History Resumes

An anime avatar’s guide to the Russo-Ukranian War

As is usual when the world shifts gears without a clutch, there’s an awful lot to talk about. However we must first explain what has actually happened in the first 24 hours in Ukraine, and what it means. In order of importance:

• Ukraine is fighting incredibly hard and has outperformed all expectations. Their         competence, capability and willpower have exceeded all expectations – including, apparently, those of the Russians.         
          
• There is an ongoing battle of operational maneuver scale that the Ukrainians are holding their own at. Russia has made serious and threatening advances in one area, but are having enough trouble that their eventual victory is anything but certain.         
          
• This is far from over. Russia has yet to commit roughly half their troops and Ukraine’s reserve units are still mobilizing. This is, in every way, classical conventional warfare; the kind fought in WWII; that takes place over vast distances and multiple days of intense combat.
  

The Current Situation

The most important fact is also the most obvious: Ukrainian forces have been demonstrably unimpressed by “shock and awe” and not only failed to collapse quickly, but defended their initial positions with incredible tenacity. The always excellent Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) has drawn this simple, but (so far) quite accurate Red Arrow Explainer that lays out Russia’s apparent operational plan:

The goals Russian forces hope to gain via maneuver are 1. to encircle/flank/divide the Eastern Ukrainian flank from the rest of the country to ease defeating them in detail and 2. to take Kyiv itself – or rather, capture the government that is in Kyiv – the entire government; not just the top leaders, but all their subordinates and as many politicians/influential people as possible and kill them, so that Putin may install a puppet government without any risk of another revolution like the one that toppled his favored puppet in 2014.

Compare to this map of the present situation at roughly 9PM EST (-5 GMT) which is guaranteed out-of-date and somewhat inaccurate but reflects the best generalized picture that can be gleaned from watching the war unfold one shaky smartcam video at a time on Twitter:

As you can see, the Russians are well short of their likely Day 1 objectives. Do not underestimate what they have accomplished; remember that Ukraine is a huge country; twice the size of California; and only slightly smaller than Texas. They have driven a good 160km from Crimea to reach the city of Melitopol and 100km to reach Kherson. However, how much significance this actually holds is questionable.

Even from a simple two-color map the significant natural barrier in Ukraine is obvious – the river Dnieper. This is no normal river; easily defeated by tracked bridge-laying vehicles or forded with snorkels on tanks; it’s a massive river the equal of the great Mississippi and represents a serious barrier to Russian advancement. To truly divide the country in half to achieve an easier defeat of Ukrainian forces in detail, piecemeal, they need to control both banks of this river. Hence the importance of the drive on Kherson. At last report the Russians had crossed the river and taken Kherson, but the Ukranians had somehow managed to re-capture the major bridge behind them. I’ve also seen reports that the Russians have been driven out of Kherson completely. Mixed messages like that in the fog of war typically owe to heavy, confused fighting (as evidenced by the mixed reports on the fighting at Hostomel Airport.)

At first blush it would seem that the Russians have made solid gains in the South, but this depends largely on how far inland the Ukrainians actually placed their Main Line of Resistance. Trying to bottle the Russians into the Crimean peninsula would have been a fool’s game given the vast amount of men and materiel the Russians crammed into Crimea to facilitate a breakout against just such a force; to say nothing of the amphibious landing capability that could land a (smaller) force west of them to assist a breakout or ferry forces across the Sea of Azov; either landing taking place well within range of heavy, massive supporting fires by Russian heavy artillery units and airpower from Crimea. When combined with the restrictions imposed by the need to capture a bridge over the Dnieper (there’s only so many bridges to target,) it makes perfect sense for the Ukranians to place their MLR back a ways from Crimea – at least out of long MLRS range – to obligate the Russians to come to them and step at least a little bit away from their base of supply.

There is also the road situation to consider. Much has been made of the hardness or softness of the ground, the fabled spring thaw/Russian mud, but the simple truth is that any army greatly values roads. The Roman empire’s roads were the backbone of its empire simply because it allowed its armies to move about quickly. Even in the relatively open terrain of eastern Ukraine it’s highly desirable to control the major roads – as evidenced by the Russian’s advance towards Melitopol in the first 24 hours being up highway E105, that runs parallel to the coast. Tanks can cross almost any terrain, but the supply trucks that feed them have a bit more trouble; even rugged military vehicles. Thus, if you consider the layout of the major highways north of Crimea, you can see that the Russians are a bit limited in options if they wish to maintain a speedy advance and not get overly bogged down:

Melitipol can obviously be bypassed if Kherson and Kakhovka cannot be taken, but even with control of a bridge crossing it will be of much more limited use without free use of the highway that runs through Melitopol.

Thus, controlling those southernmost Dneiper bridge crossings (or, in the worst extremity, blowing them completely,) and controlling the gap between Melitipol and the river are key to containing the Russian thrust from Crimea and preventing Ukrainian forces from being flanked and isolated.

Tonight, this appears to be the most crucial part of the battle.

Other notes:

1. Russian amphibious capability can’t effectively bypass the need to hold a bridge – it can put a smaller force in a flanking position to help take one, but if they could feasibly keep one supplied with ferry runs around Crimea, the Russians wouldn’t bother fighting for a bridge.

2. Ukraine’s choice to fight for the Eastern part of the country, despite being so badly outflanked and on unfavorable terrain, makes sense if you consider it’s the heart of both their industrial AND agricultural industries. Losing Ukraine east of the Dnieper would be devastating.

This concludes the Red Arrows part of the explanation. If nothing else, understand that the most significant thing here is that the red arrows actually still matter. Ukraine is currently holding its own in a conventional, force-on-force fight with Russia and that’s significantly better than anyone expected.

Bear in mind the above info might have been rendered obsolete before I finished typing it. Part 1 goes up now for that reason; I now write part 2.

Northern Flank, Brick Tank

Once again, the roads explain almost everything about the fighting in the north of the country:

Kharkiv is a road hub so major that it played a big role in multiple battles throughout history; and while Sumy grants access smaller highways but Russian maneuver forces will want to hold both cities/highways to protect their flank and lines of communication (i.e. roads) back to friendly territory – because there are confirmed Ukranian armored units in Kharkiv. This translates to a powerful maneuver force that could absolutely succeed at an attack designed to cut said lines of communication and/or flank Russian forces. Without Kharkiv the Russians will be hard pressed to quickly and effectively race southward to outflank forces defending the eastern border.

Flanking Kyiv is a concern as well, but less of one because of its sheer proximity to the Belarusian border (Russian units should be nearing artillery range of Kyiv now,) but also because Kyiv needs to be actually taken, held and controlled for the Russians to achieve their primary goal of decapitation (and subsequent regime change.) Thus outflanking Kyiv isn’t going to massively help because Russia will face a nasty urban fight anyways, and because holding Kyiv was always non-negotiable for the Ukrainians they will have sequestered a very significant number of supplies in their city and well-fortified and hid them. Russia clearly committed to a fast, quick operation to kill/imprison the current government (and destroy the Ukrainian Armed Forces as completely as possible to ensure any future revolution can be easily destroyed) and thus avoid the costs of a prolonged occupation. Given credible reports from Russia itself that young Russian men are being forced to sign conscription papers at the border itself, this makes sense – Russia does not have the sheer professional manpower to effectively occupy Ukraine and conscription is extremely unpopular with the Russian people.

From what I can tell the Ukrainians have reserved their best units for the north of the country and for good reason; as devastating as losing Eastern Ukraine would be, losing Kyiv would spell the end of the Ukrainian nation as a free state and people. Between this and the apparent bloody tenacity of the defenders the Russians have simply been unable to break through either Sumy or Kharkiv – and this is without the fighting actually entering the cities proper yet! Even if the Russians – by dint of heavier application of indiscriminate firepower or more fresh reserves – manage to batter the Ukrainians well enough to force them back into the cities, they will have to go after them if they want full control of the roads to keep advancing and lines of supply/communication safe. Urban fighting is ugly, and given the conviction of the civilian populace it would be very ugly. I don’t want to say that maneuver “doesn’t matter” up here, but so far it doesn’t look like the Russians really can maneuver out of the need to take these cities. Remember that they are racing the clock here; Ukrainian reserves are mobilizing, civilians are signing up to fight en-masse and as Ukraine’s chances seem better with every passing hour the willingness of the West to take risks to keep resupplying them will grow, and Russian attritive losses will mount.

This matters greatly in the morale equation, as well – Russia’s conscripts are draftees dragged from their normal lives at gunpoint. Bad enough normally; but much, much worse when they’re being sent into an active warzone against a competent and tenacious foe. Ukraine’s reservists, volunteers and civilian militia, on the other hand, are fighting not just for their nation, but for homes and families that are, in most cases, right at their back. Russian difficulties on Day 1 may somewhat be attributed to a professional force that was told (and had decent reason to expect) that they would roll over the Ukranians swiftly; the speed and design of the Day 1 attack indicated at least some expectation of that strategy’s success. They have clearly been disappointed in that regard.

Speaking of conviction, morale, and competence, the things witnessed through Twitter, darkly, on Day 1 are significant enough to warrant their own discussion. But first, a vitally important discussion of materiel concerns – what matters, and what does not.

 “Muh IADS”

Both the media and my own friends have, with surprising regularity, illustrated their pessimism of Ukraine’s chances in the opening few hours with the simple phrase - “their air defenses collapsed in an hour! An hour!” To which I invariably replied: “WHAT defenses?”

When multiple generations pass where the only serious wars fought by the first world are vastly asymmetric ones that pit powerful, sophisticated air forces against antiquated air defenses in limited-scope campaigns, this misunderstanding is inevitable. The collapse of a country’s air defenses is unconsciously associated with inevitable defeat from the air. This impression is grossly incorrect in the case of the Russo-Ukranian war for multiple reasons, chief among them 1. The Ukranian air-defense “system” never really existed in the first place and 2. Russia’s capabilities in the air, while formidable, are nowhere near equal to the standard set by the United States in particular and NATO in general, especially in a full-scale symmetric war.

First, Ukraine’s air defenses. Like so many former Soviet Republics, their air defense assets mostly consisted of legacy Soviet equipment; except because of prior corruption/poverty and later hostility they never had the opportunity to significantly upgrade those legacy systems, either via aftermarket purchase from Russia or through domestic development efforts (save a single homebrew upgrade to their SA-3 systems.) Missile defenses come in many sizes (and corresponding ranges;) from “theater-defense” systems that can protect significant portions of an entire country to small tactical systems that can shoot on the move and protect tanks from marauding attack helicopters. Crucial to understand is that these systems build upwards, like a brick wall – you can use the lowest tiers without the upper ones, but rarely if ever the other way around. (This is precisely what the US has done for decades with Patriot and why there’s crash programs underway to rectify it.) The reason is that big, powerful SAM systems are also big targets that cannot hide very easily, and thus are relatively simple to destroy by simply saturating their defenses; shooting enough missiles at them that they cannot shoot down all the incomings. A modern Integrated Air Defense System is a sophisticated, networked “system of systems” that weave together like chainmail; combining airborne and ground-based radars, fighter planes and an interlocking network of ground-based missile launchers; with short-range mobile systems serving as point-blank point defense against ground-skimming cruise missiles targeting the larger missile batteries.

Ukraine had none of this. Their S-300 systems were not just laughably dated (and thus very susceptible to Russian jamming and ECM) but were also literally built by the Russians and so amounted to not much more than targets. This goes double due to the relative lack of smaller missile systems to provide them point-defense. Ukraine did start this fight with a handful of SA-15 Gauntlet (Russian name “Tor”) systems which are actually still pretty decent mobile-tactical systems, as well as point-defense systems, but using them to protect big, poorly-mobile batteries that probably would struggle to acquire and engage a single target anyway would just be a moronic waste of them. Much the same goes for their other systems; the SA-3 and SA-4s. If these are still alive and fighting out there, more power to them, but they’re trailer-towed systems and thus have all the disadvantages that Ukranian towed artillery suffer on a modern battlefield where computers are doing the heavy lifting of locating enemy shooters and mailing death in their direction. Additionally, they are short-ranged systems; effectively tactical in their reach.

This almost total dearth of real SAM capability (against an opponent like Russia) translates into bad news for their air force. The Ukrainian air force was pretty small to begin with, but the inability to engage incoming cruise or ballistic missiles with any real reliability – plus the loss of strategic depth innate to Russia getting to surround Ukraine on four fucking sides – meant their air force had no real refuge. If your airbases cannot be put outside of the enemies reach they must be shielded from it, and Ukraine had no real option for that. In fact, the fact that Ukraine’s air force generated even a single sortie – much less the multiples they actually have – is as much due to Russia’s odd choices as Ukraine’s tenacity. (More on this later.)

Now, against an air force like the United States, or NATO (but I repeat myself) this dearth of defensive capability would indeed result in another Highway of Death; a dire replay of the brilliant and brutal airpower campaign in the Gulf War.

But, ladies and gentlemen, the United States’s equal the Russian Federation fuckin’ ain’t.

FLY TRUE, FIM-92

If you uttered “Muh IADS” don’t feel bad, because I’m currently sniggering at more than one OSINT-discord know-it-all who told me I was wrong about exactly what we’re seeing play out in Ukraine because they’re a LockMart engineer and know more than the plebs. What they didn’t know, apparently, was how to pay attention to Russia’s air campaign in Syria... which was mostly conducted with dumb bombs, not Precision Guided Munitions.

This isn’t that surprising – despite their seeming modern ubiquity, even the United States maintains significant stockpiles of old-fashioned iron bombs, because they are cheap. PGMs are fucking expensive and in a full-scale war of the kind we’re seeing play out in Ukraine; one scaled proportionate to US forces, the US would be using unguided munitions whenever possible as well. This is significantly worse for Russia; because despite a great deal of modernization and stockpiling, employing PGMs against tactical targets is a hell of a lot more complicated than just point-and-click. The conflict that put PGMs on the map as the new wunderweapon, the Gulf War? Most of the real carnage inflicted on Iraqi maneuver units – i.e. vehicle columns – were made with unguided cluster munitions or MK82 Snake-Eyes. Smartbombs had plenty of problems – just because you could find a target didn’t always mean you could guide a weapon to it, as illustrated by the problems in the “scud hunt:”

This is why a significant chunk of the F-35’s cost is invested in that dome housing a terrifying witch-eye sensor laced with eldritch power that lets it find one asshole hiding in a bush from 35,000 feet. This is also why planes like the A-10 – and, for that matter, any attack helicopter in existence – still exist. There is still a need for aircraft that can go down into the weeds and get very, very close to a target; not just to hunt for targets on their own, but also to bring in fire with pinpoint precision on targets to support troops in contact – often with unguided munitions like guns or dumbfire rockets. The problem with this is that to do it, you have to fly low, where every asshole with a rifle is shooting at you. The IL-2 is fabled as the most produced warplane of all time, but it’s never mentioned why – it was shot down so much. And yet, Stalin still threatened the factory foreman personally to increase production because despite that loss ratio, it was still cost-effective. The A-10 was designed in the 60s, and that’s effectively the kind of plane it is. And the fact that NATO isn’t ditching their Apache attack helicopters anytime soon – despite having the F-35 and it’s Eye of JDAM – indicates that they think there’s a real operational niche for that still as well.

Well, folks, in case you didn’t notice, the Russians don’t have an F-35. But they DO still have lots of attack helicopters, and SU-25 attack jets. They also have less money, less sophisticated air-to-ground sensors, and simply put, less practice in calling in supporting CAS fire from jets. This isn’t surprising, given Russian force doctrine has always favored ground-based fires (viz. artillery) over airpower for tactical/operational fires. Russian Tupolevs were performing medium altitude level-bombing attacks with dumb bombs in Syria; classic WWII style attacks – to save on precious PGMs. Sure, a big Serious War means they’ll be much more willing to expend PGMs, but they’ve also got many more important targets to hit with them... and due to the frugality in Syria required to save that stockpile for, well, now, they haven’t nearly as much experience at ground-to-air control.

Simply put, Russian tactical airpower was always going to be leaning heavily on attack helicopters and SU-25s relying at least in part on unguided or short-ranged weapons.

And that brings them into the MANPAD envelope.

Shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles aren’t magic; they have lousy range, can’t hit anything above 10,000 feet or so and their seekers are small, cheap and primitive compared to anything else. But they make up for this by being so small and portable they can be anywhere. Many MANPAD shots will be juked by flares or IR jammers; but if troops know how to employ them right (and video from the war I’ve seen myself indicates the Ukranians do) they’re still going to rack up the kills.

Ukraine can’t do fuck-all to stop bombing of stationary targets like bridges, barracks, ammo dumps, etc. They can’t stop an SU-35 at 35,000 feet any more than they can stop a high subsonic cruise missile. But that’s not the firepower that inflicts steady attrition on infantry and armored forces; the kind of firepower that really grinds down and decimates a force.

If attack helicopters are the cost-efficient, attritable way to move mud, then MANPADs are the cost-efficient way of shooting back at them. And the Ukrainians have lots of them – and as video from the first day of war showed clearly, they’ve been well-trained in how to use them properly.

This is far from optimal, of course – major maneuver cross-country with just MANPADs for air cover is still a miserable, brutal thing (lol Avenger) – but nonetheless, the Ukrainian forces are not helpless against Russian airpower.

Part 4 incoming. Hold tight.

Competence, Conviction and Morale

Something you probably heard about that I haven’t mentioned but in passing is the fighting at Hostomel (aka Anatov) airport, where yesterday Russian VDV (airborne) troops took the airport only 15km north-west of Kyiv in a heliborne operation, only to get Arnhem’d (a constant risk with any airborne operation) when the Ukranians promptly bombarded, then counter-attacked and crushed their little salient before they could start landing reinforcements in transport planes. Information (again, Twitter OSINT but apparently credible) indicates that the VDV lost several choppers on the way in, at least a few of them to Ukrainian MiG-29s, and during the assault on the airport the Ukranians were able to generate a sortie with one of their SU-24s to hit the airport.

I didn’t mention this before because, despite being dramatic, it wasn’t of major strategic interest once the attempt was crushed. Had the Russians been able to quickly build up a bridgehead, it would have been a big coup for the Russians; getting them to Kyiv much faster without having to fight their way there. But that required, above all, speed. To use an airport it’s not enough to physically possess the runway; you need to make sure nobody shoots the thing while rather delicate, thin-skinned transport planes are landing and taking off on it. That means you have to control a few kilometers around the airport as well, so sneaky lads with MANPADs or 81mm man-portable mortars can’t get enough to nail transports. Damage that would be survivable while on the wing is often fatal during take-off, and while landings are a bit more survivable a trashed, burning plane on the runway presents a problem for future air ops.

And even if they’d been able to get enough lightly-armed airborne infantry onto the airfield in time to do that, they’d still have the problem of, oh, all the heavier artillery in Kyiv, only 15km away.

There’s also the fact that the Russians 1. did not put every Ukrainian airbase and/or aircraft out of commission before it took off and 2. didn’t provide their airborne assault with a close air escort, nor a BARCAP over the airfield to cover the paratroopers. One or the other is understandable; USGOV reported 160~ missiles fired between the opening 4AM salvo and the follow-up attacks, and to properly knock out a single airbase can easily require forty or fifty munitions. Given the small size of the Ukrainian Air Force it’s understandable that they declined to work over their airfields that hard, but in that case their failure to run off a few cheeky lads in MiG-29s hugging the deck to avoid the S-400s over the Belorussian border is simply nuts. The fact that an SU-24 was able to sortie mid-day to attack the paratroopers mean the Russians 1. didn’t learn from losing those choppers and 2. didn’t have any plans to work over those airbases and render them unable to refuel and rearm aircraft with cheaper, much more affordable laser-guided bombs delivered via airstrike.

Sum total, the VDV got Arnhem’d because the Ukrainians were a hell of a lot less impressed with their shock-and-awe then they thought, and the Russians are apparently significantly less competent than most people, including myself, were expecting.

I was not expecting Ukrainian armored units to amount to much due to how dated their tanks are, how dated their armor-piercing ammo for those tanks are, and the sensors/technology advantage the Russians will have, to say nothing of training. Apparently the training the United States provided paid off handsomely because those old T-64s have made a decent accounting of themselves and even stopped Russian armored thrusts in maneuver combat in places, something that St. Javelin of Kyiv, despite her prowess, can’t do nearly as well.

Few people realize that the Ukrainian army has been receiving training from the United States for eight years since the Crimean annexation and invasion of the Donbas – not just on weapons systems, but on how to structure the army’s command and control itself. The Ukrainian army in 2014 was a joke; a government job in a horribly corrupt post-Soviet-collapse satellite state and thus just an excuse to strip-mine the carcass of the once mighty Soviet Army and sell it the highest bidder. It was every bit the generic caricature painted in that movie Lord Of War.

Eight years of training and support from the United States later, and it’s turned into a fighting force that has taken a massive haymaker on the chin from one of the world’s most powerful military’s and come out swinging. There’s a reason the US accomplished this with such modest aid, when twenty years of lavish expenditure on the Afghan army couldn’t produce a force that lasted for three fucking days against a bunch of 7th century goat farmers.

The Ukrainians give a shit.

Ukrainians are not just fighting for their government, nor their nation. They are fighting on their own soil to defend families and homes right at their back. They are fighting in their own cities, which the Russians, in characteristic Russian fashion, are raining indiscriminate MLRS fire on. These are people who overthrew their last pro-Russian President in 2014 out of disgust at his corruption and Putin-worship, for which Putin punished them with an invasion of their own soil; eight years of war, 14,000 dead Ukranians and the loss of most of their heavy industry.

In the first 24 hours on Twitter I saw clear evidence of this; not just in the tenacity of Ukrainian defenders that brutal Russian firepower could not dislodge, but directly in men lining up around the block, twice, to volunteer to fight, waiting to pick up their rifles. The Ukrainians say they’ve handed out ten thousand rifles in Kyiv alone and I believe them. I’ve seen at least one Russian supply truck with flat tires and a very, very dead Rooskie driver lying by it, and no other Rooskies nearby to chase away the guy with a cameraphone who was very close. All together that equates a rear-echelon supply driver that paused at a stop-sign and got lit up by some babushka with an AK. I’ve seen Ukrainian civilians verbally accosting and screaming at the Russian soldiers. I’ve seen Ukrainians gripping their heads in stunned anguish as they crouch over the bodies of family members killed by Russian MLRS strikes on their apartment buildings.

I have no doubt that the Ukrainian civilian volunteers will fight. They’re fighting in their own cities, watching their own fellow citizens get indiscriminately blasted by Russian rockets, and their families and homes are at their backs – literally, for those ten-thousand Kyiv citizens who just signed up to defend Kyiv.

As for the Russians, the situation is rather different. Despite a calm, efficient and pre-planned police crackdown, anti-war protests in multiple Russian cities quickly grew quite large. The “Mothers of Russian Conscripts” group (a sort of PAC for mothers that are pissed off when their young sons are drafted for their year of mandatory duty and come home in a body bag, as has happened before,) have said that conscripts are being actively used in Ukraine – and given that the Ukrainians have captured some, apparently not always in very, very rear-echelon lift-and-carry roles, either. The conscripts themselves, just judging by fitness and age, are clearly not cream of the crop, either, and yet Russia is using them in-country which tells you where their manpower situation is at.

Add to all this the simple psychological fact that the Russians clearly expected less resistance – at least enough to judge the risk of that airborne operation as worth it. Despite the fabled Russian indifference to casualties, they wouldn’t have risked the lives of two hundred odd elite airborne soldiers – who are rather scarce and expensive to train – if they hadn’t judged there to be a good enough chance of success. There’s no way that attitude didn’t percolate down to the troops themselves – if we in the West thought Ukraine’s chances were so grim, what do you think volunteer contract Russian soldiers who are neck-deep in the propaganda mill thought?

One noticeable facet of the war in the first 24 hours has been how there’s very little to any direct OSINT – i.e. some asshole filming on a smartphone and uploading it – of Ukrainian troops themselves, moving around, in contact, etc. I’ve seen an uploaded video of a Russian EW (ground jamming) unit that had clearly been hit by Ukrainian artillery – a unit member filming and uploading his own unit’s mission-kill. Twitter OSINT accounts are mostly agreeing not to spread any Ukrainian-side info they find to help them, but even THEY say they haven’t seen much if anything to censor. This message discipline – even among civilian volunteers – is the natural result of spending almost a decade fighting a prolonged “grey zone” war against Russia in which information ops are key. There’s a reason Ukrainian soldiers almost universally wear masks to hide their faces – it doesn’t pay to let Russian agents figure out who your mother is and what her phone number is.

Meanwhile, the Russian soldiers in Ukraine are reportedly using Tinder, so I’d say it’s safe to say that they seriously misread the mood of the locals that’d be greeting them. It went from “hot Ukranian chick want you liberate her long time” to “they have Grads too and they know how to use them fuck” in an awful goddamn hurry, didn’t it?

The upshot of all this is that the clock is definitely ticking against Putin. This war is massively unpopular in Russia, and the Ukrainians are fighting a hell of a lot harder, on average, then a good chunk of the forces Russia has to call upon as reinforcements and rear-echelon troops. This can absolutely make the difference; it not only increases Ukraine’s odds of holding out longer, but increases the stakes of prolonging the war significantly. Oh, Putin might not give a shit about ten gorillion protesters or even eleventy-billion but as this drags on the troops are going to be dragging their feet more and more.

And this is what we are just seeing now – in the first 24 hours or so. This fight is still relatively clean by Russian standards, by the scale of what could happen. If this goes ugly, the Ukrainians are highly likely to retreat to the cities and fight in them, and the Russians will have to send their weary troops, some of them unmotivated, in after them to fight Gronzy 2.0.

That’s the ~strategic~ consequences of the conviction and morale things I’ve seen through the OSINT window so far. And now that I’ve said it, it’s time to dig into what this war is going to mean for us. How it has already changed the world. And how Ukranian’s conviction is key to it.

He Who Honks Last

The last 24 hours has conclusively settled an awful lot of debates, and with it, an awful lot of insufferable think-tank types that I used to regularly insult on Twitter are currently reeling, clutching their heads, and asking how they could have missed how full of shit Joseph Nye was all these years. It’d be a lot funnier if the price of that wasn’t watching civilians being shelled as a free nation fights to the death to preserve their independence and sovereignty. It’s gratifying to see the neoliberals howling as History pops out of that grave Krushchev dug to bite them in the ass, sure. It’s fantastic to see those fools still whining about the INF staring in slack-jawed horror as MK1 War (Conventional Symmetric) kicks in the door screaming “DETER THIS!”

But of all the rude awakenings, the absolute best is the one received by those who so smugly lectured us on Russia’s Legitimate Security Concerns, as if Russia was worried about conventional land-launched missiles in Ukraine in a way they weren’t concerning ship/sub launched weapons from the Med, up to and including D-5 Tridents on a depressed trajectory tipped with thermonuclear MIRVs. It’s the people who patiently explained to me, a Greek-Orthodox man who sits next to native Slavic speakers from northern Greece in the same Greek-Orthodox church, that western Ukraine speaks Ukrainian, and Eastern Ukraine speaks Russian, and so that land is really Russian clay; trusting us to understand without explicit statement that the “rebellion” in Donbas isn’t a Putin sock-puppet but Totally Legit. And it’s especially the ones who claim the 2014 ousting of Putin’s puppeteered “President” was a CIA-led coup, and thus Ukraine’s desire to join NATO is clearly just an extension of a dire plot to “encircle” the biggest fucking country with the longest contiguous international border in the world.

I would pay almost anything to have seen the looks on their faces when Putin went on national TV and explained, for thirty minutes, why Ukraine – the entire country – was a filthy kulak capitalist NATO lie, why it didn’t deserve to exist at all, and why it was really rightful Russian clay from day one, so he was going to take it, by fire and force.

Not the Donbas. Not the Russian-speaking areas.

The entire fucking thing.

And then he threatened to nuke anyone who dared oppose him.

And then those same people; so many of whom had held forth quite smugly on the Tight Cultural Ties of Ukraine to Russia, of their disgust for their Rotten Corrupt Government, had to watch as the craven, dissolute, dejected people who Weren’t Really A Country Anyway, Much Less A Nation held off the much stronger, much wealthier, much much more vaunted juggernaut that they’d predicted would crush Ukraine in a day – in self-defense, of course.

If it’s not yet obvious how the Russo-Ukraine war changes everything, it soon will be once more video evidence of the carnage and the scale of combat comes out. It’s a return to the kind of fighting the world prepared for throughout the five decades of the Cold War but never ultimately ended up fighting. If the building tension between China and America was the 1930s tension between America and Japan replayed, then this is 1939; Germany crashing into Poland. Someone on Twitter said that a “senior administration official” told her to enjoy the last few hours of peace on the European continent for a long, long while, and he wasn’t wrong. The elaborate academic theoreticals have crumbled away to reveal the craggy face of might and conquest... and with it, the real truths of what give people an identity and what forges them into a nation. Common culture more even than common language, and common struggle above even that.

So pull up a ringside chair, oh statue avatar accounts. Gather round, international relations doctorate students. And watch the nation you made excuses for demonstrate that it wasn’t the victim of the useless neoliberals, but the dragon it fed. Watch very carefully as the AK Babushka you all laughed so hard at does more for her people and nation, and does more than anyone, especially the Russians, thought was possible to kick their asses and bleed them dry.

And then you can shut the fuck up.

48 Hour Update

At time of writing it is 1:30AM in Kyiv and according to all sources the major assault on Kyiv has begun and has been ongoing for over an hour at this point, with Kharkiv still fighting and not encircled, Suma encircled and bypassed (but still very probably resisting and denying the city center to the enemy, if not the primary road West,) and Maritipol is being torn apart by intense close-quarters combat. My prior predictions have mostly held up, with the exception of my air defense analysis – still accurate in the broad strokes but I underestimated the Ukrainian legacy inventory’s serviceability and as continuing friendly air defense activity indicates, so have the Russians.

Southern Front Update – struggle to contain breakthrough over the Dnieper River

This screenshot comes from this excellent new livemap which complements the one I linked previously as instead of showing rough unit/division AORs it shows front-lines and force concentrations. Given this Janes’s analysis largely agrees with it I’ll prefer it, esp. as Janes is working off the same information for the most part, just with less crowd sourced help and more subscription fees.

The analysis offered by the collator(s) of the map is accurate – having managed to solidify their bridgehead in Kherson and break through stubborn containment defense to the north of the city, the Russians are massing forces to pour over the second bridge in the area (which lies atop a dam) to exploit the breakthrough. This is bad, and we can expect to see the Ukrainians pull on assets that have been held back or in reserve till now – such as artillery, especially MLRS – to suppress and blast that chokepoint as hard as possible. Note this image shows a second blue line around Mykolaiv – not only does it benefit from another significant natural waterway barrier but crucially it controls the main highway north, which will make it an essential fallback position if a breakthrough is achieved out of Kherson proper. This crossing also has a rail bridge, making it even more crucial for Russian logistical sustainment past the Dnieper (rail can move much more freight in much worse weather than roads can.) Unlike Kharkiv to the north, there are no comparably huge cites in central Ukraine that control major road/rail exchanges to provide the defenders with the advantages of defensive urban fighting, so bottling Russian forces at this natural chokepoint is crucial and I expect the Ukranians will devote a tremendous amount of effort to doing so.

The Russians are also conducting heliborne insertions along the southern coast near Odessa but nothing indicates its in any serious strength; without follow-on forces those bridgeheads are little more than harassment.

As for the eastern drive, Melitopol is engulfed in incredibly violent close-quarters fighting and the Russians finally deployed their LST’s to land a force on the other side of the city. Whether to stop the defenders from escaping, stop Mauripol’s forces from reinforcing them or simply to try to create a double envelopment of the city’s defenders is unknown, but victory here will still require the Russians to take Mariupol to begin threatening the rear of the eastern Ukrainian forces on the Donbas border.

Northern Flank Update – the brutal city fight is now raging

Simple and ugly. The northern Ukrainian defense has done an incredible job thwarting Russian designs – Kharkiv is not only well defended but not encircled either; anchoring the Ukrainian right flank (to the extent that they are even trying to form lines and fight battles of maneuver in this terrain; but given how successful they’ve been at that despite the on-paper odds, I can’t rule it out. Sumy (or Suma, depending) has been bypassed and possibly taken, but reports are going either way at this point. Note the map of Sumy:

Note how the major highway skirts the northwest corner of city limits but doesn’t pass through the center. This means it’s possible for Sumy to be encircled and still partially contested but still leave the Russians in control of the roadway, allowing them to drive forces towards Kyiv to participate in the ongoing assault that started earlier tonight. However, if Sumy IS still contested, this means there could be a persistent threat to this roadway. This is especially true because I have seen two absolutely insane dashcam videos of civilians (incredibly) driving along large thoroughfares/roads weaving past defending Ukrainian armor only to end up in the middle of a gun duel between Russian and Ukrainian tanks, and one of these is confirmed to be from Kharkiv. This means there is a credible armored force in Kharkiv and if the Ukranians should choose to fall back a bit and use the urban terrain to combat that armor a thrust north-west to cut the H07 east-west highway out of Sumy is possible; esp. given that I had underestimated how many operational and useful tactical SHORAD systems the Ukranians likely started the war with (more on that in a future update.) Whether or not they could succeed with such a thrust given Russian fires/recon is dubious, and holding Sumy even moreso, but even a temporary interruption to the supply lines of the spearhead towards Kyiv would be highly disruptive. If the Ukrainians judge the fight for Kyiv desperate enough, they might do it.

Speaking of Kyiv, the situation on the northern front facing Belarus is a testament to the tenacity of the Ukrainian defense. Konotop was reported taken and lost by the Ukrainian military itself last night but is only encircled; those roads are still denied the enemy.

Chernihiv continues to be an incredible stumbling block to Russian advancements. The claim here about destroyed vehicles east of the city I believe highly likely just because of the disposition of the roads – much like with Sumy the roads skirting the outskirts of the city can be used – or at least risked - if the city is contested but not strongly held, but Chernihiv is strongly held and the movements I saw last night/early morning on Twitter et al indicated lots of maneuvering by Russian forces trying to work their way around these smaller towns/cities, so it’s credible that they tried an end-run and the defenders demonstrated their sight lines and firepower.

As said before, Kyiv proper has seen the first assault – or at least the bombardment preceding that assault - start in earnest around 6:30PM EST/1:30AM – and is now bracing for the ugly city fight I (and others) have predicted would come. Note the geography here – even if the thrust from the east reaches Kyiv the Dnieper provides a barrier protecting half the city and a few choke points – or none, if the Ukranians blow them behind them. Predictions are running rampant that Russia, badly behind schedule and facing a rapidly worsening international situation, will resort to as much force as possible, such as very heavy bombardment of the city proper and use of TOS-1 thermobaric MLRS systems.

President Zelensky of Ukraine, from Kyiv, said that tonight is the crucial night; the night when Russia will strain with all its might to break through the tenacious Ukrainian defense in every area – the Kherson bridgehead, Melitipol and of course Kyiv himself.

Given the way things are going, I believe he is right.

There is much more going on, much more to say, but I need to eat and I’m scared to look away from Twitter for ten minutes, worried that Kyiv might not be there when I look back. More updates soon.

UPDATE@ 8:21PM EST/3:21AM Kyiv

The Anatov Company’s official corporate twitter account (the same company that owned the airport NW of Kyiv that Russian paratroopers tried to take on the first day) reports that Russian VDV is conducting an assault on the airfield at Vasylkiv; about 22 kilometers south-south-east of Kyiv proper. Sightings of over 150 attack and transport helicopters being massed in a field in Belarus were made many hours ago (commercial satellite imagery) and I’ve seen earlier reports that those choppers were in the air around Kyiv, so the landings here are almost certainly that previously sighted force. This is one of the largest heliborne assaults ever conducted in history, but even with that massive commitment, deploying behind the city – even if they’re in 152mm artillery range of forward Russian troops – still leaves them vulnerable and without much heavy weapons to serve a long-term blocking role, so this is almost certainly a bridgehead to secure an LZ for follow-on paratroopers. This would track with Ukrainian claims that at least one (and more claimed) IL-76 transport has been downed tonight – the Ukranians claim by one of their SU-27s (possible) but it could also be the work of surviving Ukrainian air-defense. Also seeing claims attributed to the Ukrainian Army that the saboteur/infiltrator in false uniform activities seen yesterday are still in use on the Kyiv front. This is happening amid very heavy fighting in Kyiv proper. Fortunately the Ukrainians can read a map too and they had plenty of forewarning that a heavy helicopter assault was incoming; and given the small fleet of American ISTAR assets (including AWACS) monitoring the fighting from the Polish border, it’s likely they passed on warning to Ukraine while the choppers were in the air – if not from radar tracks, then from COMINT intercepts.

This is indeed the crucial hour. Expect the situation to change by the hour, if not the minute.  

 Day Three Update – Ukraine Survives The Night

Ukraine has survived their crucial hour. Melitipol has apparently fallen after heavy urban fighting, and the coastal roads around it seem barely defended; but in a stunning reversal the Ukranians have re-taken Kherson. An attempted drive straight from the bridges over the Dnieper towards Mykolaiv – with the assistance of an attempted VDV vertical envelopment (i.e. flanking by deploying troops behind the enemy with helicopters) was defeated soundly, and the Ukrainian counterattack pushed deep into Kherson. The Russian Dnieper bridgehead is now in serious danger.

To the north, the attack on Kyiv has been soundly rebuffed. The massive airborne operation clearly failed, with the follow-on paratrooper drop seeing two IL-76 transports shot down during ingress – i.e. with their paratroopers on-board. This has actually been confirmed by United States DoD, and given their persistent AWACS presence from Poland, they’re in a position to know. Russian airborne forces have taken heavy casualties in only the first 48 hours.

Even more shocking – there are now multiple sightings on social media video posts of Russian units stranded on highways due to fuel exhaustion. Before I could even get the chance to write about the logistical constraints in greater detail, they have already manifested in dramatic fashion. This CSIS paper from last month talks about the issues extensively; many of the predictions herein have already been borne out and I expect the rest to be in short order.

Before trying to cover the strategic situation further I want to try and cover some important background info as well. I’m going to write fast as I can and hope I can at least pace this entire mess. Upcoming updates:

1. Why the “Ghost of Kyiv” is bullshit (but I believe it) + why the Ukrainian air force is still alive

2. Why Putin’s actions have shifted the bedrock under the West and can be expected to (and already have) galvanized serious aid to Ukraine and outright embargoes on Russia that can and will have rapid operational effects

3. Why Ukrainian air defense is still alive and will remain a threat

Writeup 1 – The International Angle

Whilst the current events have struck the morons mercifully mute, the usual midwits are still happily rolling perfectly spherical armies around on frictionless battlefields; and chief among their sins is ignorance of the incredible rapidity with which serious international resistance has coalesced against Russia. France, one of the most prolific arms and military equipment exporters on Earth – as well as a nuclear power – have not only promised Ukraine money and military aid, but publicly said that the war is going to last a while. That’s not a prediction – that’s a promise, from the leader of a nation that can absolutely pour enough supplies and military materiel into Ukraine to make good on it. And he is far, far from alone. In the most unusual reversal, Germany has approved the transfer of hundreds of German-made anti-tank rockets from the Netherlands to Ukraine. This, from a country hell-bent on sucking at the energy teat of Russia, contributed only helmets to Ukraine, and even blocked the transfer of Latvian howitzers to Ukraine on the basis that the obsolete Soviet-era weapons had once belonged to East Germany. Sanctions, having failed to deter this crisis, have been discarded in favor of actual embargoes – the EU has completely banned its member states (and companies therein) from doing any aviation business whatsoever with Russia, retroactive to old contracts, which means that every Airbus aircraft in the country will soon be effectively grounded. If the US follows suit (and it probably will) it takes every Boeing jet with it, too. Russia’s state airline, Aeroflot, will be effectively grounded – which won’t matter in the UK, which has already banned Russian aircraft, commercial or private, from its airspace.

