Ukraine Blog 40 – Kherson: Case Closed
Dear
friends, family and colleagues,
Last week,
Ukraine started its long awaited counter offensive. Since the initial
announcement, the fog of war is thick, most importantly due to an Ukrainian media
blackout. So how is it going? To come straight to the point: Ukraine is
absolutely massacring Russian forces relentlessly.
So what’s
the evidence for that? For me the footage that says it all arrived three days
ago. After months of absence, the Ukrainians posted numerous videos of Bayrakter
TB2 strikes in Kherson.
There’s one
thing more important than the actual strikes. The fact that the Ukrainians are
back in using the Bayraktars in the direct fire role, means that Russia’s air
defense layer of the Kherson region has been significantly degraded over the past
weeks. As seen in the previous blog, the Ukrainians managed to successfully
perform SEAD and DEAD operations by integrating HARM anti-radiation missiles
under their Mig-29’s. The first actual footage of this configuration has also
emerged now. In short, inside the Mig-29 a tablet was installed just under the
Head-up display. This is the green screen visible in the center of the cockpit
footage. This enables the Ukrainian pilot to fire the HARM in the pre-determined
target mode. Just as expected.
This means
that Ukraine now has air dominance (not air supremacy!) in the Kherson region
and likely also in large parts of Zaporizhzhia. This means that Ukraine can use
the Bayraktars to finish off Russia’s artillery advantage in the south. Over
the past weeks in the daily Russian loss reports, there are multiple days that
Russia lost more than 20 artillery pieces per day (after hoovering around 2 to
3 per day for weeks)
Though I’m
glad the Bayraktars are back, it also helps to put things into perspective. It
shows that it’s not a “Wunderwaffe,” as opposed to HIMARS. The Bayraktars is useless
in theatres with sufficient air defense coverage. The Ukrainians know this and
for this reason they have not been deployed. Despite Russian air defense showing their
incompetence in recent videos in Kherson and Crimea, their air defense coverage
for months was reasonably good and I still suspect that to be the case in the
Donbass region.
This means
that now all the components are in place to finish off 25.000 Russian troops in
Kherson and there’s not a single thing the Russians can do about it.
1. All bridges and pontoon bridges over
the Dnipro river have now been decisively put out of action. The bridge belonging
to the Nova Kakhovka dam has now finally collapsed.
This means the Russians can’t bring anything in
or out. All Russian equipment on the West bank of the Dnipro river can be declared
a loss now.
2. Ukraine has air dominance
3. Russia’s only advantage, its
artillery dominance is under threat now
4. Ukrainian partisan activity in the towns
and villages in Kherson oblast is intense. The Russians are now fighting the
worst for of warfare possible.
a. Isolated
b. Facing conventional front line
attacks
c. Guerrilla attacks in the rear.
Ukraine is
relentlessly degrading the Russians on the West bank of the Dnipro river. At
this pace, the Russian lines will start to collapse within 1,5 weeks and when
that happens, everything will go very fast. Till that time though, the Ukrainians
will also likely suffer significant casualties. Though isolated and cut off
from supplies, the Russians built some formidable defenses in Kherson region.
Until supplies run out, they can resist fiercely and inflict significant casualties
on the Ukrainians. Yesterday the Russians captured for example for the first
time a Dutch YPR-765.
But the
strategy of Ukraine is clear here. Everything is aimed at degrading Russian
capabilities in order to avoid costly assaults on Russian strongholds and most
of all: to avoid urban combat. Ukraine is giving an impressive lesson here in
how to defeat 20th (actually 19th) century warfare with
21st century warfare using limited resources. In case Ukraine
manages to get back Kherson before Autumn, it means Ukrainian defensive posture
as well as preparation for additional offensive operations can be much more
relaxed.
But there’s
more trouble ahead for the Russians. During the defense of Severodonetsk and Lysychans'k
there were a lot of complaints and fears from you as readers that the Ukrainians
deployed badly trained troops with old Soviet equipment and that things increasingly
looked a lost cause. It now turns out that this was a deliberate decision by
the Ukrainian high command.
This is significant for two reasons:
1. The Ukrainians took their first line
troops back to replenishment areas for reconstitution, training and equipping
them with new Western weapons. The Ukrainians have now tens of thousands of
fresh and motivated first line troops available.
2. It shows that even third line
Ukrainian territorial troops with old Soviet weapons are as good as or still
even better then first line Russian troops (a suspicion that I had for a long
time). Those Ukrainian territorial defense forces killed tens of thousands of
Russian soldiers and caused havoc among Russian armored forces.
3. While the Ukrainians deploy tens of thousands
of fresh and motived high quality troops, the Russians are scraping the bottle
of the barrel. Their 3rd corps is finally being deployed and it’s
going to be a failure for two reasons:
a. The troops are mostly composed of
boomers above 50, criminals and substance addicts. Original planned strength of
the corps was 15.000 men, but the Russians likely only managed to find 10.000
at best.
b. The Russians don’t know how to
deploy the 3rd corps to “plug” the frontline. Their deployment will
see an even more piecemeal approach than before
What’s interesting is, is that training for the
3rd corps happens on the most modern Russian equipment, like BMP-3
and T-90M, we haven’t seen before in Ukraine. This tells me two things:
(5) tom on Twitter: "3rd Army Corps, Mulino https://t.co/FeoEFxv4dq" / Twitter
a. Russia let the new recruits train on
the newest stuff to not discourage them. But rest assured: after deployment,
they will get the oldest stuff possible.
b. Russia keeps it most modern
equipment away from the Ukrainian theater as a contingency for war with NATO
(which they have no chance against anyway).
The effect of
the deployment of the fresh Ukrainian troops is already clear. Surprisingly it’s
in Donetsk oblast. There are countless reports of Russian trenches and fortifications
under assault and being overrun.
In the
meantime, the Ukrainians continue the preparations for the assault on Crimea.
Over the past couple of weeks, the Ukrainians have continuously been testing
the Russian air defense layer in Crimea. They are doing this with cheap drones you
can buy on Alibaba for a couple of hundred Euro’s. Reportingly this has
resulted in a treasure-trove of information about Russian air defenses. Once
Kherson is back under Ukrainian control, I expect actual strikes on Crimea to
gather steam.
At the same
time, Russia is not able to capitalize on the far more expensive drones it
purchased. As I expected, they show numerous failures similar in nature when
the Americans and Israelis encountered them.
US assesses Russia now in possession of Iranian drones, sources say | CNN Politics
So Russia is
on the defense everywhere right now. I think we are really entering the end
stage now. Major indication right now is Putin taking personal command of the
army now
This is a recipe
for failure. Both Tsar Nicolas II and Hitler did this and it’s the worst thing
that can happen to an army. The last thing you want is having the narcissistic totalitarian
guy with no military experience taking charge. Ukraine will win by fighting
hard, but luckily as always Russian stupidity helps.
Слава
Україні!
Niels
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