10:33
Losses are rising for the Russians, it’s probably in Kherson they are taking a hit now.
https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1531161989174657024/photo/1
11:08
I’m jumping on this one 🙂
Erik14 posted a few days ago that the Russians are emptying Crimea of infantry from all branches and the 20 Grad systems that are heading north were in northern Crimea. One can reasonably assume that Crimea is not strongly defended at present but that retreating units making their way down to Crimea can go on the defensive.
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I think Crimea is very much if the opportunity arises, if Ukraine manages to lock the Russians west of the Dnieper and then push down and take Melitopol, the Russians cannot reinforce Crimea if the Kerch bridge is taken out. Then they have to fly in with personal weapons.
If the Russians manage to carry out some type of (Russian style) organized retreat to Crimea it will be harder.
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It should probably play out like this if they can’t just drive straight down in a best-case scenario – infiltrate SOF (under-radar boats, for example) in large numbers. When standing at the entrance down to Crimea, the artillery starts shooting away Russians in defense and artillery. The Russian navy is kept away with all the anti-ship missiles that have been delivered. Then they work their way down one community at a time, preferably at night. The air force must stay away.
11:19
One reflection is that less than two weeks ago there was a fairly strong belief that Ukraine was stretched to the max and that they were not going on the offensive because they couldn’t go on the offensive and that they needed months to possibly be able to go on the offensive. The tactical retreat in the pocket/bulge north of Horlivka is still considered some kind of loss for Ukraine (they die there so not to diminish that), Lyman is referred to as a larger strategically important city when it lies on the wrong side of the Severetsky Donets and so on. Experts have also recently issued warnings that Ukraine will not win. That whole pocket/bulge was intended for delay fighting, potato field against grilled BTGs.
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It has been obvious from unit maps and general information that the critical mass has been in Ukraine’s favor for a long time so they have been able to build offensive capacity while holding the front lines and long lists of unit-equipped materiel firing from the West have circulated. If you try to add up numbers, it’s small Russian versus large Ukrainian and so on endlessly. With very simple means, one has been able to add 1+1 and for example conclude that Kherson was just a big hit that Ukraine was waiting to deliver only by counting BTGs, which came first, Kherson or Zaporizhzhia was about 50/50. It has been possible to guess that Russian BTGs went to zero in their attacks rather than attacking like Western ones and therefore the BTGs marked on the maps in defense could in some cases be assumed to be shells, you can click on the map and then google the unit to see where they took a beating.
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If you now observe how quickly Ukraine is cutting through at 4-5 attack points, it’s almost that the Russian defense is starting to stretch to the breaking point here with a river at their back, panic is probably bubbling. I thought Ukraine would go down to Khakovka under the cover of the Inhulets and take the crossings, they are attacking everywhere right now and making progress and the Russians have to try to move around units that don’t exist to plug the holes that become too many. At Kherson, I have been of the opinion that it is the Russians’ elite BTG that has been in better shape than at the southern front, Izyum and the whole attack from the north. Here you can therefore make the very reasonable assumption that it will look the same in several places pretty soon because 1st Tank Brigade and two mech brigades are almost tired of standing around twiddling their thumbs and changing batteries on their image intensifiers.
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The big question actually becomes, how the hell does Putin manage to spin that things are going well for him when this is the very definition of a Potemkin facade and why do we get so many sources we consider credible that reinforce this message. Ukraine themselves have said that they will win but no one believes it and yet the US is on their side, the US usually guarantees a solid knockout since WW1. Some EU leaders have started to get scared and talk about a compromise peace with Russia, “better to give them Donbass and Crimea so Russia doesn’t get really angry and take more countries.” Then Putin’s PR gains traction in realpolitik because he is still seen as a threat. I never cease to be amazed by this, the Russians get beaten badly place after place and they have fewer and fewer tanks and IFVs but still their impending victory over Ukraine is just around the corner. Are the Russian octopus’s tentacles so well camouflaged and do they manage to reinforce the message with unwitting credible sources so they almost manage to form an opinion on the matter where the truth is the opposite?
