Ukraine Blog 34 – CEASAR’s or KRAB Salad?
Dear friends, family and colleagues,
Like with
the “siege” of Kyiv at the start of the war, the Dutch (Western) media is in
full blown melancholy mode. Like Kyiv was never a siege, the headlines scream
that Ukraine is losing in the East.
While
Ukrainian losses are extremely high, this is very far from the truth and it’s
the Russians that are definitely losing. Let me explain why and prepare
yourself for the most positive blogs in weeks.
Without a
doubt, the Ukrainian defense of the Joint Group of Forces has been under incredible
pressure over the past 1,5 month. Russian artillery has been absolutely devastating.
However, we (I) are definitely starting to see the impact of Western heavy
artillery in the South and the Donbass. What the Western media doesn’t notice,
is that over the past three days, Ukraine has struck a couple of very high
value strategic targets, deep in the Donbass region that has been under Russian
occupation for eight years now. The destruction of these targets will have a devastating
impact on the Russian ability to advance.
1. The most important target the Ukrainians
struck, is the biggest ammunition depot of the Russian forces in the Luhansk
People’s Republic (LNR, or just Russian occupation).
The site was hit on June 17th and
kept on burning for almost a day (NASA FIRMS went crazy on this area). This is
was a huge ammunition depot and the main supply depot for all Russian
operations in the Donbass
While there are wild speculations that either 1. Western artillery, 2. A Toschka missile was responsible, there’s credible evidence that this was the work of Ukrainian SU-25 attack aircraft. All of the options would be amazing.
2. Around the city of Donetsk, Ukraine keeps hitting several very large ammunition depots, resulting in huge so called secondary explosions.
For many years Ukraine has been accused by pro-Russian
apologists of shelling civilian targets in the Donbass with inaccurate artillery
fire. While I always tried to explain that this is actually far from being in
Ukraine’s interest, still quite some people kept falling for cheap pro-Kremlin
propaganda from the likes of Graham Philips and Dutch Sonja van den Ende. Right
now we have prove that when Ukraine is striking Donetsk, it will focus on hitting
high impact strategic targets and they will do so with great precision.
3. Also around Kherson, the Ukrainians start to make use of their M777 howitzers. The Ukrainians struck far behind enemy lines across the Dnipro river and hit some very large ammunition dumps in Nova Kakhovka. Evidence of the high precision, is the insane amount of secondary explosions taking place.
4. Around Severodonetsk, the Russian advance has been stalled despite them throwing all reserves to conquer this city. In fact, this is the only front where the Russians keep on attacking and they are barely able to take ground. Numerous sources give credit to this to the arrival of the earlier announced Polish KRAB howitzers. Together with the CEASAR’s (who have been picking of many Russian artillery and MLRS systems), they seem to be responsible for stabilizing the Severodonetsk frontline.
Although it’s still possible Russia will take Severodonetsk, I really doubt they will be able to advance further. The Russian forces that took Popasna and Lyman are so mangled and broken that they can barely hold the territory that they have taken.
5. The most bold report of an Ukrainian
attack happened this morning. I’m cautious with this one and we will have to
wait for surveillance drone confirmation and the fog of war is big on this one.
Apparently Ukraine struck the famous Snake Island or according to some other
reports, Russian oil riggs, with a huge volley of missiles, causing an immense amount
of destruction and huge secondary explosions.
(2) WarMonitor🇺🇦 on Twitter: "Maybe HIMARS are closer then you think😉" / Twitter
If such an attack indeed happened, there is
only one type of weapon system that can achieve something like that, the M270/HIMARS.
I think it’s very likely that some of these systems are already in Ukraine and a
target like Snake Island would be a perfect test target. People keep asking me
whether 11 of those systems is not too small of a number for what Ukraine needs.
Although I agree Ukraine needs more of them (probably around 50 would be good),
people forget the incredible destructive power of the MLRS rockets. One HIMARS
battery of just four launchers can obliterate an entire Russian brigade (so
three battalion tactical groups) in less than a day. You can see on this
footage from Afghanistan how incredible destructive this system is.
Main point is that their rockets are GPS guided
and extremely accurate Whereas with Soviet artillery, Ukraine (and Russia)
would need to fire hundreds of rounds, just a couple of HIMARS rockets will
achieve the same result over a longer distance.
It doesn’t
mean that Ukraine needs to completely abandon its Soviet artillery. Also in this
field help is on the way. Romania is restarting the production of 152mm Soviets
artillery shells.
Romania is
the only NATO country that still has the industrial capacity to produce this
round. Not many people know this, but the reason for this, is that during the
Cold War, Romania always was a little bit (actually quite a bit) at odds with the
rest of the Warsaw Pact. Most notably, Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, condemned
the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Ceausescu as such was very
keen on keeping an independent Romanian arms industry that not only produced
ammunition, but also came up with some indigenous weapon designs.
Like I said
in blog Ukraine Blog 31 - Russia Finally Fights as Expected (spectraltransition.blogspot.com), the West needs to switch to a war
economy. Good to see that at least some countries are realizing this.
It seems
that after being despised by everyone for many years after his death, we finally
have found one think for which we can say “thank you” to Ceausescu.
Make no
mistake, it will still take some weeks before we start to see the full effect
of this new high tech artillery injection becomes fully visible, but I already
started to notice the first effects. Russia will still be able to make small advance
for two or three weeks, but after that the tide will turn. Saw this happening
in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and the 2020 Karabakh war. At one moment, the front
lines will collapse and they will collapse fast.
The only
thing that starts to worry me, is the movement of the Belarussian army on the
northern front. Although it’s entirely clear that very few in the Belarussian
army and even Aleksandr Lukashenko have an appetite to go to war with Ukraine,
it’s possible that Putin finally tightened the screws on Lukashenko. After all:
this still holds:”
However, I
would like to stress that in case Lukashenko decides to actually invade Ukraine,
the moment will be far worse than it was on February 24th. There’s
absolutely no Russian air cover in the north or Ukraine and only very few
Russian troops are left in Belarus. I very much doubt Belarussian soldiers are
willing to fight in a foreign country and I think it will be the end for Lukashenko.
I also think that Ukrainian territorial defense forces will be sufficient to
deal with Lukashenko’s army.
Besides
Belarus, it’s absolutely clear that the tensions within the Collective Security
Treaty Organization (CSTO, or Putin’s NATO), is starting to rise. Kazakhstan’s
president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who was only saved by Putin this January, is
openly starting to defy him.
Kazakhstan’s
resistance is very important, because in case of a split between Russian and Kazakhstan,
Russia will lose all its remaining influence in Central Asia. I believe the Kazakhs
have always been afraid of Russia and thought of themselves of not being in a
position to voice opposition. But with a Russian army in disarray, it’s very clear
Kazakhstan smells some opportunities. And they won’t be the only ones.
Доброго вечора, ми з України!
Niels
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