Ukraine Blog 54 – MIC of the LIC's
Dear friends, family and colleagues,
Over a
month has past since the last update and we can tell with certainty that
Ukraine is able to hold the line for the most part. It’s clear that the Russian
army has lost all its offensive capabilities. There are two topics on everybody’s
lips: Bakhmut and an Ukrainian counteroffensive. Let’s dive into it:
My prediction
of more than a month ago that the Russian offensive already started without
anybody noticing turned out to be true. It was eventually confirmed by the real
experts on this topic like Michael Kofman:
So why did
the Russians went on the attack without adequate forces? This has all to do
with Russia replacing the one capable commander they have, Sergey Surovikin,
with one of the most incompetent ones they have, Valery Gerasimov. Why replace
a commander that shows he has knowledge about tactics, has a plan, focused on
defense and force constitution with an incompetent one? The issue here is that
Putin most likely grew impatient. It’s in the Russian culture to compete to
show the most results fast as opposed to delivering quality. It’s obvious that I
wasn’t present in the Kremlin, but I have a pretty good idea how the
conversation went between Putin and Gerasimov.
Putin: “Why hasn’t there been an advance from
our troops? Anyone care to explain?”
Gerasimov: “Oh Vladimir Vladimirovich, our
troops are competent, it’s just that Sergey Vladimirovich (Surovikin) is not
working on the right priorities. I will deliver you a victory in two months.”
Putin: “Great, Valery Vasilyevich, it’s set.
Deliver me my victory and you will receive your reward.”
Two points:
One: Putin prioritizes loyalty way more over competence (and yes, a reward can
easily be translated to a poisonous cup of tea or a fall from a window). Two: addressing
the those full first names may sound a little funny in the West, but this is
custom in formal communication in Russia, Belarus and.. Ukraine.
While Gerasimov
ordered the far from ready troops to storm the Ukrainian lines, the decision to
do so wasn’t entirely irrational. Large amounts of Western equipment are now on
the way. I can tell you, once this heavy equipment arrives: with the proper training,
the Russians make no chance against it. More about this later. The Russians
likely went on the attack first to secure as much as possible territory before they
will have to absorb the counteroffensives by the Ukrainian strike forces.
The Russians
started offensives on all axis: Kupyansk, Kreminna-Svatove, Siversk, Vuhledar,
Marinka and of course Bakhmut. After just two weeks, all those efforts were
abandoned with minimal gains or no gains at all returning to a familiar pattern
to play all balls on Bakhmut.
There’s a
lot of discussion on Bakhmut now. Every Western expert (including until two
days ago, yours truly) agrees that Ukraine should have withdrawn from Bakhmut
at least two weeks ago. However, the Ukrainian high command insists against this
logic to keep fighting for the city and let the Russians bleed for every meter
they have to take.
Why does
Ukraine defy the logic of every Western military manual? The answer is that
Ukraine most likely would have follow the advice in case they would have fought
almost every other army, but Ukraine is not fighting a normal army: it’s
fighting Russians and most notably the Wagner mercenary company.
My observation
is that the Ukrainians most likely consider the risk of encirclement very low.
And there’s some solid evidence to support this. The reason is that Russia
consistently fails to capitalize on breakthroughs. Over the past month, the Russians
broke through five times around Bakhmut and I mean a proper breakthrough with
collapse of Ukrainian lines. The breakthrough at Soledar was the only one they
were able to capitalize on. This is even highlighted by the International Study
of War (a source I’m normally skeptical about)
This is not
a recent trend. When Russia captured Izyum, they held the one crucial position
to punch deep in the Donbass and every modern Western army would have started
to capitalize on such a capture. As a refreshment:
Ukraine Blog 20 - Russia gets Izium, but the Clock is Ticking (spectraltransition.blogspot.com)
The
Russians paid dearly for the failure to capitalize on the capture of Izyum with
not only the loss of the city, but also the loss of critical logistical points
like Kupyansk. The reason for this failure is of course the disastrous logistics
of the Russians, who have not heard of the pallet deep in the 21st
century.
This leads
to my assessment that the Ukrainian high command thinks it’s responsible to keep
troops operating in areas that would considered to be under high risk of encirclement
when facing normal armies. This enables the Ukrainians to make the Russians pay
a heavy price for every meter they have to take. This forces Russian forces to
keep all their focus on Bakhmut.
This is by
no means an easy job for the Ukrainians. Their casualties, although in a one to
five favor to the Russians, are still really high. The Ukrainians also chose to
send in large numbers of National Guard and Territorial Defense forces with
only three weeks of training and limited equipment.
Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut: ‘Our troops are not being protected’ (kyivindependent.com)
While this
seems that the Ukrainians are absolutely no better than the Russians by sending
ill equipped badly trained soldiers to the front, for the Ukrainians it’s
absolutely a necessity to do this. The Ukrainians are doing what Surovikin
desperately wanted to do with the Russian army, namely force reconstitution.