It has been pretty lonely on Ukraine’s bench, sort of, and I have thought a lot about this because according to current practice it’s almost tin-foil hat and Flashback warning to go against the prevailing consensus but this is one of the few occasions when developments go so fast that reality cuts through the worldview faster than it can be adjusted and you get a big fat receipt for right or wrong. It wasn’t long ago that AB tore apart LW, for example, because he had the audacity to claim that the Russians would murder and rape their way through a country if they got a foothold and the researcher Kragh had a pretty dull 2021 when he dared to air his research. I have become a bit more cautious and have a calibrated filter when I evaluate sources nowadays.
11:29
Oh, the 10:26 update they have taken Tomaryne, they have made a damn advance during the night and Kozatzke is next, then they have blown through 3-4 communities when the defense at Bryschynske collapsed which probably means there wasn’t much to plug that hole with. We know they are going straight west along the Inhulets river but they should also go southwest. The real dark horse that one doesn’t dare hope for yet is if Ukraine manages to get over one of the bridges just by momentum here when the Russian front collapses, but surely even the Russians can’t be that damn bad, I think (right now..)
11:52
Step two here is probably an open question right now. Part of the plan is probably to go on the offensive south of Zaporozhye and take Melitopol but the same applies there, a battering ram at night that opens holes where brigades are then sent into the area with a defense to the east. Two artillery brigades pounding community after community. There is currently increased artillery shelling and local probing along the entire front section. What could actually happen though is that it gets so chaotic at Kherson that Ukraine crosses the Dnipro just by momentum or manages to lay some pontoon bridges south of Khakovka. If they are at Tomaryne they are far inside the Russians’ decision circle right now. A sweaty colonel is right now trying to find that damn place name on the map that is frantically shouted over the radio and it hits like a cold lightning bolt when he realizes it is just north of Khakovka where he only has a platoon of infantry defending the bridge, roughly.
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If they get across the Dnipro, then the Ukrainians on the southern front basically only need to keep the pressure up so the Russians can’t pull away any units and try to slow down a Ukrainian rolling towards Melitopol. That city is then the key to locking Crimea and if you have Melitopol you should be able to hold or maybe Toschka away the bridge at Kerch, I think?
Of course, it can also happen that the southern front collapses like a house of cards on the first try and you get advances everywhere 🙂
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If you have locked Crimea and it’s just a matter of time before it falls, then you can take it a bit easier, go on defense eastward and focus on step 3. Which is that now when the Russians start rolling down reinforcements to try to attack from Mariupol and westward, you deploy the 1st Tank Brigade and the two night-vision mechanized brigades that have been in reserve north of Izyum and trap the BTGs that haven’t retreated north through the obstacle course of ambushes, fire attacks, and mines, and then cross the Oskil river and the area north of the Slovyansk – Severodonetsk line is a large cleanup operation over time. The Russians have not prepared any defense westward partly due to the Oskil river but also the Izyum offensive. All their BTGs are pushing south.
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What happens after that hasn’t played out yet but that Donbass is hanging loose is a very reasonable guess and with Crimea at least blockaded Putin can no longer spin a “we have won and offer you peace” but must come up with a new narrative and that takes some time.
13:36
Now I got hit with a “review” of a longer post so I have to break it up.
Step two here is probably an open question right now. Part of the plan is probably to go on the offensive south of Zaporozhye and take Melitopol but the same applies there, a battering ram at night that opens holes where brigades are then sent into the area with a defense to the east. Two artillery brigades pounding community after community. There is currently increased artillery shelling and local probing along the entire front section. What could actually happen though is that it gets so chaotic at Kherson that Ukraine crosses the Dnipro just by momentum or manages to lay some pontoon bridges south of Khakovka. If they are at Tomar@ne they are far inside the Russians’ decision circle right now. A sweaty colonel is right now trying to find that damn place name on the map that is frantically shouted over the radio and it hits like a cold lightning bolt when he realizes it is just north of Khakovka where he only has a platoon of infantry defending the bridge, roughly.
13:37
If they get across the Dnipro, then the Ukrainians on the southern front basically only need to keep the pressure up so the Russians can’t pull away any units and try to slow down a Ukrainian rolling towards Melitopol. That city is then the key to locking Crimea and if you have Melitopol you should be able to hold or maybe Toschka away the bridge at Kerch, I think?
