Ukraine Blog 59 – Death by a Thousand Cuts
Dear friends, family and colleagues,
Five weeks have passed since Ukraine started its long awaited counteroffensive. Lots of people complain about the lack of progress in terms of territorial reconquest by Ukraine. To be honest, I was also having a hard time figuring out what is going on. However, in the past week, a clear picture starts to emerge about what Ukraine’s plan is and why in the medium term this will be disastrous for Russia.
So first of all, I had a little bummer when posting Blog 58. I was talking about the main indication that Ukraine would start a breakthrough attempt when Leopard 2A6 and Bradley AIFV’s would start to appear. Less than two hours after I posted the blog, Twitter was flooded with footage of abandoned Leopard 2A6’s and Bradley’s.
Russia releases footage
allegedly showing 'trophy' abandoned western tanks - YouTube
The
Ukrainians Can Finally Recover Their Leopard 2R Breaching Vehicles (forbes.com)
1. Five weeks in, and the Russians keep
on recycling footage from all kinds of angles from this same column. This means
there aren’t likely any other examples like this.
2. All abandoned equipment has since
been recovered. Only three Bradley’s are considered to be total losses. All
other equipment likely has already been repaired.
3. Western equipment has proven to be
superior in survivability. Almost all troops in that column came out without
significant injuries and there aren’t any confirmed deaths. Any Russian built
vehicle would transform into a giant furnace, but Western equipment remains
intact.
4. The Ukrainians corrected their
failure by bringing in short range air defense systems, resulting in the
Russians for a period of one and a half week losing about one KA-52 per day.
5. The Ukrainians started to adjust their approach of taking on the Russians. This will be the focus of the next section.
As I wrote in “Ukraine Blog 55 – Dieppe came before D-Day,” my main concern were the Soviet TM-62 anti-tank mines. This little device has proven to be a far worse nightmare than even my most pessimistic predictions. The Russians have millions of these little devils that have tremendous destructive power. Every meter, under every object is one of these things and they led to Ukraine completely abandoning advances by heavy armored vehicles. That the Russians occasionally drive into their own minefields is not a concern for them. The minefields hold back the Ukrainian armor and that’s sufficient for now.
However, there are many problems
with the Russian defense lines.
1. Russian trenches completely
lack barbed wire or razor wire obstacles. This means that although heavy armor
can be spotted and taken out with ATGM’s, light infantry can essentially just
walk into a Russian trench with very little effort. It’s absolutely baffling me
why the Russians don’t use barbed/razor wire in their defenses. World War I
proved how effective this is, but yeah, we are dealing with a country that
hasn’t found out about pallets in military logistics.
2. And this is what has been happening
over the past five weeks. The Ukrainian infantry squads approach the Russian
trenches in light American HUMVEE vehicles. They are too light to activate a
TM-62 mine. The Ukrainians storm right up to the trench in HUMVEE’s with very
high speed. They disembark next to the trench system and start clearing the
Russian trenches. When they do that, it becomes clear that the Ukrainian light infantry
is lightyears ahead when it comes to training and tactics. In every video that
I have seen that absolutely ransack every Russian trench in typical NATO trench
clearing fashion.
Incredible video shows
Ukrainian soldiers in Humvees storming Russian trenches - YouTube
Ukrainian special forces
storm Russian trench on southern front - YouTube
Effective as it is. Clearing each individual line will take Ukraine years even when Ukrainian casualties are as low as they are now.
However, as we progressed into July,
the picture became more clear to me. Ukraine is applying the death by a
thousand cuts strategy here. Many people thought that with the presence of
Leopard II and Bradley AIFV’s, we would see an Ukrainian version of Operation
Desert Storm. Well, the American and Western allies had a modern air fleet of 1600
fighter aircraft that relentlessly smashed Iraqi trench lines round the clock
for five weeks. Besides some satellite guided JDAM-ER bombs and Storm Shadow
missiles, Ukraine has absolutely nothing comparable (and this is why the F-16
delay talk from the West is so frustrating, but this topic is not for now). The
Ukrainian strategy works in two ways
1. The trench clearing operations force
the Russians to bring in their reserves. These are usually better trained
troops that suffer from significant fatigue since they have been moved around
the 2000 kilometer frontline to constantly fill the holes. The more these
troops come forward, the better Ukraine can target them and their accompanying
artillery with shorter range HIMARS systems. I have followed the daily confirmed
Russian artillery losses and they go through the roof.
