Ukraine Blog 31 - Russia Finally Fights as Expected

Dear friends, family and colleagues,

Today was a very bad day for the Ukrainian defenders. Russia is pushing extremely hard to put Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk under a full siege. And the Russians are definitely advancing. Today and yesterday they took many towns in the Donbass area. All the way it’s Russia’s artillery that seems to tip the edge.

South of Popasna, Russia took Svitlodars'k and Myronivs'kyi. Both towns were for years heavily contested. On the northern axis, Russia is pressing hard to take the town of Lyman. Ukraine is still holding a large part of the town, but Russian artillery is absolutely obliterating the town. Russia’s famous TOS-1A thermobaric rocket launchers were again put to use, but this time in front of the camera against a dense population center. You know that I’m very careful with proclaiming everything a war crime, but this is together with the Bucha atrocities one of the few instances where there’s clearly a war crime happening in front of the camera. As a reminder: a thermobaric weapon is a type of explosive that uses oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion. As a result it often leads to horrific dead and injuries among civilians

(3) Rob Lee on Twitter: "Russian TOS-1A thermobaric MLRS strikes on Lyman. https://t.co/B7kXZfZBQL https://t.co/kIKcpR5gC8" / Twitter

It’s thanks to these type of relentless strikes that Russia is able to advance. The fact that they don’t care that their war crime actions are now out in the open for everyone to see is very telling in how desperate they want to advance.

Russia also started to do another thing it should have done starting on the first day: targeting critical infrastructure. The Russian air force started to heavily target the rail infrastructure around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro. For Ukraine (and in Russia alike), it’s critical to keep the trains rolling to get the Western weapons and supplies to the Donbass and to evacuate civilians and wounded soldiers out. The fact that Russia started to do this in conjunction with its ground offensive really shows they mean business.

Although the Ukrainians are now also suffering higher losses, there by no means seems to be a collapse of morale. There are no mass Ukrainian POW’s and the Ukrainian retreat seems to happen orderly. And when the Ukrainians continue to trade territory for time, do not suffer catastrophic losses and continue to inflict high losses on the Russians (which they do), the situation will in the end turn out to be more favorable to the Ukrainians. However, a significant downside of any retreat (chaotic or orderly) is that the retreating force always needs to leave behind a lot of weapons, ammo and supplies. I expect the Russians to show off significant war booty in the next couple of days. These are supplies they are increasingly in dire need of and will be a welcome supply to them.

Another problem with giving up territory is that Russia’s position in any future negotiations will become stronger. This in combination with assuming control over Ukraine’s vast grain reserves will increase Russia’s leverages significantly. So do I suddenly think the Russians will win? No, by far not

1.       In the Donbass Russia finally starts fighting how and where I expected them to fight from day one: large armored punches supported by really heavy artillery. But let’s not forget they lost their best units in the first week of the war. When they would have started the war with this attack with their best units on day one, Russia actually might have succeeded in destroying a large part of the Ukrainian military. Right now, the surprise and their best units are gone.

2.       Russia abandoned offensive activity on all other fronts. In the South the lines are manned by under equipped reserve troops and around Kharkiv the Ukrainians are slowly advancing. When Russia manages to take more land in the Donbass, it means that again their supply lines will become longer and overstretched. There’s not sufficient cover in those areas. I expect the Ukrainians to continue to heavily harass Russian troops.  

So I don’t see a Ukrainian defeat, but I also don’t see a quick Russian defeat. It’s of vital importance that the West continues the delivery of (heavy) weapons to Ukraine. But also on that front there are early signs of trouble. The United States for example has delivered one third of their total supply of Javelins to the Ukrainians.

Push to Arm Ukraine Putting Strain on US Weapons Stockpile | Chicago News | WTTW

Besides the fact Western armies need to have sufficient advanced equipment, we also need to keep the Ukrainians into the fight. This can only happen when we start to prepare our economies to transform into a partial or full war economy.

War economy - Wikipedia

This in short implies that most important the production industry, but also other sections of the economy need to be prepared to serve the war effort. For example each Javelin has 200 semiconductors. It also means the semiconductor industry needs to be mobilized. A war economy can go very far. In the Second World War, Disney and Warner Bros were even recruited for the war effort to produce propaganda.

Donald Duck - Der Fuehrer's face | eng sub - YouTube

Looney Tunes - Daffy The Commando 1943 High Quality HD - YouTube (please watch till the end)

Don’t think we have to go that far, but we need to start to prepare the first steps to make sure that NATO remains a well equipped alliance and Ukraine can destroy as much Russians as possible.

Dark days for Ukraine and it won’t be the last. Thing is: the situation for Russia hardly is any brighter.

Доброго вечора, ми з України!

Niels

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