Of course, it can also happen that the southern front collapses like a house of cards on the first try and you get advances everywhere 🙂
13:37
If you have locked Crimea and it’s just a matter of time before it falls, then you can take it a bit easier, go on defense eastward and focus on step 3. Which is that now when the Russians start rolling down reinforcements to try to attack from Mariupol and westward, you deploy the 1st Tank Brigade and the two night-vision mechanized brigades that have been in reserve north of Izyum and trap the BTGs that haven’t retreated north through the obstacle course of ambushes, fire attacks, and mines, and then cross the Oskil river and the area north of the Slovyansk – Severodonetsk line is a large cleanup operation over time. The Russians have not prepared any defense westward partly due to the Oskil river but also the Izyum offensive. All their BTGs are pushing south.
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What happens after that hasn’t played out yet but that Donbass is hanging loose is a very reasonable guess and with Crimea at least blockaded Putin can no longer spin a “we have won and offer you peace” but must come up with a new narrative and that takes some time.
13:38
If you have locked Crimea and it’s just a matter of time before it falls, then you can take it a bit easier, go on defense eastward and focus on step three. Which is that now when the Russians start rolling down reinforcements to try to attack from Mariupol and westward, you deploy the 1st Tank Brigade and the two night-vision mechanized brigades that have been in reserve north of Izyum and trap the BTGs that haven’t retreated north through the obstacle course of ambushes, fire attacks, and mines, and then cross the Oskil river and the area north of the Slovyansk to Severodonetsk line is a large cleanup operation over time. The Russians have not prepared any defense westward partly due to the Oskil river but also the Izyum offensive. All their BTGs are pushing south.
13:38
What happens after that hasn’t played out yet but that Donbass is hanging loose is a very reasonable guess and with Crimea at least blockaded Putin can no longer spin a “we have won and offer you peace” but must come up with a new narrative and that takes some time.
13:39
The last thing was that with the above, Putin cannot offer peace in exchange for them being allowed to stay in their conquered territories, it was written a bit more elaborately but there was some word that wasn’t liked which I couldn’t figure out.
16:07
MRF, now the river crossing at Daydiv Brid was probably, besides making Patton and Rommel green with envy, also a way to force the Russians out of Kherson without leveling the city to the ground. They can’t just give the city to the Russians because they have conquered it with the justification that we must protect the houses when half of Ukraine is in ruins, I think, but if you can coax the Russians out without obliterating a square kilometer, that would be desirable.
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Yes, we have a few different schools here. When this is over, we’ve probably gone through eight of them, “yes, it worked for Ukraine just with that attack but don’t think they can do it again” before the Russians are thrown out feet first along with the last tank that could limp home over the border on its own. I also write from time to time that I am jumping ahead of events, I think it’s fun to predict in the swamp and you are allowed to do that (I think) 🙂
16:17
When I read your post, I actually wondered why Putin attacked Ukraine. He had quite a cozy relationship with several of Europe’s leaders and the country became rich from raw material sales and besides that, he probably had good relations with China until now. This is entirely his own fault.
There was a real proposal from Scholtz further down the thread so Germany probably makes it onto the nice list now 🙂
The German version of deer eyes that mostly scared people but he really tried.
16:28
15:48, now the optimism exploded again, god what a jackpot if Putin had passed away.
When that rumor is going around in such detail, the same rule applies as with Gerasimov, video with today’s newspaper visible or else he doesn’t exist. It’s probably time to start spinning a Putin rumor too and not just Gerasimov.
What speaks against this good news is that Shoigu died like three times and managed to speak coherently on May 9.
17:08
When it reaches real storm strength, it also reaches Russia and such a rumor spreads faster than a kindergarten class that just broke into the kitchen aiming for the ice cream freezer. The only way to stop it is a live appearance again and such an appearance will be scrutinized by the world’s best so we’ll probably know pretty soon if it’s a double or not.
If Putin is alive, we’ll probably see him shake hands with Shoigu et al. eventually.
17:25
The blue team’s arrow eastward is probably the attack down from Krivoj Rog, up there I haven’t read about river crossings and where the arrow is placed I don’t see any river?
I have interpreted it as crossing the Inhulets river at 3 or more places, Dayydiv Brid and west of that because there were two other place names at the river that were directly contested. Now it is Ukrainian Canadian who provides quite a lot of this information and he debates the scholars about who he really is 🙂
18:30
One thing I think is overlooked with Russian tanks being present or not is that losses in battle are not all that are unusable for combat. There must be a number of IFVs and tanks behind the Russian lines that they can’t get running and then in rear workshops. If you think like this, they had 3500 total, they’ve lost +1300, then all BTGs should be full strength but they are not, they are low on armor now. To some extent this certainly has to do with transport but the trains run continuously and they got 120 T62s to the southern front so the fact that they are low on armor must reasonably be that they can’t get enough of the 3500 that have been in combat running and gotten some of the million faults an old vehicle driven by half-drunk car thieves usually gets.
