Ukraine Blog 19 - Ukraine gets the Initiative and Goes on the Offense (Everywhere)

Dear friends, family and colleagues,

Yesterday we finally reached the long awaited moment: Ukraine goes full blown on offensive operations and Russia is on the defense on every front, even the initial successful south.

Ukraine really shows that it’s the only country in the world that truly understands Putin’s Russia. Instead of believing Russia that it’s performing a withdrawal from the north and north-east, Ukrainian forces keep on attacking the withdrawing (fleeing) forces with full ferocity. The Ukrainians captured a large amount of villages around Kyiv yesterday and destroying and capturing an insane amount of equipment. This doesn’t look like a withdrawal, but more like a combination of a rout and a withdrawal. Similar scenes happened  to the North of Kherson and where the Ukrainians pushed southwards from Huliaipole in Zaporizhzhia oblast.

The decision to keep on attacking the fleeing Russian troops is vital for the following reasons:

1.       Every soldier and piece of equipment that makes it out of the Northern front will be send immediately to the Izium front in Kharkiv oblast. The Ukrainians know this and are absolutely keen on destroying every piece of Russian personal/equipment that they can.

2.       It’s absolutely necessary to show that Ukraine has the initiative right now. It determines when negotiations can be held and when it can propose conditions to the Russians.

Like I said before, the only way Ukraine and the West can win this and stop Putin’s blackmail, is to destroy every piece of Putin’s army on Ukrainian soil. And the Ukrainians go further and further with regards to this. They even start to attack strategic targets in the Russian city of Belgorod. Two days ago, they hit a major ammunition storage and this morning two Ukrainian MI-24 attack helicopters attack the strategic fuel storage in Belgorod.

(2) Victor Kovalenko on Twitter: "In this new cell phone video from #Belgorod, #Russia you can see detonations at the local ammunition depot. This could be because the Russian army began using outdated ammo from the long-term storages which detonate during transportation/loading. https://t.co/21mrZTC76M" / Twitter

(2) 🅻-🆃🅴🅰🅼 on Twitter: "️⭕️🇷🇺#Russia: In Belgorod, 8 tanks with fuel volume of 2,000 cubic metres each are burning, there is a threat of fire switching to another 8 - Russian emergency services 👉The attack was executed-by 2 helicopters of 🇺🇦#Ukraine’s forces https://t.co/PFQKxRwVqr" / Twitter

The Ukrainian helicopters on their return flight

(2) Walter Lekh🇺🇦 on Twitter: "Low flying attack helicopters, spotted in #Belgorod, #Russia after explosion at fuel storage facility. #RussiaInvadedUkraine https://t.co/APSlvdNPYa" / Twitter

I can’t emphasize what a huge embarrassment this is to Russia’s military. We are in the sixth week of the war, they don’t have air superiority over Ukraine and now Ukraine starts to attack strategic targets in Russia with helicopters. I don’t think it’s the Russian executing a false flag operation. This is a major hit on a strategic target. Even in the case of a false flag, it would be even more of an embarrassment. It would make sense for Ukraine to strike such a target, since it would be a serious blow to the fuel supply of the troops going to Izium.

We are now at a point that Ukraine can start to make plans for further steps. I expect Ukrainian operations to clean out the north, north-east and southern fronts to take at least two weeks. There are a lot of scattered isolated Russian units there. It will take some time before they have all been dealt with. What is clear, is that Russia is in no way able to supply these units.

The Southern front will be the hardest. This for the simple reason that this is the only front where Russia made efforts to impose some political control. In the north and north-east troops were just rolling through towns and villages having absolutely no clue what to do. In Berdiansk, Melitopol and Kherson, Russia really tries to impose some political control by introducing the Russian Rubble as currency, opening offices of Putin’s United Russia party and install puppets in the local government. This is a very important distinction between the two fronts. This also leads to Russian troops in the south being slightly more motivated. Though they as well start to suffer the same catastrophic losses as their colleagues on the northern front.

I think Ukraine can start to think seriously about making preparations to start taking back the Donbass region. The DNR and LPR forces appear to be more motivated than the Russian army, but they also suffer from harsh battlefield conditions, lack of training and good equipment. Ukraine now has battlefield dominance and the initiative on almost all fronts. As soon as the north and south are finished, they can start thinking about going on a full offensive in the Donbass.

What helps the Ukrainians here are two things:

1.       There are serious reports that Russian officers don’t have the courage to tell Putin what’s really going on on the battlefield. They keep on feeding him with more positive reports. This leads to a serious disconnection between the commander in chief and the military. I stated this before, but this is exactly the reason why autocratic regimes have a terrible track record in performing large offensive operations with a modern army. This will accelerate the situation where lower ranking commanders keep on giving the wrong instructions to the field units while the higher officers and the politicians are not aware what’s really going on.

2.       Russia last allies are not joining the fight. More exactly: they are abandoning him. Luka is not joining, Assad is definitely not joining. I think for the both of them its clear right now that Putin is on the losing side. But the most important event is the abandonment of Russia only external ally (well, not really, since Russia created it) South-Ossetia. South-Ossetia send 300 troops to fight in Ukraine. However, as soon as the troops realized they had to perform crazy actions where there only role was to function as cannon fodder, they decided to disobey their commander and they start to hitch-hike all the way back to South-Ossetia. Please see this thread for the (very important) details.

(2) Rooslán Totrov on Twitter: "Alik’s publication (https://t.co/2qmQlcQCy4) requires a background deep dive. Here is what I have to say about South Ossetian soldiers’ voluntary refusal to partake in the warfare in Ukraine." / Twitter

3.       To show how desperate Russia is: they start to fly out troops of Russia’s exclave Kaliningrad right now to join the fight in Ukraine. It really shows that Russia is throwing in its last operational reserves. Those troops are supposed to act as a deterrence against, Poland, the Baltics and NATO as whole. This means Russia is effectively abandoning its aggressive stance towards NATO.

The only thing that Putin can do right now is escalate with even more destructive weapons. For the people who are scared of the nukes: we are still way off the nukes in Russia’s escalation ladder. For example

1.       Russia still hasn’t deployed the “Father of All Bombs.” This is Russia’s largest conventional weapon, modelled after the American “Mother of All Bombs.” Yield is equivalent of a very small nuclear weapon.

2.       We still haven’t seen Russia’s strategic bombers joining the fight. With TU-95, TU-22M and TU-160 strategic bombers, Russia can execute World War II style carpet bombing of Ukrainian cities.

3.       Chemical/biological weapons. I doubt whether chemical weapons will be effective. The West has been flying in hundreds of thousands of gas masks in the past couple of weeks and biological weapons can’t be deployed, since it will also kill Russian troops.

But every day I’m more confident that neither such escalation will happen, especially since the very serious signs of a total dysconnectivity in the Russian command structure. For a couple of weeks I was worried that the Russians would strike the NATO logistics point in Rzeszow, Poland or start to hit supply convoys that entered Ukraine, but Russia has absolutely didn’t make even the most minimal move towards such an action. I think all their efforts right now are focused on making sure they can at least declare some form of victory in Ukraine. And chances of that grow bleaker every day.

Best regards and "Slava Ukraini!"

Niels