These drastic shifts only took 48 hours to develop. The meteoric rise of resistance contrasts sharply to the swift plunge of Russian readiness, with multiple videos on social media showing Russian units stranded for lack of fuel; showing Russia’s supply lines are already over-strained. It is no wonder that Putin is clearly nervous. He should be. Because as dramatic as the reversal of the world’s previously simpering treatment of Russia is, it’s not surprising, and, in fact, there’s every reason to believe it will continue to strengthen. To understand why, you must realize that Putin is terrifying the world. He’s just pulled out a grenade in the midst of a knitting circle meeting.

“The End Of History”

Naturally, this all revolves around nukes.

Way back when, when the plains were dark with buffalo, wars happened fairly often. Not the wars the zoomer generation know; brush wars, counter-insurgencies, long wastes of money in faraway places. Capital W War, like the one we’re seeing now; where hundreds of thousands of men clashed in desperate battles and the fate of entire nations hung in the balance. Every generation could expect at least one; because there was always some king(dom) who was on top of the economic pile at the time and figured they should grab while the getting was good. The only thing keeping them somewhat in check was that the world was what the eggheads call “multipolar;” i.e. once you got stuck in with one opponent, your Traditional Enemies (viz. anyone you’d shared a border with for centuries) were guaranteed to jump in and take some kidney shots while you were too busy to fend them off. (France cannonballing into the American Revolutionary War and the multi-nation intervention against the Ottoman Empire during the Greek Revolution are two classic examples of this.)

Then WWII ended.

Yes, ended. WWII wasn’t the biggest upheaval; it was in many ways a re-run of WWI only one generation later, with the previous no-holds-barred, every-country-for-himself mass melee evolving as larger and larger alliances formed, which is how, eventually, voting one Archduke off the island spiraled into a superalliance vs. superalliance showdown in ten seconds flat. (Zoomers won’t get this joke.) The world-changing shift is the one that ended WWII, when the land of the Rising Sun encountered a falling one at 8:16AM on August 6th, 1945. This changed the bi-polar nation-state (of nature) dynamic from a high-noon showdown to a Mexican standoff now known as the Cold War. You know the rest; both sides shit-tested and proxy-warred against each other for decades, but, ultimately, it turned out that neither side was totally insane and they both wanted to live. Before nukes, starting a war ran a risk of it ending with enemy forces marching into one’s palace and hanging one from the lobby chandelier, but within a generation nukes had made it a nigh-certainty – along with the guaranteed effective destruction of one’s country, and thus one’s immortal legacy as a leader. The Cold War established, through many decades and various crises, that the severity of the threat was actually sufficient to counteract the loss of wiggle room for human error that’d buttressed all prior nations since the dawn of recorded history. That last part is important – it’s not often mentioned by the erudite academics from their ivory Think Tanks, nor in The Literature, but one of the strongest legacies of the Cold War is that Mutual Assured Destruction actually does deter nuclear use, and that nobody is keen to let the genie out of the bottle. Be it a lone king or a vast national government, everyone weighs risk vs. reward, and since nobody’s fought a nuclear war before, but plenty have abstained from one, the sure bet appeals more than the unknown gamble. Thus the Sword of Damocles became a hand grenade, and the thrones of the world, effectively unassailable.

And then the Cold War ended, and lo, did the midwits rejoice. For now, they had a stable, peaceful world; girdled by the gentleman’s dueling agreements that limited things to pistols in order to keep the artillery away – but now the other fellow had tripped and fallen, his cannon was rusty and he was asking for a loan! The best of both worlds had arrived; the peace of the standoff without the shadow of the Grenade hovering overhead. The epic tides and flows of History had ended, and now the future was safe, beige and covered with sponsored advertising.

And so heady was that wine that many of those midwits remained drunk on it right up until Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border a few days ago.

You see, it was pretty clear to anyone intelligent at least fifteen years ago that China was not keen on joining the gentleman’s club, and wasn’t content with puffing cigars and the occasional gentlemanly three-paces-turn-and-fire stuff. The same for Russia; greatly weakened, some limbs shorn, but still lugging its legacy Grenade. In other words, the world was multi-polar again – perhaps not the multi-nation cagematch it’d been pre-1900s but multi-polar nonetheless.

And now, the Grenade of Damocles had completely removed any penalty for great gambles – you might lose your stake, but never your shirt. Which, in turn, meant that the sanctified International Norms had lost the altar that supported them. They lived on as religion, shared fiction who’s power relied on mutual belief, much like the US Dollar.

The loud noise we all heard a few days ago was Putin hurling that rulebook through the plate-glass window before smashing a chair over Ukraine’s head, whaling away as the other Gentleman stared in mute shock. In one move Putin swept away The Rules and all but laughed as he flashed his Grenade; confident in it’s paralyzing power.

And now the leaders of the world are, at long last, getting off their numb asses and scrambling with great haste to adapt; to prevent this terrifying new two-tier world where those with Grenades can do anything they please to those without, and will naturally race to do so before said hapless ones manage to scrounge up their own. War, capital-W War, is back on the menu, and just as oxygen cannot selectively exist here or there in a volume, but only be present or absent, so to can War only kindle somewhere if everywhere is flammable.

The leaders of the world are scared.

And they damn well should be.

NOOK NOOK

Yesterday, someone in the Kremlin was instructed to take a Topol-M ICBM out on its transporter-erector-launcher truck and take it for a walk around Moscow a few times – and when not enough drivers uploaded giddy smartphone cam video to Tik-Tok fast enough, some Russian sockpuppet accounts started signal-boosting it, occasionally with poorly photoshopped “invasion triangles” on it as if it was driving around in Ukraine just for funsies. As gauche as this gun-flashing was, it was also redundant, given the explicit nuclear threat Putin issued to all would-be interventionists at the beginning of his invasion and the major nuclear exercises he timed to coincide with the invasion. Most stunning, however, was the threats issued to Sweden and Finland should they dare join NATO; making it explicit that what Putin is doing to Ukraine right now could befall anyone, anyone who makes a move to prevent the possibility. And indeed, the powerhouses of NATO are already explicitly worried that the taking will not stop, and as a Twitter search for “Taiwan” makes clear, it is lost on nobody what the global consequences of the New Rules could be.

But just as bad is the obsolescence of the old playbooks. The “rules” of the Cold War’s Mexican Standoff were explicit from the get-go; kill me, I take you down with me. How to work with and around that, how far you could push, where exactly the red line lay; it took decades to find out. It’s the difference between knowing the rules to chess, and knowing how to actually play it without getting your ass kicked. The smug assurance of the International Normists is that of the chess grandmaster who has read all the books and knows all the Queen’s Gambits; an accomplished player of a known game.

Now Putin has upset the gameboard and smashed it over Ukraine’s head, making it explicit that the actual rules changed long ago, and everyone was just persisting with the old game because it was so much more convenient than rolling dice under the long shadow of the Grenade of Damocles. Putin is the first leader to cast that consensus away since it was formed, and now everyone else has to ask how many more gentleman’s agreements he will cast aside. Because under Mexican Standoff rules, anyone without a gun is a fair target. Tactical nuclear employment on Ukraine, for instance – what are you going to do about it, NATO? Nuke me? Are you willing to risk your very existence to defend Ukraine?

This question strikes at the heart of the NATO alliance; which exists only insofar as it huddles under the Nuclear Umbrella. The bi-polar world of yesteryear formed in the shadow of two colossi squaring off as everyone else scrambled to pick one side or another, for if they didn’t they’d be in the crossfire when the shooting started. Now, however, the standoff isn’t guaranteed; and America is squaring up with the new kid on the block, China. But everyone still has grenades to throw, so will America really risk that exchange to protect nations whom aren’t in the line of fire with China, nations who aren’t intrinsically interested and salient to America’s struggle for survival? It’s far less clear cut than before. Everything is. And the dangers inherent to those unknown unknowns are so great, so compelling, that it’s chiefly responsible for many midwits – and some genuinely smart people – mistaking them as the ironclad Rules, rather than the playbook. To dive so deep, so fast into that dark pool, as Putin has, is patently insane by the ~norms~ of the West, and it forces them to ask; how far is he willing to alter this deal?

How far will he go?

Everyone Signals with their nukes, of course, but ever since History Ended that was just the Teller-Ulam Gambit, from page 47 of Play International Chess For Fun and Profit!, as traditional and wholesome as dad cleaning his guns on the kitchen table waiting for his daughter’s prom date to walk through the door. Last week, driving that Topol-M around Moscow was about as exciting as putting a leash on it and taking it for a walk. But now, it’s waving a gun in everyone’s face while screaming “don’t think I won’t do it,” and for the first time in decades, the rest of the world has a little reason to wonder if he isn’t serious.

This, naturally, is unacceptable.

World Police – Plural

There used to be a solution – call the bouncer. The 8,000 pound gorilla called America would trundle on over, seize the miscreant, and beat the absolute hell out of him. So prodigious was his strength that he could make knees buckle just by leaning on them. But everyone truly believed in the Rules, and so deep down didn’t think he was absolutely necessary, not after History ended, since in a static world no new miscreants would spawn. The gorilla was gauche. He fitted himself for a suit, slimmed down, talked in gentle tones, imposed sanctions.

Putin, however, pines for the days when Glorious Rodina was bouncer of her own club, and this slim effete fellow clearly – as is now explicit – did not impress. So now the gentleman in the club must do something themselves. History has started again, as well, a whole new problem unto itself, but conveniently, two birds can be downed with one stone – the best way to stop any other miscreants who might fancy a go is to lay hands on Putin, beat the ever-loving tar out of him, and hurl him out of the club. Let him stagger down the street, bloodied and penniless, without a trade agreement or SWIFT connection or even a gas pipeline to his name, and let everyone see that the sheriff is back in town, and if he’s weaker now he’s still got plenty of like-minded fellows to deputize if the offense is egregious enough. If you want in the clubhouse, you behave, and if you fuck around, you’ll get tarred, feathered and dumped in the back alley with North Korea to starve.

It’s the obvious solution – and given how shaky Putin looks, they have every incentive to do it quickly before he gets any closer to pulling that trigger, deliberately or by accident.

Desperation

Exacerbating all the above considerations is Putin’s apparent weakness. It’s not simply the Russian army failing to terrorize the Ukrainians into an early surrender – as the midwits say, we’re barely 48 hours (now 52) into this conflict, and Russia’s greater endurance will take at least a little time to tell. But it already seems to be flagging, here and there. Russian riot police; who were expected to serve as enforcers and hostage-collectors, were thrown into the frontal assaults on Kyiv last night. Reports and evidence from all quarters continue to accrue as to the extent of Russian efforts to fool and/or coerce Russian conscripts to the frontline, and Putin has openly appealed to one of his most loyal allies, Kazakhstan, for troops to assist – and been rebuffed. For an army that has yet to commit ½ of its massed forces, this is a striking display of barrel-scraping, especially this early in the conflict. It’s becoming clear why Putin was so willing to take that plunge and why the nuclear threats continue to come; if the West piles on with enough military aid, even without direct intervention, Ukraine could very well bleed Putin dry.

There’s also the massive protests against the war across Russia – Russian propaganda acknowledges the futility of trying to truly and completely brainwash an entire populace when they have an internet connection in favor of generating so much noise that the people simply resign themselves to bitter cynicism and carry on, resenting their peasant status but not entertaining any idea of opposing it for lack of a universally-accepted Truth to rally to. This has worked in Russia since the Soviet Union collapsed – and now it is not. Kings concern themselves chiefly with the opinions of their Lords, not their peasants – but even peasants rebel when things get bad enough, and with the world set to embargo Russia more than Iran has been, things are absolutely headed towards “enough.” Putin desperately needs a fast victory, and the insane – if not nigh-suicidal – fervor of some Russian pushes probably owe to this.

A nervous man waving nukes around is even more alarming than a calm one, and that’s only going to incentivize world leaders to move faster; to force Putin to back off while he still has some chance of a face-saving exit. If he gets stuck in too far to withdraw... that’s a risk nobody need brave.

History Resumes

I know this is long, and perhaps overly metaphorical for the tastes of many, but it’s necessary to get into the headspace of the world leaders now calling the shots. Even if they were slightly scrambled instead of sunny-side-up, you now hopefully grasp the upheaval as personally as they do – you feel the way their very world has tilted, just as yours would if you woke up one morning to find your house had neatly inverted during the night without even the courtesy of asking your say-so. This is what History is – Mongols, Sea Peoples, Huns at the Gates. It is, in a word, change. History moves; and so it runs over those who stand still.

And now that Putin has made that loudly, painfully, explicitly clear even for the perpetual fools in the back of the room, you can damn well expect world leaders to get off their asses and move.

72 Hour Update @ 7PM EST

Sitrep, Maneuver/LOC:

• Ukranians are not only holding in the north but have actively flanked the Russian thrust from Belarus towards Kyiv and now credibly threaten Russian LOC back to their base of supply in Belarus.
• Thrust from the north-east continues to progress but only against heavy resistance and while this thrust has a highway back to Russia, resistance in Sumy is still confirmed to be active, which threatens it. Furthermore, Konotop continues to be held by Ukranians, and a crucial rail junction runs through there.
• The aforementioned convoy the Ukranians claimed to have trashed as it tried to skirt Chernihiv is confirmed, and not only that, an entire damned train carrying 52 Russian tanks tried to thunder-run the town and was destroyed for its trouble. Nothing better underlines how Russian ability to advance is integral to their control of key transport crossroads (and thus, cities) than this does.
• I have literally lost count of how many ambushed and destroyed Russian convoys I have seen just today. I don’t know if they’re all from the last 12~24 hours or if some date back to the opening hours. Russian losses are becoming truly significant. This rate of attrition is hard to fathom as sustainable.
• Russians have bypassed Melitipol in the south and are moving rapidly through the coastal area because the Ukrainians are lightly defending it; most likely ceding this ground to use the Dnieper River as their Main Line of Resistance. There appears to be staunch Ukrainian resistance at a city north-northeast of Martipol called Tokmak, because it controls a crucial crossroads. Whether or not this smaller town, surrounded by ideal tank country and fairly close to Russian LOC can long last is questionable, but controlling it will significantly slow any Russian attempts to move past it as their supply lines struggle along side roads and cross-country. This should buy the Ukrainians time to destroy bridges, roads, rail etc. behind them and reinforce whatever new line they have chosen, anchored with the Eastern Donetsk front blocking forces as their eastern flank and the Dnieper river as their western one. More detailed analysis on this to come ASAP.
• Russians continue to bite the barricades of Kyiv and that’s working out about as well as you’d expect.

Sitrep, Logistical/Intelligence:

• Russian logistics appear to be a complete clusterfuck. I have literally lost track of how many different videos I’ve seen of fuel-exhausted Russian vehicles so far. I wanted to detail this yesterday but ran out of time: the many people saying Russia must be “holding back” because ½ its troops aren’t deployed in-country yet don’t understand that road and rail can only move a finite amount of materiel a finite distance in a finite time; and with troops already in contact the Russians will have to choose either between sending in more reinforcements or more supplies for the troops already there. That vehicles are now running out of fuel seems to indicate that Russia chose the latter; gambling that, while Ukraine may have been unexpectedly resilient at first, one more good, violently hard push would crack the shell and end things quickly. This gamble failed last night when Ukraine not only held, but pushed back in crucial areas (such as the Kherson bridgehead,) and now they’re paying the price for that gamble.
• Due to the troops > fuel choice my gut instinct is that the units that were first in contact came in with their own “organic” supply – carrying supplies on their own combat vehicles (in bustle racks on tanks/IFVs and in the form of their own modest contingent of dedicated supply transports) and my friends have told me that OSINT evidence bears this out; knocked-out Russian tanks surrounded by an impressive amount of MRE packs and ammo spam cans strewn about when they brewed up. Given that we are readily approaching the 72 hour mark, this means the Russian troops first in contact are likely hors de combat simply from supply exhaustion, (as the increasing number of abandoned vehicles indicate,) so Russian attacks can be expected to falter the further they get from their own territory.
• The huge number of successfully ambushed Russian columns indicates that if American intelligence/ISTAR support has not been providing tactical level intel from the get-go, it is now. This most likely means RQ-180 stealth drones, equipped with Ground Moving Target Indicator technology, are operating in Ukrainian airspace. The intelligence being provided to Ukraine can now be assumed to extend to tactical target localization and cuing up to and including counter-battery targeting.
• Elon goddamned Musk has moved Starlink satellite terminals to Ukraine; providing them with an infrastructure-independent communications option. Combined with their own homegrown cyber capacity and extremely probable US support, this opens up a whole new option for communications, with security being provided by end-to-end encrypted third party software. This is a massive boon to the robustness of Ukrainian C4 capability and should not be under-estimated.
• Western aid continues to pour in over the Polish border and donated weapons and equipment are adding up very fast. I count 600+ more stinger missiles and a staggering 1200 Panzerfaust-3 anti-tank rockets as promised to Ukrainian forces. OSINT has already spotted RPGs with Bulgarian factory markings on them on the front lines, indicating how OSINT is only capturing a small fraction of the real aid pouring into the country.
• Mention has been made by some of deliberate and skilled Ukrainian propaganda operations being conducted. Although the people alleging this are known to me for a history of hostility towards Ukraine and sympathy for Russian propaganda claims, there’s reason to believe their analysis has some merit, esp. combined with other indicators like strict Ukrainian OPSEC (which may be benefiting from US cyber support, as well.) Given that both morale and international opinion has already been proven to be crucial in just the first 72 hours, this aspect of Ukrainian operational skill sets should not be dismissed; especially as they are currently dominating Russia in that regard.
• For various reasons, Ukrainian supply lines from the Polish border to central-central Eastern Ukraine should be considered fairly secure and not at serious risk of deep interdiction by Russian strike assets; as indicated by apparent Russian refusal to attempt such ops, curiously limited deep attacks against infrastructure with aviation strike assets and the persistent credible threat of Ukrainian air defense (see following.)

Sitrep: Strategic + OOB/Materiel

• Ukraine is now proven to have substantial surviving surface-to-air missile and aviation assets, both of which the Russians have failed to conclusively put out of action or even seriously attrit. Big update on this to come later. For now, the consequences of this are:

• Russia does not have air superiority and cannot operate without, risk even above the MANPAD envelope, in most of the country. A persistent short-medium range SAM threat from tactical maneuver (SA-8, SA-9, SA-13, SA-15s) and short/medium-range high mobility SAMs (SA-6, SA-11) is demonstrated to exist and may be assumed to be higher the further west, and the closer to the center of the country (distant from both Belarus and the coast) Russian assets go due to terrain concealment and increasing distance from Russian airborne and ground based standoff jamming support. The refusal (or inability) of Russia to commit serious, sustained attacks on Ukrainian airbases (preferring instead to attempt repeated small cruise missile attacks likely aimed at taking out assets on the ground) make Ukrainian claims of surviving and still operable S-300 systems more credible than I first believed. These will likely be held back in the Western part of the country, esp. further west than the Black Sea Coast, as that means Moldova + Romanian airspace (closed to Russia and of course the Russian fleet) channels enemy approach lanes and effectively increases strategic depth. The ever-rougher terrain – plus the obvious reluctance of Russian forces to conduct offensive operations too close to the Polish border – also increase survivability of these theater assets in this area, and allow them, in turn, to utilize the strategic depth and terrain features to make Western Ukranian airspace a hostile environment for Russia. Given their evident failures to properly provide CAP and/or SEAD protection to tactical air operations in eastern Ukraine, the ability of the Russian air forces to brave the persistent air threats further west are highly questionable.
• My previous assessment of Ukrainian tactical/maneuver SHORAD systems is likely erroneous given the demonstrated existence of them in OSINT footage and the demonstrated presence of surviving batteries by the surprisingly high volume of demonstrated intercepts taking place above (or what should be above) the MANPAD envelope. The answer to “how much of Ukraine’s legacy small road-mobile SAM force was actually refurbished to operational status before hostilities commenced” is now, at least, guaranteed to be “more than just the half-dozen Tor systems that were known.”
• Prevalence of Ukrainian air assets is murky. Both fixed and rotary wing operations, and both anti-air and anti-ground sorties are being generated, but how many and to what effect is hard to say. There is firm reason to believe (up to and including US DoD confirmation) that Ukraine has, between last night and this, downed four IL-76 transports. There are also claims that the Vasylkiv interceptor airbase, the same one targeted by the all-out effort paradrop last night, is actually still active as a MiG-29 base, and that a MiG from said base actually shot down one of the incoming IL-76s. I found this hard to believe given the high likelihood of that base being reduced by the initial Russian missile blitz and the obvious wisdom of dispersing assets and ops personnel from more exposed bases to more distant, protected ones further in the rear, but not minutes ago a missile attack was conducted on the base that resulted in a truly huge explosion and OSINT images seem to indicate it was, indeed, an attack on the base’s underground fuel bunkers. That 1. this had not already been conducted in the opening blitz and 2. the Russians decided to do it now makes it more likely that Ukrainian claims of successful A2A engagements are actually true. It should always be borne in mind that there is great propaganda and deceptive strategic value in claiming surface-to-air kills as actually air-to-air kills, esp. if the enemy is actually fooled (which might be the case here,) but taken all together with other staggering displays of Russian operational incompetence taken into account it is clear that nothing is impossible at this point.
• More detailed AD explanation to follow.

UPDATE ON PRIOR INFO @ 10:30

1. Further research casts doubt on all evidence of sustained Ukrainian air operations at Vasylkiv airbase. The two reported IL-76 shootdowns yesterday were corroborated by an AP Wire reporter citing high level contacts, but was later countered by another reporter citing a high-level contact. Cloud cover yesterday prevented any IMINT via commercial satellite and Ukrainian forces have only just approached the areas where the planes might have gone down. Likewise the missile strike near Vasylkiv hitting the fuel bunkers is also difficult to determine; nobody can geolocate the pictures of cratered underground tanks well enough and conflicting reports on the exact location of the huge fires continue to circulate.

In any case, it does not substantially impact the conclusions vis a vis the Ukrainian air force’s continued survival as that has been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt, but previously discussed information vis a vis very bad Russian screw-ups has to be shelved until data is clarified.

2. Previous information about Ukrainian flanking the Russian LOC from Belarus to Kyiv has been confirmed by @spuddus (Big Spud on discord) who geolocated this video showing an ambushed/destroyed Russian tank convoy by identifying the egg-shaped monument in the middle of a large traffic circle – lat/long: 50.95046, 29.88186.

This traffic circle lies on the north-west outskirts of Ivankiv, and is a crossroads for the main road into town, the P02 highway and the P56 highway, both of which are the primary road lines of advancement south from Belarus towards the Russian forces at Kyiv.

This is hard confirmation that the Russian forces driving on Kyiv completely failed to cover their flank and that Ukranian counter-offensives have successfully interdicted the Russian line of communication to Belarus.

SOUTHERN FLANK SWAG “ANALYSIS”

This matches perfectly with the information taken from that scribblemaps that is being run by Finnish-Language Twitter OSINT fellows. Same source refers to the Russians in the south trying to drive to the “Polohy/Komysh-zoria/Manhush line.” All three towns lie along the Konka river, which runs roughly northwest/southeast. It’s a squiggly beast that I eventually gave up trying to even roughly sketch out on the map for you, but suffice to say it’s long, winding, and in military terms more of a creek than a river. It’s not the Dnieper river; it’s very very bridgeable and/or snorkel fordable.

HOWEVER, Ukrainians are demonstrably destroying every smaller bridge they can, thus the river nonetheless offers them a barrier – something of immense value given that south-east Ukraine is mostly open flat fields; in other words, ideal tank country. Also, because of the highway that roughly follows its winding course, the settlements strung along it, in combination with the wooded areas that tend to follow its banks and watersheds, make for some modest cover against which Russian tanks will have to advance across wide-open areas. This is still not ideal – the Ukranians were, apparently, equipped with the old Javelin CLU, with a maximum range of about 2,500km, so Russian tanks should be able to out-range them with HE fire – but Javelin-armed infantry need not reveal themselves till hostiles enter range, and even after battle is joined and the lines defined, the cover improves their chances vastly. Given the terrain it’s about the best defense they could hope for, and unlike other rivers in the area, it anchors their right flank at Zaporizhzhia (a major city controlling a Dnieper crossing that benefits from a huge lake to its south-southeast that will limit the frontage available to the Russians to approach it,) and their left flank at Mariupol.

If Ukraine wants to extract their Donesk front forces before they are encircled, this line might buy them the time to do so. My assumption from day 1 was that those forces were unlikely to maneuver and may simply have prepared with as much supplies in situ as possible, given that their proximity to Russian air and artillery fire would likely pin them down. But given the larger supply issues Russian forces are facing, and the fact that I underestimated how many mobile SHORAD units they have to cover their maneuvers, it’s possible that they could brave Russian tactical airpower and that Russian artillery units may be running into ammo issues, despite being inside their own lines of supply. (it’s been mentioned by Ukranian command themselves that the Donestk from has been under constant bombardment since initiation of hostilities, exactly as one would expect, to pin those forces down.) Ukraine’s disappointment of Russia’s planning likely extends to their logistics, and after three days of incredibly tenacious resistance in multiple other cities raising the demand for heavy artillery/MLRS expenditures its likely the nearby ammo dumps are sorely taxed.

These are all theoreticals, of course. I don’t know, qualitatively, what the state of any of those variables really is. But, relatively, if Ukraine wants to extract their eastern border forces north-west to form a new front from Dnipro (on the Dnieper) north along the E105 highway to Kharkiv, around now might be the best opportunity they’ll have – when Russian initial stockpiles have been obviously drawn low, before fresh stockpiles can move over congested road/rail links that were pushing in fresh forces rather than fresh supplies, and after three days of exhausting urban fighting for the enemy while those Eastern forces mainly sat in dugouts listening to artillery pounding on the roof.

90 HOUR SITREP @ 3:03PM

Northern Front

1. Kyiv is encircled. Tracking the real situation around Kyiv is very difficult due to the nature of the information flow but it’s clear that the Ukrainian Army has fought hard for every inch of Kyiv’s left flank, and have inflicted significant casualties while doing so. A significant Russian force has been seen advancing on Kyiv in commercial satellite imagery, presumably down the P02 highway. This information fits with constant imagery claimed to be from Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin – all suburbs right off the north-western side of Kyiv; indicating a Russian fighting advance south. The point of this would be to flank and eventually encircle Kyiv. Whether or not they can maintain that encirclement against a dedicated break-in attempt is anyone’s guess. I have not been able to find any evidence or information on serious clashes for towns significantly north-west of Kyiv; i.e. not in its suburbs. Either the Russians belatedly secured their flank and the Ukrainians faded without contesting the ground, or it could mean they have not attempted to secure it. No way of knowing. Another hard fight for Kyiv is incoming.

2. Russia’s westward push from the Russian border is still a disaster, as Ukrainian resistance in Konotop, Sumy and elsewhere continue to deny critical road junctions to the Russians, complicating their supply lines. This area has seen the most videos of fuel-starved vehicles being abandoned and soldiers looting stores for food. Russians are demonstrably leveling the town, and multiple videos show continued active fighting (and destruction of Russian armored vehicles) around the city. These videos came out fairly recently, too. This video from yesterday of a Russian supply truck being hit by a molotov illustrates the difficulty of running supply lines through resisting areas. This video of a battle-disabled SPG being towed by a tank, and both of them bogging down in the mud, illustrates the costs of being forced to conduct even a short over-land divert to avoid side-road ambushes and denied major road intersections.

Note that only the video of the burning tank on the road with the Sumy street sign has been positively geo-located. I have seen occasional attribution of these same videos to other regions/areas. But on preponderance of evidence – especially the number of abandoned vehicles in rural areas being seen attributed to Sumy – I would say the resistance in these cities is real and Russia’s westward push can be considered supply-interdicted.

Southern Front

1. Russians confirmed at Zaporizhzhya. A tweet from a reporter in-country, who also indicated she traveled from “Mauripol to Dnipro,” i.e. most likely along the highway that roughly follows the Konka river. It seems the Finnish OSINT scribblemaps was right. NASA FIRMS satellite data (infa-red satellites that show large fires) also showed significant fires in northern Zaporizhzhia last night, though those could indicate air/missile strikes on crucial infrastructure. Denying locals crucial infrastructure, however, would be most likely part of a preparatory bombardments prior to assault.

2. Same reporter indicates that Mauripol is now surrounded. This does track with the video uploaded by rebel forces of the Donbas region front line’s entrenchments and bunkers seemingly abandoned; no firefight is happening, no bodies, no destruction from heavy bombardment.

3. Circumstantial evidence for Ukrainian withdrawal from the Donbas defensive line to avoid encirclement. This video released by the Donbas “rebels” indicates that Ukraine expended one of their precious Tochka-U’s against a tank farm in Rovenky, a coal-mining town close to the Russian border. I located the tank farm on Google Earth (NW corner of town:)

Those more familiar with this infrastructure tell me this is essentially a large gas station that sells diesel fuel to large farms or smaller industrial operators. Other videos of multiple burning tanks on Twitter are likely from the facility recently struck south of Kyiv by Russia; as only one tank is burning in this video. The Tochka-U can accept a bomblet submunition warhead, and given the relatively intact state of the debris, no visible blast crater, and no visible shrapnel damage to the non-burning tanks I suspect they are simply empty, and the burning one was ignited by bomblet damage to the roof.

The Tochka-U represents Ukraine’s only deep-strike option against Russia; an especially important capability for them given the mismatch. To expend this weapon on that tank farm is curious; as with the Donbas line between them, none of the major Russian thrusts can really access that fuel. Taken together with the abandoned frontline positions, this may indicate the Ukranians are pulling their eastern forces out, and the new Konka river line will cover their withdrawal. This would still require the Donbas line be held to avoid flanking from occupied Donbas. However the abandoned positions do make sense in conjunction with reports of Mauripol being surrounded:

The Donbas front line was so close to Mauripol that artillery fire could usually be heard in the town during the Donbas war. If the Ukrainians are leaving only a rearguard/delaying force in those fortifications they wouldn’t be able to hold against a heavy, determined push by the Russian forces in Donbas – fortunately for them, said forces are pushing for Mariupol, which can anchor the end of the line anyways. It would make perfect sense to abandon positions and relocate in that event.

One Tochka-U strike a withdrawal does not make, mind, but it is an interesting allocation of a precious resource by the Ukrainians.

4. Kherson area bridgehead continues to be an insane fight:

More than a few videos showing fighting around Mykolaiv, but as the Finnmap shows, I’ve heard nothing of Kherson being retaken by the Russians. Recent video of outgoing MLRS fire from Nova Kakhovka (the dam crossing to the northeast) indicates that their bridgehead there is far from uncontested, as well. The direct drive to the crossroads at Mykolaiv mirrors their prior attempts.

Ukraine is devoting serious resources towards halting this breakout attempt. Two of their SU-25s were said to be downed, with one absolutely confirmed shot down, pilot(s) KIA, over the area, and more recently the first confirmed attack of a Ukranian TB-2 occurred, destroying multiple vehicles on the tarmac at Kherson International Airport (positively geolocated.) High confidence with experts that it’s not the recycled footage from the Armenian-Azerbaijani war that has been floating around. The fighting here seems to be particularly intense.

D+5 Update In Brief – No Huge Changes

My updates have slowed down, not just due to exhaustion but because the situation has stabilized a little compared to the first days. This update will be very brief; not all of it I have independently confirmed but it does match predictions I made based on earlier data so it’s worth noting as tentative data:

Northern Front

• Reports Of Kyiv being encircled were apparently premature and/or the forces encircling Kyiv were too light and/or not present in strength. Alternatively statements to that effect referred more to the roads out of Kyiv were denied to effective civilian evacuation by indiscriminate Russian long range fires/aviation. I saw a video of a distant bombardment at night claimed to be an SU-24 bombing run on Makarivskyi, a town further west of Kyiv, but it could have been anything (MLRS etc.) However I’ve seen enough persistent mention of the town (without video evidence) to conclude there probably is active fighting there. This makes perfect sense as the town controls the closest decent crossroads that allow a southern march around the west flank of Kyiv in order to begin properly encircling it. Given that multiple columns were destroyed in the north-western suburb cities of Kyiv yesterday in incredibly dramatic fashion; with an entire airborne column in Bucha bottled up by a blown bridge, then hit with HEAT submunition MLRS bomblets, it’s no surprise the Russians would shift their axis of advance away from the force concentrations present in Kyiv.

• North-East advance is now credited with a stable front line developing as Ukrainians defend at convenient urban areas and/or crossroads. I have seen no chatter about this at all and will have to verify with place-name searches later. Chernihiv is said to most likely be surrounded at last, though we have seen how little that has helped Russia before.
• All in all the push west from Russia proper still has not reached Kyiv, and even if it does, and even if Resistance in Sumy and Konotop are finally crushed, it’s unclear to me that the Russians can establish effective security along the 186 mile long route back to their supply dumps in Russia. (The route to Belarus is still blocked by Chernihiv and given the examples set by Sumy and Konotop resistance in that city will not fade for a minimum of several days yet; additionally the one open route along the P02 highway will be clogged with supply traffic supporting the forces that moved from Belarus. Transport routes have finite capacity.) Additionally this excellent paper on Russian logistics makes clear the Russian reliance on rail over road, and specifies 90 miles as the rough limit of Russian road-mobile logistics support based on the number of supply trucks they have present. Given the low manpower-to-firepower ratio of Russian Battalion Tactical Groups they will be sorely lacking in light infantry/light vehicles to secure such a long over-land route, both road and rail, and while we’re already seeing video evidence of Russia commandeering civilian heavy trucking they have also demonstrably lost quite a bit of supply vehicles in-country already (some of them captured with their supplies intact!) Thus they’ll be hard pressed to commander and deliver enough vehicles quickly to not only make up their losses but establish a sufficient supply chain back to Russia. All in all the westward push does not worry me as much as it might otherwise.

Southern Front

• Kherson continues to be a bloodbath but no reports of Russian breakthroughs yet. A rumored naval landing at Odessa last night never materialized. Very little news out of Odessa; apparently due to deliberate OPSEC implementation by civilians, possibly at the request of the mayor. (This is a rumor, treat it as such.)
• It is confirmed that Russians have reached the town of Enerhodar, on the southern bank of the Dnieper, and the nuclear power plant it holds, but have not entered the city. No word on Ukrainian defenses yet.
• Finnmap reports that civil administrators announced an attack on Zaporizhia proper, specifically on the airfield, and that it was repulsed. I couldn’t confirm this. If it’s true, most likely another airborne operation, given the target. Less likely to be ground assault as the airfield’s in northern Zaporizhia and the Ukranians are highly unlikely to not anchor the Konka River line at the southern edge of the city.
• Tokamak and its crossroads are still contested. Little information past that.
• Finnmap credits Russia with having advanced up to the Konka river line, but offers no information and I have seen nothing to confirm this. All we know for certain right now is that the Ukranians are entrenching along this line or a line close to it vis a vis the in-country journalist’s report from yesterday.
• Finnmap also claims that the separatist “rebel” forces are advancing without serious resistance in northern Donbas, potentially indicating a fighting retreat by forces there to avoid encirclement. Also claims that Volnovakha, north of Mauripol is being bitterly contested with the separatists. This does match my own predictions of a withdrawal from the eastern line that still maintains flank protection for the Konka line, but I have not verified a word of this.

Update to come: airpower in the conflict and the “Ghost of Kyiv,” then confirming as much of the above as I can later today.

 Why The Ghost Of Kyiv Is Bullshit – But I (Mostly) Believe It

If by some miracle you haven’t heard of the “Ghost of Kyiv,” you’ve probably seen the many, many memes (justifiably) mocking it; the legend of a Ukrainian MiG-29 Fulcrum pilot who allegedly became ace in a day and is still marauding around Ukrainian airspace downing the invader like an Ace Combat hero. It’s almost certainly bullshit, given the complete lack of proof, but the legend of the lone aerial gunslinger has held imaginations in thrall since the days where WWI aces, leaving on lone hunting patrols, were storied as “knights of the air.” Thus it took off like wildfire.

However – nothing attributed to the Ghost of Kyiv (at least by the first person to attach concrete claims of kills to the Fulcrum pilot, a War Thunder youtuber,) is actually impossible. In fact, it’s not even improbable. And now that a few days time has cleared the fog of war a little, we know that the mythic marauding Fulcrum’s continued presence isn’t terribly questionable either.

The Mysterious Case Of The Vanishing VVS

A few days in and the professionals are taking note of the Russian Air Force’s mysterious absence. The continued survival of the Ukrainian Air Force (UAF) did not baffle me as much. As I mentioned in the first 24 hours’ analysis, it can take a good 40 to 50 munitions to comprehensively put an airbase out of action – if you cannot destroy the aircraft themselves in their hardened aircraft shelters – because, for example, they’re not there – then you have to take out the fuel and munitions bunkers, so even if those aircraft fly back to that base from elsewhere, they cannot refuel or rearm and thus cannot generate actual combat sorties. Since the aircraft shelters, munitions bunkers and fuel bunkers are all hardened as much as possible (and the fuel + munitions can be made very hard indeed) you’ll need to put one (for aircraft shelters) and multiple (for fuel and munitions) precision-guided, penetrating-capable (i.e. “bunker busters”) munitions on each target.

Russia launched only 160~ cruise/ballistic missiles in the first two waves on D-Day (100 at 4AM, 60 more a little later, according to the US, who had AWACS up to watch it.) That’s enough to hit critical supply dumps, C2 nodes, and crater runways to prevent take-offs for a few hours. Runways are not hard to fix; there’s an entire class of open-market commercial products designed specifically to rapidly repair damaged runways with a nice smooth surface to allow fast jet operations. As the above article notes, the point of closing runways is to keep enemy aircraft bottled up until you can get a big airstrike there to comprehensively clobber the place and render it useless for serious air ops. The enemy might be able to fly a few fighters in and out, refueling/rearming off trucks, but with their effective fuel/munitions/spare parts supply dumps and aircraft maintenance infrastructure etc. destroyed (to say nothing of base housing and facilities for the small army of people who maintain, refuel, and re-arm aircraft. Handling, preparing, arming and loading air-dropped weapons is a profession unto itself, for instance.)