2. While the Russian reserves are lured
to the front, Ukraine is incrementally destroying Russian logistics in the
hinterland with Storm Shadow missiles and underwater drones. That this is
according to a planning and incremental becomes clear when looking at the time
frame.
a. On June 18, Ukraine struck the largest Russian ammunition depot north of Crimea in Rykove, completely obliterating all ammunition dumps thanks to secondary explosions.
b. On June 22, a couple of kilometers
south, Ukraine struck the Chonhar bridge with, again with Storm Shadow
missiles, causing severe damage to both the railroad and road bridge.
c. The cherry on the pie came today
with the second strike on the Kerch bridge linking Crimea with Russia.
Ukraine’s strategy here is twofold:
1. Step by step cutting off Russian
logistics until they become untenable. Although the Russians are stupid, they
are not stupid. Every time the Russians committed a “gesture of goodwill” it
was because their logistics became from bad to unsustainable. This happened in
Kyiv, Chernihiv, Snake Island, Kherson and Kharkiv.
2. The Ukrainians are slowly cutting the lines to give the Russians the opportunity to get out. Ukraine doesn’t want to fight for every inch and certainly doesn’t want to have hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners of war.
The Ukrainians are helped there by a bit by Russian stupidity. As a result of the whole Wagner mutiny, the Russians are very busy putting their most capable officers (who are knowledgeable and not necessarily loyal) on inactive (see blog 58). The most prominent example is general Ivan Popov, commander of the 58th army. This guy was one of the last capable hands-on commanders in the field, who was quite popular with the troops. In addition, the Ukrainians killed commander Oleg Tsokov (also 58th army) with a Storm Shadow missile in Berdyansk. This means the whole 58th army is essentially leaderless.
Many of you have called me crazy,
but now that the Ukrainian strategy is clear to me, I’m more convinced than
ever that Ukraine will return Crimea without a single shot from ground forces.
There are two analogies for what the Ukrainians are doing right now.
1. The battle of Caen (again Normandy).
The allies had to fight for a month to dislocate German divisions and disrupt
their logistics in brutal warfare in and around the city of Caen. After Caen
was done, it took less than a year to end the war
2. Azerbaijan’s breakthrough through
the Armenian lines in the Karabakh war of 2020. Initially Azeri forces were
fighting positional warfare on the frontlines with very heavy armor losses. Only
after Bayraktar TB2 strikes devastated the Armenian Soviet doctrine based
logistics, the Azeri army punched through the Armenian lines like a hot knife
through butter.
The Armenian army continues
destroy tanks of Azerbaijan - YouTube
Azerbaijan Army Drone Strikes || Bayraktar TB2 || IKINCI QARABAG DOYUSLERI - YouTube
So will the end of the war be in sight? Yes and no. I’m convinced we will see more significant reclaim of Ukrainian territory by the Ukrainian armed forces soon, but NATO single handedly prolonged the war for at least a year more by displaying multiple acts of unforgivable appeasement at the NATO summit in Vilnius. Even after one and a half years of warfare, most Western politicians still don’t understand that it’s appeasement that emboldens dictators like Hitler and Putin. By stating that Ukraine can only become a member after the conflict is over, they ensured 1. The war will not stop soon 2. Ukraine won’t be a member for a very long time. Even when Ukraine succeeds in reconquering all of its territory and secures a 200 kilometer buffer zone around it, the only thing Putin has to do is firing a couple of missiles every day into Ukrainian territory.
That both parties really want to go to what is realistically possible is shown by the indications that especially Russia appears to be able to increasingly produce new tanks. I say “appears.” I took the liberty to spend a couple of evenings to go through all Russian military storage areas, that you can find via the Google Earth database of Archer83Able. Apologies, you need a Twitter account now that Putin friend Elon Musk blocked non-user access.
Ukrainian
2S7 Pion shoots with American 203mm rounds - Militarnyi
Croatian
T-34/85 during the Yugoslav Wars : TankPorn (reddit.com)
Simply anything goes. All that matters is to hold the lines.
Слава Україні!
Niels
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