffected by the war and then suddenly debaters will pop up claiming it’s a pity for Russian children etc. and that strikes a chord with a broad group and then everything is forgotten.
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There needs to be pretty tough measures with Russia after this because Europe got through it because the Russians ran an Afghan strategy and Putin top-manages and Ukraine wanted peace but prepared for war. It would also be unfair to Ukraine if Russia in five years is welcomed back into the fold after some reshuffle of the top layer where the same people pull the strings in the shadows.
20:37
Took a look at the past week on FIRMS and it’s pretty calm in Donbass, or maybe there’s not much that can burn, the forest belt Slovyansk – Severodonetsk has been lively, they’re probably lobbing everything they can at each other and then something in the forest catches fire so it’s a little mix but it indicates activity along the entire front.
Down by Kherson it’s full speed east of the Dnieper, if we disregard the forest fire which probably didn’t start by itself there are a couple more places marked as points. At the frontline west of the Dnieper there seems to be activity but not what I would directly call a prelude to an offensive, because for that we need a red carpet closer to the river where you can guess the Russians are lying low.
00:25
Then on this ball but if one is to guess Ukraine doesn’t need to negotiate at all but will take back its land by force.
All attempts at some kind of compromise from now on in my opinion serve Russia’s interests so those countries pitching for it should get a slap on the fingers.
Let the Russians go all the way and share the bottom spot with rocket man until we see real democracy. If that doesn’t happen they can correspond with rocket man.
10:22
Continued heavy losses for the Russians, there is probably quite an uneven distribution of survivors in the heavily hit Russian BTGs. One can guess that the 300 are drivers, commanders at all levels, gunners and mechanized infantry, and that the rear takes fewer losses percentage-wise.
Even a cook can dig a hole and shoot in the indicated direction, but they probably lose the best all the time and key personnel are harder to replace. Sure, there are reserves, but for a tank to function, three people are needed who know their job, and for a BTG to function, a battalion commander, company and platoon commanders are needed, and there is probably a glaring shortage of those.
https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1525367606655459328/photo/1