The problem for Russia is that Ukraine, as a former Soviet state, had the airbases – and the airframes – left over from the Soviet heyday, but only a handful of those aircraft were operational. After the 2014 Donbas invasion, which saw the Russian regular forces invade Donbas and directly engage and destroy Ukrainian forces to prevent total defeat of Russia’s sock-puppet “rebels,” the Ukrainians engaged in a hasty re-armament program, re-activating as much of their old Soviet weaponry as possible. (This is why I mistook the Ukrainians actual SAM inventory; the “paper figures” on Wikipedia only said how many they had, not how many were actually operational versus mothballed. More on that in my eternally delayed SAM post.) All in all, the Ukrainians allegedly had about 30+ MiG-29 Fulcrums, 12 SU-24 Fencers, 15ish SU-25 Frogfoots, and 30ish SU-27 Flankers in operational condition. How many of those were combat-ready is anyone’s guess; typically a good 1/3rd to ½ of any squadron is “down” for routine maintenance (combat aircraft are expensive and delicate beasts.) With a major war breathing down their neck the Ukrainians probably made an all-out effort to prepare all aircraft, but some of them were likely destroyed in the opening strikes.

Still, even if all their operable inventory was ready to rock, that’s not very many combat aircraft – but Ukraine has the full complement of Soviet-era airbases (and dual-use civilian airports). They have a fraction of the airframes, but 100% of the airbases to disperse them to. Even with intel and simple logistical concerns narrowing the target list a bit (airbases tend to service one or two types of aircraft; if you land your MiG at a Fencer airbase they’ll have bombs and fuel for you, but no A2A missiles or spare parts), that’s still a lot of airbases for the VVS (Russian Air Force) to hit. Cruise and ballistic missiles are heartbreakingly expensive and very useful, which is why it’s preferred to hit these bases with airstrikes and laser-guided bombs, but Russia’s PGM stockpile is also pretty limited and there’s plenty of demand for those weapons to support troops in contact; esp. in city fighting. So the VVS’s reluctance to expend literal tons of munitions to plaster every hole the UAF could play whack-a-mole with is also understandable.

Russia has tried to take out the surviving UAF assets on the ground with single cruise missile or Iskander shots (this is most likely what they’re trying to do, as a single or pair of munitions aren’t going to do much against fuel/munitions bunkers except at small interceptor bases,) but they clearly lack (or refuse to commit) the recon assets required to accurately target those attacks. (Airbases are big places and shrapnel only goes so far.) Ultimately, this failure shouldn’t matter either as with only 60ish aircraft (at best) to array against the staggering three hundred various jets Russia massed near Ukraine for this war, they should simply be able to keep a Combat Air Patrol up and clobber the UAF when they show up.

Except they haven’t.

Even through the fog of war, the persistent operations of the UAF have demonstrated this, at least. Most stunning to me was the SU-24 bomb-run on Hostomel (aka Anatov) airbase on the first day. That’s only 50 nautical miles south of the Belorussian border. While the UAF can and have been avoiding the S-400 batteries in Belarus by flying low, under the radar horizon, an SU-34 Fullback, especially with an A-50 AWACS plane backing it up, should be fully capable of detecting and shooting the UAF out of the sky. Nor can “de-confliction” concerns fully explain this – the Russians could simply instruct their SHORAD crews in the field that anything above 10,000 feet is not to be engaged (as it’s either friendlies flying above the MANPAD envelope or will be blasted by the S-400 batteries in short order,) and the S-400 batteries are huge, state of the art IADS stuff; networked with computers out the wazoo. They are absolutely capable of basic IFF interrogation. Combined with some airborne jamming support; which should be quite effective against the dated Ukrainian aircraft, they needn’t even fear the Ukrainian fighters shooting back. Their air to air missiles are newer and should have longer range. They have every reason to do this.

And yet, for some baffling reason, they haven’t.

Ass In The Grass and Balls To The Wall

Which brings me back to the Ghost of Kyiv. The videos which inspired the idea were posted by the same user who posted, in the same twitter thread, the now oft-seen clip of two Ukrainian Fulcrums hauling ass over an outlying residential areas. (You’ve likely seen this one mislabeled as a “dogfight” between a Ukrainian Fulcrum and a Russian aircraft, but they’re both Ukrainian MiG-29s.) The second two videos of a lone MiG staying low over Kyiv’s rooftops, on the other hand, sparked the (in)famous “Ghost of Kyiv” myth.

So what did we actually see?

We saw at least two Ukrainian Fulcrum pilots hugging the deck to avoid being engaged by the S-400 batteries in Belarus, hauling ass (if that apparent sonic boom is any indication) and performing defensive counter-air (since they’re clearly carrying missiles, but no bombs or obvious air to ground ordinance.) This is exactly what I’d do in their situation – get out there, stay low as possible (not just to duck the S-400s, but also to use the ground clutter against Russian fighters and AWACs) and keep my speed up as much as possible; keeping the energy I need to juke missiles or fighters and/or just bug out when needed. My goal would be to find something with a VVS star on it and ram some heaters up its ass – doesn’t particularly matter what. A few Fulcrums can’t make a big dent materially, but they can make every Rooskie in the AO pucker their asshole, check six and start jinking, which means they’re paying that much less attention to their actual mission objectives. Additionally, I wouldn’t worry much about SHORAD if I was pushing supersonic – the horizon issue again. By the time I pop over the horizon and the little Gaskin that couldn’t sees me I’ve already ripped right past him and vanished beyond the opposite treeline. (This is exactly why better SHORAD systems have “slew-to-cue;” an offboard radar tells it where the baddie is coming from so it can have guns/missiles pointed at where it’s going to pop up. But since I’d be looking for aircraft to geek I’d not be deliberately overflying major troop concentrations.)

Now consider what the Russians had up. On day one, I would have assumed (as did most) that the Russians had some combat air patrol up; but the above considerations, especially given that they also had their own fixed-wing SU-25s and possibly SU-24s making low-level runs, means that the Fulcrum’s survival for a time in that airspace isn’t impossible. Russia has less practice at this and not engaging an enemy is better than positively blasting one of your own aircraft with friendly fire. The Russians also demonstrably had a shit-ton of helicopters in the air; attack helos providing fire support everywhere and transport choppers heading towards Hostomel (and note that some of those choppers shot down were attributed, by the Ukrainians, to their Fulcrums.) An AO swarming with slow tactical CAS airframes everywhere is what any fighter pilot calls a “target-rich environment.”

So, even before we knew that the Russians probably weren’t flying CAP that day, it is entirely believable that a couple of Fulcrum pilots hauling ass through the weeds were able to geek a few helicopters or SU-25s before bugging out. At the least they could’ve gotten rid of their heaters, even if they saved their radar-guided stuff (a lot less useful at close ranges due to their design era and much more valuable to save for pegging at high value targets from longer ranges.) And now that we know the VVS is still MIA, the continued presence of Fulcrum pilots zooming in on the deck to bag a few helicopters before bugging out at afterburner is also entirely believable. That’s exactly how I’d use these assets too. It’s not like they’re invincible, either; at least one Ukrainian Flanker was confirmed by multiple sources to have been shot down over Kyiv on D+2, with it usually attributed to “a SAM,” and given the altitude at which that fireball appears to be, I’d say that’s plausible – he flew a little too high and paid for it.

None of this is hard to swallow.

The Ghosts Of Kyiv

I understand the prickly irritation, given that reality quickly gave way to unadulterated bullshit about “GOAST OF Kyiv OWO” shooting down multiple fighter jets and becoming “ace in a day”. But it’s just as bullshit to claim that those Ukrainian Fulcrum/Flanker pilots (plural) aren’t out there hauling ass on the deck, popping up to bite the odd Russian tac-air in the ass, and generally making a damned nuisance of themselves – as well as making Russian mass paratrooper operations (which involve big, slow transport planes loaded with precious, expensive, and scarce VDV airborne troopers) a lot more dangerous, esp. given the VVS’s apparent refusal (or inability) to provide them CAP. That they’re also out there is likely playing a role in the VVS’s disinclination to perform deep interdiction missions – over the rugged terrain of western Ukraine hugging the deck would give the UAF more benefit from ground clutter, the Russian AWACS would be a bit more distant (esp. given the Russians’ wise choice to not approach the Polish border too closely with their high value assets) and from a low-to-high angle standoff jamming couldn’t give them much protection. The persistent threat of “surprise SA-11 tracking radar from nowhere” is likely playing a bigger role there, but the UAF is helping too.

Yes, the knuckle-dragging simians hooting GOAST OF KEEF between Borethunder rounds are annoying. But the people hyperventilating over the idea that some bold Fulcrum bois could be out there executing what are textbook bag-and-drag tactics for high-altitude denied airspace need to calm the fuck down as well. The truth is that every Ukrainian pilot still flying is the Ghost of Kyiv – what they’re doing is incredibly dangerous, but they’re getting the most possible value out of their air-frames for their country, at a time when their country needs every single advantage it can get. And they are indeed paying with their lives, but as that exact example demonstrates, they are selling them dearly. Kherson is perhaps the most crucial single point in the entire war, and if those SU-25s hit even a single sizable Russian column near there with a good cluster-bombing run each, then their sortie – and even their lives – were well-spent.

I’ve spent my life in rapt fascination with combat aviation; and if there’s one consistent trend I’ve seen from both pilots and those who truly write about them well, it’s an appreciation for how thin the veil between life and death is. For most of aviation’s history, aircraft have been dangerous enough in their own right even when they weren’t being shot at; and while the machines are now more reliable and sophisticated, so are the weapons devoted to their destruction. A scene I’ve seen time and again, arrived at independently or deliberately echoed, is one where a pilot, living, beholds the ghosts of all those aviators, often combat aviators, who’ve gone before – complete with their ships; perhaps inseparable. Many pilots in many wars have reported acceptance of being a dead man walking. As Heinrich Gontermann said to Ernest Udet, the only other survivor of the entirety of Jasta 15, “The bullets fall from the hand of God... sooner or later they will hit us.” He was dead three months later. Werner Voss displayed what fury such men could unleash, freed from any concern for their own survival, during his legendary final dogfight when he took on an entire flight of British aces and left all their planes holed, some disabled, before he was finally downed. The British aces landed, shaking and in awe, keenly aware that they had just witnessed something incredible, already regretting that they had to kill their foe.

Werner Voss was twenty-three years old when he died.

The Ukrainians now contesting the air over their homeland are already dead men. At those low altitudes and high speeds, successful ejection from a stricken bird is far from guaranteed. They risk friendly fire from their own triggerhappy troops, used to a sky mostly owned by the enemy – if they don’t just hit a flock of birds first. But the value of their presence cannot be overstated. As I mentioned on day one, with only the popular perception of recent wars to draw on, most people, even in the military, have a skewed perception of what “ownership of the skies” actually means in terms of real combat prowess. The Western media and my own friends alike quailed to hear that Ukrainian air defense had been “destroyed in a day,” despite it being patently untrue. Ukraine’s defenders could not have felt otherwise, especially as Hinds and Frogfoots rained rocket fire upon them. The roar of Fulcrum engines in the skies of Ukraine, thundering through the night, reminds them that the skies of their homeland do not belong to the enemy; that the galloping ghosts of the Azov coast are still marauding, that the enemy has to keep an eye on his six or to the sky, and feel the same fear they do.

The “Ghost” of Kyiv is aptly named; but just because it’s ephemeral doesn’t mean the many Ukrainian pilots it inhabits aren’t very, very real. They now walk in the footsteps of many ghosts who’ve gone before them, and every soldier and civilian volunteer with naught but a cheap RPG and a cosmoline-caked rifle to their name right now can sense that when they hear those engines roaring overhead in the dark.

They know, in that moment, that the Ghost of Kyiv dwells within them as well.

 D+6 Update @4PM

Northern Front

Summary: Little information to go on; likely a regrouping in effect, assume prior dynamics in play.

* The much-reported massive convoy from Belarus seems to be stalled. Given the amount of equipment and personnel present this is no surprise; cat-herding will be required before a new assault can be conducted. With Russian attempts to encircle the city still apparently struggling to fight their way south – and with prior precedent regarding their vulnerability to flanking attacks in this area and its terrain – it’s likely that the major roads into Kyiv will remain open as defenders move materiel into the city in preparation for the likely encirclement and very hard fighting to come.

* Information on this front seems sparse overall today and late yesterday. Only statements I can find regarding the fighting in the countryside east of Kyiv are from Ukranian military/government officials who indicate their forces are fighting for towns at Pryluky and Nizhyn – naturally, crossroads. Given that the Kharkiv area/region has seen more videos of abandoned or captured supply trucks than any other – and considering how conducive the woodier, more varied terrain is to ambushes – we can presume that if the Russians bypass these towns, as they have preferred to do in the past, that they will continue to suffer the same supply interdiction issues. Their utility in the assault on Kyiv is questionable, past being able to encircle the town to easy passage from the east.

Southern Front

Summary: Getting worse, but still, incredibly, holding.

•  Kherson area: Better than has been reported. Seeing a lot of doomerism about this on the discord, for understandable reasons. Resistance in Kherson is, incredibly, still active. Russian troops apperently bypassed Mykolaiv and moved north along the N11 highway but were promptly ambushed and destroyed in the town of Bashtanka. I was not expecting such ambushes in this area, as the terrain is incredibly flat, level, and open – ideal tank country; that should play to Russian materiel advantages in artillery and armor. Judging by the truck with the towed field gun, this was not a recon element, either.

• Ukrainian officials claim they are committing their MI-24 Hinds to this area; continuing the trend of aggressive deployment of their limited air assets on this front. Given the incredible importance of the area, and the unfavorable defensive terrain outside of major cities and the Dnieper river itself, this makes sense.
• Reported artillery duel at Severodonetsk with “rockets lighting up the sky” last night and a video claiming to be Russians entering Starobilsk 45km north-east of there seems to indicate high mobility fights (counterbattery employment and the simple speed of advance from Dontesk.). More recently video of civilians blocking Russian troops (a recon element) in Kupiansk have been seen – which is 100km north-west of the aforementioned towns and only 100km east-southeast of Kharkiv. Those troops are likely from the north-eastern forces probing south to find a way around Kharkiv, but the speed with which towns well north-west of the old Donbas line have apparently fallen indicate to me that Ukranian eastern forces (on the Donbas line) are making a fighting retreat – or at least falling back in good order – likely to anchor a new line around the southeastern flank of Kharkiv.

• Combat reported in the vicinity of Vasilievka, 40km south of Zaporizhzhia. Russians at least this far north here. (This has not been geolocated.)
• Russians confirmed to be assaulting Poltava; in the form of two videos of abandoned tanks – whether out of fuel or simply deserting crews crews is unclear. (These have not been geolocated but preponderance of reports favors this. Multiple pictures of civilians in Poltava organizing support services; food etc. have been seen as well.)
• In addition, Russians in Kherson have been seen looting stores for food.

• These events together indicate that supply exhaustion is affecting the southern push out of Crimea. This is of vital importance, given the criticality of defending crossings over the Dneiper river, the Russian army’s dependence on rail transport for logistics, and the intact rail line into the south via the Kerch strait bridge through Crimea. Regarding this, the widely reported TB-2 drone strike on a large Russian fuel tanker train was, incredibly, localized to a railway in Crimea by commercial satellite photography. This would mean the aircraft is operating in an area where an S-400 battery is almost certainly active. Barring more info the TB-2 should be suspected to have LO properties from certain angles at this point in time. The importance of this strike cannot be over-stated; it shows that Russian logistics in territory they solidly control is not beyond reach of Ukranian strikes. While Ukraine only had six TB-2s at beginning of hostilities, the fact that airframes are already being delivered by NATO means that Turkey may be willing to (quietly) deliver more.
• Maruipol is now under proper assault but defending forces seem well equipped with artillery and are making use of small, likely commercial drones to spot their attacks. Given the Russian’s have mostly not deployed their storied ground EW capability (more on this later) we can expect to see more low-cost, high effectiveness tactics like this. (More on this below.) If fanatic resistance in other Ukrainian cities are anything to go by Mauripol will hold for quite a while yet.

Analysis – state of Russian forces now and future performance

(Skip to “conclusions” if you’re lazy or an officer)

It is a fool’s errand to try and link every sighting of completely abandoned tanks and even high-end SAMs, but this incident deserves note as the vehicle is fully functional – the Ukranians start the engine and drive it away without problem. Videos of farmers hauling away abandoned IFVs with their tractors are already making the rounds, but this shows civilians with heavy equipment (cranes and flatbed tractor-trailers) removing a pair of SA-8 Gekos (one of the better and more sophisticated mobile SHORAD units with a limited capability for missile interception!). Not only are vehicles like this lighter than tanks and thus possible to move with lighter and more common civilian equipment, but they make a larger difference than a single tank does given the problems a persistent SAM threat causes for airpower and the relative shortage of such systems in the Ukranian OOB. Furthermore, the units being abandoned include Tor (SA-15) and Pantsir (SA-22) systems, among the most useful, sophisticated and brand-new surface to air systems in the Russian inventory. Additionally, all but the SA-22 are already present in Ukrainian stocks. For example, while only six SA-15/Tor systems were re-activated before the war, Ukraine has many more of them in storage that they did not have money to re-activate; thus there should be no shortage of spare parts and ammunition reloads, and there’s even operators trained to use the systems. Examples of deliberate recovery efforts being made on Russian vehicles, mostly SAMs, often by farmers with tractors are now so common I have lost count.

In addition, supply convoys are being intercepted and not only destroyed, but outright captured, esp. in the Kharkiv region where Russian efforts seem to be coming to grief quite frequently, for instance this truckload of 280mm Smerch rockets. With the long range of this system and the relative low ammo stockpiles Ukraine has for it’s small number of launchers, captures like this weaken the Russians while strengthening the Ukrainians. This fuel truck reportedly ran into a tree after swerving to avoid civilians in the road, and this convoy was apparently ambushed, with one truck destroyed and another loaded with MLRS rockets captured.

The troubles of Russian forces go significantly deeper than ammunition supply, as well: early reports that Russian frontline troops were using cheap, civilian radios without encryption is now confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt; thousands of people are listening in to unsecured Russian field communications using web-linked radio receivers and crowd-sourcing the intelligence collection from it. One unit in particular, Buran-30, has become famous for the frequency with which he gets lost and has to call for help from other units who are also lost. This is the likely reason why Russia has almost completely neglected to deploy its formidable ground EW systems (one was spotted yesterday moving towards Kherson, likely as a counter TB-2 drone measure.) Worse, POWs are reporting that they have no long-range radios to contact their headquarters whatsoever. Radios are not a logistical concern like ammunition, fuel, food, and other consumables that must be channeled into a fight by a constant (sometimes literal) pipeline; they are basic and vital pieces of common kit. To constantly be broadcasting unit movements in the clear, with United States ELINT assets hovering all around the nation, feeding that data to Ukrainian ground troops, is staggeringly incompetent and ill-prepared.

Next I wish to draw attention to something I’ve dubbed terrain attrition; i.e. the losses incurred by accidents crossing terrain. These happen in any military and are a major reason training with armored vehicles is important, but Russia seems to be having more problems than normal. Multiple videos of Russian tanks that drove off small (or over destroyed) bridges have been seen. More vehicles have been seen abandoned by the side of the road for unclear reasons. A video showing two abandoned T-80s that collided had a tow chain hooked between them; likely one had broken down. Multiple sightings of mud-bogged and abandoned vehicles have been seen as well; the S-22 above being one good example.

Due to good OPSEC by both sides’ uniformed military most OSINT so far has been civilian sightings of combat from (usually) a safe distance, and almost all of it has been of combat’s aftermath. Videos of the Russian advance into Kherson yesterday gave a rare look at Russian infantry actually maneuvering, and displaying incredibly lackadaisical attitudes about it. I initially took this as indication that UA had withdrawn from Kherson to the crossroads; we now know that is incorrect and that the city was still occupied at the time. Given overall performance of the entire Russian Federation Armed Forces over the past several days and persistent evidence of outright desertion, not just of individual vehicles but of entire OPs, vehicles included, the quality of regular Russian troops, including infantry, should no longer receive the benefit of the doubt.

One last data point: commercial imagery is now available of Ozerne Airbase in Zhytomr Oblast, showing the impacts of what were probably opening-day salvos by Iskanders. Incredibly, it shows the majority of the seven weapons deployed missed their targets. Tellingly, every impact seems offset from their likely intended target by the same distance, and in the same direction. This is highly reminiscent of the 2019 Indian Air Force strike on a terrorist camp in southern Pakistan which apparently missed the mark because strike planners misunderstood the intricacies of coordinate systems and as a result, missed their intended targets because the elevation data was not correct.

Conclusions

Let me paint you a picture. You have a military force that is suffering from high rates of desertion and abysmal morale, having persistent supply problems even in areas where intact railheads are not far to the rear, and have poorly trained troops who cannot conduct proper bounding overwatch movement in uncleared and suspected hostile cities, nor, apparently, can drive or service their vehicles properly, neither when negotiating tricky terrain or dealing with bogged-down machines. On an operational level this force is relying heavily on completely unsecured comms that are easily jammed by enterprising civilians broadcasting with their own radios and is feeding a constant stream of troop movement ELINT to enemy allies, giving hostile forces both indications of your maneuvering and easy artillery targets. Worse, your lower level maneuver elements often lack longer-range radios, leaving them unable to contact HQ. Your troops are engaging in repeated “thunder runs” with just one or two vehicles, likely for scouting, as your air force is loath to sortie and when it finally does on D+5 it’s flying strike jets around in the SHORAD/MANPAD envelope due to a likely shortage of PGMs. If this is not enough, your own air defenses are evidently unable to protect even your most important rear areas, using your best, most powerful long-range air defenses, given possible LO capabilities of a cheap drone that your intelligence agencies had years to study due to employment in nearby conflicts. If this is not enough, your operational-level strike planners cannot effectively utilize division-level long range precision fires because they apparently have a shortage of competent, trained and practiced personnel. On a force structure level, you have reportedly committed 80% of forces massed for the operation but still cannot muster enough infantry or mechanized forces to adequately secure your own lines of communication/supply from partisan/SOF activity and cannot commit to clearing tenacious defenders in towns that occupy key crossroads; forcing wheeled vehicles to deviate over side-roads where ambushes are much easier, or go overland and risk bogging down. Worse, you cannot utilize rail at all on two out of three fronts due to these same occupied cities, and in the third those lines are proven vulnerable to enemy airpower. Your enemy is extremely highly motivated, receiving top-tier SIGINT/ELINT support and very significant quantities of materiel aid down interior lines of communication that your air force will not or cannot perform deep interdiction against due to poor SEAD capability and the persistent mobile SAM threat against even higher altitudes that the enemy clearly retains. Your enemy has incredible support from the civilian populace, with passive resistance to your forces common, and materiel aid being supplied constantly. Enemy forces – with said civilian aid – are recovering your abandoned vehicles wherever possible, and where those vehicles were bogged down too much to easily recover, or in an area you are likely to retake, they destroy them in-situ to deny you their use.

Furthermore, this enemy has demonstrated a willingness to boldly use armor and mechanized infantry assets to conduct deep raids and attack your flank to cut your lines of communication, not afraid to parcel them out in small units and maneuver aggressively instead of trying to retain them for decisive massed action due to their moderate qualitative inferiority and significantly smaller numbers.

Right now, many analysts are saying that the Russian Federation’s early setbacks and mistakes were born of terrible restrictions in ROE and a worse operational concept that has hamstrung their forces by forcing them to fight in a manner contravening their doctrine; without significant use of combined arms and not enough reliance on their long-range fires. These analysts allege that a shift is now underway, and when the Russians resume their all-out push it will be in accord with their doctrine, and thus they will perform much better and inflict much higher casualties.

My conclusion: Given the above points, which call into question the basic quality of the troops, their ability to maintain supply flow mandatory for the doctrinal heavy use of artillery fires, and above all the absolutely atrocious state of their C3, I highly fucking doubt that the BTGs will suddenly start performing more like we expected them to. Furthermore, the Ukrainians have demonstrated real competence in the use of their armor assets; to the point where I would not rule out their ability to fight a tank battle in the South, if one should be required to advance on the southern Dnieper bridgeheads to retake them.

Brief Update @ 8PM EST

• Of passing interest, I can now confirm that the fuel storage at Vasylkiv air base was indeed the target hit a few nights ago, not a civilian oil tank farm nearby. This strengthens the claim that the UAF was bold enough to be operating MiG-29s out of that base only a few days ago. In related news, I’m seeing more reports of Russians hitting fuel storage at various Ukrainian airbases with long range precision weapons now. This should help curtail the operations of the UAF, however, it’s unclear if these were above-ground storage or actual dug-in bunker storage – many airbases have both. Given the Russian’s propensity to be sparing with their cruise/ballistic missiles so far it may be the former. They’ve also given the Ukrainian military almost five days to offload fuel from those tanks into tanker trucks and disperse them. There’s still no replacement for bulk storage, but the UAF has limited numbers of airframes to service anyways, meaning that UAF operations might not be much curtailed while waiting for fuel deliveries already promised by France.
• Reported Russian airstrikes in Zhytomyr. That’s a good 110km west of Kyiv; a decent-sized city controlling a major crossroads that would be essential to moving through central-western Ukraine and cutting the country in two; isolating forces protecting the Dnieper river. No word of hostile ground forces anywhere near there but this could be the first preparatory work for an eventual drive on that city.
• Kherson city center has reportedly fallen; one would presume any future resistance would be of the asymmetric and irregular kind.
• Ukrainian forces destroyed a railroad bridge in Vasylvka, 40 km due south of Zaporizhzhia and on the shore of the huge lake where the Dneiper turns northward. The railroad bridge is only over a relatively short span, however the fact that the deck is intact but sagging indicates the supports themselves were blown. Smaller bridges can often be destroyed to a greater degree of thoroughness with greater ease since their supports are small enough to demolish directly. On larger bridges only the spans are easily destroyed, multiple must be taken down to prevent bridge-laying vehicles from covering the destroyed span, and repair work is far easier and faster.
• Railroad bridges are more difficult in every case to repair due to the sheer weight of trains, of course; there is no such thing as a bridge-layer for a train that I am aware of. The road bridge upstream has not been touched that I know of, but as previously discussed pre-emptive denial of rail is more important. In the Kherson area there is one rail bridge that could have been destroyed (it seems intact) but the Nova Kakhova dam upstream has a road and rail connection, built on very strong concrete pillars rooted in an earthen dam, making the entire thing very hard to comprehensively destroy. This contributes massively to the importance of actually controlling this area, as there are no smaller bridges that are easily destroyed on the other side (that I have found) to limit the reach of rail on the other side of the Dneiper.
• Boeing has officially cut Russia off. Aeroflot is effectively grounded.
• Ukraine is continuing to attack Russian forward airbases with what can only be Tochka-U missiles (this base is in Russia, just on the other side of the pre-war Donbas border.) Given the Tochka’s relatively short range of only 120km this shot must have been fired from Mauripol or the Ukrainian-controlled areas north of it. To date I have seen only one claimed interception of a Tochka attack by Russian air defenses. They seem to be making good use of these weapons; they risk losing them to counter-force attacks by reserving some, but by doing so present a persistent risk to air operations on these forward airbases, forcing greater dispersal of aircraft and ready munitions on the tarmac and adding psychological stress. Holding munitions back also allows for timing the attacks when intensified hostile air activity is seen; guaranteeing that aircraft at the base will be out of their revetments and personnel, running around unprotected on the tarmac. They seem to be making careful use of their limited deep fires to achieve maximum
• disruption of enemy operational tempo.

Background Update: Concerning “They Will Level The Cities!”

Much has been said about the Russians “using more firepower” on the cities in order to defeat them, but even with heavy thermobaric-based artillery, this doesn’t make as much sense as the journalists seem to think. Russia does this, as evidenced by Gronzy, but it’s not as useful for taking a city as it might seem. Cities are tough fighting terrain because every halfway decent structure (made out of concrete and a few stories high) makes for an easily fortified strongpoint, that can then be combined with other nearby fortified buildings to create interlocking defensive fortifications. By building interior bunkers (to protect against spalling) and intelligently using loopholes/firing ports (so the FOV that can see into and fire on the hole is small enough that the shooters can cover that area and shoot back) these positions can be made extremely hard to suppress, and by using internal “fatal funnels” (doors and hallways) equipped with pre-positioned defenses (a GPMG behind a concrete highway barrier is popular and effective) they can be made very hard to assail.

There are two general solutions for this. The first is as old as repeating firearms themselves, as evidenced in the Mexican-American war: “mouse-holing.” Making new openings in walls to move through and between buildings instead of down exposed lanes of fire in the street. This is also useful to enter fortified buildings from new angles not covered by defenders, but still requires very difficult and grueling close-quarters combat, the likes of which very few soldiers (almost always SOF) are actually trained and practiced in enough to be considered proficient.

The second solution is armor support. Tanks combine a powerful direct-fire weapon with advanced optics that can pinpoint enemy fire and accurately engage it, often achieving outright destruction, not just suppression of the firing position.

Note that neither of these approaches involve leveling a structure completely. That’s because doing so, especially against the kind of huge, heavily built concrete structures so common in Eastern Europe, requires insane amounts of ammunition to achieve. It can and has been done, but when a strong-point is so strong it requires outright demolition, tank cannons alone aren’t enough – an example would be Aachen, where self-propelled artillery had to be brought in to utilize direct-fire against select buildings. Even with large-caliber guns employing direct-fire, huge buildings require incredible amounts of ammunition to effectively destroy, and to actually collapse them outright often requires well aimed airstrikes with heavy (2,000lbs) class bombs. While smaller structures are easier to handle, the rubble they leave behind – even rubble from relatively light wooden structures – provides ample cover for determined infantry as well, so constant fire overwatch is required to ensure the enemy does not re-occupy those positions at some point. (If they’re in the building when it collapses they are typically killed; so direct fire can force them out, but it does not eliminate the position as a high-cover threat.)

Furthermore, a great deal of the artillery a Russian Battalion Tactical Group (BTG) brings to a fight is unsuited to this kind of systematic destruction, as they are Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS). Rocket artillery excels at long range and salvo throw weight; it can put an incredible amount of ordinance on a target all at once. Hence why they’re sometimes referred to as the “grid square removal service.” This is of incredible value for fire-and-maneuver, as they can blanket entire enemy maneuver formations (tanks, IFVs, etc.) with sub-munitions, then move to avoid return counter-battery fire. The disadvantages are inaccuracy and reload time; they spread rockets over a wide area not by design, but by inevitable consequence of the technology, and once they’ve shot their wad, every tube must be manually reloaded with a rocket. This is why BTGs still bring self-propelled artillery guns that can keep a steady barrage of shells on a target to suppress it. The inaccuracy and spread of rocket artillery makes them poorly suited to actually destroying point targets, even when using unitary HE warheads – and a great deal of their ammunition will be unguided sub-munitions of various types which are useless against heavy structures.

Russia does have unique weapons suited for this kind of work – the TOS-1 Thermobaric launcher (which the media has been quailing about regularly) and the 2S4 Tyulpan 240mm self-propelled siege mortar. However, they don’t have many of them – only 10 Tyuphans were known to be operational and it’s unknown (especially given the shitshow of Russian logistics on display) how many of the mothballed stockpile could be activated, and the TOS-1 only numbered 45 at its peak (naturally, how many have been actually deployed is also unknown.) While they are very effective for their tonnage and supply consumption, I don’t see these assets as being numerous enough to truly make the systematic leveling of a city a viable proposition; they are more like an “airstrike in your pocket,” capable of engaging point targets like bunkers and fortifications that can rebuff average field artillery (105-155mm) and would otherwise require a heavy (2,000 pound) class delayed-fuze bomb delivered via strike aircraft to defeat. That’s a valuable capability, but to level a city is an order-of-magnitude larger in terms of ammunition supply for those weapons; and to finish before the heat death of the universe would require more units than they now possess.

Then there’s the “soft” consequences of utilizing such a strategy. Putin may well be counting on these weapons more as terror tactics to coerce capitulation by the Ukrainian government. Indeed there are hints such tactics are already being employed. The initial paratrooper assault on, and subsequent heavy fighting over Hostomel airport left the one-of-a-kind A-225 superheavy aircraft (only example of its kind) untouched. Sometime in the last few days, however, the hangar and the aircraft were destroyed; and given that fighting had already moved past this location – and that the hangar itself offered no real positional advantage in controlling the airport itself – it seems the aircraft was deliberately targeted by an airstrike, simply to destroy an icon of Ukrainian technological achievement. Given the extreme resistance already exhibited by Ukrainian civilians, this approach would be an obvious blunder that would only serve to further stiffen resistance and add more and more civilians – many of them grieving lost family and seeking revenge – to join the military’s ranks proper, as well as encourage partisan activities behind Russian lines.

Worse would be the foreign reaction. Open and systematic slaughter of Ukrainian citizens would shock and terrify western voters to a degree they have never truly felt before in their lives. It will highlight that Putin’s Russia is an active threat to the West that cannot be reasonably appeased or accommodated. Working in synergy with this is how the media-inflated prognostications of Ukraine falling within 72 hours have been upended in dramatic fashion by both Ukraine’s fierce resistance and Russia’s blatant incompetence. In but five days the dynamic has gone from “why should we send our soldiers to die in a major war with a nuclear-armed power to protect some corrupt nowhere in Eastern Europe?” to “we could deploy NATO’s air force, knock these clowns over with a feather, and stop the slaughter of an incredibly brave and tenacious people.”

The vaporization of Russia’s public image as a military powerhouse also invalidates Putin’s claims of “legitimate security interests” in Ukraine; as his armies blunders and his air force’s almost complete absence from a fight going badly against a weaker, poorer neighbor insinuates that Russia’s conventional forces would have a snowball’s chance in hell against NATO’s armies no matter how much “strategic depth” they had to fight in. Thus it highlights the idea that Russia’s nuclear deterrent was and is the only real existential guarantee it has, and that isn’t affected one way or another by Ukraine. Complaints of “warning time” can and will be easily countered by Western nations (and the US) disclosing intelligence of how often Russian SSGNs have patrolled along their coastlines and showing reporters placards with Russian nuclear-capable cruise missiles on them. By going on the offensive against a much weaker nation and attempting to conquer it completely – under an explicit nuclear umberella – he has forced Western leaders and voters to acknowledge that Russia cannot simply be allowed to take what they want because they invoke nuclear weapons. If they walk ten men into Poland and say “surrender, or I end the world,” what then?

The more brutality Putin unleashes against the people of Ukraine the more poignant this point will become to the average western voter, as the costs of non-intervention become more stark and terrifying. This conflict is not a brush war in a perpetually war-torn part of the world, but a full-scale war in a modern European nation, who’s borders touch Poland and control of which would put a victorious, aggressive – and after embargoes and sanctions – now vengeful Russia on the doorstep of Western Europe. This is no banana republic coup, but an unprecedented threat that could plunge Europe back into the horrors that many now living Western voters remember from stories passed down by their parents and grandparents. The more violent and horrifying Putin’s tactics become, the more political support there will be for Western intervention, and the more logical said intervention will seem to Western leaders.

None of this means Putin will not do it, of course – he has alienated both his people and the “oligarchs” (best understood as feudal lords) who support him. He has made the stakes existential for the Russian people and the lords that back him. Putin has no way out, but his lords and military do – to offer him up on a platter. Putin could order the button pushed to take the West down with him, but it’s now far from certain that the military would obey, committing their own suicide to go down with a leader that led them into disaster.

The problem is that he has already set up this situation for himself; so it might, from his point of view, make sense to pull out all the stops and hope for victory. Whether he decides to cut his losses, or keep digging deeper remain to be seen. But in any case, the simple decision to unleash heavy ordinance against urban centers is in no way a serious improvement for Russian fortunes in this war, nor the death knell of effective Ukrainian resistance.

 D + 7 update @ 1:45PM EST: Still holding

Northern Front

• Fighting seen in Borodyanka, 25km north-northwest of Kyiv and astride the main road south. Note the tank engaging an (apparently) large concrete building is exactly the kind of strongpoint-reduction tactic I mentioned yesterday in my brief about urban combat.
• Effectively no information available about fighting south of this point except that it’s likely happening – at what scale and in what fashion, no idea. It’s possible that they’ve learned from their mistakes and are securing crucial crossroads at their back (such as Borodyanka) before moving on, but given their record so far that’s no guarantee.
• Russians likely still sorting out their reinforcements for assault. Kyiv still isn’t encircled and defenders are no doubt pouring resources into the city in preparation for the attack.
• Can’t find much information about the area east of Kyiv, except vague references to the Russians advancing. Given that interdiction of supply convoys around Sumy continue apace (with this video clearly showing the ambushers to be irregulars, most likely Territorial Defense Forces i.e. local official militia) my prior comments about these forces likely being ineffectual still apply.
• I’ve seen many ambushed supply convoys now but not a single knocked out IFV with them – the Russians don’t seem to be providing any security for their supply convoys, which is simply stunning.

Southern Front

• God has chosen sides – the recent weather in Ukraine (tons of snow followed by slightly above freezing temperatures) has turned the wide-open fields of Southern Ukraine from perfect tank country to soft muddy ground that is bogging entire Russian vehicle platoons. This penalizes the Russians more for leaving the roads, which makes the Ukrainian strategy of stubbornly holding crucial crossroads significantly more effective than it was before in the South.
• More Russian troops seen in Bashtanka, a solid 85km to the north of Mykolaiv. Instead of an ambush, this time they’re encountering another impromptu civilian body-block as well as resistance from (allegedly) local militia volunteers. (Note this Grad dovetails with the towed gun seen yesterday; they’re trying to move serious forces into here.) Oddly I’ve seen no mention of Snihurivka or Bereznehuvate (both on the TI505, a two-lane road that runs north from Kherson parallel to the Inhulets river, and about as far north as Bashtanka.) The Russians may have learned from their earlier outflanking at Ivankiv and want a covered flank, plus they would benefit greatly from having both the H11 (another two-lane) road and the TI505 to utilize for northern movement, both for capacity and to avoid packing too many targets onto one road. As long as Mykolaiv is held, however, the four-lane north-south P06 is denied to them. So is the Varvarovsky bridge and Inhulʹsʹkyy drawbridge over the Southern Bug river plus the relatively modest Inhul river crossing on the northeast outskirts taken by M-14. The Inhul parallels H11 north-northeast and while it’s quite crossable with a pontoon bridge it still presents a barrier, as the small bridges crossing it (and there don’t appear to be many) are much more easily demolished (this includes the M-14 crossing.) Additionally pontoon bridges have limited capacity, aren’t terribly robust under serious artillery attack and are even more exciting to set up in such conditions. Taking Mykolaiv could solve a lot of headaches for them. They don’t need it, given the terrain is far more open than near Sumy and the threat of ambushes reduced thereby, but the main roads around Mykolaiv are still within artillery distance of the defenders; and the TI505 is only a two-lane itself.
• Apparently a Russian attack bypassing Mykolaiv has reached as far north-west as Voznesensk, but enterprising locals demolished the local bridges. The objective appears to be the nuclear power plant near the city.
• The nuclear plant at Enerhodar, south of Zaporizhia, has had hasty roadblocks erected before it by local civilians. Likely useless, but the Russians haven’t moved to take the plant yet.
• Mariupol has reportedly been under heavy bombardment for over fifteen hours with MLRS cluster munitions being used to level entire residential suburbs. The civilian death toll is likely awful, but it won’t eliminate the suburbs as useful cover for defenders, just reduce it. The Russian assault on Mariupol has yet to properly begin.
• No information on the Donbas region I can find – only one or two unexplained red arrows on the Finnmap.