While the poor guys of the National Guard and Territorial Defense forces are
fighting off waves of Russian infantry, Ukraine’s newly formed combined arms
units are being trained and equipped with modern Western weapons and tactics.
So a couple
of words on Wagner’s chairman, Yevgeny Prigozhin. A lot of reports mentioned
that he fell out of favor with Putin for siding with Chechen’s frontman Ramzan
Kadyrov and Surovikin and that he will soon be thrown out of window or get poisonous
tea from Putin. I don’t think that will happen for now. Prigozhin is far too
useful since he owns Russia’s business empire in Africa and can be used as a
scapegoat when something goes wrong for the regular Russian military. He’s a
bit like the drunk fella at the late night party. We all think he’s annoying,
but we all have a soft spot for the clown. He’s on a downward spiral for sure,
but he’s far from out.
I get a lot
of comments that state that the Ukrainians won’t have a chance of breaking
through Russian fortifications. Well, it’s true, that just the equipment won’t
be sufficient for the job. Tactics is sixty percent of the job here. While people
mostly look at the tanks, it’s also important to have a look at the full aid
packages the West sends. Take for example this one:
“The
package will also include demolition munitions and equipment for obstacle
clearing.”
This is the
most important equipment in the whole package. It will allow the Ukrainians to
lay a 500 meter long explosive charge over the Russian defenses in order to clear
it of all obstacles and explosives. I’m pretty confident the aid packages include
a large number of so called “mine-clearing line charges” (MICLIC). The Russians
also have MICLIC’s and the Ukrainians captured a number of them, the UR-77 Meteorit.
However, the American version is based on the M1 Abrams tank and is called the M1150.
Below a clip of the immense trench destruction this thing can bring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=4Wob2ryCfhc
Any
Ukrainian offensive will start with a large number of MICLIC charges, Excalibur
laser guided artillery strikes and HIMARS strikes on troop concentrations. As Operation
Desert Storm and the Ukrainian breakthrough at Balakliia have shown us: only a
small breach is enough for a breakthrough when there’re MICLIC’s at play.
I can talk
for hours on fortifications breakthroughs by engineering units, but as usual noclador
does a far better job on this than me:
There are a
lot of people that say that Ukraine needs to attack as fast as possible, because
the Russians may start up their ammo and arms production and then it will all
be too late. I seriously doubt this is true. It’s clear right now that Russia
has problems across the board when it comes to all basic items needed to equip
an army:
-Artillery
ammunition
-Small arms and
small arms ammunition
-Armored
vehicles.
I wrote in
my blog
Ukraine Blog 51 – Russia on the Path to Self-Destruction (spectraltransition.blogspot.com)
That Russia
most likely will run out of ammunition by now. This is absolutely the case,
Prigozhin is not only accusing that the regular Russian military is keeping ammo
from him, the Russian military is doing the same in reverse.
It’s now also
proven that Russian soldiers are sent to charge with sticks:
I know the
stories about Russia having 35 million AK-47’s. Already during the first
mobilization wave we saw a lot of rusted ones. I really don’t think there are
that many around. Most of the boxes have been in open air storage for 50 years.
Imagine what Siberian winters and Caucasian summers will do to these boxes.
But the
best info about Russia’s tank shortage comes from a Twitter member called partizan_oleg.
His thread
even made it to Forbes (something I try to prevent at all costs):
The Russian Army Is Running Out Of T-72 Tanks—And Quickly (forbes.com)
Oleg did
some simple math and concluded with simple calculations that estimates of 7000
T-72 tanks in reserve are simply bollocks and it’s no more than logical that
Russia is already digging into T-62 and early T-80 models for tank replacements.
Oleg comes to a total of 3440 T-72 tanks in operation and reserve on February 24th
2022. I did some recalculations. It’s really accurate, except that Oleg forgot
tank losses during the Chechen wars, so the amount is even lower I think.
So T-62’s
and T-80’s. Besides being them hopelessly outdated and the T-80 being propelled
by a problematic gas turbine engine, it’s a huge problem for Russia that at
best it’s s possible of producing 30 tanks per month (new build’s and upgrades
from rusted hulks) while it loses around 10 per day in Ukraine.
A thing
that really strikes me is that Russia in the runup to its invasion directed
dozens of trains with equipment per day towards Ukraine. Now at most they can muster
three every week, mostly loaded with old equipment.
In short, I
see Russia’s collapse accelerating. The logistical problems are rising exponentially,
its infighting is bursting more out in the open and yes, the sanctions are
finally biting deep to the bone (but we need a separate blog for that last point).
Слава Україні!
Niels
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