11:17
I don’t really understand the HIMARS ammunition, but two days after they opened up near Kherson and presumably Izyum, it’s almost a record in destroyed Russian T62s?
There is an order where ammunition depots, headquarters, and artillery should be first, then tanks, and last IFVs and infantry. I have interpreted airfields as unnecessary in this war, as artillery does the most damage, and the air force is held back by a low-altitude air defense umbrella.
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Then we also have “choke points,” of course. Ukraine stated that 50 train sabotages in Belarus contributed to the Russians’ panic retreat from Kiev, and now that their supply line Belgorod – Kupiansk – Izyum is disrupted, they have quite long supply routes, and eventually Donbass will lie like an isolated island with long supply lines, so if you knock them out, you can quite quickly “starve out” the defense. Rostov-na-Don has always surprised me that it doesn’t see more action, but maybe it does and we just don’t get the information.
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The point was probably: could it be that they have moved some types of precision artillery to start hitting buried Russian tanks now? They are where they are, and the coordinates are known, so it’s just a matter of getting on the list? Otherwise, it could of course be Ukrainian air strikes as usual hitting “gatherings of Russian troops,” which I interpret as reinforcements on the way that they can reach.
12:00
This one from UkrainianCanadian was interesting, “Ukrainian units advanced south of #Vuhledar and liberated #Shevchenko after several hours of heavy fighting.”
That means they are on the right side of the watercourse south of Vuhledar. The discussion yesterday was quite speculative, so it’s very exciting if Ukraine makes progress there towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
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A guess has been that now that Ukraine has pushed towards Kharkov/Izyum and Kherson/western part of the southern front, it is weakest between Donetsk – Horlivka and near Volnovakha down towards Mariupol. I don’t really believe in a five-step battle plan here where Kherson is a double bluff, but rather that the critical mass is in Ukraine’s favor and that they can exploit weaknesses where they arise. We still haven’t seen the 1st Tank brigade and the two mech brigades in combat, but a battalion from the 1st Tank is supposed to be there.
12:03
Adding air defense as a prioritized target as well, near Kherson the Russians should have brought forward more air defense and I expected an uptick in destroyed air defense because of that.
12:12
I always want to believe that the losses are happening in Kherson, but if you look at uawarmap, it’s 2-3 tank regiments and a bunch of motorized units leading the fight in Popasna now, and it should reasonably have been from there that they made an attempt against Vekhnoyukamhanka. Also, it was territorial defense that was in between according to the militaryland map.
Yes, you might be right here that they went all in and pushed hard for a scale of Lysychansk straight towards a weak point but failed; Ukraine has a couple of maneuver brigades in the area that probably rushed forward.
12:25
According to DefMon, around 150 BTG along active fronts. What is not included here are the 15,000 who are beginning to gather for a Kiev 2.0 (which naturally won’t happen but is meant to tie down Ukrainian units up there).
As usual, we don’t really know the condition of these, and some are certainly shells, and his calculation includes the 1st and 2nd Army, which are Donbass rebels + Rosgvardia, but if they started the spring offensive in April with 90-97 BTG and have fought themselves to total exhaustion and now have 150 BTG (in a condition we don’t really know), then they have certainly pressed in reserves over time and re-equipped wiped-out BTG. I think the simplest is probably to keep the existing structure so you press in new personnel and the armor that exists, and then there is a battalion in the 1st Guards Tank Army again, only now with T62 and older/younger replacement personnel.
https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/2022051301800/nBT8ffpeGH
12:26
I have some respect for DefMon because he picks up quite peripheral pieces of information that he places nicely in the puzzle.
Nice that he is Swedish.
12:32
According to Warmonitor, Ukrainian artillery reaches all supply routes to Izyum, so they probably reach east of Izyum as well, one would assume?
Good that there is still a lot burning in that area on the red side; according to DefMon, they have 20 BTG clustered down there 🙂
13:39
Deepstatemap shows a nice little Ukrainian advance south of Vuhledar, but these can usually change while you write your post… Again, it’s an interesting point for a breakthrough, I think, and a strike against a weak point in the southern front.
13:40
Then this article was naturally very sad…
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3515517-enemy-military-vehicle-columns-driving-westwards-via-mariupol-andriushchenko.html
13:45
Either they have weakened Donbass proper and then we will see it ahead when Ukraine takes a few villages, or these are new reinforcements from Rostov-na-Don that they are moving up towards Kherson and the Southern front. In any case, these are known targets on the highway that if they are heading to Kherson must pass three guarded points over the Dnieper 🙂
14:07
Wasn’t this a Marines unit? It’s a bit wrong to extrapolate so hard that it applies to the whole army (without trying to diminish the Russians’ devastation on the eastern front at all)?
It seems that the 503rd Marines battalion is in the east, so it could be them; I think they were previously further down outside Donetsk and have thus been in heavy fighting from day one. Some brigades came in later, others have been resting after Kiev, etc., so there are probably quite scattered conditions on how they are doing. The 5th Tank brigade was deployed quite recently. What we do know is that on the eastern front, the Territorial took a huge hit because the Russians figured out where they defended and concentrated everything against them in a couple of places, Popasna for example.
The brigades don’t have all battalions in the battle line but rotate and fill up over time; it is also my strong conviction that they have a large pool of battle-hardened soldiers after 8 years of war to draw from.
However, this type of war also takes a toll on Ukraine; they probably have 50,000 wounded plus 10,000 dead, so some units have probably taken heavy losses. Girkin claimed that the Russians have wiped out some Ukrainian units, he never mentioned size, but since we are not discussing Ukrainian losses, I didn’t bring it up.