Maneuver/other “analysis” to come shortly.

 D + 7 Analysis: “Blyatkrieg”

Now that the initial fog of war has settled a little and even the enemy’s figured out that they’ve humped the hound, it’s time to ask: why are they maneuvering like this?

Russia’s catastrophically flawed operational premises have gone up in smoke and taken their initial tactics/ROE with it, as the now heavy use of artillery fires demonstrate. What remains puzzling is their continued use of almost suicidally reckless advances against an enemy that has, and still is, teaching them the consequences of not properly securing their lines of communication. Ukrainian militia have most recently demonstrated their ability to ambush supply convoys even in the flat, almost completely concealment-devoid fields of southern Ukraine. Even where they aren’t trying to drive unguarded supply convoys past occupied cities filled with hostile local militia, their insistence on advancing as rapidly as possible continues unabated. The Russian drive to Bashtanka and even more aggressive drive straight to Voznesensk – both of which encountered heavy resistance and were forced to retreat a good 100 clicks back down the roads they’d just come from due to having over-extended - are good examples. The goal in Voznesensk was likely the nuclear power plant (a trend with disturbing implications) but try as I might I can’t see the strategic value of Bashtanka except as a strong-point along the road that effectively covers the flank of the north-south rail line that could supply their drive up Ukraine’s center – not something requiring urgent movement (or justifying the now-expected casualties such rapidity would incur.) Nor does dragging a towed gun along for a reconnaissance in force. The baffling thing is where they lost it; in town – suggesting that even if they were preceded by a scout element and were traveling in force, they thought that trying to move through was worth the risk, despite the Ukrainian militia having repeatedly taken every opportunity to stage an ambush. Typically if you bring a towed gun, you unlimber it and set it up before sending your direct-fire assets into contact. Given the scarcity of urban areas that favor the Ukrainian's clearly favored tactics at this time, even attempting to move through the town rather than taking and clearing is baffling. Perhaps there was another objective – suspected supply dump, etc. - and of course one towed gun a doctrine doesn’t indicate – but it fits a pattern.

In a word, I suspect it’s... Blyatkrieg.

The forbidden word

If you want to make a military historian turn purple, simply utter “blitzkrieg!” and let the huffy lecture roll over you. You’ll hear all about how there was never no such doctrine – and they’re right, insofar as 1939 is concerned. “Blitzkrieg” was what happened when some bright young officers took their Prussian-centric officer corps’ well-established “Auftragstaktik” principles that stressed individual initiative and applied it to the mobility of armored combat. After this toppled a nation that’d resisted Germany for four years of all-out war in only 36 days, it did become doctrine, Prussia’s tradition of infantry snobbery be damned. Not that it matters, because the same concepts were doctrine for the Soviet Union by the 1930s: “Soviet Deep Battle.” Not that the Russian Federation’s army is the Red Army of the 1930s – or even the 1980s, for that matter. They’re not even a tank-centric army; but an artillery army with a lot of tanks.

None of that changes the fact that running riot through an enemy’s rear areas, disrupting his internal lines of supply/communication, flanking his front-line units and attacking his supporting assets, if not HQ elements directly is a Good Thing, sperg as the pendants might. Moving fast is the point of modern mechanized maneuver; if you’ve an opportunity to do so through the enemy’s rear areas before he can muster troops, so much the better.

Except the Ukrainian reserves should be mustered by now, and Russian forces are already suffering keenly from supply problems without over-extending themselves further. This is especially puzzling for the southern front out of Crimea; they (should) have an intact rail line back to Russia, the only axis of advance so blessed at present. While resistance in Kherson was (unsurprisingly) resilient, with attacks and (attempted) ambushes just last night, it’s doubtful it can deny Russian forces the use of the rail yard there for long. An attempt to invest Mykolaiv and start reducing it with artillery would make more sense, advancing up the road only to secure the north flank. The enemy is alert, fully mobilized, and heavily committed to an attrition strategy that Russian forces clearly can’t suppress effectively. Given the Ukrainians can read an OOB as well and have forces bearing down from Belarus, they’re clearly not without a plan for an enemy on their side of the Dnieper river. As any asshole with a Twitter account has been saying sagely since this insanity began, Russia is bigger and stronger and has more bang-shooties and sooner or later the Mass Should Begin To Tell.

So why the hell aren’t the Russians acting like that?

Montgomery wasn’t considered a crack strategist prior to WWII; he was respected as a training general. He catapulted to fame and higher command when, in North Africa, a man used to sizing up his army actually considered what his motley crew of green troops, old reservists and exhausted veterans could feasibly do – and so instead of charting out an intricate dance of maneuvery death his troops couldn’t possibly pull off, he gave them a job they could – a mostly static defense-in-depth that relied on his superior mass to grind down a wily opponent that could afford losses less than he could.

Assuming that Russian military command is not filled with goddamn morons and that the colossal fuckups of this campaign’s opening days was imposed by Putin, they should be pulling a Monty as we speak – abandoning what doesn’t work and leaning into what does. They’re apparently doing this around Kyiv (not that they’ve much choice,) but still thunder-running about in the South. The opportunity to force a fast, catastrophic collapse of the Ukrainian forces has come and gone; the timeline’s blown and what was perfect tank country is now a bog that restricts their freedom of maneuver greatly. What they’re doing now only increases every source of attrition they have – bogged vehicles, opportunistic ambushes by an enemy actively pursuing the tactic with irregular, regular and special forces, and simply letting confused drivers get lost, which seems to be when individual, isolated crews choose to desert the most (not wanting to sit around till someone pops an RPG into them and with nobody near to machine-gun them for their treason.)

So what gives?

Out Of Options

I can only think of a few distinct possibilities:

1. Logistical constraints have given them no choice. They may simply be running out of supplies – not supplies at the front, but supplies, total. Some recently captured “battle plans” indicated a 15 day timeline for the defeat of Ukraine – and even if that document is mere propaganda, it neatly fits most prognostications I heard even optimistic Western experts making, to say nothing of those predicting Kyiv’s fall within 72 hours (which seems to be closer to Putin’s expectations.) I initially assumed the Russian military was competent, and thus attempted a hail-mary but had backup plans in case it failed, but after seeing Russian troops communicating with unsecured commercial radios and a T-72A of 1970s vintage deployed in the field, I’m starting to fucking wonder. How many days of supplies are waiting in those dumps back in Belarus and Russia? 15 days supply? 30? 30 days of supply as they’re fighting now, or as they intended to fight, limiting artillery fires instead of constantly utilizing them to level entire city districts?

2. Operational/Morale constraints have given them no choice. That morale is horrid among their troops is well-established at this point, and if the continuing desperation of Russian command to source personnel is any indication, they’ve realized the mistake of signing up not for one, but a series of Stalingrads. Given BTGs are equipment-heavy and infantry light, and they’ve got pretty much every civilian in Ukraine gunning for them with whatever they can lay hands on (and thanks to Western support, that’s increasingly something pretty damned lethal) the writing is clearly on the wall. They don’t need Ukrainians spray-painting “welcome to hell” to know what Kyiv is gonna be like – they know what happened in Gronzy. This is precisely why the Ukrainians have preferred to hold cities and let the Russians bypass them; urban fighting gives them the greatest advantage, and maneuver combat favors the combatant with more vehicles to maneuver with. By holding objectives that are logistically indispensable they ensure the enemy has to come to them. Any Russian commander who can add point #1 and point #2 together may have concluded that they simply don’t have the time.

#3. Strategy shift to coercion – or even the unspeakable. Russia has already stepped up attacks on civilian infrastructure – Mariupol has already been denied gas (heat), power and water, and no doubt a major goal of the encirclement of Kyiv is to impose such conditions on its defenders as well. Russian forces were quick to isolate the nuclear power plant at Enerhodar, which powers Zaporizhia; and the only thing of significance in Voznesensk (aside from a way to flank Mykolaiv that’d be 100km shorter with a pontoon bridging of the river) is the nuclear power plant there. Russia already has two major generating stations under their effective control, counting the hydroelectric dam at Nova Kakhovka; taking three would start to put real pressure on the Ukrainian grid. It’d dovetail neatly with the systematic and deliberate slaughter of innocents underway in Mariupol and Kyiv, a terror/coercion strategy aimed at making the government, and people, capitulate.

There is a darker possibility, however. The incredible unified response of the West, and the world, caught everyone by surprise – including, I believe, Western leaders themselves. The writing is on the wall for Putin’s timeworn nuclear coercion tactics; the West has clearly decided that this has gone far enough, and that capitulating now would guarantee an eventual attack on Poland, putting NATO to the final and most ultimate test. That would truly be the eve of Armageddon. NATO needs “strategic depth” too, but in credibility, not territory, and allowing Putin to take an entire country because he screeches OR I NUKE YOU would wound it, perhaps beyond recovery.

So it’d be very useful to Putin to have an ace in the hole, right now – and the implicit threat of multiple Chernobyls – caused by “crazed nationalist Ukrainian commie-Nazi lizardmen terrorist kulak wrecker terrorists,” of course – would be an excellent one, wouldn’t it? Especially for the master of the gray-zone tactic, who’s exploited NATO’s inability to work in-between bright lines before.

If you think he wouldn’t do this, read up on the Holodomor and recall that Putin thinks the collapse of the Soviet Union was a bad thing. Then watch Putin’s speech where he explains why Ukraine is a fake country that doesn’t really exist and who’s people don’t deserve self-determination, then look at how he’s murdering those people en-masse, right now, to conquer them. Do that, and have yourself a good think about how far this son of a bitch is willing to go. Because I promise you, there’s very well paid people in governments across the somewhat-free world doing just that, and they probably don’t like the conclusions they’re coming to.

4. “Blyatkrieg, Noun: The belief that you can conduct a style of maneuver warfare dependent on rapid, aggressive movement to catch your enemy unawares and leave him confused as to your position and objectives, when using unsecured commercial radios with American SIGINT/ELINT assets hovering nearby.”

D+8 Update @9PM EST

Northern Front

Good news for Ukraine but much of it is unverifiable statements from NATO’s side. Claims are, however, probable.

Sitrep: Maneuver

• Rumors that Ukrainian forces have cut off Russian troops marching south along T1019 are likely true, as video evidence of defeated Russian assaults in Irpin (note the airborne vehicles; indicating elite troops), the retaking of Bucha, and this recently surfaced video from Gostomel confirming the destruction of the AN-225 strongly suggests that Ukrainian MoD claims these cities are back in Ukrainian hands are true. To cut off the Russian advance to Kyiv’s SW would require further westward movement towards the T1019 (the suburb cities are 6km from Kyiv’s outskirts proper, that highway, 20, ) but the fact that the fabled “huge convoy” has yet to reach the area makes this likely. Simply put, the road south is congested with reinforcements + supplies, so its unlikely that (sufficient) supply is reaching the forces already around Kyiv. Ukraine’s own supply dumps are close by and their internal lines of communication uninterrupted so it’s no surprise they’re pushing the enemy out of the suburbs. Since they can also access the E373 highway west out of Kyiv, which runs straight to Borodyanka (which was, and given precedent probably still is the site of heavy fighting) it’s highly plausible that Ukrainian troops were able to push westward and cut the T1019 (wooded terrain also helps given light infantry disparity in Ukraine’s favor.) Forces south of them are now not only supply interdicted, but denied. Fuel and ammo are used up very fast in fights like these.
• According to Ukrainian MoD reports they’re posting on Facebook (sigh) Russian forces are attempting offensive operations in suburb cities directly north of Kyiv and as far south as Fastiv (79km SW of Kyiv) and Obukhiv (40km directly south of Kyiv, almost at the Dnieper.) This is an incredible distance of advance, if true, and given the tardy reinforcements from the North + likely supply situation represents another fantastic example of Blyatkrieg. I do not expect these forces to hold, especially given how Territorial Defense militias seem to come out of the woodwork everywhere.
• Ukrainian MoD claims Russian forces are indeed moving west towards the major city of Zhytomyr 130km west of Kyiv and previously noted airstrikes against that city continue as I type. MoD claimed the advance was halted in three small towns just west of Makariv, indicating Russian use of the T1015 as the axis of advance. Given the terrain gets quite wooded west of Makariv this doesn’t bode well for the Russians, given the success Ukraine has had with AT-armed light infantry tactics in this rougher terrain.
• Additionally new Russian forces have opened up a new thrust straight from Belarus directly south towards Zhytomyr (according to the Ukrainian MoD, again,) but due to heavy cloud cover over all Ukraine right now no independent confirmation of this can be made via commercial imagery etc. They’ve only advanced 20km so far, allegedly. Likely route is P28 highway.
• These efforts could both secure Russia’s right flank as well as an alternative rail-line from Belarus.
• Cherniv, Konotop and Sumy still held by Ukrainian forces, with consequent supply route interdiction.

Sitrep: LOC/Logistical

• Anonymous DoD sources have coyly hinted that Ukrainian forces have attacked the huge convoy north of Kyiv and others have outright stated that Ukrainian forces have engaged it with Javelins. Statements have also been made that it was originally multiple smaller convoys (which is how sane armies dispatch any supply effort, to avoid creating a “highway of death” but has become one massive one as mechanical breakdowns, supply shortages etc. bite hard. These observations highlight likely serious maintenance problems with Russian vehicles, including supply vehicles, making the possibility of breakdowns even more keen. Given the terrain is uniquely suited to ATGM ambushes along the highway route (plenty of woods and overlooking hills) and Ukrainian SOF have been very active in staging these ambushes it’s likely true. It’s exactly what I would do.
• As fuel exhaustion affects the convoy, with fuel trucks unable to make it down the line due to route congestion, expect air attacks on the convoy with TB-2s and perhaps SU-24s. Without fuel, SHORAD units cannot power their electronics or radars.

Southern Front

Sitrep: Maneuver

• Power plant in Enerhodar is finally under assault. Battle has been going for some hours which is incredible in light of its cut-off position + lack of depth (back to the Dneiper where it becomes a huge lake.) Battle is being livestreamed from the plant as I type and according to Discord’s commentary Russian infantry tactics leave much to be desired.
• Resistance in Kherson has reportedly ended after deal struck with the Mayor, who’s imposed restrictions amounting to cessation of civilian resistance. However there has been two nights already of persistent guerrilla operations against the occupiers (multiple ambushes, some failed, some successful).
• Mykolaiv is still heavily contested and defenders are actively blowing smaller bridges and overpasses to defend it. A completely abandoned (by desertion, given no fuel exhaustion or mud bogging) platoon of Tunguskas was found (and destroyed) and prisoners are being taken.
• No news from the north, including Bashtanka.
• With the mud now in effect and various other Russian problems in mind (logistical/mechanical/morale) it is unlikely Russian mechanized advantage is going to make a huge difference in this area anytime soon. The limited volume of the two-lane roads available to them w/o taking Mykolaiv + severely constrained offroad movement is a great hindrance.

• “Rebel” forces claiming taking cities in the North-East, south of Kharkiv. Little information to go on here but fits with the likely withdrawal of UA Donbas-line forces to avoid encirclement.
• Fighting still underway, incredibly, in Tokmak. These images, esp. one showing an AT gun set up out in the open with little concealment and not even dug in or sandbagged, show how difficult it is to conduct static defense without pre-prepared positions in this open terrain. How long they can hold here is dubious. This journalist’s report from Poltava shows improvised anti-tank road barricades and in multiple images extensive earthworks/trenches. Poltava anchors the center of the Konka river line. Given earlier reporting of identical efforts all along the line it can be assumed that Russian forces will encounter serious handicaps attacking. Expect anti-tank ditches, dug-in AT guns and well-sited minefields to be present as well.
•  Mariupol under heavy attack but still holding.
• Long-suggested Russian amphibious landing near Odessa has yet to materialize; likely due to it being suicide without serious Russian air support which they’ve been reluctant to commit so far.

Sitrep: Logistical

• Russian forces now have two heavy city fights on their hands (Mykolaiv and Mariupol) and as recent TB-2 activity has demonstrated even Crimea is not entirely safe from line-of-communication interdiction, so despite being the only axis of Russian advance with an intact rail-line; and the capture of the Kherson railhead, ammunition supply issues cannot be ignored.

Sitrep: Overall Strategic Picture

• Russian ISR is shit. Lack of air control + SEAD means no large drones. Probably why so many 1 and 2 vehicle patrols were noted early on (scouts.) Conversely Ukrainians have excellent battlespace awareness.

• Incidents of supply interdiction too numerous to count. Russians discovered disguising fuel tanker trucks as ordinary supply trucks and hiding ammunition in a medivac vehicle (itself captured with destroyed tires along with the would-be tow vehicle, still hooked up with a tow bar.)
• Incidents/evidence of outright desertion becoming very common, often citing horrid supply issues (food esp.) and generally miserable conditions e.g. weather.
• Marked increase in attacks on civilian infrastructure, including power stations, with non-nuclear power plants simply being destroyed via missile strikes.
• Mostly unverifiable but frequent reports from multiple sources regarding ongoing active Ukrainian air defense. Russians are committing SU-34s and at least one shoot-down is now highly probable (photographed debris.)
• Summation: Russia has lost operational momentum and is now trying to switch to a slow grind coercion strategy. Expect Ukrainian forces to embrace this where applicable or unavoidable (Mariupol/Kharkiv) do not be surprised if counter-offensives are launched (especially in Kyiv.) Kherson area ground conditions hinder counter-attack as well as attack but a southward push from near the river(s) to bring the bridgeheads proper under artillery fire might be attempted. Given terrain, continued enemy Blyatkrieg behavior, force concentrations and LOC/logistics, counter-offensives around Kyiv are most overwhelmingly likely as 1. all conditions favor the Ukrainians most here and 2. this seems to be the main overall Russian effort, making for a vast amount of men and materiel that can be caught out of position and destroyed/captured given great success, and defensive depth gained for modest success is still of great use (see constant fight over Kyiv’s NW suburbs.)

D+9 Update + Analysis @ 10AM/D+10 (March 5th)

Late because of exhaustion and a dearth of significant information/developments yesterday. Most significant was confirmations/clarifications of previously reported information:

• Journalist in Mykolaiv conveys for Ukrainian Army that the main bridge across the Southern Bug river has been rigged for demolition. Of the other two bridge crossings in the city (both over the spur that becomes the Inhul river) one is a pontoon footbridge (easily disassembled or sunk) and the other is a drawbridge(trivial to disable by raising the drawbridge, then shoving a few thermite grenades into the main gearing/motors to fuze them in position. This also prevents spanning the gap with a normal bridge-layer – not that I’m aware of any deployable bridges that can easily span the 65~ meter gap of the drawbridge in Mykolaiv. Perhaps the greatest operational failure of the Ukrainian Army on D-Day was not wiring the bridges near Kherson for demolition (little could be done about the dam;) they are clearly not making the same mistakes twice.
• Logistical/Maneuver Considerations: Previous observations vis a vis Mykolaiv and Russian options for advances remain; esp. M-14 highway being accessible without those bridges (only a single smaller bridge within Russia’s bridging capability is a barrier.) However there are persistent reports of Russian LST’s hovering near Odessa, although recent weather has precluded any landing operations. Ukraine’s military seems to believe that Odessa is a prime target, an impression I’ve garnered from various circumstantial evidence (where the Territorial Defense Forces are placing roadblocks, pre-emptive small bridge demolitions etc.) Two possibilities exist: one, taking the entire southern coast would effectively landlock Ukraine, with attendant economic consequences and given that total victory now seems very remote for Russia this could drastically strengthen their hand at a negotiating table later (they keep Donbass/Crimea in exchange for Odessa and Mykolaiv. Two, taking Odessa’s major port would allow for an alternative logistical route into the country, plus a new axis of advance into the relatively lesser-defended rear areas that serve as a mostly safe haven for Ukrainian supply, repair, and logistics (given the Russian air force’s absence.) Ships can move an awful lot of cargo at once, and while they’re slow, they need only come from Crimea, which is relatively close. (I have no idea if their ten amphibs can reasonably support any significant force via constant ferrying from Crimea, or if the one rail line into Crimea can support the (foolish) three-axis push in Southern Ukraine and also provide enough supply for such an effort. I’ll contact an SME on this matter and update you further at a later date.)

• In any case, taking Odessa with an amphibious landing alone (especially given Russian airpower’s track record so far and the difficulties innate to city fighting) is dubious at best. Given the speed of an LST and American reconnaissance support any landing will find significant maneuver/artillery assets waiting for it on the beach. An amphib landing could at best be used to support the primary land advance (by cutting coast-road communication from Odessa to Mykolaiv area after a breakthrough there, flanking the city to encircle it and cut resupply, etc.) Either way Odessa depends on Mykolaiv.
• Bridges in Mykolaiv also control its usefulness as a port for the Russians:

Note the major dock facilities are on the “wrong” (Eastern) side of the Southern Bug river. The military’s own docks for their warships are near the pontoon bridge, and while they’re unsuited as cargo docks they can likely be denied by proper wrecking of the pontoon bridge to create a hazard to navigation. This port can still assist if they continue to control the M14 highway (and invest Mykolaiv well enough that counter-attacks from the city are unlikely and counter-battery can suppress persistent artillery threat to that artery.) Given that the furthest westward Russian advance to Voznesensk has still not crossed the Bug river even where it becomes more bridgeable, however, that’s a big “if” (given how persistent resistance is in the northern/north-east cities even with their supply lines cut via encirclement.)

• The role of Ukrainian Special Forces has been officially acknowledged by the Ukrainian Army to the Wall Street Journal; especially their focus on infiltrating Russian “rear” areas to attack supply convoys. The use of sniper teams is also confirmed. The probability of that “supercolumn” north of Kyiv having been graced by a few well-placed Javelins to the lead elements is almost certain now.
• Logistical developments: I’ve seen more Russian vehicles with obvious tire failures than I can count. Even over-road movement will be problematic for them. While this commentator’s predictions may be overly optimistic, he still raises a point I was going to make myself; resolving the massive traffic jam on the highway from Belarus isn’t going to be easy, given that (as commercial satellite imagery has shown) the Russians lined up vehicles three abreast on that road; leaving no room on the hard surface for fuel trucks to move down the length of the column and refuel the lead elements. This issue isn’t insurmountable but will still take significant time and effort to resolve; esp. since air-lifting fuel bladders to the column’s front will put those helos directly in the sights of UA SOF MANPADs.
• Geo-located photo taken by a journalist on March 3rd shows Ukrainian Army forces in Ivankiv, near the crucial crossroads of the highway(s) from Belarus. Tanks and IFVs can be seen. The Ukrainians have gained a shocking amount of ground back. They’re threatening the flank of the attempted Russian movement westward by doing so.
• Many reports of the maneuver situation in North-East Ukraine; south of Kharkiv and north of the Donbas line. This is the most dynamic part of the war right now; with Russian forces trying to achieve an encirclement of the Donbass line forces from the North. Unsurprisingly, RUMINT also suggests that the announced Ukrainian counter-offensive is developing here. Little information was available yesterday; there should be more today. Logically it makes sense; significant UA maneuver elements should be in/around Kharkiv and given the Russian’s recent blyatkrieg tactics, bypassing Kharkiv to attempt that encirclement should leave them open to a strong flanking attack to cut their LOC and encircle them in turn. Between Ukrainian successes in the north (gaining back ground + the dismal state of the Russian reinforcement column) and the threat in the north-east, this makes sense as the most important place for a counter-attack.
• Logistics/Rear area security: Russian forces are adapting, but slowly. Their convoys are now being actively escorted by air defenses and by IFVs, but as the second video shows they’re not committing IFVs in sufficient numbers to really secure these convoys (although it’s better than nothing and might impact TDF ambushes more, esp. in the south where there’s less good cover. Russians are aware of that, as evidenced by improvised wooden protection being seeing on the cabs of some supply vehicles. Russia’s logistical train is in dire condition; commandeered civilian vehicles with the “V” identifier were spotted in Western Russia moving east on a flatbed train. Many of the vehicles were mere vans, not even flatbed trucks. Another train spotted in the Russian far east was headed west with military vehicles on it; indicating Russia is pulling reserves from as far as the Pacific. This is a desperate move and indicates the severity of equipment losses they have sustained; the forces now available to them must be considered insufficient to accomplish their goals.

Sitrep coming later today. Maybe more analysis/background.

Ukrainian Air Defense – In-Depth Overview

My day-one overview of Ukrainian air defenses was only partially accurate, mainly in the broad-brush sense (i.e. no integrated air defense, no ballistic missile defense, but a persistent SHORAD threat.) However I was grossly negligent in my evaluation of how many maneuver SHORAD and medium-altitude capable SAMs they had – the picture looks much better than I initially reported.

The difficulty of research owes to a paucity of decent English-language sources and the fact that Ukraine has a large stockpile of Soviet-era equipment that is often cited as the “paper” arsenal, but this doesn’t tell us anything about the number of actually operable systems. As Russia’s problems with rotted tires demonstrate, even mere trucks cannot be left alone in a depot and still be fully operational in even a single year; Ukraine’s weapons have been sitting for decades. The ever-excellent Oryx’s writeup on the multi-year effort to restore just Six Tor (SA-15 Gauntlet) systems to active service gives an idea of the challenges Ukraine had to face. (This also highlights the significance of Ukraine’s current captures from the Russian military; at time of writing three captured Tors are in their possession; in a matter of days they have increased their number of these systems by half-again.) These three sources are the only ones I could find on the actual numbers of operational systems fielded by Ukraine before the war began, so I’ll have to rely on these. Especially for the older/longer-ranged SAMs the number/type of vehicles per effective battery is vague; I’m basing this off nominal Soviet/Russian practices but Ukraine isn’t obligated to do likewise. More concrete numbers are (sometimes) available for the mobile SHORAD systems.

Ukraine’s inventory pre-war:

Theater defense systems (long range):

S-300PT and S-300PS (SA-10/SA-10B “Grumble”): Unclear organization. Batteries are nominally twelve TELs (four missiles each) plus a command/computer vehicle, a CLAM SHELL search radar and a FLAP LID fire control radar. Three batteries to the regiment. However, less TELs can be assigned if desired. Additionally, the PT utilizes towed missile launchers (ergo they are only EL’s, erector-launchers,) unlike the PS which has proper self-mobile TELs. These – along with a handful of S-300V1 (SA-12 Giant) systems are organized into “five or six brigades and a similar number of independent regiments” which means fuck-all to me. Nor is the difference in numbers between towed and self-mobile systems made clear. At the most pessimistic assumption of 12 TELs per battery assume 16 total batteries (i.e. pairs of engagement radars) with each able to engage six targets at a time.

9k81 S-300V (SA-12 “Giant”): Highly unclear numbers. One source credits “a few” battalions (each battalion consists of four batteries.) Difficult to find any further information. This system is actually two different systems owing to it using two different missiles, the 9M83 (SA-12A “Gladiator”) is an anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapon, whilst the 9M82 (SA-12B “Giant”) is essentially the same missile with a bigger solid-fuel rocket motor, optimizing it for engaging tactical ballistic missiles at the cost of magazine depth. (Three Gladiators or two Giants per TEL.) The batteries apparently split their twelve nominal TELs evenly between these two missile types. I have no idea if Ukraine is operating both types and/or has full complements per alleged battalion, so I’m going to assume one battalion of four batteries each; making for four more radars that (to the best of my knowledge) should be able to illuminate for the related S-300PT/PS systems. Even with a few more batteries the dated nature of the system (i.e. likely low pK%) and the sophistication of contemporary Russian Iskanders means it’d make little difference; Ukraine is still effectively without serious ability to stop Tactical Ballistic Missile attacks, as they’d have to concentrate multiple batteries to properly protect one area.

S-200 (SA-5 “Gammon”): Reportedly none, as they were installed in fixed sites that were damaged by their earlier removal for storage. However, this does not preclude a hasty/makeshift deployment now that Ukraine is on a war footing. Three batteries nominally available to make operational.

Medium range, med/high altitude systems:

2K12 Kub (SA-6 “Gainful”): Two regiments active. A battery consists of four missile TELs and one radar vehicle with four batteries per regiment. This equals 40 vehicles, with 8 batteries carrying 12 ready missiles each. Every battery can engage one target at a time.

9K37 Buk M-1(2?) (SA-11 “Gadfly”): Three regiments of eight batteries each, with each battery consisting of three vehicles (two TELARs which carry missiles and a fire-control radar and a TEL which carries missiles and a crane to reload the TELARs) for a total of 72 vehicles. Each battery can engage two targets at once. There’s some limited interchangeability between this and the older Kub from which it evolved (likely can guide weapons for each other.)

S-125-2D Pechora (SA-3 “Goa”): Allegedly two regiments with four launchers and two radars (search and fire control) per battery. Ukraine clearly uses the stationary four-rail launchers instead of the towed three-rail variant. Reported domestic upgrades (in addition to using a significantly newer radar) amount to a much more modern system than the original pure SARH weapon; the missile is directed to the kill-box by the ground station and only relies on its own SARH guidance for terminal attack. While not a true track-via-missile system it should perform much more similar to one; i.e. using proper lead-pursuit against high-rate crossing targets etc. Can’t find information on batteries per regiment; will assume 4 as with other Soviet-style air-defense regiments; for a total of eight launchers. Simultaneous engagements are probably only one-per; however “time-sharing” of missile illumination like AEGIS does cannot be ruled out.

Maneuver SHORAD vehicles:

(Note these vehicles are all self-contained shooters; thus units == batteries.)

9k330 Tor-M (SA-15 “Gauntlet”): Six operational vehicles. Now nine, if all three recently captured examples are restored to operation.

9kk33 Osa (SA-8 “Gecko”): Unclear. Source alleges a total of 75ish SA-8s and SA-13 “Gophers” operational, no word on how many of each. Wikipedia reports 125 SA-8ts and 150+ SA-13s; illustrating the difference between total paper figures and operational systems.

9K35 Strela 10b (SA-13 “Gopher”): See above.

K22 Tunguska (SA-19 “Grison”): Seventy-five vehicles. Combined SPAAG (self-propelled anti-aircraft gun) and SAM launcher; max range ~8km or so for the SAMs. From what I can find the SAM’s are command-guided with high velocity (Mach 3) but low range; which makes sense given that they’re co-located with a twin 30mm gun system (they’re employed much the same.) Accurate, but limited in range.

ZSU-23-4 Shilka: 300 in storage, unknown how many are operational. A useful weapon still, but in the current fight likely inferior to the many Stinger MANPADs already in Ukrainian service for the purposes of air defense against helicopters.

State of Ukrainian Air Defense:

What this all means for Ukrainian air defense:

True area denial of Ukrainian airspace is difficult, but a long-range threat over the major battle areas is still possible. With the age of the SA-10 system and Russia’s intimate knowledge of it, defensive jammers on aircraft, standoff jamming support etc. will be markedly more effective than on contemporary weapons, to say nothing of the older system’s lower baseline pK% (probability-of-kill). Especially since a good number (unknown how many) are towed, their ability to relocate to avoid counter-attacks is dismal. However this must be evaluated in light of the Russian air force’s dismal performance so far; almost complete lack of sorties for the first week, and now that they’re finally turning out in some numbers they are already taking losses at unsustainable rates. While their relative dearth of SEAD weapons is known, (with only two ARMs available, likely of only average capabilities) their structural inability to plan large, complicated air ops was hithero unknown to me and also most expert commentators (though they are the ones who damn well should have known.)

A “large, complicated air op” may be the definition of proper SEAD/DEAD missions as it involves coordination of sensors and shooters. While the aircraft itself can engage with an ARM unsupported, targeting is greatly assisted by dedicated standoff ELINT aircraft, which can not only provide a bearing to the target radar, but a much better range estimate, letting the attacking pilots know if their weapons can reach the target. It also pinpoints the target’s location much better for a dedicated attack on the site the old-fashioned way (Vietnam style; low-level cluster-bombing of the battery directly.) In short, Ukraine’s SA-10s can feasibly take pot shots at long range without serious danger of reprisal. (Any decent ARM made since mid-Vietnam war includes a “memory” so it can continue an engagement when the targeted radar shuts off, but the further away the target is when the radar goes cold, the further the missile has to rely on comparatively inaccurate INS guidance. Depending on how quick the defending pilot is on the gun, and how quickly the SAM operator can conclude his engagement and shut off his radars, there’s an excellent chance the incoming ARM won’t hit the broad side of a barn. This is precisely why the latest versions of the venerable HARM also have GPS/INS guidance to more accurately hit the known vicinity of the launcher, using data passed to the shooter before launch from better sensor platforms, and even active millimeter-wave radar that can not only pick out the SAM battery’s vehicles, but identify the silhouette of the radars and target them to decisively put the battery out of action.)

Ukraine’s ability to defend against long-range precision missile attack is low, not not nonexistent. Against the Iskander there’s almost nothing to be done; only the S-300V could attempt to engage those, and between the dated nature of the system and the evasive capabilities of the Iskander, even that is dubious. Against cruise missiles, however, the news is better. The SA-11 systems have some ability to successfully engage cruise missiles. The handful (six, possibly nine) SA-15 batteries can definitely do well at this, as one of its original missions was intended to be point-defense against cruise missile attacks. Surprisingly, even the SA-8 and SA-19 have some capability here as well; despite using command-guided weapons, the high speed/acceleration of the missiles (Mach 2.4 and 3 respectively) make them surprisingly accurate, and their poor utility in crossing engagements is mitigated by them being small, self-contained launchers easy to place right next to high value targets needing protection (i.e. point-defense.) The Russian Kalibr cruise missile presents a unique challenge here as it has a terminal supersonic “sprint,” but both these systems would at least stand some chance, if not great, of engaging various legacy air-launched Russian cruise missiles without this feature.

The challenge for using these systems is one of speed; specifically detection-to-engagement. The US “Avenger” system has a “slew-to-cue” feature, where it can be directed to aim at a bearing by data passed from off-board defense radars; allowing the missiles to aim at where an incoming air threat will be when it crests the horizon (or treeline.) Russian mobile SHORAD systems of yesteryear often had “battery command vehicles” with their own superior search radars and simple datalinks to provide similar unified service for their unit’s launch vehicles. How many such vehicles are still operable and/or available to the Ukrainians I cannot say. These datalink systems are (obviously) incompatible with longer-range radars/sensors such as the ones the surviving S-300 batteries have; (such extensive networking for small mobile SHORAD is a development these Soviet-era systems significantly predate.) More primitive arrangements can still be effective, however, if only co-locationg their most effective point-defense systems with some longer-ranged SA-11s and simply “going live when we hear the Buk crack off.”

Given persistent reports of outgoing SAM fire from Kyiv, it should not be taken completely for granted that every single-weapon Russian cruise missile strike is guaranteed to hit.

Ukraine can present a persistent threat to Russian tactical aviation, both CAS and strike aircraft. The SA-11 “Gadfly” is an improved version of the SA-6 “Gainful.” The latter, older system can still be dangerous, as evidenced by the damage it inflicted on the infamous Package-Q strike in the Gulf War. Its limitations were also illustrated by the F-16 driver who famously dodged six Gainful missiles in a row; but while he was fighting for his life he was not accomplishing his mission. (Note the Package-Q strike went to hell when the Iraqi SAM operators realized that the Wild Weasel Phantoms had RTB’d due to bingo fuel, and were free to turn on their radars and start shooting in earnest.) There’s also the experience of Operation Allied Force, where a Serbian SA-6 managed to down an F-16 – over a month after the fighting had begun in earnest. US airpower, which had been perfecting the art of SEAD/DEAD since developing the art in Vietnam, was still unable to conclusively destroy all Serbian SA-6 batteries due to their small size and high mobility. This is the essential lesson – while short/medium range systems like the Buk and Kub cannot deny large swathes of the air to hostile forces, they can lurk in the weeds and pop up to bite the enemy in the ass. That persistent threat either forces the enemy to expend more effort to achieve the same result (providing SEAD, etc.) or if they cannot (like Russia, apparently,) force them to accept the constant attrition of previous airframes. The SAMs will take attrition too; on D+2 incredible footage was caught of a Russian MI-24 catching a Ukrainian Kub whilst in-transit on trailers, for instance. But without high-altitude SEAD tactics, this is Russia’s only option; and going into the weeds with tac-air and CAS guarantees heavy attrition from MANPADs. This, more than any other consideration, is what is restraining Russia from using their air power effectively. If they cannot at least suppress these SAMs while they are actively prosecuting strike missions, they are going to take unsustainable losses during constant operations.

Ukraine has enough mobile SHORAD systems to enable effective use of their maneuver formations even in the face of hostile Russian attack helicopters and jets. This is aided greatly by the excellent saturation of modern MANPADs courtesy of NATO. “Maneuver SHORAD” systems have often consisted simply of a MANPAD missile launcher that’s been motorized - the American Avenger is a classic example. The Avenger is also a classic example of insufficient maneuver SHORAD that only works for people who have a powerful air force to handle the majority of air defense for them, illustrating the limitations there. However, this is both a question of coverage, as well as capability. While Ukraine’s number of operable SHORAD systems may be insufficient for the number of maneuver formations they have on paper, this is made up for by the MANPADs. MANPADs are crappy missiles; they have little energy, limited envelopes and poor guidance by the standards of larger missiles – but since they’re tiny (two-man infantry teams) they can come out of nowhere, and be fielded in numbers, which is how they score kills. You may dodge six MANPADs, but it’s the seventh one – fired from close range with a great angle – that ends up killing you. Likewise, while Ukraine’s SHORAD vehicles may be relatively scarce on the ground, they provide bigger, more capable weapons that pose a much greater danger to any attack helicopter caught in their sights. Their weapons can also reach significantly higher, and are effective against faster aircraft, making them a decent deterrent to strike/multirole fighters like Russia’s SU-30s/SU-34s.

Given proper utilization (which Ukraine seems to be doing), Ukraine is fully capable of keeping the Russian air force, as it’s been revealed to be, from making a scale-tilting contribution to this war.

Other Notes:

1. Every Russian SAM system since at least the SA-2 has included a backup optical guidance system to engage targets even under conditions of heavy jamming. On more traditional missile systems, including the SA-2, SA-3, SA-6 and SA-11, this more or less amounted to 1. a useful way to visually identify targets at closer ranges and 2. a fucking bad joke, because all this would allow is launching a missile without guidance into the general area of an incoming aircraft with a time-set fuze; like a huge anti-aircraft gun... and not one with radio proximity fuzing, either. The Package Q strike was taking ballistic launches of that nature (which did nothing,) which is why things only got hot when the Wild Weasels had to RTB and the Iraqi’s could actually guide their weapons. (The SA-11, at least, will resort to pure command guidance in this situation.)

However, for the Ukrainians, there’s some advantages to these electro-optical aiming systems; namely they allow passive positive ID of aircraft without having to turn on their radars. This allows Ukrainian AD batteries to stay well-hidden and camouflaged, engines off (and thus less visible even on thermals) and only turn on to engage when they know hostiles are in the area. (With some MANPAD teams providing cover against marauding attack choppers or CAS jets, of course.) These backup electro-optical systems are especially useful for the SA-8 and SA-19 given how their weapons work; especially the SA-19; these units can hit the target without their search radars on. By the time the enemy gets a radar threat warning, the AD unit is already firing. These should excel at engaging low-flying helicopters, which is the majority of Russian CAS assets.