18:42
It goes too fast even for a sharp guy like Surtruten, imagine how the highest Russian commander in Kherson must feel right now when he can’t find the communities being called in over the radio because they are too far behind what he thinks is his front line. He is probably sitting in Kherson on the other side of the Inhulets or east of the Dnipro.
The bridge over Khakovka must be locked now?
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Then if they make the corresponding trip down to Daryivka tonight (staying on the blue side) they have probably secured the whole area inside the Inhulets river and can calmly start grouping their long-range artillery to lock the bridges at Kherson.
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This went really fast, the thousand-kronor question is where the T62 battalion has grouped, preferably west of the Dnipro if you can choose but the risk is they have taken positions on the eastern side at all the bridges.
18:59
Shortly after the first report of the Inhulets crossing came in, someone in the thread posted Girkin who wrote “armoured breakthrough” which was interpreted as tanks. This was paired with the fact that the 5th Tank Brigade had new T72s with night capability and then reports came of 10-15 tanks in Borozhenske, I think.
Canadian Ukrainian is probably the only one for the 5th Tank Brigade up at the crossing.
19:29
A video on the pro-Russian side about Spetsnaz who have taken a large part of Severodonetsk so they are both in Lyman and Severodonetsk and thus not in Kherson where they would be needed. It’s probably time to retreat from Severodonetsk if they haven’t already done so because the world doesn’t need a larger Ukrainian surrender or a crossing attempt of the river under fire that ends badly.
22:50
It was really fun to read the blogger’s last posts for the evening 🙂
It will probably be messy for a couple more days but to hedge and wait for ISW is no challenge, today was a very good day in the blog and comment field.
Now that I finally went in and double-checked provincial borders, there is a Topolyne up there where Liveuamap has marked Mykolaivka as conquered so it’s probably time to accept that it’s still a bit away.
However, it seems that Russian BTGs have been defending there and they have taken hits.
Now one would like to know where the T62 has been defending.
22:51
What are the chances that there is a Topolyne and Mykolaivka also up by Krivoj Rog that don’t come up when you google, I would classify that as an honest mistake, many got it wrong today.
23:07
Everything we write is probably privacy-invading, criminal or demoralizing depending on how you look at it, violations of the Geneva Convention with videos of prisoners, gore videos, stories of raped children. Putin considers everyone on Ukraine’s side to be Nazis.
But all that is nothing compared to what Russia is doing and the best the thread can do is to blow up everything it can and cheer Ukraine to victory?
09:53
Sometimes it’s really fun to wake up and today was one of those days.
What’s almost best about the Kherson offensive is that if the Russians try to reinforce on the west side of the Dnieper River, the reserves have to cross the bridges over the Dnieper. Even rotating units between front sections means exposing themselves on the road and taking losses. Those knocked-out T62s that the blog writes about, it would be interesting to know if they were in combat or a string on the move. Right now, the Russian line is also bulging at 4-5 places, so it’s probably not super fun to be the responsible Russian commander here.
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Then the question is probably how things really stand with the red team, Erik14 posted a video where Spetsnaz were seen near Lyman, I think, and they are marked on the unit maps as sitting in a ditch up by Kherson.
I also believe that Russian BTGs have been positioned further up towards Kryvyi Rih than the unit maps suggest because they have shelled Kryvyi Rih with artillery and then they must have BTGs in between. Probably the Davydiv Brid was the weakest point and the Russians stand east of that up towards Kryvyi Rih with at least +2 BTGs.
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It was probably Surtrutn who posted it in yesterday’s thread in the pre-talk but Snihurivka seems to have fallen or is about to fall for the red team.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1531159958175326209?cxt=HHwWgoC9ldP34r8qAAAA
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The conclusion can almost only be that Ukraine has given ground on all its maneuver brigades along the entire Kherson front?
M14 towards Kherson, Snihurivka, several crossings over the Inhulets and up by Mykolaiv (a couple are Canadian Ukrainian, it should be added). They take communities at night, during the day they pound with artillery brigades against the next Russian position.