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Then the reverse Darwin principle applies with the Russians, so the best are constantly wiped out and the whole BTG is completely inexperienced, but with Ukraine, you can probably top up with reserves and have people like him left who can train the reserves over time. Very unpleasant, however, that Russia is allowed to carry out this kind of extermination war in Europe in 2022, and we damn well hope that this is stopped fairly soon and for a very long time to come. The interview touched on something very important; this traumatizes an entire country for a very long time ahead.
14:12
13:45, it is enormously frustrating that we still at the end of June have no defense whatsoever against Russian psyops and that it seeps into our news channels which are supposed to be our beacon in war. Now it is war and they are doing Russia’s bidding…
SVT could have broadcast that the Russians got epic beatings south of Lysychansk and that Ukraine has secured the horseshoe defense which will bleed out Russian BTGs all summer before Ukraine eventually (maybe) conducts a tactical retreat.
14:19
The Russians have not had a single major victory in this war at all, they get beaten place after place and proclaimed Popasna as our time’s Stalingrad in pro-Russian media. One reflection is that IF the Russians were to start winning this war because they find thousands of good tanks, advanced aircraft and alligators (incredible) then the rest of Europe out of pure self-preservation should consider intervention because there is no other army in Europe even close to Ukraine’s. Finland will probably manage well on its side and Poland will probably turn its spikes outward but the whole Balkans and Slovakia would be a walkover where country after country more or less voluntarily let the Russians in.
Then the Baltics will probably fall quite quickly. This will not happen by the Russians on their own but only if China keeps the USA occupied in Asia.
14:52
Yes, it is, I was more thinking that a couple of countries down there would have joined Russia’s side voluntarily as soon as they got the chance after Ukrainian capitulation, Serbia and Hungary for example, and that some other countries are too weak to resist when the Russians start their subversive campaigns to take over.
Apart from Operation Storm, there were front lines on each side of valleys and mountains for four years or something as easily defensible as you write.
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I’ve thought a bit about Poland especially since the Germans crossed the country in 1939 but it looks like good defensive terrain to the east and the Polish army has, like the Finnish, wanted peace but prepared for war and in Poland’s case since the early 90s so they should be able to fight back quite well. NATO to be sure but if China starts swinging its katanas then it is a question of whether there is anything to send rather than whether one is in NATO or not I think and own defense capability becomes important. Then the Poles are probably not the least bit keen on either a new 1939 or becoming a vassal province to Russia again and should have a defense will on par with Ukraine’s.
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Now I went off a bit, this will of course end with the Russians getting beaten in Ukraine 🙂
15:00
In Slovakia’s case, they have sent quite a lot of their heavy weapons to Ukraine, most recently they were to donate the air force so that was probably what I was thinking about in Slovakia’s case.
Serbia and Hungary ally with Russia as soon as they can, one would guess?
I know that Bulgaria and Romania are in NATO but a well-planned Russian psyops can probably mess things up badly there and then you have Putin’s best buddy Erdogan on the other side. The rest of the countries are too small not to fall in line if the wind changes, Croatia will probably go into hedgehog mode.
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NATO is only as strong as they have materiel and soldiers for. If China starts stirring up trouble in Asia and there is more turmoil in the world’s rogue regimes, one can probably stretch NATO’s capacity somewhat I guess. Now we haven’t seen that and what I wrote was that IF the Russians start gaining the upper hand then the West must go for full intervention in Ukraine.
15:07
A weak point, they have moved units to Popasna – Severodonetsk and then to Kherson and further west towards Tokmak to protect Melitopol.
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This was probably discussed yesterday or so and if Ukraine can take down towards Mariupol and go on the defensive it serves the same function as if they take Melitopol. What it absolutely does is that the Russians now have to defend themselves in Kherson, and along the entire southern front. One can guess that there will be some offensive attempts between Donetsk – Horlivka soon from Ukraine because they have probably had to weaken even more there.
19:47
Yep MickeU that is exactly what I think because if Ukraine kicks out the Russians but still has an army of 12 men they have lost in round three. They must be able to defend their border and for that they need intact maneuver brigades.
Now we have been discussing for a while in the thread that the Russians are starting to run short of key personnel. If Ukraine ran the same reverse Darwinism they would also be sitting there with inexperienced brigades and they don’t seem to be doing that.
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Then as I said, there is a window where they should act in the near term which they are demonstrably doing in Kherson and the southern front and then there is probably a long-term window too because someday the Russians will have managed to get their materiel in order but we are definitely not there yet.
23:32
The Boris seems to have managed to really pull the G7’s ear because this is what happened,
“We will provide financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support and support Ukraine for as long as necessary,” the text of the draft statement reads”.
10:55
According to Warmonitor, the Russians were pushed back from Vekhnoyukamhanka. Now Ukraine can reinforce and hopefully freeze the front so there will be plenty of grilled btg in Lysychansk. These days have been very high risk for Lysychansk and the Russians suddenly made a big advance after Zolote, which was unexpected.
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On uawarmap, I think they have pressed in quite a few “new” btg in the area for a serious push. A week or so ago, we tried to reason that reserves had been smuggled in as newly established wiped-out btg, and with the information that has now come out, it seems to be true and there is a fairly potent Russian presence if you can also gather 15,000 men for, as they say, a new attempt against Kiev. However, there is a shortage of key personnel, armor, and aircraft.