The 3KM minimum range of the SA-11 means that such ambushes are less feasible; however (in theory) it should allow the unit to fire a missile using passive radio command guidance and guide it towards a hostile, then turn on the radar when the missile is already close. How well this works depends on how sophisticated the command-guidance is; (it may not be able to conduct lead pursuits against crossing targets,) but there is at least the potential. An expert in Soviet AD systems I am not; if you can find one, please tell.

2. An oft-forgotten aspect of Soviet SHORAD systems that the Russians, being absolutely insane, has a secondary ability to conduct surface to surface attacks; just in case Glorious Rodina managed to shoot down all of NATO’s planes, they could expend their remaining missiles on ground targets. This capability is obviously limited, and it’s usefulness to a nation slinging Javelins around, obviously low. There is, however, one significant possible application in this war – shore-to-sea missile attacks.

Ukraine’s domestic anti-ship cruise missile, the Neptune, reportedly had its first delivery made in late 2021 – how many are operational, however, is anyone’s guess. Should that number be insufficient to stave off the expected naval landings near Odessa, SA-11s could theoretically be added to the attack. Against a sea target, with minimal ground clutter, the semi-active guidance system should work decently, and even the backup command-guidance option may suffice. If nothing else it will add mass to the attack; helping saturate the LST’s point-defense to get the Neptune’s through.

It should be noted that the SA-3 system nominally had that capability, and given the Ukrainian upgrades to a better radar and a combined command-guidance/SARH terminal attack, there is potential for similar employment. Unlike the SA-11 they take time to transport and set up, but given that the Russian LST’s must land on the beach themselves (instead of dispatching fast hovercraft moving at twice to three times their speed from over the horizon, as most nations do,) there may yet be the opportunity to attempt that employment. Alternatively the Russians may prove predictable and come right to the batteries themselves, esp. if they were set up near Odessa.

It is absolutely insane to me that this is relevant.

D+10 Update: “Operational Pause”

Things were so (relatively) slow today that even the ISW, who are putting out a pretty decent daily summary of their own, albeit one that takes Ukrainian MoD statements at face value, had little to say. There is maneuver happening; a Russian spearhead well west of Mykolaiv, Russian efforts to widen their flank to the north-west of Kyiv, whatever the hell is happening south-west of Kyiv with the (possibly?) cut-off Russian advance forces and most importantly, persistent claims/rumors of a Ukrainian counter-attack developing around Kharkiv. As I (and any idiot with a map) said before, a thrust east or south-East from Kharkiv will cut the supply lines of Russian forces trying to bypass and link up with forces pushing north-west out of northern Donbas. It’s likely this Ukranian counter-attack won’t simply cut the lines of communication, but engage the Russian rear guard (assuming the dumb bastards have one) to catch them between the counter-attack and the Donbas line just as the Russian advance seeks to catch the Donbas forces between them and the thrust from Donbas.

Recursive encirclements, if you will.

A few other things:

• According to the mad lads monitoring Russian communications, the Russians are now using “Mode B” communication – i.e. speaking in Chechen, like some ghetto slav Navajo code talker. You can’t make this shit up. Especially funny because there’s Chechens volunteering for Ukraine.
• In addition to devoting more IFVs to their supply convoy protection details, the Russians have finally started using attack helicopters to guard their convoys. This is a serious improvement in reconnaissance and firepower, largely because rear-area TDF militia don’t have Stinger missiles (yet.) I suspect the NSV 12.7x108mm machine guns they’ve been stripping off all those abandoned tanks are going to make life interesting for those pilots soon enough, however. To say nothing of the ERA blocks – it won’t take them long to put that plastique into simple Explosively Formed Penetrator off-route mines.
• Allegations that Russians are pushing hard to reach a hydroelectric power plant about 100km South of Kyiv, which would be a feat of Blyatkrieg hitherto unimaginable.

An Aside

That’s it for the update on D + 10. Nothing much happening today – or, rather, there’s a hell of a lot happening and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense can’t say too much about it for OPSEC reasons. So I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about something that’s bothered me since day one.

Open up Google Earth, (if you have it downloaded,) or failing that, Google Maps with satellite view. Now zoom out to view your 100x100km corner of the state.

Now imagine the state next door is invading. (Or Canada, if you can take them seriously long enough for this thought exercise.) Look at your land, your home as you never have before. Look at where the highways run, where the rail lines merge. Where are the major crossroads? Which cities are the densest? You know these cities, you’ve driven through them, lived in a few at some point. You know how they’re built, where they sprawl. Which one would give your ATGM-armed troopers the best chance?

Now look at your local area. Consider which roads and sheltered lanes would be the best for an ambush of an enemy patrol, or supply convoy. Which areas offer clear sight lines? Your militia will only have small arms and cheap RPGs; plan accordingly. Where are the turns? Where are the farm fields which the farmer can till up ahead of schedule to ensure they’re too soft for a wheeled IFV to have easy going of it? Which areas offer good tree canopy to hide you from patrolling hostile choppers?

We’ve all been dissecting Ukraine from a birds-eye-view for over a week now, thinking in terms of axes of advance, lines of communication, defensive terrain. But one thing that I’ve noticed looking at the Google Street view and the odd pictures still on Google Earth – Ukraine is a beautiful country.

And right now it is being torn to fucking pieces because of a murderous son-of-a-bitch who wants to resurrect a repressive, evil shithole of an empire and enslave all the former vassals who managed to escape it after over a hundred years of genocide and suffering.

Imagine it happening to you.

And keep that in mind the next time you see some glib fucking takes on Twitter about it.

 D + 11: Hidden Movement

More information today; some confirmations of Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Statements, current and prior, some only on their say-so.

Northern Front

•  Russia’s axis of advance from the East has finally reached the Eastern suburbs of Kyiv, as confirmed by scenes of heavy damage in those rural areas and this well-publicized ambush of Russian armor using the now familiar Ukrainian “shoot-and-scoot.” See also this drone footage of firing MLRS units that was geolocated to Peremoha, [50.498014, 31.259219] and given angle, direction and range was likely firing on the eastern Kyiv suburb of Brovari. Also these Chechens at Boryspil International Airport on the east side of Kyiv.

• Given that they’re at the end of a long and frequently interdicted supply line their usefulness is in doubt. They’ve left even more Ukrainian-held towns to their rear (all at crossroads, naturally) to push this far, and the forces pushing past Chernihiv still haven’t taken that city and are thus denied its rail line and crossroads.
• Ukrainian MoD reports enemy pushes towards Malyn, NW of Kyiv and indicating Russian movements further west. This widening of the front could “secure” another highway for Russian advances, as well as an alternate rail line that passes west of the Chernobyl region.

• The Finnmap now seems most based on official statements by the Ukrainian MoD, which isn’t bad, but will necessarily lack timeliness or detail due to OPSEC.

• Russians have reportedly re-taken Irpin (again,) which is probably what occasioned the widely-reported fleeing of civilians in the last two days, including civilian casualties during the attempt.
• The fighting north-west of Kyiv is still unexpectedly pitched. I’m surprised that Russian forces have not exhausted their supply. Enough must be getting through to enable continued operations, even with most of their supply and reinforcements still stuck on that highway and reportedly camping out in the woods on either side of the convoy for lack of other options. The western highway may already be in use.

Southern Front

• Russian forces around Mykolaiv are apparently getting their asses kicked. I’ve seen video of an entire battalion level battery of 122mm D-30 towed guns put out of action by a direct hit to an ammunition vehicle (mortars, TB-2 cluster munition or artillery ICM counter-battery are all possibilities,) several VDV airborne vehicles captured, and a field full of Russian corpses. Note the rural terrain and use of towed guns suggest these aren’t meeting engagements northwest of Mykolaiv, but the city’s defenders taking the fight to the enemy.
• Ukrainian MoD statements (?) indicate that Tokmak and Vasylivka have fallen, which means the Konka river line is certainly in full contact with Russian forces now. Note the Finnmap shows the line already crossed in Polohy, which I very much doubt – there’s only very recent (30m ago) claims to this effect from Literally Who’s on twitter. It seems unlikely for Polohy to be bypassed so quickly, especially with the fortification and natural barriers it has to call upon. (The river is bridgeable, but especially in this area tends to wind and branch, forming wide marshy areas. Given the saturation of the terrain right now and the ATGM-heavy nature of the defenders I doubt they could push through without a serious advantage in manpower.)
• Claimed counter-attack by Ukrainian forces on the Donbas line towards Mariupol, but no more information.

Eastern Front

• Ukraine MoD claims they have counter-attacked out of Kyiv and liberated Chuhuiv, which cuts the M03/E40 highway north/south. This is a sizable town, not a mere village, that should offer good cover for a defender.
• Movements on Finnmap are mostly based on Ukrainian MoD reports, but we have some scant evidence to verify them now. There is definitely fighting in Izum, though whether they came from the East or North I cannot say. There is/was definitely fighting in Severodonetsk. Interestingly, a similar scene is found in Novoaydar, almost 40km due East, and in both images the Ukrainian T-64s seem to be in “hull down” positions behind berms created by raised roadbeds, indicating defensive deployment. This supports the theory of a fighting retreat. Overall I think this apparent “pocket” is indeed forming. The Ukraine deployment tracker (based on UoD official statements) indicates the UA 92nd Mechanized Brigade is in Chuhuiv, with the 57th Motorized Brigade and 79th Air Assault Brigade holding the pocket of Rubizhne and Severodonetsk. That amounts to motorized light infantry (ideal for city defense) reinforced by elite mechanized forces (the air-assault brigades.) Air assault brigades were converted from legacy Soviet airmobile brigades into elite mechanized units; they have Ukraine’s best equipment and are reinforced by a tank company – T-80s, no less. There is also the 111th Defense Brigade, which hasn’t had any reported changes of position, but given it’s a Defense Brigade, and its garrison is Severodonetsk, I’d say they’re still there. An analyst I can’t vouch for estimates there’s about 7 Russian Battalion Tactical Groups operating in this area, but since I have no clue myself I’ll use his estimate. BTGs consist of a tank and artillery battalion but only a single motorized/mechanized rifle company. Thus the 92nd Mechanized (which has three mechanized battalions, one or two motorized battalions and a tank battalion) is outnumbered in tanks (7 vs. 1) and artillery (4 vs. 1) but is mustering 4-5 infantry battalions against a grand total of one reinforced battalion (7 companies) of Russian motorized/mechanized infantry. Additionally one of their artillery battalions are actually T-12 anti-tank guns, which (while lacking vs. tanks) could make a decent accounting of themselves against IFVs, especially when properly dug-in (saving ATGMs for anti-tank work.)

• These disparities neatly illustrate why the Ukrainians are fighting so defensively; armor and self-propelled artillery are the key weapons for maneuver combat in more open terrain. This counter-offensive may seem limited, but if it forces the Russians to come back to them to secure the crossroads, it plays to their strengths. Note also that mechanized infantry can reach out and touch people; not just with artillery, but in person; controlling the town aids in control of the area around the town, esp. given the presence of TDF militias and friendly civilians that can provide local patrols and information on enemy movements. Add in the steady attrition Russian forces are suffering and the ground situation (which penalizes maneuver no matter who’s doing it) and I expect the most aggressive counter-attacks (at least in the more open areas of the country) won’t come until the ground dries out.

• If you see any info on the Ukrainian 4th Tank Brigade moving east, however, prepare for some serious shit.

General Developments

• Russian airpower’s very bad, no good day yesterday (seven aircraft downed) continues today with a shoot-down over Kharkiv, which was definitely not a MANPAD; most likely an SA-11. Ukrainian air defense is highly effective against Russian operations.
• Following truly outrageous Russian claims that America was helping Ukraine develop nuclear weapons and open threats against the EU for supplying weapons to Ukraine, the Harry S. Truman’s Carrier Strike Group moved to the north of the Aegean Sea, putting it as close as it can possibly get to Ukraine. The carrier was, at last report, operating under NATO command and with the Italian carrier ITS Cavour and the French Charles de Gaulle (itself a CATOBAR ship.) The surface fleet Russia put into the Med (ostensibly) to deter such action holed up in its Syrian port at Tartus under land-based air-defense cover. NATO is sending clearer and clearer messages that it is done dancing every time Putin rattles his saber, nuclear or otherwise.
• After repeated demonstrations of why air-droppable armor is ill-suited for assaults, VDV formations are now being reinforced with heavy armor support.
• Russia is continuing to hit airports – twelve weapons were launched at Vinnytsya AB today. They are struggling mightily to put the Ukrainian air-power out of action.
• Tochka-U missiles were seen moving in Belarus towards the Ukrainian border and a Tochka booster section crashed in Desyanka, near Chernihiv in Ukraine. This likely indicates Russia’s munition stockpiles of Iskanders and Kalibrs are running low (approaching their reserve levels for contingencies,) given they’ve fired at least 600 ballistic and/or cruise missiles since the beginning of the war. (They’ve also committed 95% of the troops massed for the operation.) This also represents Belarus’s first direct action against Ukraine so far.

D + 12 Update (Posted on D+13)

Another day of slow news. Despite posting this on D+13 I’m marking this separate for posterity’s sake so we know what information was available on March 7th.

• First confirmed shootdowns of Russian cruise missiles: both a Russian air-launched weapon and a Kalibr. I have been informed that the land-attack variant of the Kalibr does not have a terminal supersonic sprint, making it fair game for most Ukrainian SAM systems, as this demonstrates.
• The SU-34 intercept over Kharkiv on D+11 was recorded from inside the SAM vehicle that destroyed it – an SA-8 “Gecko.” This video shows the crew tracking the intercept using the vehicle’s electro-optical system, and gives you both an idea of the limited picture quality those dated systems provide, and also of their continued utility despite that.
• Russian aircraft, especially expensive strike assets, are seemingly only sortieing at night now. This is likely to reduce their casualties from MANPADS. Given that they are using iron bombs exclusively this further degrades their effectiveness (conducting iron bomb attacks while wearing NVGs is not easy. Everything is harder when peering through those things.) It also provides them little protection against actual SAM systems; while the aircraft are harder for an individual with a MANPADS to find, it also makes small wheeled systems like the SA-8 or SA-11 harder for the jet to find as well; and a combination of old-fashioned sound spotting and their electro-optical systems can allow for laying their launchers before turning on their search radars to establish a track and engage.

• There is no shortcut for the Russian air forces; they must either get good at SEAD or accept the irrelevance of much of their airpower.

• Another fuel depot in occupied Donbas has been hit by Ukraine using a Tochka-U missile, establishing a pattern of efforts to interdict the enemy’s fuel supply chain.
• First confirmation of Ukrainian airstrikes underway against the now-infamous stalled convoy north of Kyiv. Ukrainian MoD stated to the media days ago (March 2nd) that they were hitting this convoy with direct airstrikes – manned aircraft, even. This is the first confirmation we’ve had of direct action against said convoy with air assets. Given the TB-2’s likely low-observable characteristics against ground-based radars, in addition to its modest payload capacity when compared to an SU-25 and especially an SU-24, it’d make sense to use the TB-2s for preparatory DEAD.

• If one assumes Ukrainian air assets are keeping a low operational tempo in order to preserve their combat power and avoid airframe losses from continuing Russian airstrikes on their bases, the lack of a single-day “highway of death” event is understandable. Given how long this column has been stalled it’s clear Ukraine has time to steadily attrit that equipment without taking undue losses of precious airframes. The damage even a single SU-24 can do with a bomblet dispenser is horrifying, and with every passing day the TB-2 operations will degrade enemy air defenses more and more.

• The video of an apparently successful MLRS strike on a stationary Russian patrol ship offshore of Odessa was matched by footage of something burning out to sea come daylight. A little luck for Ukraine, and a lot of incompetence by the Russians to (apparently) sit stationary at anchor instead of maintaining a slow holding pattern. The ship damaged was claimed to be the Vasily Bykov, a Project 22160 patrol ship; roughly equivalent to an American Littoral Combat Ship. Most likely mission was simply keeping Odessa under direct observation.

• The significance of this event, aside from the morale boost, is that it illustrates how dangerous a Russian amphibious landing would be. If a single Grad can wound a ship at standoff distance, it’s not hard to calculate the chances of multiple LSTs approaching the beach to land on it directly. As the joke in WWII went, LST stands for “Large, Slow Target.” Much of the coast is unsuitable for an amphibious landing and given that land transit is faster than water, any amphibious force can expect Ukrainian artillery to be ready and waiting for them when they disembark.

• Ukrainian MoD claimed that their marines conducted a night raid on Kherson Airport and destroyed some 30 Russian helicopters. Commercial imagery showed the airport was hosting at least forty-nine helicopters the day before, so the targets they claimed to attack were definitely present.

• This indicates how Russia is using airpower to try and resolve logistical difficulties. Moving supplies via air is very expensive and has limited volume but given how dangerous the roads are for them, it’s an operationally sound decision. The reason to use the airport, despite helicopters not needing runways, is likely to utilize the aviation fuel already stored there; taking it from the enemy instead of burning their own supply.

• Note this would be far more valuable for Russia if they could bring in IL-76 transport aircraft, which are much more efficient transport than helicopter fleets, but the persistent SAM threat Ukraine still has precludes this.

• No significant or solid information on ongoing maneuver battles. The ISW’s summation of the day is illustrative; for the most part preparatory shelling was still reported to be in effect. The one incident of note was the Ukrainian army’s own report that “a Russian BTG crossed the Inhul River at Kashpero-Mykolaivka, roughly 50 kilometers north of Mykolayiv, on March 6.” At time of writing (March 8th) I’ve heard no more about that unit. It might quite possibly have been a single BTG’s complement of mechanized infantry utilizing their amphibious IFV capability, in which case it’d amount to a reconnaissance in force (one mechanized rifle company without heavy armor support.) Their tanks can ford/w snorkels but their supply trucks cannot; and if they deploy a pontoon bridge they’ll want to defend it – and if they’re going to do that, they may as well send in follow-on forces. I’m guessing this is either a reconnaissance-in-force, or there’s more than one BTG on the other side of the Inhul river now. If they want a naval landing at Odessa to work, this is exactly what they’d have to do; bypass Mykolaiv and position to link up with that force.
• This could cut Ukrainian internal lines of communication to Mykolaiv, but the forces they seem to have committed to this axis (approx 6 Battalion Tactical Groups) seem woefully insufficient for such an attempt. They could invest both Odessa and Mykolaiv in an attempt to starve them out, but it doesn’t seem like Russia’s overall strategic picture has time for that. Moreover the mass-murder of civilians by the millions is almost sure to bring a NATO response; much like Stalin’s attempt to starve out West Berlin was countered by the Berlin Airlift (and god help Russia if they threaten kinetic action against such a move.) Nor do they have the infantry to take those cities; six BTGs amounts to roughly one reinforced battalion worth of infantry; woefully insufficient for urban fighting against even the known or suspected regular Ukrainian units, to say nothing of militia forces and civilian resistance.

D+13 update coming later today.

D+13 Update

I’ve gotten around Facebook’s fucking nagwall and can read Ukrainian General Staff official update bulletins myself. As they’re the only source of detailed information on a lot of maneuvering I’m going to stop endlessly qualifying them and just use them. I’ll tag this info with “UMoD” (for Ukrainian Ministry of Defense) to identify this as official government press releases. Any corroborating OSINT evidence will be attached afterwards. Not even the Institute for the Study of War’s excellent daily updates are fully conveying the information in these bulletins.

Sitrep: Maneuver

Northern Front

• UMoD says that two BTGs have advanced to Byshiv; 40km west-southwest of Kyiv and 20km south of Makariv (see map.) Efforts to encircle Kyiv continue but are still far from realization.

• This hideous video from Makariv shows a BMP murdering an elderly couple in their car. Note that the BMP was providing security for a small convoy of supply trucks. This paranoia and trigger-happy ruthlessness is indicative of how effective Ukrainian rear-area interdiction has been.

• Incredibly, UMoD reports that Russians are conducting offensive operations against Ivankiv, which is not only 70km north-northwest of Kyiv, but should be behind enemy lines, given UMoD statements to the effect of Russian movements clear to the west bank of the Dnieper river in the suburbs directly north of Kyiv. This jells with the report/photography by a journalist on D+9 (three days ago) showing Ukrainian forces in southern Ivankiv. Russian forces must be utilizing more western road links to Belarus (such as the RO2) given that Ukrainian forces have apparently controlled (or at least threatened with artillery fire) the crossroads at Ivankiv.

• No reports of Russian forces actually taking Malyn or pushing as far west as it, meaning they don’t have access to an additional two-lane highway to the Belarusian border, only surface roads. Perhaps they’re using helicopters to help deliver supplies forward?
• Russian troops are still near the eastern suburbs of Kyiv but haven’t had success in actually pushing into them.
• Interdiction of Russia’s long supply lines continues apace, as exemplified by the successful engagement of this supply column despite a T-80U escort. ISW claims Russian units around Kharkiv are diverting to help secure that territory better, and UMoD now states that Russian forces near Chernihiv are moving east, presumably to assist in this. It seems they are finally learning. With Konotop and Chernihiv still held the Russians are still without a rail line, however.

• This video of three T-80U tanks abandoned at (allegedly) Myrhorod is alarming – this is very deep in what is effectively the Ukrainian rear area and indicates a possible threat to Ukrainian lines of communicating to Kharkiv (via Poltava.) Of course, the fact an entire platoon of armor was simply abandoned illustrates the problems Russia faces when not moving in strength. Despite this attrition, Russian forces continue to aggressively commit small patrols long distances; likely due to a need for reconnaissance data and their apparently awful aerial ISR ability.
• A force of four tanks and at least one BMP-2 was engaged and destroyed near the village of Moskovs'kyi Bobryk by the Ukrainian 93rd Mechanized. Additionally a full platoon of T-80s was captured at Chupakhivka, about 20km east. The village is 60 kilometers south-west of Sumy; hence the surprise of enemy tank platoons probing as far southwest as Myrhorod. There’s quite possibly no well defined “front line” in this area, but I haven’t seen any indications by any force disposition estimations to indicate Russian troops are advancing south-west in serious numbers. Given the need to secure the long lines of communication from eastern Kyiv to the Sumy area this isn’t surprising.

Eastern Front

• UMoD confirms continued fighting at Izum, with Russia conducting pontoon-bridge crossings of the Siversky Donets and Berek rivers, and “rebel” forces have allegedly advanced as far as Rubizhne. Whether or not the Ukrainians continue fighting for Sievierodonetsk or withdraw will probably depend on how the southern front east of the Dnieper fares, but as long as they have Izium, their exit route from the city is probably secure.

Southern Front

• UMoD states that Russian forces are prioritizing a drive towards Zaporizhia along the eastern bank of the Dnieper. No official statements about Mykolaiv.
• OSINT indicates active combat around Mykolaiv, as well as the city mayor’s statement that they’re bracing for another assault. OSINT is also showing a constant drip of destroyed/captured Russian supply trucks and combat units in the open countryside, indicating that Ukrainian defenders in the area are not limited to contesting the city itself. These units might be supply convoys attempting to reach forces that have advanced further than Mykolaiv, but neither OSINT nor UMoD has much to say about how far west Russians have gone (or still are) in any significant force.

• Note this video shows sandbags on the tank’s “cope cage” positioned to give overhead cover to anyone manning the flexible .50 caliber gun, and the BMP-3’s crew is riding with the rear clamshell doors open, allowing them to provide flank security against infantry ambushes. The Russian army is learning how to fight – the hard way.

• Not much information on the defensive line in southern Ukraine east of the Dnieper.
• Mariupol remains Ukrainian. Russian forces tried to exploit a humanitarian civilian evacuation corridor to infiltrate troops into the city, which may indicate how successful their attacks have been to-date (i.e. not very.)

Sitrep: Logistics

• The death of a high-ranking Russian officer was recently confirmed by a communications intercept, in which an FSB officer explained he was informing his superior via insecure cell phone call because the 41st Army had lost all secure communication capability. The inability of entire armies to establish secure lines of communication will be a serious impediment to their ability to engage in successful maneuver warfare.
• Several recent OSINT tidbits confirm that Western-supplied anti-tank weapons are indeed reaching the front lines across the country and give an idea of the integrity of Ukrainian internal lines of communication:

• Danish M-72 EC’s have reached Kyiv. (2nd)
• Panzerfaust 3s (unknown location.)
• Spanish C-90-CR. (Unknown location.)
• AT-4 CS and NLAW resupply has reached Kharkiv.
• More Javelin missiles as well as AT-4s and NLAWs. (Unknown location.)

• Anonymous US Defense Official source puts Pentagon’s estimate of Russian losses at about five percent of their weapons/vehicles so far.
• Captured Russian equipment is already being put into service with Ukrainian frontline troops. Much captured materiel will need transport to rear areas where Ukraine’s significant defense industry can refurbish and repair them, but this shows that a good amount of materiel is being captured in good enough condition for immediate re-use.

Strategic Update

• In addition to the outrageous demand that Putin’s dethroned puppet be installed as Ukraine’s Prime Minister made yesterday, today’s negotiations saw a demand for Ukraine to reduce its military to a mere 60,000 men. Given this insanity, reports that Russia is “backing away from its maximalist demands” should be disregarded until such time as Russia actually negotiates instead of spewing lunacies.
• The saga of the on-again-off-again Polish MiG-29 deal took a surprising turn today when Poland outright declared their willingness to immediately turn over their MiG-29 fleet to the US, (by way of Ramstein AB in Germany) at no charge, and requested the sale of equivalent-capability airframes (i.e. F-16s) as soon as possible to make up for it. US diplomats openly admitted they were taken by complete surprise by this announcement, then said that Poland’s proposal was “not tenable” due to the US not wanting to fly those aircraft directly from a NATO airbase into skies contested by the Russian Air Force.

• Both Poland and the US are clearly keen to make this transfer of MiGs happen, but this two-step tango of diplomatic fuck-ups is not encouraging to behold.

 D+14, D+15 Update: Last 48 Hours

The frontlines have remained mostly static in the last 48 hours, but the preponderance of information (including some independently verifiable data) now supports the view that this is reflective of what’s actually been happening at the frontline. Sources for the most part are directly from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (these five posts on their official facebook page cover all official information released in the last 72 hours: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]) (Oh wait add [6] because fuck the boomers at the Ukrainian MoD consolidate your posts you FUCKS) The Institute for the Study of War’s March 9th and 10th assessments are useful for understanding the MoD reports but I’m reading and analyzing them myself nonetheless instead of relying entirely on ISW’s summaries, and trying to find corroborating OSINT whenever possible. I am also cross-checking against the Finnmap and trying to verify those claims one Twitter search at a time.

I’m not having much fucking luck.

Sitrep: Maneuver

Northern Front

• Russian forces appear only partly combat-capable (at last.) Analysis dropped today by the best OSINT ORBAT tracking I’ve seen estimates 18-20 Battalion Tactical Groups near western Kyiv. This puts UMoD statements regarding force sizes on March 8th into a new light (five BTG force mounted repulsed attack on Bucha, four BTG force moved on Yasnohorodka.) On the 9th UMoD stated that “separate units of the 29th, 35th and 36th”. This is referring to the parent regiments of the BTGs in question. In theory each regiment can provide troops/equipment to form up to three BTGs, but @JominiW, who has been tracking reports of individual BTGs since the war’s start, credits this as only five actual BTGs, analysis that even ISW didn’t offer. (I don’t know what his sources are; feel free to ask him!) Taken together this suggests Russian supply situation in the area can support two regiments worth of offensive operations (only half their local force) and for whatever reason they are only moving towards individual objectives at regimental strength. Given the March 8th advance on Bucha was repulsed, not massing two regiments for operations on the 9th hint that the Russians cannot do so, for whatever reason (likely coordination e.g. secure radio communication issues.)
• Russia attempted no major offensives in NW Kyiv’s suburbs and had a three-company assault repulsed from Brovary on Kyiv’s eastern side.

• The well-publicized video of a three-company combined-arms assault (one company of ten tanks and two companies of mechanized infantry in IFVs being halted, then forced to retreat by very accurate Ukrainian artillery gives an idea of how Russia fights. (Note these forces represent the better part of a BTG’s maneuver force.) Rushing down a wide road without dismounting the infantry to secure the houses once entering an urban area only to be halted by enemy fire, then forced to retreat by very accurate IDF, is peak blitzkrieg.

• UMoD reports retaking Moshchun, 12km north of Kyiv and only 8km east of Hostomel itself. Earlier UMoD reports on imminent Russian attack on Ivankiv have yielded no further word, raising the possibility that Ukranian forces could extend a salient north to link up with forces at, and strongly hold the Ivankiv crossroads.
• UMoD reports liberating Muraviyka, just south-west of Chernihiv, on March 10th. This follows a report of Russian forces cutting the highway between Chernihiv and Kyiv by taking the village of Kozelets about halfway between them on the 9th. If this line is still cut it’s likely it won’t remain that way long enough to weaken the defenders; keeping this road/rail link from effective use by Russian supply efforts.
• A reporter for the Kyiv Independent claims that Ukrainian forces have re-taken Makariv, 40km west of Kyiv. This is the first solid claim I’ve seen on Makariv’s status so far. That Makariv was contested was hinted at, but that Russian forces were strongly holding it is anyone’s guess (see the trigger-happy BMP convoy escort from my last update.)

• This source is on-scene (in the city) and is one of the on-scene journalists western media is contacting for information. Regardless I have no independent confirmation of this claim at this time.

• UMoD clarifies regional frontline to the northwestern countryside a bit. Finnmap is a mess compared to UMoD statements so here’s mine:

• The massive convoy stuck on the P02 and/or P56 (it has never been made explicitly clear) has largely “dispersed and redeployed,” according to commercial satellite imagery. Between the imagery and basic logic this amounts to armored fighting vehicles, not supply trucks, moving overland as best they’re able (with the usual attrition theoretically recoverable since it’s in an area where no TDF have been operating that we’ve seen, so likely only Ukrainian SoF.) This means Russia’s pause in attacks yesterday was likely to reconstitute units using these reinforcements. Whether or not they have the supply to attack with them is another matter; though moving the actual AFVs overland should reduce congestion on that highway significantly.

• Note, however, that this is after a solid week of attrition by Ukrainian attacks, and the troops/crews will be at lower readiness due to their extended, unplanned camping trip.

• Previous UMoD statements to the effect of Russia shifting forces from the Chernihiv and Russian border north of Sumy axes of advance has been corroborated by anonymous US officials quoted by journalists. ISW’s previous analysis that the Russians are attempting to properly secure their LOC from Sumy to Kyiv seems likely, as the atrocious toll Ukrainian TDF and the defenders of Sumy have been wreaking daily on their supply chain is obviously unsustainable. I’ve seen so many ambushed convoys near Sumy it’s hard to keep track of them.

• This could also explain the aggressive exploration south of this LOC as noted yesterday; to widen the flank and provide some defensive depth to that line.

Eastern Flank

• Izum is still held by Ukrainian troops 72 hours after the first reported Russian attack there. Given Russia’s lack of success it would seem Sievierodonetsk is not in great danger of encirclement anytime soon. No statement to this effect, rather, no UMoD statement that Izum has fallen.
• Kharkiv is still taking shelling, but no serious ground assaults. It’s possible that Russian forces are shifting units north to actually take Sumy and end the bleeding wound in the side of their logistics pipeline once and for all. (SW’s analysis.)
• Northwestern Kharkiv suburb of Dergachi retaken by Ukraine, according to the aide of President Zelensky. It’s only a few KM outside of the city proper, but given the advance to Chuhuiv a few days ago, it shows a widening of the defensive lines on each side of Kharkiv proper. With Chuhuiv held, Russian forces attacking Izum (or anywhere NW of it up to Chuhuiv) are denied the crossroads.

Southern Flank

• Russian forces are attempting to bypass Mykolaiv, according to UMoD and corroborated by commercial satellite imagery. Additionally the Russians are trying to expand their front northward in the region between the Dnieper and the Southern Bug rivers, driving north along the meager two-lane roads available in the area as discussed a few days prior, as well as moving past Mykolaiv along the eastern bank of the Southern Bug:

• UMoD claims no serious crossing (i.e. bridge, not just amphib IFVs) has taken place over the Bug, and I haven’t seen evidence otherwise via OSINT channels. Note Ukrainian defenders are (as always) holding crossroads. Given the muddy terrain in this area is going to heavily incentivize, if not mandate an attack similar to the one seen in Brovary (i.e. down the road) and the roads here are only two lanes wide, I don’t anticipate Russian breakthrough efforts having much luck to the north.
• Two odd things, Kherson region:

• UMoD claimed on the 9th that Russian soldiers in civilian clothes are moving towards Mykolayiv – either new infiltration attempts (also reported in Kyiv) or an attempt to infiltrate forces past Mykolayiv, perhaps by using a rope bridge or boats somewhere north of the city, then infiltrating through Ukrainian-held countryside to somewhere else.
• This video showing a large convoy of troops, armor and supplies moving south through Kherson, towards the waterfront.
• Taken together this could insinuate something is being planned vis a vis an amphibious landing.

• This will not go well for the Russians.

• Mariupol is still under bombardment but not ground assault. At this point encircling Mariupol is keeping Russian forces pinned down, unable to participate elsewhere.
• Still no solid information or even UMoD statements on the southern defensive line between Mariupol and Zaporizhzhia.

There are other things to talk about but they will have to wait till later tonight or early tomorrow. I’m tired.

D+15: Shit That Matters But I’m Too Tired To Organize It So Fuck It

• Personnel balance is shifting in Ukraine’s favor. US estimate is 5 to 6k Russian KIA, by standard battlefield ratios for full-scale conventional war that means 15,000-18,000 Russian soldiers WIA and thus out of the fight. Ukraine claims to have shut down recruitment of foreign volunteers due to having more than they can arm at this point, over 100,000. Even if they’re full of shit, the volunteers they are getting are high quality. Active-duty defectors from the UK, American pilots with > 1500 flight hours each, many British and American veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, even highly skilled veteran snipers. Contrast this to the replacements that Russia can get, which are effectively conscripts. The entire reason Battalion Tactical Groups exist is because the Russians have a lot more tanks than soldiers who want to sign up to be infantry; so they have a battalion of armor, and the artillery complement one-third a fucking regiment, but only a company of mechanized infantry in it. They cannot replace these people. Ukraine can.
• Much has been said about apparently limited deployment of Russia’s much-vaunted ground electronic warfare capabilities; with their reliance on commercial radios the best explanation so far.
• UMoD has openly informed its people to prioritize targeting Russian EW systems as they are interfering with small drones used for reconnaissance. Russian troops have also been using small battlefield drones for short-range recon and artillery spotting. Ukraine likely doesn’t have as many purpose-built military drones. However, they do have a bizarre and diverse arsenal of drones built over the last eight years of war in Donbas by volunteer domestic experts from all corners. Furthermore, they are hardened against Russian EW systems used against them in Donbas, systems that sidelined purpose-built military drones like older EQ-11 Ravens from the US (they didn’t have the hardened communication link of newer models.) Thus Ukraine isn’t entirely dependent on cheap commercial drones that are easy meat for jammers.
• This rare look at a Ukrainian tank engaging the enemy also shows an abandoned MT-LB that was clearly camouflaged before abandonment (not the first vehicle like that I’ve seen.) See also this stationary and apparently camouflaged BMP-2 that was captured... with the crew still inside it! These incidents demonstrate that many of these abandoned vehicles aren’t being left out of choice; but because the crews have no way to recover or effectively tow the vehicle. It’s normal for armored vehicles to break down, get stuck, and in general have problems, which is why any armored unit has recovery vehicles along with them. It’s also normal for some tanks knocked out in combat to be repairable, not total losses (less so for Russian tanks given the turret explodey issue but true enough for their IFVs at least.) In other words, a lot of the attrition that any armored force would normally suffer is becoming not just total losses, but Ukrainian GAINS due to Russian incompetence.
• Co-location of 42 AN-2 biplanes with two electronic warfare aircraft and an ELINT aircraft at Seshcha airbase in Russia strongly suggest the AN-2s have been converted into drones for SEAD/DEAD operations, i.e. dedicated decoys for air defense.
• Russian losses from the engagement seen above in Brovary (see whole thread)
• Some slight corroboration of UMoD claims of repulsing Russians from Moshun. There was at least a fight, most likely.
• Chechens fighting for Ukraine.
• Despite earlier predictions that Russia was running out of missiles not reserved for contingencies, they are still firing about two dozen weapons a day. We’re approaching 800 cruise or ballistic missiles fired into Ukraine now.
• Three more advanced SAMs capable of point-defense against cruise missiles captured by Ukraine.
• Confirmation that some Russian equipment was recently activated from mothball/reserve status.
• US reporter quotes anonymous DoD official as saying that air defenses superior to MANPADS will soon be provided to Ukraine. Now that Ukraine is clearly not going to be over-run in the short term, this could easily mean a NATO-made SHORAD system, not just ammo reloads for their Buks from old Romanian or Polish stocks. The risk of operating systems with NATO crews, or providing technical advisers, or even “contractors” that are (recently?) retired NATO military members trained in the systems in question, is far less risky. This goes double for the city of Lviv, which is only 75km from the Polish border. Despite housing both an aircraft repair depot, the Lviv tank factory and most of Ukraine’s mothballed T-64s, it hasn’t seen a single Russian missile strike yet. Now that the war is clearly going to last a while, this deference may not last; proximity to Poland be damned. A handful of anti-ballistic-missile capable systems placed near these crucial infrastructure resources in Lviv could make a huge difference for Ukraine; as their biggest weakness right now is that they have limited ability to intercept cruise missiles and very limited ability to stop tactical ballistic missiles. A few active-duty NATO SHORAD systems are capable of ABM work as well as engaging cruise missiles. A few, such as I-HAWK Phase III, have been recently retired by some NATO members, and are still in active service with others (e.g. Netherlands and Greece respectively) and thus mothballed stocks and trained operators and technicians should be available.
• Ukrainian artillery competence. This video shows Ukrainian artillery near Borodyanka actively engaging single tanks and scoring direct hits, showing the accurate fire displayed in Brovary was not mere luck via firing into a target-rich environment. To achieve this kind of accuracy with old Soviet guns lacking the sensors and computerization of more modern weapons is possible but requires very well trained crews that know their weapons well – and have kept them in excellent working order. Compare to Russian equipment – this captured towed gun shocked a Ukrainian – presumably an artilleryman – with the poor condition of the weapon. See above comment on recently un-mothballed reserve equipment.
• The MiG-29 deal is dead as a doornail. What I took for an uncommonly selfless offer was, in fact, the Polish government dumping a hot potato in the US’s lap as revenge for them repeatedly ignoring Poland’s statements that they weren’t going to give up 1/3rd of their active fighter force with a possible war with Russia right on their doorstep. Sasuga fucking D.C. Whoever’s puppet-mastering the senile pedophile isn’t doing a great job of managing these things.

D+16 Update: Limited Movement (posted D+17@ 2PM EST)

Increasing evidence of limited Ukrainian counter-attacks in the north, and one solidly confirmed Russian gain in the south-east. Russia launched missile strikes against crucial military infrastructure in far Western Ukraine for the first time. UMoD claims Russian offensives on every front have stalled and Russian forces are regrouping/resupplying.

Northern Front

• Some suggestion that Nizhyn, almost 70km south-east of Chernihiv, has at least been contested, as the mayor of the city claimed it was hit with MLRS fire on March 10th. Note this is third-hand information (facebook post reported by a Ukrainian booster account.) This follows UMoD claims of the liberation of Baklanova Muraviika (incorrectly “Muraviyka” in D+15 update) 13km south-east of Chernihiv (not sw as said in D+15) and actual video evidence of Ukrainian troops entering the (devastated) town of Viktorivka posted yesterday. Video of a counterattack said to be in this region was posted the 9th or 10th but with no information on what the objective was. Taken together, this would suggest that Ukrainian forces are indeed engaging in a limited counter-attack to ensure Chernihiv is not encircled and that its lines of communication to Kyiv (and thus to Ukraine proper) remain intact. Note this southward movement is well east of the main road connection between the cities; the E95. The Dnieper widens into a 10km wide lake north of Kyiv for a good 60km northward where it narrows again to pontoon-bridgeable widths, with the only other crossings being the major bridges in Kyiv itself. Ergo, by clearing and holding territory to the east of that road, Ukraine can let the Dnieper protect its west flank, and Russian forces trying to move south from Belarus to attack it will have to pass Chernihiv and its defenders.

• Remember that Chernihiv controls not just a southern highway to eastern Kyiv, but also a rail link. Having this city in hand would drastically alleviate Russian supply issues in eastern Kyiv as they’d be able to supply the forces advancing from the Sumy axis directly from Belarus, and right off the train. Options for working around this are limited; as the major rail junction/railhead in Russian “held” territory further east is Konotop – which is still held by Ukrainian defenders at last report. Russia will either have to build a new railhead (switches, turnaround, unloading equipment etc.) or take Konotop to move their railheads closer and relocate their primary supply dumps further forward.

• See also this spent Tochka-U (likely Belurussian/w bomblet warhead) seen today in Avdiivka, some 30~km east of Chernihiv.
• Kyiv’s western side seems (relatively) quiet from social media, just as UMoD suggests.
• Image allegedly from Demydiv, 15km north of Kyiv west of the river, showing a Ukrainian sniper taking cover from air attack in a slit trench. This is the definition of a slit trench; something barely deep enough for you to get below ground level and so narrow you have to slot in sideways. This is (obviously) a hasty field fortification, the kind of which would be dug by advancing soldiers. This matches previous statements by UMoD of northwards Ukrainian advances from Kyiv.

Southern Front

• Volnovakha seems to have fallen. This city is 60km directly north of Mariupol, so its fall effectively means the flank of the southern defensive line to the Dnieper river is threatened. Most images (unsurprisingly) are coming from “rebel” forces; and while they have already demonstrated a penchant for photographing the same two T-64s from multiple angles to claim them as new losses, the images coming out are new and indeed show knocked-out Ukrainian T-64s in an urban environment. (I’m saving these as the pro-Russian accounts are likely to get nuked.)

• As there is no good withdrawal option that will leave Kharkiv with an open LOC I would expect either a Ukrainian counteroffensive or fallback to prepared earthworks/positions outside the town (if they exist.) At time of writing a counter-attack is being rumored but obviously there’s no evidence of this yet.
• I still cannot find a whisper of information on where the southern defensive line actually is right now, but Finnmap still illustrates the importance of Volnovakha for anchoring the defensive line. Without this city the Ukrainians lack a good highway to move armor long-distance for any relief effort for Mariupol.

• Possible corroborating evidence of UMoD reported counterattacks around Kharkiv. Possibly the push to recapture Dergachi the UMoD claimed the other day. No more solid info on counteroffensives in this area just yet.
• Mykolaiv remains under heavy shelling. Unclear if also under heavy ground assault, or if the Russians are simply trying to level the city before moving in. Russian forces appear to still be stalled on this front. UMoD claims the probes along surface roads north of the city have found no success and no independent information confirms or denies that. Certainly no social media info on Russian forces west of the Southern Bug river.
• Mariupol under shelling but not assault as of March 11th.
• Confirmation of conflict near Izum in the south-east. This is in Yatskovka, a town 20 kilometers east of Izum. Russian forces presumably still trying to close the pocket around Severodontesk.

 Strategic

• First Russian missile attacks on crucial infrastructure in Western Ukraine. The most important target hit was a repair plant that services and repairs MiG-29 engines. This indicates a shift in Russian strategy towards a long-haul fight. Fortunately, Ukraine can always send their MiG engines into Poland for servicing as they also operate the type, but other infastructure (such as the Lviv tank plant) are far more precious. This underlines the dire need to get better anti-missile point defenses into Western Ukraine.

D+17 Update @ 8:54PM EST

No major developments at this time. The ISW report, which is drawing off mostly the same sources I am, is a good overview of the big nothing that has occurred. However I’m hearing rumors of a major counterattack on the southern defensive line towards Volnovakha – and perhaps further. Absolutely no confirmation either way but solid sources have indicated these rumors are coming from both sides, including pro-Russian accounts. I will update again tonight if any major confirmation is found, or confirmation of bigger and more sustained Ukrainian counterattacks near Kyiv or Kharkiv than the ones documented in the last update.

General:

• On D+8 I relayed a (poorly sourced but logical) report that the Mayor of Kherson had accepted Russian demands such as a strict curfew and no mass demonstrations or confrontations (such as blocking of Russian vehicles) by civilians. In the week since I have seen multiple repeated demonstrations by the locals in Kherson.
• On the 11th it was reported that the Mayor of Melitopol (Ivan Fedorov) had been arrested by Russian occupation troops. Today we have video of a mass demonstration by civilians demanding his release. Reportedly a new “mayor” has been installed by the occupiers already.
• I’ve seen rumors that Russian forces are attempting to set up another puppet “republic” in the Kherson region (contacting local officials and asking if they’d collaberate) followed by this report that local officials have issued a joint statement insisting that Kherson region will always be Ukrainian. 

• This is ominous as it implies Russia is preparing for a negotiated cease-fire with an eye towards keeping as much of Ukraine as possible.

• DC scuttlebut indicating Russian forces have lost fully one-fourth of their equipment.
• Anonymous DoD official quoted as saying 80 of Ukraine’s fixed-wing fleet still intact, with a sortie tempo of 56 jets at 5-10 hours per day due to constraints from Russian SAM coverage, which tracks with any realistic prediction.
• Yet another example of incredibly accurate Ukrainian artillery fire.
• First sighting of a small loitering munition made – this one Russian. No video or even mention of Ukrainian use of Polish “Warmate” drones has been mentioned (they are a known customer from before the war.)
• Russian strikes now deliberately destroying food warehouses in Mykolaiv and near Kyiv. (Geolocation (50.5282385, 30.8473788) This indicates full commitment to an “isolate and starve” strategy; effectively holding the civilian population hostage to force favorable terms. If Ukraine does not bend, this will amount to a slow genocide, and drastically increases the possibility of more overt Western intervention. Not necessarily kinetic; mind – a modern-day “Berlin Airlift” to supply food (and much more crucially, water) to these (encircled) cities is highly probable, as I mentioned before, but would necessitate (unarmed) NATO assets moving directly into the combat zone. Mariupol is a port city, and the US Navy actually has deployable desalination plants that can be delivered by land, sea or air to alleviate the crisis. US Navy ships have also used their onboard desalination plants to provide fresh water during disaster relief; these plants are also present on US Navy supply ships that only feature defensive armament (if any.)

• Ukrainian officials claim a relief convoy headed for Mariupol was entirely confiscated by Russian forces – food, water, trucks and all. This illustrates that any Western relief effort will have to come by air or sea. It is not difficult to imagine such an effort being challenged and engaged with lethal weapons by Russian forces.

• Today Russia explicitly threatened to attack arms shipments from the West to Ukraine: “Ryabkov said that Russia had “warned the US that pumping weapons from a number of countries it orchestrates isn’t just a dangerous move, it’s an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets.” Given these convoys are being driven by Ukrainian troops using Ukrainian trucks into Poland to make the pickups, strikes on them on Ukrainian soil shouldn’t threaten NATO personnel, and weapons are already assumed to be legitimate targets. Ergo this is a veiled threat (e.g. “dangerous move.”) This indicates a steady escalation of threats made by Russia. Every time Biden opens his senile mouth and blathers that America will never fight Russia in Ukraine “because it’d be WWIII” we move one step closer to Russia having the confidence to commit the unthinkable.

• Taken in combination with recent fantastical Russian propagandizing vis a vis biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine’s possession, there is reason to worry that Russia may be contemplating options beyond the pale. Expect them to keep pushing boundaries.

Northern Front

• Images now coming in of damage to Makariv; 40km directly due west of Kyiv and controlling the main road (and route of advance) south. Little to no information was on Twitter before then regarding this city; strongly suggests this IS fresh data and could be evidence of Ukrainian counter-attacks towards the city – but UMoD has made no such claims. I might email the Finnmap authors and ask what their source is for claims of Makariv’s recapture they cite.

• AK Babushka in Makariv ready to fuck shit up. Nobody’s fucking laughing at them now, that’s for damn sure.

• This geolocated Russian MLRS battery firing in the town of Trostyanets yesterday seems to indicate active fighting in this area; perhaps giving an idea of the furthest south advance by Russian forces.
• Ukrainian TDF near Sumy continue to rack up incredible victories against not only supply columns, but enemy armor reinforcements. What these mere militiamen are accomplishing with cheap shoulder-fired rockets is truly incredible.

Southern Front

• Mariupol is now under actual ground attack after several days of nonstop preparatory shelling. Note these Russian tanks advancing past a roadblock made with busses (geolocated here.) CBS posted the later part of this video showing the tanks are engaging a large apartment building. Recall this is how I described the proper use of tanks in urban assault days ago; using their optics and gun to engage firing positions in large buildings that have been turned into heavily fortified strong-points. This suggests a serious effort to reduce and take Mariupol now underway.

• Confirmation that Ukrainian Marines are indeed defending Mariupol. In the Ukrainian military the marines are considered a special forces unit; roughly akin to Rangers but with training in beach assault. As this image and ones from several days ago show they’ve been making a good accounting of themselves. (Destroyed tank spotted on recent commercial satellite imagery.) (Same one seen in the prior video of Russian tanks engaging apartment buildings?)

• Confirmation of Russian forces in Volnovakha yesterday. Further destruction in the city.

D +18 and +19 48 hour update

Russian advances are still largely stalled in the last 48 hours (as I expected) so I took more time to verify data and attempt to draw some bigger conclusions instead of regurgitating the ISW report. The Institute for the Study of War reports are pretty good, but they are overly reliant (read: entirely) on Ukrainian General Staff bulletins and only occasionally cite secondary confirming sources. No effort will be made to keep D+18 and D+19 information apart, as time lag between events happening and it showing up in OSINT circles is at least > 24 hours in many cases.

Kyiv AAO

• Confirmation of continuing Ukrainian counterattacks to the north of Kharkiv; in the town of Moshchun, 12km north of Kyiv’s outskirts and only 8km directly east of Hostomel (site of the Anatov airstrip.) A video of Ukrainian mortars hitting a Russian ammo dump hidden in a wooded area has been geolocated to the area (50.613054, 30.246464). Incredibly the unit launching this attack was most likely recorded; (see “General” for takeaways from this video.)
• More clarification on the “dissolution” of the fabled massive convoy – elements were still seen on the move and trickling in on March 10th. In other words, the delay continues (as mentioned previously, while armored vehicles can maneuver overland the trucks will have to use the roads given prevailing conditions.)

• Aside from the materiel lost from attrition by Ukrainian strikes, the operational costs of this delay to the Russians is highlighted by Kyiv’s authorities stating they’ve stockpiled enough food for at least two weeks – two weeks for an estimated two million civilians. One can presume their military preparations have been just as frantic. Even if Kyiv is encircled at this point it will take weeks to truly tell on the defenders.

• The reported capture of five mud-bogged T-72s at Mokrets; 50km due east of Kharkiv, shows the continuing difficulties Russia is suffering along the long line of communication back to the Russian border near Sumy, as well as the continued presence of Ukrainian pressure on said LOCs.
• Russian efforts to destroy Ukrainian fuel supplies at their airbases continue apace. Oddly enough, this airbase’s fuel stores were already attacked on Feb. 27th. This was either an attempt to hit underground fuel bunkers (which most airbases have, at least as a reserve, in addition to an aboveground bulk farm,) or to hit the same fuel depot again. Ukrainian TB-2 operations are clearly maintaining a higher sortie tempo than their traditional fixed-wing assets (if the spate of videos coming out is anything to go by) and unfortunately for the Russians, the TB-2, due to its size and humble propeller-driven powerplant, is far more fuel efficient than their legacy Soviet fast-jets. It should be possible to keep these in operation even if all fuel must be provided by tanker-truck.
• Russia continues to scrape for the light infantry required to really assault Kyiv; with their convoys increasingly showing civilian vehicles.
• Ukrainian artillery continues to demonstrate high competence against point targets, such as this pontoon bridge over the Irpin river northwest of Kyiv. (The widely-published direct image of one end of the bridge submerged seems to have been taken via a drone, making artillery the likely culprit. Some have suggested that this is a ruse; the use of “underwater bridges” that are navigable by military traffic but are just far enough beneath the surface of a small muddy river to avoid aerial detection has been demonstrated by Russia in various exercises. However underwater bridges are nothing new in warfare and the point is to hide their presence from the enemy entirely, not to make them appear damaged, as even damaged targets will attract artillery fire, if only to prevent expeditious repair or recovery efforts.)

Kharkiv-Sumy AAO

• More confirmation that Ukrainian forces took Derhachi (also spelled Dergachi,) or at the very least that there was a fight there.
• Some evidence that Ukrainian forces have advanced 27km from Kharkiv to Zolochiv, as pictures of shelling damage are just now showing up en-masse. [2] [3] I’ve seen nothing on social media posted earlier than the 10th implying this damage is recent. Airstrikes are performed against rear-area assets but artillery fire indicates active ground combat operations. There’s also a sighting of an abandoned Russian tank on the road between Derachi and Zolochiv (date unknown and no geolocation.) Most tellingly, Russia’s UK Embassy was propagandizing about “Ukrainian nationalists preparing a false-flag chemical attack on Zolochiv” on March 9th. This is standard Russian/Russian proxy practice to provide cover before launching limited chemical attacks for local tactical gain, as seen in Syria. This suggests Zolochiv was of tactical significance to them on the 9th (with the claim either to cover possible chemical use, spook Ukrainian attackers with the threat of such, or both.)
• Naturally, Zolochiv is a crossroads. Ukrainian counter-attacks are seriously impeding Russia’s options to find alternate routes around the city:

• The expected attack against Sumy has yet to be reported.
• Kupiansk, 40km east of Chuhuiv, hosts a rail yard and if this March 14th video is any indication it’s proximity to Russia and its rail yard has made it another logistical hub for the Russians. Kupiansk is only 50km from Izum by road; while holding Chuhuiv complicates direct movement around Kharkiv to quickly allocate reinforcements, use of internal LOCs in Russia proper to Kupiansk could allow this. This may have much to do with Russia’s ability to press the Izum area hard.

Donbas/South-Eastern AOO

• Izum is confirmed as being heavily contested. Geolocated video (originally posted by Russian propaganda accounts) show Russian armor moving into the outskirts of the city. Additionally, drone-recorded video of an artillery strike on troops near a gas station south of the town was first posted by Russian propaganda accounts a few days ago. This has been confirmed by geolocation.

• Russian claims of taking the city are dubious; note the terrain along the line in this entire area (in Oskill, Yatskovka and other nearby towns where combat has been reported recently) is along the banks/tributaries of the Oskill river and the terrain is heavily wooded in the vicinity, unlike most of this area. Thus the urban areas don’t represent the only defensible terrain. Also, a single squad advancing in file does not a “retreat” make.
• Little can be extrapolated from a single data point, but the Russians employment of unitary-warhead MLRS against a single squad is a very odd use of valuable ammo. One would expect 122 or 152mm fire against a point target of this nature. This could indicate problems with Russian artillery accuracy, or simply a shortage of self-propelled guns to support their advances.
• UMoD confirms Russia has taken Staromlynivka, Yevhenivka, Yegorivka and Pavlivka, clarifying that Volnovakha has indeed fallen and the defensive line, at least in this area, has been pushed north of the Konka river. Taken with this report of “loud in Toretsk” and geolocated image of incendiary munitions being used in Popansa the (verifiable) front line looks like this:

• * Confirmation of the heavy fighting in Volnovakha. Video of a tank during the fight in the city.
• * Heavy Russian air activity in this AO – mostly Frogfoots, still.
• The Tochka-U SRBM that came down in downtown Dontestk was possibly a Ukrainian attempt to attack the railhead in Dontestk that was intercepted by Russian missile defenses. Damage characteristic of light HE-frag bomblets was photographed not far from where the intact booster section came down. Russian media showed the missile remains and shrapnel damage in detail. Note the engine (the smoking mostly intact section with a rocket nozzle,) the guidance package (the burnt, shattered bit with the cable hanging off it) and the steering section (the shattered, mostly unrecognizable mess with the grid fins clearly visible.) Compare with this image of an intact Tochka – note the cabling run between the guidance section (which sits under the payload in the nosecone) down past the engine/fuel tank and to the controls section (with the grid fins that steer the weapon.) From the shattered remnants of the rearward-most section (the guidance section) and the way the rocket-nozzle end of the engine section is dented in (as if it hit first) it seems the weapon came down rear end first. Compare to the remains of the Tochka employed against the Rovenki fuel storage facility, (all three sections separated but are substantially more intact and very close together,) and these two recent Belorussian Tochkas which are almost completely intact save for the payload. Also note the rather modest damage in the area; as Russian propaganda itself is saying, if it hadn’t been shot down, the coverage of bomblets would’ve been denser, more uniform, and wider.
• Since SRBMs don’t re-enter backwards and we see no shrapnel damage to the visible parts this was either a catastrophic weapon failure (unlikely) or the result of a head-on engagement by a Russian S-400 system defending the city. Current preference for missile intercept is either a hit-to-kill engagement (best) or directional blast-frag (second best and common with dual-use anti-aircraft/ABM missiles.) Fly-past proximity detonation (fragmentation or continuous-rod style) are disfavored due to very high closing rates in head-on ABM engagements often failing due to these weapons being fuzed in expectation of much slower aircraft engagements (unless the weapon is purpose-built for both ABM and cost-efficiency e.g. Tamir.) Ergo the payload bay itself most likely took the hit. Impact plus disruption of aerodynamic streamlining would likely lead the weapon to flip end-for end, spoiling its terminal accuracy.
• Trajectory/range analysis shows the weapon would have had to have been fired from fairly close to the front lines (in the area directly north of the city) to be a Ukrainian attack; however this is consistent with the Ukrainian’s repeated (two) strikes against diesel fuel storage facilities in Dontesk and employment against airbases in Russia proper. With a 120km range the Ukrainians would need to base these weapons fairly far forward to get the most out of their deep strike capabilities. Given these weapons represent the only deep strike capability the Ukrainians possess and their pattern of utilizing them against logistics in the Dontesk area, there is no other probable target that I can discern. Given the long Russian occupation of the Donbas region this is the one area the Ukrainians don’t have TDF troops conducting rear-area supply line interdiction, so it’s unsurprising they would expend their limited deep strike capability here.

• Credible possibility of a Ukrainian deep raid towards the vicinity of Melitipol conducted within the last 48 hours. Late March 13th saw rumors flying about a rumored counterattack on Volnovakha that might have pressed, somehow, all the way south to Mariupol. On the 14th this was followed by UMoD claiming the destruction of a “200 vehicle convoy” destroyed somewhere north of Melitipol (which happens to be the closest rail yard on the north-east axis of advance out of Crimea.) These rumors were noted by reliable OSINT accounts who noted their local sources were reporting an awful lot of noise in the area north of Melitipol, which made this stand out.

• Oddly, this is the same general region in which Ukrainian general Zobrodskyi, during the direct combat between Ukrainian and Russian forces in 2014, conducted what is allegedly the longest-distance armored raid ever conducted behind Russian lines, running rampant in the Russian’s rear. (Video narrated by Dr. Phillip Karber, who has met Ge. Zobrodskyi personally.) Zobrodskyi would repeat this feat later, cutting behind a fast Russian advance before turning to attack them in their forward flank. That the Ukrainians had a good general is one thing, but having a regiment capable of executing such bold orders – in 2014, when the Ukrainian military was a shadow of what it is now, after eight years of support and training at all levels by American advisers – is phenomenal.
• The best ORBAT tracking I have seen (working largely off the same sources I’m finding but with better day-to-day tracking) credits the entire southern flank (i.e. not the eastern Donbas front) as having maybe five Russian BTGs present, total. This matches with UMoD predictions of the main effort in the south being directed towards Mykolaiv. These are thin forces to cover this much ground. If the Ukrainian army successfully pulled off not one, but two “thunder runs” in this area in 2014, then the Ukrainian army of 2022 could absolutely do this. Melitipol, as the major rail yard in this area, would definitely be a priority target, as it must be a Russian supply hub now.

• The level of fucks not being given by the defenders of Mariupol can be seen in this astonishing video from one of their BTR-4’s thermal cam, showing bold, fast usage of their vehicle to engage multiple Russian targets; including dismounts trying to take cover behind their BMP and clearly eating shit for it. Anecdotal data etc. but this demonstrates the boldness with which Mariupol’s defenders are fighting and handling their assets.

Kherson AOO

• This TB-2 strike near the Kherson bridge against a SAM demonstrates the Ukrainian’s ability to conduct air operations in what should be denied airspace, and against a crucial line of communication, as well.
• Still little to no direct evidence from the Kherson area, aside from consistent UMoD statements that the enemy is making little progress either against the city or with its northern thrusts seeking a passage across the Southern Bug.

General Conclusions:

• This previously shown video and the very likely related drone footage shows us how Ukraine is effectively dealing with Russian artillery superiority. Note how the Ukrainians are operating – they’re using small SOF units that can infiltrate close to enemy artillery positions (likely localized earlier with sound-spotting systems) without being easily spotted even by drone reconnaissance. From close range (the M57 60mm mortar they’re using only reaches 2,500 meters) and with the assistance of squad-integral man-portable drones they locate the enemy firebase, identify the likely location of the ammo dump, then engage it with rapid-fire 60mm mortar fire. You can hear the secondaries of their successful work during the interview. Mortar ammo is heavy – at the ROF you see in the video they will exhaust what they brought with them quickly. This is the goal; to put as much ordinance on target as fast as possible to put the unit out of action via destroying their ammo dump before rapidly extracting from the area before they can be found and counterattacked. Note the one soldier commenting on “how fucking stupid” the Russians are; “flying around shooting at god-knows-what,” indicating Russian attempts to control the area from the air without ground patrols are clearly fruitless.

• Closing the distance with an enemy that has superiority at range is a classic tactic, but it further emphasizes the consequences Russia is paying for their extremely top-heavy forces.
• This also demonstrates that the ISR environment favors Ukraine. Both sides are making frequent use of small man-portable drones at the squad level, and neither side has a great capability to counter them, but as an equipment-rich, infantry-poor army the Russians are much more vulnerable to the kinds of attacks such integral reece capabilities provide. Moreover the Ukrainians have the benefit of American/NATO ISTAR assets feeding them data; so strategically they have a “big picture” the Russians will struggle to generate.
• This further reinforces the crippling consequences of having a mostly unsecured radio net easily jammed by civilians playing music over the radio; units must rely on their integral drones as communicating it past shouting range is difficult and time-consuming.

• Russian gains in the south-east are the one place in this war where “but the Russians are still slowly taking ground!” actually has merit, as the terrain strongly plays to their strengths here, and while the very slow Russian advance (likely due to incredibly tenacious defense and low troop commitment to this axis) makes it likely that Ukraine could extract its forces from this area in good order, it has to hold a line somewhere from the Dnieper to Kharkiv if it’s to keep the city. To lose Kharkiv is to effectively concede all of eastern Ukraine to Russia, and if they do, they may not get it back.
• The 4th Armored was last reported to be in Kharkiv – one of only two Ukrainian regular army tank regiments. Kupiansk is extremely reachable from Kharkiv via armored assault, and the Russians have (UMoD claims) been shifting forces away from the impenetrable nut that is Kharkiv to prepare for an assault to finally remove the dagger in the side of their Main Supply Route that is Sumy. If I was running this show I’d want to ram the 4th armored into Kupianski, lay waste to anything with a Z on it, trash the railyard as best I could (preferably by wrecking rolling stock on the rails to temporarily block it and blasting the local rail bridge, again,) then get the hell out before they shout over the dancing pig meme song jamming their unsecured Chinese comms enough to figure out what the hell is going on. If the state of their comms, tactical acumen and airpower performance is anything to go by – and past Ukrainian performance, much less current, is any gauge of quality – Ukraine can absolutely pull that off.
• In any case, even though they’re defending doggedly, the time is fast approaching when UMoD will have to make a hard decision in the south. They may be wagering that the fight for Kyiv will either be won or lost before that time comes (given the glacial speed of Russian gains) and since Kyiv will likely determine the war, delaying is fine as a long-term strategy. Russia has not mounted a serious offensive in NW Kyiv for three days now, and that follows failed battalion-level attacks that themselves were preceded by an operational pause. If the Russians take long enough to unfuck themselves the Ukrainians may well go to them and decide the matter. If they decide that’s not feasible, then something will have to be done in the South, as it indicates Russia is switching to a longer siege style strategy, and thus the timelines will not permit indefinite delay on other fronts.

As usual there are more general happenings to cover but it’s 9:45 and I’ve been working on this since 3PM. I need a fucking drink. I will add the bulletpoints in properly in a few minutes. P.S. NSA hire me I was staring at sat photos of the DPRK just because I really wanted to know where they hide those TELs I was doing this shit before it became cool for twenty minutes PAY ME AAAAAAAAAA

 Brief Update @ 8PM EST

General Background Things Update:

1. The Iranian SRBM strike in northern Iraq fortunately didn’t have (much) to do with America: the target was a mansion belonging to the CEO of a company that does business with/in Israel, [2] ergo it constituted retaliation against Israel for the deaths of some Iranian whoevers in the last round of Israeli airstrikes recently. I’m sure they were thrilled to rattle America’s cage due to proximity to the under-construction consulate. Also, the weapons used were Fateh-110s, which are cheaper and in far greater stockpile numbers than Iran’s MRBM or IRBMs, (so they’re less precious munitions to expend.) Obviously the Iran-Russia relationship still has implications for the war in Ukraine but this event doesn’t seem to be a big signifier on its own. That’s good. That’s very good.

2. I’m aware of the crashed TU-141 recon drone and Croatia’s claim that it had a warhead in it. The claimed warhead size was 120kg, or about 260 pounds. My take: it’s possible Ukraine converted some old TU-141s into ghetto cruise missiles but not very likely.

Some background: understand that the TU-141 is an old piece of kit; it’s comparable to the Ryan Model 147 recon drone flown during the Vietnam war, itself based on a simple target drone. These are pretty simple aircraft – you program their autopilot with waypoints, they fly the waypoints and take pictures with their camera, then when they finish their waypoints they shut off the engine and pop a parachute so you can snag them out of the air with a helicopter. They’re also old as hell; both in terms of the technology and also the equipment’s own age since manufacture. Thus it’s almost guaranteed this drone went so far off course due to a malfunction; it was common for drones of that era when they were new, much less now that they’re decades old.

Now military experts have weighed in already and said the explosive the Croatians are talking about was probably a small scuttling charge meant to destroy information/data so enemies can’t get it. Some drones today have this feature and it was ubiquitous on drones of this vintage (given the aforementioned reliability issues.) Another possibility is that the drone’s solid-fuel retrorocket (fired to slow it before popping it’s recovery parachute) exploded on impact. It is possible it was an actual jury-rigged warhead. 120Kg isn’t much of a warhead but you can’t simply ram things into an airframe and expect it to work out right; especially for an antiquated drone with a simple 1970s autopilot; if the aircraft’s center of gravity is thrown off more than the autopilot is expecting its commands will be useless and it’ll simply crash – and it won’t take hours of it flying off-course before it does, either. So the potential warhead size would be limited to the mass of camera gear the thing is designed to use; at least for a hasty jury-rigging.

However, doing so doesn’t make much sense for Ukraine. Simply put, a 264 pound warhead isn’t very big, and a cruise missile using only 1970s inertial guidance is going to be very limited in its effective accuracy. 1970’s inertal nav is better than you might think, but it’s not good enough that you’re going to reliably get close enough to a target that the fragmentation radius of a 264 pound warhead will reach it. This is precisely why older SRBMs like the Tochka-U were mostly equipped with sub-munition warheads; so the spread would compensate for their limited accuracy. Jury-rigging a submunition dispenser onto one of these drones is definitely complicated enough that Ukraine doing it in two weeks is dubious, although I can’t rule out possible pre-war preparations of that sort. But even then, 264 pounds just isn’t enough bomblets to really get good coverage.

The original role of these drones – high speed reconnaissance – is still perfectly valid, and despite their age they’re one of the few options Ukraine has for getting that kind of intelligence. Ukraine has plenty of smaller drones but nothing with the range of the TU-141. As an old-fashioned autopilot-only machine it’s invincible to ECM, and it can avoid S-400 batteries by flying low, under the radar horizon. These old systems are perfectly capable of that; one Ryan 147 in Vietnam bugged out, dropped a zero and flew its waypoints at 150 feet instead of 1,500 feet. When the photos were developed the analysts were rather shocked to see pictures of transmission towers taken from underneath the power lines. While the Ukrainians are getting intel straight from the US right now, they will still want their own sources of data, because even the best allies are going to hold information back from you. Phillip Kaber’s lecture I linked yesterday mentioned this in passing; as he said the US was providing intel to Ukraine, but then telling them they couldn’t conduct counter-battery fire on Russian artillery because they were firing from Russian soil and “attacking the territory of a superpower is a no-no!” You can imagine how the Ukrainian general staff felt about that, and even though eight years of US support has definitely smoothed things over, it’s still prudent and wise to gather as much information for yourself as possible – if only to verify that your allies are being straight with you, and to collect information your allies can’t share as it’d expose collection methods they wish to keep very secret (not necessarily from you, but from enemy agents infiltrating your command.)

Most likely this drone was being used by Ukraine for its intended purpose and just malfunctioned. The reason Croatia is making claims of a bomb in it is because they’re probably pretty fucking pissed off that it flew through NATO airspace for an hour without NATO doing a damn thing about it and letting it come down in their country where it could’ve killed someone. I’d say their irritation is understandable.

• This abandoned Russian field kitchen is startling to see; this is 1. a very important piece of logistical equipment (soldiers have to eat and a kitchen lets you utilize local food sources instead of having to ship in MREs, and hot food is a HUGE morale booster in the field,) and 2. something that should be in a rear area far from the frontline (eating in a frontline foxhole is precisely what MREs are meant for.) TDF hitting supply convoys in “rear” areas is expected, but for them to be captured would require Ukrainian general army units to be moving into areas that were (previously) Russian rear areas. This is just one data point but if we see more high value, rear echelon equipment falling into Ukrainian hands it might indicate something about how their counterattacks are going and how well the Russians are responding to them.
• More examples of Ukrainian artillerymen being very good with their weapons.
• This “sad example of a cope cage” made me write an entire paragraph on how my theory of those cages being meant for overhead protection in urban combat before someone told me it’s just a rocket rack. I’m telling you this because the fact the Russians are still using fucking rocket racks on AFVs, like a Calliope Sherman in the year of our lord 2020 is significantly more cringe than any cope cage could possibly be. What even the fuck are Russians?
• Another short clip illustrating Ukrainian special forces’ doctrine (mute sound, hardbass warning.) Notice the sniper rifle and scoped LMG being used to kill dismounting Russian armor crews fleeing their burning vehicles. These guys are not fucking around; they’re ensuring that those Russian crews cannot mount up to operate a replacement vehicle. They could just be suppressing escorting infantry as well,
• Direct evidence of Russia employing their frontline EW capabilities.
• I’m seeing evidence of Ukrainian use of anti-vehicle land mines for the first time. Obviously they’ve probably been in use since the conflict began, I’m just noting the direct evidence of how they’re being employed as they come in. I’ve also seen video of a road that has logs and ant-tank mines lined up on the side of it for quick deployment by troops at a nearby roadblock if needed.
• About the strike on the training center – this isn’t a very important facility when there’s a full-scale war on. Nobody’s going to be sitting around reading powerpoint presentations, they’re going to be outside getting quick and dirty instruction in how to shoot a rifle and conduct basic fire and maneuver. Most interesting thing here is that Ukrainians claim 30+ cruise missiles were employed against the target, specifically so they could saturate the air defenses around it. This is a real world example of why anti-cruise missile capable air defenses are so valuable – even if the target is destroyed, it still forces the enemy to expend a lot more precious munitions to do it, reducing the ammunition available to fire at other targets.

• Also that Reddit post about it making the rounds is probably bullshit. And it’s not the only bullshit like that out there. Not all of it’s deliberate Russian shitposting, though, some of it’s just assblasted war tourists upset that Ukrainians need people who want to serve, not just clowns that want to kill.

• Russia is making deliberate efforts to limit the Ukrainian government’s ability to communicate to its people by destroying TV transmission towers.
• More examples of Russian forces using disguised saboteurs (flagrant violation of the Geneva convention, naturally) to attack civilians. Previously they’ve been seen conducting recon and target location. Russia has to resort to these tactics to make up for a lack of precision guided weapons and aerial reconnaissance capabilities. The use of local militias greatly increases Ukraine’s ability to police rear areas against this kind of tactic; another example of Ukrainian manpower advantage having tangible consequences in the field.
• This stuck Ukrainian Tochka-U TEL shows you how recovery of stuck armored vehicles can be done. Obviously, earthmoving equipment is very useful for it. Civilian earthmoving equipment is always a useful resource for military forces. Yet another thing Russia has to ship in if they want it, something more to compete for room in their logistics pipeline.
• Ukrainian SWAT team using drones to drop improvised munitions. Nothing new in the least of course; this war has demonstrated all over again that a few rifle grenade rounds dropped from drones are nothing compared to the artillery they can serve as spotters for, but this shows you how paramilitary forces such as police are contributing to Ukraine’s defense. These troops aren’t accounted for in the total count of their military; keep that in mind.
• Direct evidence of effective Ukrainian counterbattery fire. Wild to see how MLRS rockets zoom off on their own when they start cooking off. Note the drone footage; probably the same drone that spotted for the fire.
• Continuing Russian attacks on crucial Ukrainian aerospace industry.

Apologies for being late; I was rather ill yesterday and couldn’t keep working.

There is much to talk about. Maneuver/force positions will come later, I will cover more general background things here, and go into detail on a few matters which the preponderance of evidence now gives me more solid ground to speculate on.

Artillery Usage Comparison (March 16th)

Field artillery has been present on the battlefield since Roman times, but when the corned gunpowder revolution arrived it quickly grew in stature to become the “king of the battlefield.” Infantry was still the queen, but as the saying goes, “everyone knows what the king does to the queen.” The lethality of artillery is hard to overemphasize. In modern combat between unsupported light infantry forces, by the time ammo is exhausted and one side has lost or won, 20% casualties are considered very high. This is the point of flanking; when you gain a positional advantage on your opponent that negates their cover and/or lets you apply your firepower to them more effectively than they can do to you, they either have to withdraw or accept destruction (and obviously, they usually withdraw.) This is how firefights are won and ground taken.

Artillery does not afford soldiers the luxury of a chance to withdraw – it arrives quickly, mows down those who are exposed without cover, and keeps the more fortunate pinned down in their foxholes as long as it’s falling. Artillery can kill more men in ten minutes than a raging close-quarters firefight will kill in a day. Thus it’s been a cornerstone of military affairs for a hundred and fifty years, and especially so for Soviet-legacy armies (e.g. Russia and Ukraine.) Western doctrine uses fire to enable maneuver; i.e. artillery pins down and constrains the enemy, allowing maneuver forces (viz. tanks) to close with them and apply their direct firepower to destroy them. (The point of maneuver is to apply firepower.) Russian doctrine always emphasized using maneuver to enable fire; with mobile units locating, engaging and stopping the enemy so heavy artillery can obliterate them. In practice these doctrines are flexible and any competent field commander can switch from one to the other as needed, but this does guide the general procurement strategy of these forces. The nature of the Russian “Battalion Tactical Group,” which adapts for Russia’s severe manpower shortage by pairing relatively scant mechanized infantry with the tank and artillery resources of an entire regiment, increases the artillery focus even more. Thus the performance of Russian artillery fires is a crucial factor in understanding their performance in the ongoing war.

Pre-war, the largest single materiel factor weighing in Russia’s favor was artillery. Significant superiority in tanks was a close second, but it was generally understood even by the layman years ago why the Javelin was such a significant boon to Ukraine; upgraded Soviet-era tanks wading into the face of the most modern anti-tank guided munitions was always going to be ugly. (Even the United States has only equipped a fraction of its tank force with active-protection systems for shooting down guided missiles; much like the small drone threat everyone understands this is the future, but adapting vast equipment stockpiles for it is a very costly and time-consuming task.) Artillery, however, worked as well as ever, and its one of the few weapons systems where “quantity has a quality all its own” still rings true. Even the USA, who has insane munitions like the “Excalibur” (basically a GPS-guided glide-bomb fired out of a howitzer) still relies on simple unguided HE shells as the mainstay, for they’re cheap, plentiful and effective. Reliable numbers of specific systems are hard to come by, but Russia started the war with at least seven thousand artillery units, compared to Ukraine’s total of three thousand.

Far worse, Ukraine’s artillery is biased more towards towed guns than self-propelled ones; a severe disadvantage in modern maneuver combat. Because of artillery’s power, the first target for any artillery battery is typically their enemy counterpart; “counter-battery fire.” Self-propelled gun systems mount the cannon on a tracked (or occasionally wheeled) chassis and protect the gun, its ammunition and its crew under armor that shrugs off shrapnel from hostile units. This lets them “shoot and scoot” to avoid retaliation, as well as keep up with tanks and mechanized infantry. Standard artillery cannons, that are towed behind vehicles, then unlimbered and set up in a stationary firing position, are still important for any military – much cheaper and easier to transport/deploy, and thus are essential for volume. But self-propelled guns are essential for the forces that make areas safe enough for such stationary firebases to get set up; the units that dodge hostile fire while firing back and eliminating the stationary guns of the enemy.

Then there’s the MLRS – Multiple Launch Rocket System – artillery. Based on the Katyusha of WWII fame, rocket artillery excels at shooting long-distance and achieving area coverage. Rockets are inaccurate and spread out a lot, but this is also a feature; it lets them plaster wide areas. Rockets also excel at salvo weight; they can put more steel into the air in one minute than an entire battery of self-propelled guns can deliver in thirty. This allows them to plaster entire wide-open fields with munitions; they can engage and destroy entire armored formations that are on the move. They’re awful at picking off single targets requiring precision (“point targets,”) and take forever to reload, but that’s what the Self-Propelled-Guns (SPGs) are for.

And then there’s the ammunition. First and foremost, the amount. Russia prepared for this war years ago; using small drones to drop thermite grenades on major Ukrainian ammunition dumps. These attacks destroyed many thousands of stockpiled Soviet-era ammunition, which Ukraine couldn’t replace. Incredibly, Russia even sent agents into NATO countries like Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria to destroy ammunition dumps there – literal acts of war on NATO soil – to eliminate stockpiles of Warsaw pact ammunition in Ukraine-friendly countries. That’s in addition to the shells expended during eight years of war in Donbas – they fired off more shells worth of old Soviet stocks than NATO has stockpiled total. They eventually started a new ammunition factory, but it can only produce 14,000 rounds a year. Even at triple capacity, it’d take years of production to build ammo stocks back up. That’s not unusual; that’s how every army on earth stockpiles ammo – not just artillery and missiles, but even rifle bullets. War consumes ammunition at a terrifying rate.

Then there’s the sophistication. Modern technology’s produced guided MLRS rockets, which turn the inaccurate area weapon into a very long-range precision weapon (the American G31 rocket is called “the 70km sniper rifle.”) In fact it turns them into a miniature SRBM launcher (see also the American ATACMS, an actual Short Range Ballistic Missile that can be fired out of an MLRS launcher.) Russia supposedly had plenty of these, while Ukraine had... about a hundred, at best.

But the most lethal artillery munition is much older and simpler – DPICM, “Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions.” When the fabled “VT” radio proximity fuze entered WWII, it didn’t just revolutionize anti-aircraft fire, but also ground artillery – it could reliably set artillery shells off in the air, spreading shrapnel much further and more uniformly and killing soldiers that should’ve been safe inside their foxholes. Patton called it the “funny fuze that won the Battle of the Bulge.” Improved Conventional Munitions further refined the concept; filling artillery shells with many small bomblets; raining a pattern of little grenades over a wide area. These reached their ultimate incarnation in the “Dual Purpose” kind: tiny shaped charges that could easily punch through the thin roof armor of tanks, and also had a fragmentation jacket and an incendiary ring around the explosive charge. In artillery shells these are devastating; they kill everything and set the remains on fire. In MLRS rockets, which are bigger and can carry more, they are known as “steel rain” and are responsible for the M270 MLRS’s reputation as the “grid square removal service” (as in the one square kilometer grid squares on standard military maps.) This is how MLRS can wipe out an entire company of spread-out tanks in wide-open fields without trouble.

These are one of the most powerful weapons ever fielded on Earth – and I’ve yet to see a single instance of Ukraine firing them, whilst Russia is raining them down every day.

By every single conceivable metric, the Russians should be dominating Ukrainian forces under a crushing hurricane of steel.

But instead, they seem to be getting their asses kicked square.

Curious Russian munition usage

As I noted on D+6, an awful lot of images of Russian MLRS “cargo” rocket containers have been seen throughout the war in bombarded cities; embedded in streets, buildings, and even embedded in unlucky civilian vehicles. These casings hold hundreds of small bomblets; usually DPICM, sometimes dedicated incendiaries, or even air-delivered anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. Russian airdropped “butterfly mines” were quickly photographed a week ago, but I’ve seen nothing about mines in Kyiv or Kharkiv. There’s the occasional sighting of incendiary weapons, but amid the many scenes of devastation from Kyiv and Kharkiv as they suffer nonstop bombardment I haven’t seen the kind of widespread fires incendiaries would inflict (and those are most effective against residential suburbs filled with wooden houses, anyways; Eastern Bloc construction emphasizes massive concrete apartment blocks that aren’t very susceptible to incendiaries.)

Since MLRS cargo rockets leave evidence that HE frag artillery doesn’t, I’d put this down to a selection bias – but for the fact that at least 30% of the videos uploaded of this war are just shaky smartphone cam of artillery bombardments lighting up city skylines at night, and in the vast majority I’ve seen you can see the telltale “popcorn” rippling explosions of submunitions going off. That video is especially interesting as you can see the size of the buildings the munitions are landing around – they’re sizeable. Now sub-munitions can (and clearly have) level suburbs with small residential homes; the explosives punch holes in roofs and make the buildings uninhabitable and secondary incendiary effects then gut the structures. (The rubble still provides cover to infantry, just not as good as the building.) This video from today in Kharkiv is emblematic of the damage I’m seeing in most of these heavily bombarded cities; while the buildings have been rendered uninhabitable for civilians, they’re still substantially intact. There’s few if any shell craters to be seen; and almost never an actually leveled building. This is what you’d expect from heavy use of MLRS submunition warheads over unitary rockets or HE-frag shells.

Bluntly, this choice of munitions is stupid from every conceivable angle. Even if committing murder of civilians for the sake of murder (to hold the populace hostage as a bargaining chip in negotiations) submuntions only hit people walking around on the street; and most civilians in these bombarded cities will be in bomb shelters whenever possible (see the many taking refuge in the subway tunnels of Kyiv as we speak.) This is also true for military troops; the first shells/rockets of artillery are the most effective as they catch men by surprise, standing up out in the open and thus most exposed to shrapnel.

There is one good use for sub-munitions in a city: “blocking fire.” By dropping steel rain on the streets you force enemy infantry to take cover, thus stopping them from moving through streets to react to your own movement. But I’m seeing MLRS cargo shells on social media still, and even accounting for reporting lag (Tiktok upload to OSINT twitter picking it up and circulating it) Kharkiv and Kyiv proper haven’t been under direct ground assault for many days now. Kharkiv especially; the fighting is clearly moving away from the city and I’ve seen absolutely zero mention of Russian troops attempting advances into the city proper for many days. Thus there’s no maneuvering forces in the city to be blocked. As harassing fire it’s certainly lethal; preventing military defenders and civilians alike from conducting “business as usual” without being hampered by keeping close to shelter at all times, but single HE-frag shells are highly effective for that as well and much more efficient than MLRS rocket ammo, which is very bulky and harder to deliver to the front. Most importantly, MLRS sub-munition rockets are the best weapon for fighting maneuver combat; and their vast spread also makes them more effective when attacking targets who’s position isn’t precisely known (as we’ve seen, Russia is obviously struggling to conduct longer-range reconnaissance.) Blind-firing with artillery does work if done smartly. Japanese resistance forces during the Battle of Okinawa in WWII were producing an artillery gun from hidden caves to fire harassing rounds at American positions. The Americans performed a “map recon,” marked every place in the rough terrain that was flat and wide enough to house an artillery gun, handed out firing assignments and went about their day. The next time they took harassing fire, the gun crews started pounding their assigned targets, and sure enough, one of those flat spaces happened to have the Japanese gun and crew in it, fully exposed.

Cluster munitions aren’t even good for mass-murdering civilians in major cities. Russia’s continued use of them against those targets suggests to me that they might not have enough more suitable munitions to use. Soviet era stockpiles were build for actual maneuver war in open areas; just like America’s massive stockpiles, the bulk of them were DPICM. They may simply be using the most plentiful ammo available to them – which happens to be poorly suited to reducing the inner city strongholds they need to assault, especially Kyiv.

The other possibility is that they can’t hit a flock of barns if they were standing inside the middle barn and are compensating with cluster warheads. Russian official propaganda has been bafflingly scarce. We know they’re inflicting casualties on the Ukrainians. They know that Ukraine is dominating the information war (and thus the perceptions war with NATO which is what’s greatly aiding the influx of volunteers, supplies, money and weapons from NATO) because Russian losses are posted to social media but not Ukrainian ones. And yet we’ve seen very little of their operations and strikes, and even then the footage is heavily cut. This drone video of Russian artillery strikes from yesterday is representative. Note the odd cut and how few artillery shells actually landing we’re allowed to see. Note how one shell has clearly landed on the railroad tracks of the rail yard, well short of the truck park that is clearly being targeted. An initial spotting round going wide isn’t unheard of, of course. And with a sample size of one we can’t conclude that the Russians are lousy shots. But it does invite the question of why the Russians are keen to deny us a wider sample size – if they had video of Russian artillery plastering Ukrainian forces, wouldn’t they put that out there?

Even odder, I’ve seen more drone videos of Russians employing their laser-guided 152mm shells than I’ve seen of normal quick-fuze engagements. (Note again how short and clipped this video is.) Ukrainians have multiple videos of their artillery achieving incredible precision, engaging point-targets like tanks, but Russia can only show similar results when artillery-fired PGMs are employed. And if their very infrequent use of other PGMs is any guide, they probably don’t have many of these, either.

Doctrinal Failures

This raises the question of how competent Russian artillery actually is. One thing you’d expect from any army, especially a Warsaw Pact army and explicitly from Russian BTGs is an obsessive focus on artillery fires – both in delivering and avoiding them. For a tank BTG, which nominally only has a single company of mechanized infantry, one good MLRS attack could erase the force’s entire infantry complement. A BTG can better withstand losses from counter-battery fire than unopposed attacks on their maneuver elements; dispersing the latter properly is just as important as aggressively accepting artillery duels with the former.

By that metric, the Russians don’t seem to know what the hell they’re doing. This video (again from the spotting drone) released today shows what appears to e a Russian command post being attacked by (characteristically accurate) Ukrainian artillery. Note how there’s no obvious attempt at camouflage, and the units aren’t dispersed (spread out so one artillery shell can’t damage or destroy multiple units.) Going back to this video of a Ukrainian counterbattery strike I noticed the foliage near the Russian positions is already on fire. Also, you can see Russian personnel ambling around in no great hurry. Either they had already taken fire, or their own artillery had set the foliage on fire by accident, giving away their position (MLRS backblast, perhaps.) In both cases it would be time to leave, in a goddamned hurry – again, shoot and scoot. Even towed guns can be limbered up and moved promptly if the enemy gives you a few minutes to do so. And yet the personnel present clearly show no such urgency.

Another odd thing – I’ve seen more examples of Russian towed artillery that have not dug into field positions than ones that have – in fact I’ve only seen the first example yesterday. Note the dirt berms and the ready ammo dump protected by earth-filled tires. Even rudimentary fortification such as this vastly increases the survivability of gun crews; especially in the wide-open flat terrain of southern Ukraine. The dirt berms that guarded the guns themselves were probably produced by a bulldozer; a single bulldozer can work up protection for an entire gun battery very quickly, depending on terrain. Gun batteries don’t always have time to dig in, if the need for artillery support is dire – and if they don’t have a bulldozer handy, they may never have time to dig in, as building berms high as the one you see there with just entrenching tools and your gun-crew manpower is very difficult. Again, we’re only getting the barest glimpse of Russian operations, but it’s becoming easier to see why Ukrainian commandos feel that dropping wee 60mm mortar shells on Russian gun batteries is effective – if they lack the training – or perhaps just the equipment – to dig into their firing positions, one little man-portable mortar can indeed put a whole gun battery – and it’s ammunition dump – out of action in a hurry.

Finally, there’s the impact of communications on artillery. Drones are so powerful in this conflict because the biggest challenge to artillery has always been information – finding the target, then communicating it back to your gun crews. This is why forward observation is an art form unto itself. Russian units are frequently operating the Orlan-10; a small man-portable fixed-wing drone. You can tell the Orlan is the main drone spotting for Russian artillery by how jerky the camera feed is; as a fixed-wing drone its a far less stable camera platform than small consumer quadcopter drones who’s primary use is as an airborne camera.

The other difference between these drones is, fixed-wing platforms have much longer range. The Orlan-10 is equivalent to a militarized hobbyist remote-control airplane; powered by a gasoline engine. And like the miniature airplane it is, it has great transit speed (90-150km/h) flight duration (16 hours) and range (it can be commanded up to 140km from its ground station.) Compare to consumer quadcopter drones powered by batteries. Since they’re meant for convenience and taking neat pictures from above, their range is pathetic and flight duration on batteries limited; fifteen minutes to an hour, typically.

The point I’m making is that most Russian drone-spotted artillery strikes we’ve seen are being controlled by the gun battery operating its own drone directly, whereas most Ukrainian ones are taken by small quad-copter “backpack” drones operated by a squad in proximity, who must them communicate their spotted information as a traditional fire mission to their artillery support. The recent Wall Street Journal article on the fighting in Vosnesenk (more on that later) included this very revealing detail of how Ukrainians are improvising field communications. Territorial Defense militiamen aren’t equipped with secure radios that regular forces have; but they were still able to use social media messaging apps to pass spotting data to a forward observer – observing fucking social media PM’s, before communicating the fire missions to Ukrainian artillery units with a fucking cell phone. It’s a given that a force (Russians) relying on unsecured civilan walkie talkies will also be utilizing cell phones when possible. They’re harder to intercept and can’t be jammed by any Ukrainian civilian playing loud music over their kid’s baby monitor, but using them requires leaving cell phone towers intact, and thus the same communication option open to their enemy.

In short, due to a failure of planning and procurement, the Russians are being matched in terms of communication integrity by militiamen texting each other on fucking Facebook. How do you think they’re stacking up against Ukrainian regulars with proper radios? How many Russian maneuver units can actually call for artillery support and promptly receive it? Or do they have to use “Mode B” through a Chechen fucking code talker and wait thirty minutes for the artillery unit to send its own drone?

Truly incredible.

Assembling a picture

All this evidence is circumstantial, of course, but it’s also spaced across enough time – two weeks now – that we can at least see some patterns. Additionally, we have a larger context to put it in as well. We’ve seen captured Russian guns that were in terribly maintained condition. We’ve seen evidence that some equipment stocks were recently re-activated from mothball status; and given lacking Russian maintenance of their forward-deployed vehicles (witness yet another sighting of a vehicle who’s wheel hub seals clearly dry rotted due to neglect) whether or not mothballed equipment was properly checked over and serviced before return to duty is doubtful. We’ve seen examples of flat-out ignoring sane doctrine; un-escorted supply convoys, poor spacing and movement discipline in hostile cities, poor use of combined arms, poor adherence to basic military principles such as use of camouflage, dispersion, and entrenching and if the continuing trend of entire mud-bogged tank companies is any indication, even a failure to conduct proper route recon. Even if these failures could be explained away as the myopia of the OSINT window the fact remains Russian forces are embarrassingly slow to adapt to the prevalent conditions. It took them far too long to start escorting convoys and using air patrol along the MSR and their failure to disperse, dig in and camouflage indicates a failure to adapt to the ubiquity of small squad-level recon drones on both sides – while the Russians have tactical EW the Ukrainians don’t in this regard it’s clearly not enough to establish spectrum dominance and certainly won’t help against strike UAVs like the TB-2, which their SHORAD has proven ineffective against as well. Nothing I see indicates they’re acting like people who understand that eyes are overhead at all times, and the people peering through them are not hajis with a handful of antiquated 81mm mortars to pop off with, but a modern military with heavy long-range artillery and the skill to use it well.

In sum, Russian artillery forces seem mis-provisioned for the siege warfare they’re now faced with, lacking in skill, and deficient in both basic military doctrine and their ability to adapt it to the situation. For two weeks the Learned Experts™ have insisted that this was just the OSINT window myopia at work; that the trickle of information was biased and that prudence dictated the assumption of competence. They were right – then. But now we’ve enough evidence in hand of systematic failures at every level of military organization that this assumption must be challenged. Perhaps the Ukrainians could slip into the woods and film a propaganda film by firing a 60mm mortar at nothing – but I do wonder where the devastating secondary explosions heard in that video came from. That their formations are very equipment heavy but infantry light is already well-known; but if they’re unable to perform foot patrols to keep squads of infantry from dunking on them with fucking 60mm mortars, why not with airpower? Or drones? Or mounted scouts; even unmanned ground vehicles?

In short, we’re seeing a failure not just to adhere to their known doctrine, but a failure of the doctrine itself – it doesn’t seem they ever bothered to answer these questions, to find solutions to the known problems, before starting a full-scale symmetric war with a near-peer adversary. I contend this extends to the artillery domain. The Russians are, most likely, not only incompetent and ill-prepared to use their most pivotal source of firepower, but facing a Warsaw-pact legacy military that is very, very skilled at employing their own.

They’re fucked.

Postscript

I Am Not An Artilleryman. If you are and I said something stupid, feel free to let me know. I’m no genius, just a – may Allah forgive me for uttering this word – journalist, and all I’m doing is using a broad familiarity with military matters to collate as much data as I can. Input from people who know what the fuck they’re talking about is a major source of data.

I’ve been writing all day since I woke up from my ick-haze. I’m going to try and crank out an update on the maneuver situation tonight, as well as another “general” update covering strategic matters. Stay tuned.

D+19 and D+20 update (March 15th-16th)

Sitrep: Maneuver

Kyiv AOO:

• Combat continues all along the frontline west and north-west of Kyiv itself, right up to the Belorussian border. The recently released video of Ukrainian artillery strikes on (either a command post or forward supply dump) has been geolocated to a point not twenty kilometers south of the Belorussian border, near the town of Poliske, which the UMoD has previously cited as the furthest western extent of Russian advance in that area. Incredibly this truck park and/or command post is scarcely two hundred and thirty meters away from the P02 highway that runs south from Belarus and to the traffic circle crossroads at Ivankiv. That it came under artillery attack indicates the Russians have not been pushing their front line further west to provide more strategic depth. While not pushing as far as Malyn to open up an additional highway is one thing, not at least securing the flank of a main line of communication along its entire length, leaving it open to artillery interdiction... what even the fuck? (PS it’s still burning.)

• It seems Bucha is at least contested yet again. This video of apparently abandoned VDV armor has been geolocated to Bucha. The vehicles aren’t damaged, but it taxes imagination to suppose that Russian crews would allow random civilians to videotape their precise locations, given how accurate Ukrainian artillery has proven. Perhaps they’re simply storing the vehicles there, using civilians as human shields against their own countrymen, but I guaran-fucking-tee every tank would have sugar in the gas tank by the time they got back, if the locals didn’t just douse them with gasoline and light them up. Shit, hop in, fire them up, see if the turreted guns work. Russia’s continued inability to decisively hold even the suburbs of Kyiv calls into serious doubt their ability to even push into Kyiv proper before the heat death of the universe.
• This video from a Russian convoy shows the Ivankiv traffic circle is still a graveyard for Russian vehicles. Given recent Ukrainian pushes northward from Kyiv up to Demydiv, it’s very conceivable they’ve brought the crossroads into long artillery range (30km, for MLRS.) The distinctive decoration in the middle of the circle is hereby dubbed the “egg of death.” This is at least the third confirmed time that Russian forces have eaten shit in this roundabout.
• Evidence of Ukrainian advances west of Makariv – this Russian video of a laser-guided artillery strike on two Ukrainian BMPs has been geolocated to 50.5609492, 29.6365587, 17km north-west of Makariv. Of course, given this is a Russian propaganda release we have no way of knowing the likely date of the video, but local (to me) journalists are reporting persistent rumors of Ukrainian advances this far west on the 16th and it matches previous evidence of recent fighting in Makariv. The Russians released their video on the 15th; scouting on the 15th would have preceded any Ukrainian advance on the 16th.
• It was noted there were only a few bridges in the Ivankiv area that allowed passage south past a local river. It seems the Ukrianians were proactive in destroying it as a recently spotted pontoon bridge has been geolocated to near the area (51.03762, 30.12761). Incidentally, if Ukrainian forces can push north from Demydiv to within 12km of Andriyivka, this bridge will be in MLRS range, and if they push to a few km of the city, it’ll be in 152mm range.
• Recent evidence of combat in the Chernihiv area – at the village of Yahidne, a highway crossroads/exchange 13km south of the city itself, at Stara Basan, 31km east-northeast of Kyiv’s eastern suburb of Brovary and another field fire-damaged about 16km east-northeast of that. These are near Novyi Bykiv, where a brilliant combined-arms DEAD engagement by Ukrainian forces was recently seen (more on this later.) This indicates Russian forces are at least within 152mm range of this town; a solid 60km east of Brovary. They’re either pushing east from Kyiv, north from the defensive lines that sprang up to resist the Russian drive from Sumy, or both.
• See also this geolocated data of fields 16km northwest of Ivankiv (51.041111, 29.734972) showing vehicle tracks closely correlated with shell craters. This was taken on the 12 so doesn’t necessarily indicate where Ukrainian positions are now, but is further evidence that someone is pretty consistently punishing vehicular movement with accurate artillery fire, and I think we all know who that is at this point.
• In general, information from this area is scarce and circumstantial, but given the trends of the last few days it seems Ukrainian counterattacks are steadily pushing the enemy back from Kyiv and Chernihiv in multiple directions. At the very least they are actively contesting the areas around the city. Russians are not struggling to break into the city, they’re struggling to keep hold of the staging areas around the city. It is unclear how they can build the momentum to reverse this trend, much less generate the operational momentum required to start fighting into the city proper.

Donbas/South-Eastern AOO

• UMoD claims that Russian forces have tried to encircle/bypass Izum and a (relative) wealth of geolocated images of strikes/fighting seems to confirm intense combat in that area:

• This artillery strike posted by a Ukrainian artillery unit to their page on a Ukrainian social media site; geolocated to 49.106362, 37.281739. This is seven kilometers south of Izum proper.
• This destroyed bridge just west of Drobysheve at 49.0409045, 37.6856864.
• This video from yesterday showing a Russian tank hitting an AT mine while trying to advance is from 48.11858, 37.79489 near a highway crossroads just north of the city of Donetsk. Given this area was on the frontline of the Donbas war, the mine might have been placed back then, but the drone observing the incident indicates there’s still active defenders in the area.

• This also makes the Tochka-U attack on downtown Dontesk very odd, because if Ukrainians are still defending a line just outside of the city, they could easily shell the rail yard in the city without bringing artillery too close to the front line.
• Another Tochka attack was just reported in Dontesk the other day; this one further east, far from any possible legitimate targets, and this one left a crater, indicating the use of a unitary blast-frag warhead. The chances of Ukraine expending such a weapon with no obvious strategic target and having it land (yet again) in the middle of the street is rather suspicious. These may well be false-flag attacks conducted with Belorussian Tochkas.

• Not geolocated but reported by multiple good sources: fighting in Rubizhne continues. This was previously reported as lost to Russian forces; that this suburb west-northwest of Severodonetsk is still defended is good news. Rough look at the front line:

• Shelling of Kharkiv continues, but no ground assaults reported in the vicinity.
• According to UMoD Ukrainian forces are slowly losing ground on the southern defensive line. Taking UMoD at face value, the Finnmap seems accurate here:

• Only circumstantial supporting evidence is available but UmoD’s statement that the assault is now directed at the town of Velyka Novosilka makes sense given it’s a crossroads. Between the muddy terrain in southeastern Ukraine and the seeming failure of Russian forces to adequately adapt to conditions, they are very much road-bound; an observation the UK Ministry of Defense has echoed on their official Twitter account. Russia’s advantage in maneuver assets has been reduced even more than I expected by this, perhaps explaining their glacial rate of advance in what is otherwise open terrain that favors their artillery superiority (as well as the limited forces they seem to have committed to this theater.)

• It remains to be seen if Ukraine’s forces will fight for every inch in this area to buy as much time as possible, or if they’re holding to buy time for a fallback defensive line to be entrenched. The answer may be both, as in terrain like this, against heavily mechanized forces, defense-in-depth is the favored response.

• Russian units are moving deeper into Mariupol proper now. The hospital reported to have been taken is only 5km from the city center, and this widely-circulated video of a “rebel” T-64 getting lit up by multiple RPGs at once geolocates to deeper in the western part of the city (47.098538, 37.523711). This fight is far, far from over however. Russia just deliberately bombed a civilian bomb shelter that had been marked with “CHILDREN” outside of it in the city. Given the nature and quality of the units defending the city, and deliberate, shameless murders like this, I do not expect Mariupol’s defenders to surrender. A fight to the death is likely. Furthermore, Mariupol was the likely main objective of Russia’s direct attack on Ukraine in 2014; as it was the closest major city to the Donbas frontline, and sat on the main highway along the Azov coast to the Crimean peninsula; ergo it was always a mandatory target for both the Russian-puppeered “rebels” and Russian forces proper; as securing a land link to the Crimean peninsula was a major goal of Russia’s eight years of low and high intensity warfare in Ukraine. In other words the city was heavily fortified for almost a decade. These people will fight, and fight like hell. Even if Mariupol falls, the Russians are going to pay a very dear price for it; one they can scarce afford.

Kherson/Mykolaiv AOO

The biggest news is a rare detailed report of the battle of Voznesensk, the town 80km north-west of Mykolaiv along the banks of the Southern Bug river that marks the furthest west known advance of Russian forces. What seemed like a probing attack (to the best of our knowledge at the time) was apparently a brutal two-day battle that saw the Russian BTG committed to the thrust effectively destroyed as a fighting unit. The Wall Street Journal’s in-depth article is a rare in-detail look at ground facts (here is an archive.is link that bypasses their fucking paywall.) This battle reportedly took place on March 2nd and 3rd, the date when their thrust was first noted. It appears that instead of bugging out once they met stiff resistance, they went all-in trying to take the town (and its nuclear power plant) and were simply obliterated. According to the Ukrainian city officials, the Russian BTG left 30 of their 43 AFVs behind when they retreated “fifty miles” (probably to the occupied northern suburb towns of Mykolaiv.) 100ish Russian troops were reported slain; which would account for 1/3rd of a mechanized company (rendering it combat-ineffective) or easily a battalion worth of tank crews.

The entire article is worth a read. It reveals much about how the fighting is preceeding, how Russian troops are comporting themselves in general, and how Ukrainian professional soldiers, reserve militiamen and even civilians and civilian authorities worked together to defeat them. Of especial note: “Russian troops in two Ural trucks were preparing to assemble and set up 120mm mortars on the wheat field, but they got only as far as unloading the ammunition before Ukrainian shelling began.”

(Odd note – it says the municipal swimming pool was hit by a missile strike. The building reported hit in Rubizhne is also a municipal swimming pool. Whether this an extension of the terror strategy or just strikes meant to contaminate a source of relatively clean water in case a siege is required, I cannot say. Either way, Russian forces commitment to outright savage murder is hideous in the extreme.)

The other major story from this AOO is confirmation that the Ukrainians were telling the truth about their two attacks (March 6th and March 15th) on Kherson’s airport and destroying helicopters there. And not just helicopters, but supply trucks and logistical vehicles (much dispersion so revetments such artillery hardening.) Commercial satellite imagery from the 12th shows how the first attack was conducted. Note the red dots marking MLRS rocket impacts, compared to pre-strike commercial SAR imagery of where helicopters were located. To be blunt, those were not MLRS rockets. They were either either incredibly precise shooting by some Ukrainian self-propelled howitzers that did a thunder run down the road from Mykolaiv to get in range... or we have hard evidence of Ukraine’s first confirmed usage of their limited stockpile of guided 300mm MLRS rockets.

• Civilian opposition is still strong in occupied Kherson. Russian occupation forces were seen searching for weapons in the city, hinting that low-intensity militia insurgency activities are still underway.

• Remember this the next time some asshole tells you that you can’t fight a tank with an AR-15. It’s not tanks searching for small arms, is it?

• Yet another example of rear-echelon equipment (in this case, towed guns) being captured by Ukrainian forces near Mykolaiv proper. The guns were limbered for transport and not in their revetments, implying they were abandoned simply because their prime movers (towing trucks) were hit or otherwise nonfunctional – or perhaps a Ukrainian advance came across them before they could hook them up and they fled. It’s odd that they left ammo behind as well, even if it’s only a ready pile near a firing pit. There’s no visible damage to the guns, no attempt to decommission them by shoving a thermite grenade into the breech, so it seems the Russians left in a hurry. Note the terrain; they’re nowhere near even the suburbs of Mykolaiv. It seems the Ukrainians are actively contesting the area.

• See also these abandoned IFVs in rural areas, also said to be near the city.

• Suffice to say that Russian efforts on the western side of the Dnieper haven’t had much success. Given these developments I think UMoD statements concerning the halting of Russian thrusts northward closer to the west bank of the Dnieper are most likely credible. Even without regular mechanized forces or tank support, one town brought not only halted a BTG, but almost completely destroyed it in detail. I doubt the Russians are having much luck elsewhere given how they are splitting their forces up so much.

That’s the big things. There’s an entire general update to go but I need to sleep for now.

General Update (March 15-17)

There’s a LOT to talk about.

Sitrep: Logistics/OOB/TO&E

• Russia is desperately scraping for more materiel. You’ve all seen the media reports that Putin asked China for help by now – but as this reporter points out when multiple “favored” publications get the same information from their anonymous sources at the same time, that’s because the government wants the information out there. The message is “we know all about this and we are watching.”
• Russia is also scraping for more troops. There’s video evidence of them emptying out their garrison and occupation forces in their various little puppet states in occupied territory of prior victims. This is the forces in occupied Georgia clearly mobilizing. [2][3] (Also recall the train seen on March 5th moving old garrison vehicles from the Russian far east.) The UK Ministry of Defence additionally alleges they’re pulling troops from garrisons in Armenia and even from the Pacific Fleet. Given the paucity of infantry in the average BTG, the intense urban combat they’re facing and the Ukrainian advantage in manpower from both reservists, Territorial Defense Forces and new civilian volunteers, this is unsurprising.
• President Zelensky announced that Ukraine is now fully mobilized – that means the 200,000 reservists of the Ukrainian army are fully prepared for action. Given that three out of five of Ukraine’s tank regiments are reserve regiments, this is a big deal and means a lot for Ukraine’s usable maneuver forces.
• POTUS publicly called out the massive refugee problem on the 15th, likely indicating that NATO is indeed considering the strategic consequences for Western Europe. He also acknowledged “12 million people who require humanitarian assistance inside Ukraine” and announced a “global humanitarian response with our partners in Europe and beyond.” Berlin Airlift is now on the table.
• Russian cruise/ballistic missile strikes now stand at roughly 950. As Russia grows more desperate their willingness to dig into stocks previously set as reserved against wider war(s) will grow, but there’s a limit even to their total stockpile. It’s uncertain when they will reach it.
• NATO is nervous; it’s announced intention to deploy “substantially more” forces to its eastern border, in addition to the Rapid Reaction Force which has been mobilized and deployed for the first time in NATO’s history.
• First sighting of a TDF technical, using one of the 12.7x108mm (.50 caliber-ski) machine guns they’ve been seen to be stripping off every abandoned T-72 they find. Technicals work; which is why armies use them too – even if it’s just a pickup truck and not an HMMV with the gun mounted, it’s far better than nothing and provides some badly-needed heavier weaponry to TDF units.
• Possible first sighting of a Russian “gun truck” from both Ukrainian POV (drone and personnel) and Russian (captured dashcam.) “Gun Trucks” are a simple supply route/convoy security measure; an open-topped APC improvised by adding armored sides to supply trucks. These were invented by the US in Vietnam, and then re-invented for Iraq because even though a dedicated convoy security IFV was made for Vietnam and is still in service, there weren’t enough.

• Russia is learning, but whether they’re learning fast enough to stanch the losses before they become decisive, and whether or not they have the rear-area logistical support to put those lessons into action remains to be seen. Every welder in Ukraine is making tank barricades. How many welders can Russia lay ahold of near the front, where the vehicles requiring modification are? We will see.

• Commercial satellite imagery provides a good idea of how heavily Russia is using their strategic airlift capabilities to ferry supplies to the operational area.
• As this account (and half the internet) has noticed, Russian forces in general are lacking in more advanced equipment, with night vision goggles especially scarce. (One of the contributors to the @UAWeapons account is @CalibreObscura, a mutual of mine before I was yeeted from birdsite, and a very thorough OSINT analyst who’s been tracking the informal Middle East black arms market on various social media for years. The other contributor, @ArmoryBazaar is also known to me of old. They’ve been observing patterns in light infantry TO&E gleaned from social media posts for years. These guys are good.)

Western material support updates:

• UK confirms they are sending Starstreak missiles. While there’s doubts among some as to the Starstreak’s usefulness compared to the Javelin against aircraft, the Starstreak has a credible secondary anti-IFV capability, and the pedestal mount system (which includes an automatic tracker and a passive volume-search IRST system to cue it) is the only MANPADS system which can be credited with an anti-cruise missile capability greater than “extremely notional.” Anti-PGM point defense is one of Ukraine’s keenest needs.
• The US’s new support package includes 800 more Stinger missiles (possibly of a newer bloc than the ones previously supplied,) 2,000 more Javelins, 1,000 “light anti-armor weapons” (likely M-72A7 LAWs; will likely include specialized variants such as the Fire From Enclosure and Anti-Structure Munition models for use in urban combat), and 6,000 AT-4 disposable AT weapons (which can absolutely threaten tanks.) Also included are 100 “tactical unmanned aerial systems”, 100 grenade launchers, 5,000 rifles, 1,000 pistols, 400 machine guns and 400 shotguns (all likely for SOF use,) and most significantly, over twenty million rounds of various small arms and grenade launcher/mortar rounds. 25,000 sets of body armor and helmets are also included.

• The small arms are significant: see this reporter’s Ukrainian contacts (snipers he met/interviewed a week before the invasion) explaining their supply issues. They’re using .308 hunting rounds because they can’t get steel-core ammo that’d penetrate foliage and light cover reliably. Many also purchased their own precision rifles and optics from the US with personal funds, so there’s little standardization of equipment; and more specialized, higher-power rifles and ammo (such as .338 Lapua). They don’t even have good man-portable thermal camera observation systems (like this device) and observation/recon/artillery spotting is a huge part of a sniper’s job. The numbers of weapons being promised are peanuts compared to the vast stocks of old Soviet rifles the Ukrainians are handing out en-masse to volunteers; the weapons and (some of) the ammo America’s sending are almost certainly specialized high-end weapons to fill needed niches like the ones these snipers require.
• The drones are confidently alleged to be Switchblade loitering munitions. Think a Javelin but with longer range and the ability to loiter. They’re fearsome weapons. Ukrainian SOF so armed will make their current attacks on Russian artillery positions with 60mm mortars look like child’s play. One man can and will put entire gun batteries out of action by nailing their ammo truck from a safe distance.
• Given the ammo consumption rates in modern war, twenty million rounds of small arms ammunition is significant. I’ve never heard rumors that Ukraine is short on small arms ammo, but the US could definitely purchase bulk stocks from major non-NATO allies who use Warsaw pact weapons. They could also purchase from the domestic and global civilian ammunition market – major commercial manufacturers supply the bulk of ammo to civilians as well as the military market.
• The US also has military stockpiles of Warsaw Pact ammo. The US military keeps a small arsenal of Russian-designed guns and has even manufactured new copies (angering the Russian firms owning the patents) for the benefit of Special Forces who train troops from allied nations with Warsaw Pact weapons in their TO&E. In fact, the American company Airtronic makes a clone of the RPG-7 and its most common ammunition for nations who need commonality with old Soviet era bulk stockpiles but want a launcher with modern features, picatinny rails and without 40 years of rust and dings. And, in fact, this launcher has already been seen in Ukraine.
• The amount of body armor being donated is absolutely massive. It’s enough to fully equip two divisions worth of frontline infantry. Possibly three (when one considers rear echelon/support personnel will probably not be wearing it.)

• US also officially and openly declared they’re working to source Soviet-era SAMs the Ukrainians can immediately field, both systems and missile stocks, likely from NATO member states with old stockpiles.

• Anonymous Officials have indicated these systems potentially include SA-8s, SA-10s, SA-12s and SA-14s. Another reporter cites three anonymous sources (rare good use of anonymous sourcing there) saying that Slovakia has tentatively agreed to transfer their SA-10 system, contingent, of course, on NATO expediently selling them a similar or better replacement system. (Rep. Michael McCaul also said as much, with an aide doing a poor job of walking it back later.) Slovakia only has one SA-10 battery but it’s an S-300PMU model, i.e. a fully motorized battery, whereas most of Ukraine’s S-300s still have trailer-mounted launchers that reduce their mobility and survivability significantly. And as a theater (long) range SAM it lets them threaten Russian aircraft over the front from deeper in Western Ukraine, as well as making them a much more effective defensive umbrella over the Western part of the country. This excellent article by Tyler Rogoway and Thomas Newdick runs down the NATO nations with stockpiles of former Warsaw Pact SAMs that could be potential sources of new systems and munitions for Ukraine. See my SAM post for more.

• Note these SAMs can also engage cruise missiles effectively, unlike MANPADs, providing badly needed point defense capacity.

Sitrep: Operational/Tactical developments

• Video of Ukrainian SOF ambushing Russian armor shows they’re using an LMG and a sniper to pick off the dismounting crew from struck tanks, rather than simply booking it as quickly as possible. Killing vehicle crew is technically standard practice in war (they’re combatants) but in most fights you’ve got more urgent targets (such as armed soldiers shooting back at you.) Given Russia’s vast stockpiles of old tanks but limited volunteer soldier manpower, Ukrainian forces making an especial point to eliminate personnel as well as vehicle stocks matters.

• This video also shows the remote-control use of an ATGM launcher, most likely the domestically-produced Stugna-P, which is in service in far greater numbers than the Javelin. While not as light, mobile or survivable as a Javelin, the Stugna-P’s option for remote operation from up to 50 meters away is a massive improvement over the classic tripod-mount SALCOS ATGM, as the best way for tankers to defeat them has always been to engage the ATGM team itself with coaxial and main gun fire. Bullets and cannon shells move faster than missiles. These pictures of a shrapnel damaged (but fully operational) Stugna-P ATGM show how greatly the survivability of ATGM crews is improved by the remote control option.

• A good look at the kind of terrain Ukrainian forces are fighting in. This looks likely to be around Kharkiv or Sumy, though you can see this kind of terrain in some parts of the northwest around Kyiv as well. It’s not nearly as bad as the south; but you can see this is going to be pretty good tank country once the ground conditions improve (and they very clearly haven’t yet in this footage, ick.) But as you can see, there’s still some cover and concealment for infantry to work with. The unfamiliar would be surprised at how little it takes to conceal an infantryman, or how seemingly flat ground can have shallow rises and falls that provide just enough dirt to shield a soldier from bullets. This doesn’t just benefit Special Forces, but also the Territorial Defense Force, as those reservists are locals who’ve lived in their local area and know it intimately.
• Ground conditions continue to be absolutely horrible across the country, even further north (this is allegedly Sumy oblast) where frequently-tilled farm fields are rare. As this entire column of very badly bogged-in T-80U’s show, Russian forces still aren’t doing “route reconnaissance,” sending a lighter vehicle(s) ahead to find out if the ground is muddy or not before an entire armored platoon charges in and gets stuck fast. RE: my comments yesterday about Russia still failing to substantially adapt their behavior to conditions.
• In case anyone wondered, American ISTAR support continues, including our old friend FORTE11 and an E-8C JOINT STARS with its long-range ground-moving-target-indicator radar that can track the movements of Russian ground formations from an impressive distance.
• The Russian UAV that briefly transgressed Polish airspace before being shot down by Ukrainian air defenses isn’t a near-miss with Article V as some have hyperventilated. It does indicate that Russia is finally attempting to locate the flow of crucial supplies coming into Ukraine over the Polish border so it can attempt to interdict it with airstrikes or standoff precision munitions.

• The drone being shot down should tell you what their chances are of succeeding at that. Very ISTAR. Much Recon. So killchain.

• Here’s the recent sighting of an MLRS sub-munition in Kharkiv I wanted to link in the big artillery post as an example of recent MLRS cluster munition sightings but couldn’t find. Since this isn’t the cargo shell but an actual dud sub-munition we can see it’s an HE-frag submunition with no incendiary or anti-armor functionality. Since (according to Wikipedia) Russia has no mixed AP/AT cargo rockets in service for the Grad or the 300mm Smerch it means these dizzy fuckers are routinely bombarding Ukrainian cities with weapons that can only kill civilians – and are substandard at even that when fired into heavily built urban centers. This will not reduce a city’s defensive strongpoints, but will ensure a surplus of very fucking angry people will be waiting inside when Russia attacks. And this time, they’re not going to have a single Panzerfaust to fire but an armload of modern Western anti-tank weapons. Privet, motherfuckers.
• Direct evidence of Ukrainian forces brilliantly employing DEAD tactics with their limited assets. While the drone this was filmed from might not have advanced area search capabilities – or even a FLIR or night-vision camera at all – it can still find a Russian SAM when it’s “stimulated” to fire by a decoy. (This could be as simple as a very cheap consumer drone with a handmade radar corner reflector.) Using drone spotters and artillery for SEAD/DEAD was considered by the US military for use in Kosovo; it’s a known tactic. This is a very sophisticated use of limited assets.

• Also note this engagement was geolocated and the Russian SAM was parked directly beside a school.

• Of small interest: we’ve got our first look at/confirmation of the Russian Iskander ballistic missile using advanced decoys/penetration aids. No doubt NATO intelligence will be very, very interested in these recovered examples.
• Of smaller interest, the first video recording a shootdown of an aircraft by a Ukrainian Buk-1M (SA-11) unit. If the Russians cannot find and engage a Buk sitting in the middle of a totally featureless snow-covered field – near Kharkiv, which is very near their own borders and airbases – wew LAD.

That’s the big things for now, naturally I’m sure I forgot some. Maneuver update later today; presuming there’s much maneuver to repor-

• Right, I almost forgot – Russia bombarded the Odessa area on the evening of the 15th and reportedly shelled the shore with ships, but to nobody’s surprise declined to commit suicide by attempting an opposed landing without land support. At best they seem to be attempting feints to draw away Ukrainian regular forces.
• Vasiliy Bykov, (Pennant No. 368) was finally seen again without any obvious battle damage, so it can’t be the ship hit by a Ukrainian Grad from the Odessa-area shore. The civilian ship seen to be smoking from Odessa last week was recently spotted still smoking in satellite imagery – but at coordinates 46.3692, 31.1203 which is a good 15 nautical miles (16.63 statute miles) offshore. Typically you can only see ships about 12 miles out to sea, and in the footage released the day after the MLRS strike a smoking hull was clearly visible, not just a smoke plume. Also, that ship appeared to be either white or haze gray. The civilian ship hit off Odessa and videotaped smoking on the horizon was either the Namura Queen, Lord Nelson or Helt, and none color match. I’m pretty sure the Ukrainians hit something, but it wasn’t any civilian ship in the area that we already know about.

• Why the Russians declined to post images of an undamaged No. 368 after the UMoD specifically identified it as the ship hit is unknown. It seems like the lowest hanging fruit possible but despite their characteristically smug style of diplomatic shitposting in past years, Russia was silent on the matter.

Okay that’s it for real, maneuver later today

D+21 (March 17th) Maneuver Sitrep (posted 18th @3PM)

Kyiv AOO

• Not much change from the last report, aside from this report from a volunteer confirming my prior assessments that active fighting has pushed east, away from the Kyiv suburb of Brovary. “The front is active, all these small villages east of Boryspil and Brovary are the front. “ Interestingly, it also describes the operations in brief – artillery preparation followed by infantry combat in the villages.

• While this report is secondhand, it comes from a reporter who’s been on the ground in Ukraine since 2014, with an extensive number of sources and has proven reliable in the past.

• A knocked out BMD-2, reportedly in Kyiv’s outskirts, shows the kind of terrain the fighting is in. Rural areas dotted with villages. Light infantry can definitely be effective here.
• FIRMS data (infrared satellites) have picked up an awful lot of fire in north-east Chernihiv. Whether this indicates a renewed effort to retake the town or just reducing bombardments with no serious corresponding ground action I cannot tell you.

Kharkiv/Donbas AOO

• Ukrainian defensive line along the northeast seems to be slipping. Rubizhne, the big suburb north of Severodonetsk, was apparently taken by “rebel” forces yesterday.
• An anonymous US defense official has said that Izyum is assessed to be in Russian hands now. (At time of writing I can’t find the tweet of the original reporter making the claim.) I’m seeing plenty of evidence of fighting [1] [2] but since Izyum (or “Izum”) has been contested for at least a week now this could be old evidence. I’m also seeing scattered reports that Ukrainian army units still hold part of the city. Given the terrain this would be likely in any case given the Siverskyi Donets river divides the city in two. That would certainly slow an assault, even a successful one – and given the layout, from either north or south, as well. I delayed this update in hopes of getting more concrete information in Izyum but none has been forthcoming despite an extra 12~ hours.

• ORBAT analysis indicates that Russia may have deployed some operational reserves to this region. This may have something to do with UMoD’s claim that Russia’s 252nd Motor Rifle Regiment (or rather, BTGs comprised from it) took 30% casualties, (in the area between Kharkiv and Izum specifically) which would mean they’re combat ineffective. But there hasn’t been enough footage from this area that I’ve seen to confirm either way.

Southern AOO

• No reported changes to the southern defensive line.
• The fighting in Mariupol is still heavy.

Kherson AOO

• Ukrainian units have advanced from Mykolaiv to the village of Possad Pokrowske. This video released by Ukrainian forces shows a sign at the 2-second mark – note that the first line looks identical to the Russian spelling of Possad Pokrowske in Cryllic, at least according to Google Translate. Ergo I assess this as likely true. This village is about between Kherson and Mykolaiv directly on the main M14 highway:

As you can see from Google Earth, this landscape is even more like a dinner plate than normal. The village is also small and mostly light residential buildings so its fortification value is low. In other words, a Ukrainian reconnaissance managing to reach this indicates that Russian forces have quite probably retreated from Mykolaiv back to Kherson, simply because there’s no good place to take a defensive posture in this terrain that isn’t either in Mykolaiv or Kherson. Despite my 12 hour delay UMoD has said nothing about this region except that Russian forces haven’t been actively advancing west (towards the Southern Bug, specifically.)

With so little information to go on, I’m going to have to do some “analysis” to get some idea of where this is likely to go. Stand by.

D+22 General update

I have a hangover so this isn’t gonna be organized

• Putin’s having a normal one. While a lot of people are indeed leaving Russia due to the escalating authoritarian crackdown the numbers aren’t necessarily significant given the country’s population. More important to ask is who is leaving – engineers? Scientists? People who have disproportionate impact on the nation’s economy and arms industry?

• Putin has shitcanned several high-level leaders for incompetence and malfeasance. The latest one specifically for “squandering fuel.”

• Third swimming pool struck by Russia. (Two seen, one reported.) Given these buildings are typically big and glass-sided they’re not very useful as defensive structures. Only explanation I have continues to be that they’re big sources of potable water.
• More confirmation of units being pulled from South Ossetia. [2]
• More sightings of Ukrainians in, and still holding Moshchun.
• First sighting of improvised armor on an MLRS vehicle. This demonstrates one downside of Russia’s truck-based MLRS – while they’re lightweight, fast and easy to transport they carry little to no armor protection and are very vulnerable to counterbattery or even just small arms.

• Note that Pryluky this is a solid 100km east of Kyiv. A good example of how Russia’s taking attrition due to that very long line of communication. Note this was a military convoy and they were paying attention; that MRAP’s windows were open so soldiers could fire out and the MRAP managed to get off the road before it was knocked out. This is the consequences of not having some defensive depth south of their main supply route; it’s in range of enemy patrols and SOF ambushes along its entire length.

• More examples of how Ukraine is employing anti-vehicle mines. For the most part they seem to be using them at the squad/platoon level to enhance local defense or as part of ambushes; not as big monolithic area-denial weapons. Date in the first video is the 16th but I’m really unsure on the location; place-name similarities are causing problems again.
• Russian forces capturing mud-bogged Ukrainian IFV. They’re rigging a tow with a tank; looks like tracks are fine there but wheels aren’t. Good example of how General Mud restrains both side’s ability to maneuver offroad.

• No worries, that BTR has already been replaced by another marauding tractor.

• First confirmed TB-2 loss. Given we’re 20+ days in, and likely a high sortie rate, these are proving to have a pretty good kill ratio.
• Russian helo pilots are now lofting rockets at areas from long range instead of approaching to actually put warheads on foreheads with anything approaching accuracy. If the location tag is accurate this also confirms ongoing fighting at Popansa, 35km south of Severodonetsk and commanding the eastern side of the Severodonetsk salient. (Only a single geolocated incendiary attack near here was previously seen.)

• If Russian tactical aviation dares not get close to their intended targets its going to severely restrict their usefulness. If they had sufficient air-launched ATGMs or other light standoff missiles (Hellfireski etc.) they’d be using them, not doing this.
• Apparently Russians have been seeing doing this before in Syria.
• I hereby dub this maneuver the “Blyat Loop.”

• Official footage released by Russia’s MoD showing drone-spotted artillery strikes seem to have one common theme – their drone’s optical sensor resolution is absolute dogshit: [1] [2] [3] The last one is especially telling; it looks like they’re operating at very high altitude (perhaps to avoid MANPADS) and just dropping bombs on wherever a lot of truck tracks meet, without being able to see if the trucks are actually still there or not. For a propaganda video, especially, you’d want to show actual vehicles getting blasted. The two Russian drone videos I linked the other day were also of this same poor quality and heavily chopped up (the strike on Ukrainian BMPs was damn near a .gif with only two frames.)

• I conclude the ISR value of Russian drones are most likely inferior to whatever Ukraine has been gifted, purchased, or built homewbrew. Given Ukraine was still the primary military electronics supplier for Russia until Russia attacked them in 2014 this is perhaps unsurprising.
• There’s no credible intelligence reason to deliberately degrade these images. These aren’t 100 million dollar Global Hawk drones; these things are affordable and also attritable (i.e. it’s expected they’re going to have pieces falling into enemy hands semi-regularly.)

• I have been reliably informed before that Russia’s optical sensors (thermal and NV) are considered poor by the standards of the West’s cutting edge stuff. Now there seems to be some empirical evidence to demonstrate that.

More stuff to talk about but it has some operational significance that I need to think about instead of just yeeting it out.

D+23 Maneuver Update + Analysis (March 19th @ 6PM)

UMoD dropped a very detailed update today which I’ve cross-reverenced with extant/independent information best as possible. Brace for arrow maps. (Imgur gallery link so you can view in glorious high[er] resolution if desired.)

Kiev AOO

UMoD hadn’t much to say about this region except that Russian forces are still not taking strong offensive action. They did, however, mention several villages by name they hadn’t before as where Russian forces are holding a defensive line. Most significant is that the Russians are as far south as Kopyliv and Motyzhn, meaning the E40 highway west to Makariv is cut. However, image evidence (not yet geolocated) and statements from local police, both from today, indicate ongoing airstrikes and mortar fire in Makariv, implying to me it’s still actively contested. Given the E40 is cut this means Ukrainian defenders are using their line of communication from the west. Contesting Makariv means further southward movement by Russian forces will be difficult; even if they deign to continue fighting south through the Kyiv suburbs their advance will be narrow and vulnerable to flank and rear attacks.

East of Kyiv the update paints an interesting picture:

UMoD used the curious phrase “the enemy is trying to act” in the settlements marked by purple pins, with the phrase “trying to control the border” for the ones I put in red (east of Brovary specifically) and “maintain defensive positions” for the red-pinned locations around Chernihiv. Around Brovary it was also specifically said the Russians were not conducting active offensive operations. I interpret this to mean (as the UMoD has said of enemy forces in this and other regions repeatedly in recent days) that they’re not engaging in major offensives. Ergo, “red” areas are Russian defensive positions and purple ones, areas they are reconnoitering/patrolling/shelling; their likely future objectives.

I’ve circled Viktorivka, Nizhyn and Prylucky as these are areas I’ve (as previously reported) seen evidence of combat in – Ukrainian troops moving through Viktorivka, local official’s statements and video of MLRS shelling in Nizhyn and just yesterday the images of an ambushed convoy in the vicinity of Prylucky (the one with the Smerch sporting improvised cab armoring.) UMoD also specified enemy strength as approximately three brigades east of Brovary and three investing Chereniv, and also clarified that Chereniv is under bombardment but not ground assault.

Sum total picture is of a Ukrainian advance up the E95 in the last few days to meet an advance out of Chereniv itself, followed by Russian counter-counterattacks to cut the E95 just north of Brovary and the P67 running east, then south-east to Nizhyn by taking Lukashovka. The UMoD said Cherenihiv is “partially” blockaded, which seems right – the city can’t be considered in full communication, but neither is it conclusively cut off. (Notice Kiselivka noted as held, and Mena as a place Russians are “trying to act” in; this’d be a good Russian move to enable use of the P-12 highway and close off the apparently uninvested areas east of Chereniv.) This also jells with the US volunteer in the area I mentioned yesterday who said the fighting is in the small villages east of Brovary.

Interestingly the UMoD also indicated Romny and Nedrigailiv, about 250km east and both along the H07, as other areas of enemy operational interest. Given the H07 runs just north of Prylucky and the towns just west of Brovary that UMoD indicated as either held by Russians or as of operational interest to them, this suggests that they’re trying to widen their flank and keep Ukrainian regular forces further away from their lines of communication, which is wise.

Consider the main east-west highways available here:

The M02 should be solidly in Russian hands (excepting local irregular TDF activities, of course) but to reach Russian operational areas east of Brovary they’d have to run through Nizhyn (on the P67 southbound) or take it all the way to the E95 running north-south near the banks of the Dnieper. The next furthest north/south connection to the less exposed H07 runs through Konotop, which is also the major rail junction in this area. There’s been little news from Konotop since the infamous visit by a Russian negotiator who had to walk through a crowd with armed grenades in each hand to guarantee his safety, aside from yesterday’s footage of knocked out Russian IFVs, so I presume it is still denied to Russian passage. Given the above it is no shock that the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence openly seconded the Ukrainian MoD’s assessment that Russian forces are shifting large numbers of troops to defend their supply lines, limiting their offensive potential. They either need to take Chernihiv, or take Sumy and Konotop to stop the attrition of their supply lines and logistical vehicles. Given the shifts of forces from Kharkiv towards encircling Sumy (and UMoD’s reports that Sumy is now indeed under preparatory bombardment and probing attacks again) it’s most likely that Russian forces east of Bovary will try to hold the area till operations further East are completed.

I take pains to note that lines on maps are always arbitrary and don’t ever perfectly represent “controlled area.” The fighting is fluid, the reach of artillery is long, and infantry can be very sneaky.

k AIzyum-SeverodonetsOO

No big changes in Kharkiv reported or rumored either officially or unofficially; likely due to reported shifts of Russian forces northward to deal with Sumy. UMoD specifically noted intensive ISR efforts around Kharkiv with Orlan-10 drones. UMoD specifically reused their wording vis a vis Brovary area for the areas around Izuym, i.e. “trying to act” but expressly not engaging in offensives. UMoD also specified that Izuym is still contested. The Siverskyi Donets river is a good 50m wide where it winds through the heart of Izyum and the Ukrainians will have had those bridges wired to blow by now; I’d hazard a guess that (at worst) Russian forces are in northwest Izyum and Ukrainian forces, southeast, with the river between them. As demonstrated by footage of Ukrainian artillery blasting a truck park just south of Izyum on the 16th Russian efforts to bridge the Donets and flank Izyum have obviously been in progress. In other words, even if Russian efforts around here have paused for resupply and regrouping, the actual frontline situation here is pretty fluid. All prior points about the reach of artillery and the sneakiness of infantry apply here.

UMoD has stated explicitly that Rubizhne is still contested, with Russian forces gaining a foothold in the northwestern parts of the city. Settlements marked with the red ! were noted explicitly as the focus of Russian offensives and the arrows identify the three most prioritized goals of Russian forces – Rubizhne/Severodonetsk and Popasna. (Popasna was under incendiary shelling on March 14th as established by geolocated footage.)

While there’s little to confirm it, if we take UMoD’s latest report at face value, the (scattered) evidence of heavy fighting around Izyum and photos of apparently captured documents showing the 26th Guards Tank Regiment present near Izyum, which should be up near Sumy, (thus implying commitment of an operational reserve to Izyum,) this would all suggest that Russian forces near Izyum have exhausted their immediate capacity for offensive action. Whether Russian forces have consequently shifted their focus to open areas southwest of Rubizhne/Severodontesk and Popansa to encircle the city there, or if those efforts were simultaneous already I cannot say.

Dontesk-Mariupol, Southeastern AOO

Around Severodonetsk UMoD identifies the ! marked settlements as areas of Russian assaults and notes that enemy offensive activity; including shelling and smaller scale probes are active throughout the entire region. In addition, recently geolocated video shows Russian troops in Maryinka, southwest of Dontesk city proper. As for Yasynuvata, this is very near where the video of a Russian tank hitting a mine on the 15th was geolocated to. The area was the frontline of the Donbas conflict, and since the city was a major center of gravity for that the Russians may be pushing towards Toretsk more to avoid the problems of the heavy entrenchments near the city.

There’s still very little direct evidence to confirm it, but there’s at least some social media chatter from locals (or those who know a guy who thinks he knows a local etc.) indicating this is the current defensive line in the south. UMoD says that only harrasing attacks and shelling are taking place around Orikhiv and Huliaipole, with the settlements indicated in purple here being contested and Vugledar being the primary point of the assault – perhaps to encircle the crossroads at Novotroitskoye. I’ve seen mention of civilian evacuees from Vugledar on Twitter dating to the 15th; aside from that, no direct evidence of operations around here.

Also, Mariuopol is still Ukrainian, though that’s not a surprise at this point. I suppose Chechens aren’t as good at city fighting as they thought.

Kherson AOO

Yesterday UMoD specified that Russian forces retreated from Mykolaiv on the evening of the 17th, and as I’ve previously said, this makes sense for them to do. Given the many good reasons for them to not attack into cities if they can help it, they would either invest Mykolaiv or withdraw to around Kherson, as the terrain doesn’t reward forward defense here. The Ukrainian probe to Possad-Pokrovske yesterday would’ve been impossible if Russian forces were investing the city. Of interest are these images of a few knocked out Russian thin-skinned vehicles allegedly knocked out while leaving Mykolaiv for Kherson, yesterday. Whilst this can’t be geolocated it definitely matches the terrain around Mykolaiv and the previously observed trend of long-range artillery assets in rural areas around the city being knocked out by Ukrainian forces. In other words, given that the area around Mykolaiv have obviously been effectively contested by Ukrainian forces, hitting Russian rear areas significantly outside the city, it’s plausible the Russians would just cut their losses and defend Kherson.

Red-pin marked settlements are where the UMoD today said the Russian advance has been decisively halted. The red line running up the TI505 road is giving Russia the benefit of the doubt. Theoretically they should be able to protect that LOC with their airpower, drone and artillery advantage, especially in such open terrain with little cover. Practically, with 50 helicopters at Kherson, at least some of which were attack birds, they were unable to stop Ukraine from running some MLRS up into long range and plastering their airfield, so who fucking knows? The TI505 is only a two lane road, so they may have opted to use surface roads a little further east to exploit the barrier of the Inhulets River to help protect their flank from any counterattacks. The rail line from Kherson is just west of the TI505, (and thus the river) as well, though. tl;dr everything I said about logistics around here days ago still applies.

Conclusions/Caveats

• Actual direct verification of action or the character of it in most of these areas continues to be incredibly scarce compared to what we’d obviously prefer, but it all passes the sanity check at least.
• Some village names just don’t survive Google Translate, still others share their names with multiple others and I have to guess which one UMoD are talking about, and on occasion Google directs me to a village with a different name than the one I searched for, which, upon investigation, turns out to have been re-named in 2015 as part of a general shedding of Soviet-era nomenclature. I am missing some things that natives won’t.
• UMoD continues to be sparse in their force assessments and rarely names specific Ukrainian regiments involved in action in any of these areas.
• Minor note: I have reversed my prior policy and am now spelling it “Kyiv” specifically because it annoys copeniks.

I’m going to add some more in-depth “analysis” of exactly what the fighting/maneuver options along the Donbas front are a bit later today if at all possible.

D+24 Operational Analysis – What Ukraine Will Do Next

I believe it’s time to move past summary of possible ground facts and listing theoretical options to make some more concrete predictions. However, there are a few significant developments in the terms of Russia’s operational abilities that have yet to be covered, and must be to put together the complete picture.

Let’s talk about roads and bridges.

Most of what the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence publicly states about the progress of the Ukrainian war is no surprise; it’s mainly useful as confirmation that the trends noticed through the narrow window of OSINT are indeed an accurate enough sampling. But on the 17th the UK’s MoD pointed out something that I hadn’t seen evidence of via OSINT: that Russia had limited bridging capabilities.

The more I thought about it, the more it fit. And when added to the rest of the picture, it changes everything.

The Art and Science of Military Bridging

Ukraine was quite obviously not expecting Putin to seriously invade with maximalist aims, as their government’s failure to initiate full mobilization till the very eve of war shows. This was responsible for many early setbacks, the most damning being the quick capture of the Kherson and Nova Kharkova bridges before serious efforts could be made to wire them to blow. Since then, however, the Ukrainians have clearly adjusted their tactics; wiring major river crossings for demolition ahead of time and engaging in a spree of destruction against smaller bridges throughout the country. Much like the mud, I thought this would prove a hindrance, but not a show stopper. Because just like mud, blown bridges are the norm in warfare, and while they slow an advance, they will not substantially stop one. The art and science of military bridging has been a necessity since ancient times when men fought with sling and steel. Demolishing bridges is due diligence for any defender, and it’s due diligence for the attacker to be prepared to deal with it. Like everything else when it comes to attack versus defense, it’s easier to create a problem than to surmount it; the natural friction of war that any attacker must plan for. With Russia having such an overall materiel advantage, I never thought about it past that – as I’ve said many times in my prior updates, rivers are obstacles, but not insurmountable ones.

But that does not mean it is easy.

The most common bridge in the history of warfare has been the humble pontoon bridge, and it’s much the same today. The definitive modern version is a Soviet invention, the PMP floating bridge, a design so clever America simply copied it wholesale, with the rest of the modern world soon following. It’s an elegant design that incorporates the road deck and the sealed float (“pontoon”) in one package that’s hinged to fold up compact on the back of a truck. A bridging battalion backs their trucks up to the river and dumps them off one at a time, and men can either wrangle them together in the shallows, then swing the completed length over (letting the current help) to reach the far shore, or use small motorboats (also unloaded from trucks) to nudge them together across the river. With the boats lashed to a few pontoon sections, they can also form rafts for ferrying vehicles across open water. He’s the US Army Reserve demonstrating the system in action.

There’s other options, of course, such as wheeled amphibious vehicles with built-in pontoons that can drive into the water, swim into a conga line and rotate their built-in road decking to interlock with each other. Or that delightful British invention, the Mexeflote, a folding pontoon system that comes with a modular motorized attachment to become a self powered raft, an idea others immediately and shamelessly stole.

All these marvels of combat engineering have one thing in common – they’re basically boats, and if you poke holes in them, they sink.

Your enemy will be trying extremely hard to poke holes in them – and every weapon in the modern military arsenal, starting with a 9mm pistol on upwards, is quite capable of doing it.

There’s other bridges, of course; made of steel girders with nary a float involved. But they take a long time to set up and a long time to take down and relocate, and once they enemy figures out where they are, they’ll dump artillery fire on it. Even if the bridge survives, the soft-skin trucked moving over and past it won’t be so lucky. The pontoon bridge defines bridging ops because of its speed. It’s the only real option for maintaining speed of advance and freedom of maneuver. An army using girder bridges will be outmaneuvered and outflanked by one using pontoon bridges.

Thus, bridging ops revolve around letting nothing shoot at the bridge. Stealth is of course the most potent asset here, aided greatly by the system’s speed. Together these equal time; time to move forces and sufficient supply over the connection before it’s found and destroyed. Then there’s space; as your vanguard force widens their bridgehead to find, fix and push the enemy further from the river, as well as gaining and securing additional bridging sites for your bridge to move to – standard doctrine for “pulsed” bridge ops varies with army, era and situation, but every two hours is the one I’ve heard – gain the space before then, lest you run out of time. And of course the last aspect of war, force. When the King of war is pitched against something as delicate as an aluminum float, the results are inevitable. Attack helicopters must roam far and wide, hunting down and destroying enemy artillery, and should they open up on the bridgehead your tubes must be firing counter-battery before the first enemy shell has even landed.

In other words, river crossings are friction, and like any other friction, overcoming it depends on mastery of the same operational elements that dictate any other military action – time, space and force. If you cannot control space, if you cannot buy time, if you cannot apply force, you may muddle on when things are going your way, but when a real test comes you will pay, and you will pay in blood.

And that’s exactly what is happening to the Russians.

Friction Bleeds Force

Ukrainian forces are blasting Russian bridges left and right, when they’re not ambushing the bridgeheads. They’re setting up bridges inside Ukrainian artillery range and leaving them there till they’re found and destroyed. They’ve got all the drones and attack helicopters anyone could ask for, but still can’t keep their major forward tac-air bases from being plastered, much less conduct effective counterbattery before MLRS nails their bridgeheads and scoots away. They have a shortage of infantry dismounts for conducting aggressive patrolling and while they’ve some tactical vehicleborne EW systems they’ve no man-portable jammers to counter the small backpack drones they themselves employ and should have been expecting. Nor have they adapted their tactics for the reality of a war where both sides have good frontline ISR due to a surplus of drones and a paucity of effective EW counters. From what little footage of their own operations they’ve released, they fire precious (bulky and costly to ship) MLRS rockets (unitary warhead, no less) to engage single squads, rely on laser-guided munitions when attacking stationary targets, and are apparently using their TOS-1 thermobarics more often against targets in the field than against cities, which they instead pepper with frag-only sub-munitions. And on top of all that, even if they learn to properly protect their supply convoys their movements will still be given away by the same hilarious lack of secure communications capability that’s already seen one Russian general slain by a prompt Ukrainian artillery strike, making it unlikely they’ll be able to surge sufficient vehicles over a bridge fast enough. And even when they do they stop and are promptly shelled by accurate Ukrainian tubes instead of keeping on the move.

And there’s a lot of rivers in Ukraine – in the south and eastern areas especially. They are big and small, and while the small ones can be crossed more simply with a vehicle-launched bridge, they also tend to be found where rivers split and wind, and as the snowmelt continues and spring precipitation starts in earnest those wet marshy areas will become veritable bogs, requiring road building with materiel they did not bring and cannot efficiently collect with tools they do not have – how many chainsaws did they pack, if they’re issuing expired rations and ERA bags without the ERA?

Wherever there is friction this story repeats, and the Ukrainians have committed heavily and fully to creating as much of it as possible.

And only going by what we have actually seen, verified, and counted as destroyed, the Russian’s loss rates are clearly unsustainable. Even if you posit that the Ukrainians are losing forces – both personnel and equipment at similar rates – it still won’t save Russia, as the attacker is always the one facing more friction. Hence why attackers must mass more something to win; they need to overcome the built-in friction defenders can generate, especially defenders in their home territory. They’re bleeding force fast, time is not on their side, not with their nation embargoed by a world that’s gleefully pouring money and resources into their enemy’s unassailable rear areas, and they are gaining space so very, very slowly.

Blyatkrieg Redux

Now that we have the full story of the battle of Voznesensk we can appreciate Blyatkrieg in all its moronic glory, with the bridges completing the picture. When that single BTG was first reported has having dashed up there I saw it as another attempt at a stolen march, the “blitz” part of the blitzkrieg they were going for; rebuffed in part by defense in depth ( Territorial Defense Forces and mobilized reserves garrisoned nearby) and a very tenuous supply line (TDF + Mykolaiv in artillery range of their MSR.) And subsequent operations explicable by recon; the same reason vehicles were running around singly or in twos earlier on; compensating for a lack of aerial ISR as they searched for a good crossing point over the Bug for follow-on forces.

Instead, we know know, this single BTG attacked Voznesnsk rigorously for two days, and a combination of local Territorial Defense militia, on-the-spot civilian volunteers and resistance and regular Ukrainian forces (including a small SOF recon element with Javelin missiles) completely crushed them. All this, apparently, to try and take a bridge that had already been destroyed. One-fourth of their personnel killed (perhaps) and a staggering 30 of 43 vehicles (assuredly) destroyed. They did not properly assess the situation and use their mobility to retreat to friendly forces. By the time they realized they were outmatched they had already been routed. Whatever unit that was, it’s combat-ineffective now.

Given this, the claims of an entire BTG being rendered combat-ineffective near Izyum scan true. Plenty of things in the WSJ article scan true to what we’ve seen elsewhere – Russian soldiers looting for food, prompt and accurate Ukrainian artillery and effective counterbattery, and now – a bridge the enemy apparently needed worse than we could’ve known at the time. Even with the paucity of information and the skew every account will have, a pattern’s emerging and it’s undeniable. And now it’s clear why the Russians are advancing so very, very slowly in the south.

A modern “map recon” of the southern and eastern (Donetsk) fronts, using google Street View to put overhead imagery into context, makes one realize that the Ukrainians can defend this terrain, especially against an enemy channelized by roads and mud. Water is frequent in this terrain, and it tends to coincide with habitations, settlements, and treelines. There is cover, sometimes very good cover: berms of irrigation channels reinforced with concrete, sunken ground, low brick walls that seem popular in Eastern Europe, etc. No matter how wide the fields are, there’s plenty of places that will slow an advance; obstacles that require tactical acumen to suppress, negotiate and/or bypass without taking undue casualties or sacrificing momentum, acumen the Russians demonstrably lack. They must have the roads, and that makes them, moreover, predictable; allowing Ukrainian defenders to predict their second and third options for advance. The road is always ambushed, the easy way is always mined, and the hard way is through close terrain bristling with RPGs.

The loss of operational momentum also affords the defenders time to entrench, made easier by massive civilian support and fighting in their home territory – their earthmovers are on-hand and come with trained, motivated operators, unlike the enemy which must bring everything with him. Because the Ukrainians will also be practicing limited “scorched earth,” they’re aware the Russians are seeking to capture in-situ supplies. I doubt a gas station is left in the occupied territories with a drop in its tanks or, failing that, intact. They can, and are, making the Russians bleed for every inch, even in the most favorable terrain the enemy could ask for.

How To Win

I’ve never formally studied the operational science of war, but what I sense of the art says this enemy – unable to mass cohesively against single points, operating with divided forces lacking internal lines of communication, unable to maneuver cross-country, and unable to maintain operational momentum when faced with complex barriers – should be attacked, ruthlessly and swift.

But the mud takes no sides, and the brutal math of attrition is clear. The only reason Russia’s making any progress on the southern and eastern fronts is a better supply situation; multiple road (and most essentially) rail links; one each through Crimea and multiple from Dontesk. Additionally there’s no TDF militia to gnaw upon their lifelines in Dontesk due to eight years of occupation.

I earlier said that the Ukrainians would soon have to make a choice as to where to commit their reserves; especially the three reserve tank regiments we’ve yet to see or hear of as conclusively committed to action. I was half right. They will need to choose, but nowhere near as soon as I thought. Russia bleeds for every kilometer taken; and while operational momentum was spent long ago they still lose everything as they advance tanks, artillery, (due to consistently excellent Ukrainian counterbattery) pontoon bridge sections, supply trucks, and LOC efficiency (more distance through hostile territory teeming with TDF.)

It’s entirely possible the enemy will eventually shatter themselves on this bulwark and the timing of counterattack will be dictated more by their collapse than by road conditions. In addition to the hints of a Russian operational reserve being committed to Izyum this morning brought evidence of VDV units fighting there as well; and yet the area remains contested and the enemy assault stalled. If these units cannot break through, than who? Even if the Russians retain combat power they’re unlikely to achieve a breakthrough that maintains the momentum needed to encircle and isolate the Donbas flank. This is exacerbated by their strategy – due to having occupied Donbas at their back and Mariupol mostly occupied, they have sufficient lines of communication to rapidly shift forces from Dontesk to the southern front. (The rail yard in Mariupol is north of the city proper; have they no counterbattery at all?) If they drove up through Velyka Novosilka or Huliaipole they could cut Ukraine in two; perhaps even invest Zaporizhzhia and Dnirpro’s eastern sides; use the Dniper’s chokepoints against the Ukrainians. Instead they batter against the eastern flank; attacking into Rubinzhe and Severodonetsk directly when all their force should be against Lyman and Popansa, avoiding urban areas that negate their advantages and enhance their enemies’.

So, Ukraine can and should wait till ground conditions allow freer operational maneuver. The enemy slowly learns, but many crippling problems (lack of reliable and secure communications) remains, and others will get worse (i.e. high leadership attrition, available engineering assets etc.) The enemy has divided his forces among multiple fronts that must work along very long external lines of communication. The question now is how to use Ukraine’s internal lines of communication to isolate one part of these forces and annihilate them. These are the options I can see:

1. East of Kyiv. Russian forces in the northwest are densely massed, very close to their base of supply in Belarus, and already digging in for siege. With Chernihiv and Kyiv still Ukrainian this force’s path around the Dnieper is long. Combined with their substandard ISR it should be possible for Ukrainian forces to cross the river south of Kyiv – e.g. at Cherkasy – and drive north for an attack at Prylucky. Motorized regiment(s) could hold the terrain around Ichnya, where it’s highly favorable for defense, and the armor could turn west and attack; crushing Russian forces against Kyiv and Chernihiv as anvils. The usefulness of this depends on how many BTGs are there to be destroyed.

2. North out of Kharkiv, pushing north of Sumy as far as possible to cut supply lines (leaving blocking forces behind for this purpose) then west. There are few good roads leading north into Belarus in this area and the main ones go through Chernihiv. I am not schooled enough to grasp if this scale of maneuver is more suitable than possibility #1 given the forces involved but if the Russians are still dispersing three whole divisions through this area to secure their lines of communication, this seems doable. It could be combined with a lesser commitment to #1 (or perhaps a drive up through Romny to Konotop) to constrain enemy maneuver, preventing them from massing forces and allowing the Ukrainian counterattack to defeat them in detail. (This could also be the main axis of the assault; benefiting from more distance from Russia proper.)

3. A breakthrough at Nova Kakhovka. UMoD stated today that Russian forces are shifting regular troops out of Kherson and substituting police forces instead; most likely to both pacify the population and to exploit the benefits of urban defense to free up badly needed military units for other fronts. Nova Kakhovka is a much smaller town and the bridge runs atop a dam; a much harder structure to demolish. Blocking forces could move south and cut off the police units in Kherson while the main force grazes Melitopol (hitting the airfield and rail yard there, with massed long range fires if possible,) then driving to Tokmak and on, seeking to drive Russian units against the southern defensive line. This could be combined with a drive south from Dnipro, but splitting forces like that is very risky.

There are other possibilities – such as a drive from Kharkiv through Kupiansk and Starobil, or an encirclement of the main force northwest of Kyiv – but they are insanely risky and would depend on a careful weighing of factors that require information only the Ukrainian general staff has. As it stands, these are the possibilities that seem most probable to me. I welcome the input of anyone who has more education in the Science and experience in the Art; obviously, you have my email.

D+24 & 25 (March 20th and 21st) Update

General Update:

Strategic:

• Serious and growing indications that Belarus is going to join the war:

• Observed Belarussian military vehicle convoys moving by road with many vehicles sporting an identification mark; red square or rectangle, all westward movement.
• Belarus’s dictator is now openly threatening that any attack on Belarus would be an attack on Russia; a not so veiled threat against NATO interference. This is extremely ominous signaling.
• The Kremlin’s obvious desperation to stop the flow of resources into Ukraine from the Polish border, as evidenced by this latest threat to attack “supply chains” of S-300 batteries, the egregious overkill of cruise missiles directed at the Yavoriv training center only 20km from the Polish border (for intimidation, as the military value of the site can’t possibly justify that expenditure,) and Russian state mouthpiece Pravda openly threatening to invade Poland.
•  Recent Russian nuclear signalling. (Note the US has had E-4 and E-6 nuclear command aircraft airborne pretty regularly as well, but nothing like this swarm.)

• As the above collation of reports shows, Belorussian military columns are already in the far-western part of the country. UMoD fears an attack in the Volyn region of Ukraine; the furthest north-west corner of the country. Russia’s maintained a token force (a motor rifle brigade, at best) in this area since the invasion began; likely to keep some Ukrainian reserves pinned in that part of the country.
• Invading here would be incredibly risky for Russia given the very close proximity to the Polish border. Russia’s threats against Poland will likely backfire, given that the Russian army’s prowess has been demonstrated to be a fraction of what it was presumed, Poland’s immediate security interests in not having two Russian puppet states on its border, and cultural factors (Poles loathe and despise Russia for very good reasons.) Furthermore the terrain this far west is far more rugged than in the East and even local TDF personnel and reservists could make reaching Lviv to cut the Ukrainian supply line from Poland impossible.

• There’s been persistent indications that Belarus’s dictator is unwilling to stick his dick into this meatgrinder and given persistent rumblings of Belorussian civilian dissent, plus the demonstrable failure of Russia’s attack and the potential of Polish involvement it cannot be presumed that Belorussian military morale is much better. It’s entirely possible this is a feint to attempt to draw away Ukrainian troops from the battle zone.

• This could also be a feint to draw attention away from an attack by Belorussian forces already in-situ near Mazyr, who might push south on the P28 highway to help secure the Russian LOC’s western flank, and/or contribute personnel to the main efforts against Kiev. If Russian forces NW of Kiev continue digging in, however, this becomes less likely. I doubt the Belorussian military will be expected to sustain a serious advance all the way to Zhytomyr on their own, given the competence Ukraine has demonstrated so far.

• Russia’s ships in the Med have left Tartus, and seem spaced out to provide optimal radar coverage over the sea. This is useful from an intelligence perspective as it lets Russia see when NATO ISTAR sorties are flying out of Italy, Greece, Turkey or the major American regional base at Qatar. This is no threat to NATO assets – even without land-based missile and airpower the three carrier NATO task force in the northern Aegean right now could wipe this fleet with a sneeze.

Personnel and Materiel:

• Recent UMoD statements about Russia drawing on Naval Infantry units to provide replacements is being borne out by increasing sightings of Naval Infantry obituaries in local Russian media. These guys supposedly were being held in reserve for actual naval landings, but with an unsupported landing effectively suicide Russia seems to be committing them.
• Increasing reports of higher level Russian officers being killed in Ukraine. I’m not interested in dickering over exactly how many generals and of what rank were killed; it’s enough to observe that some or most of them are almost certainly actually dead, and this attrition of trained, experienced career officers is going to have a serious impact on Russian operational competence. Observe that the death of this engineer corps Colonel occurred while setting up a pontoon bridge near Izyum. (See prior discussion of military bridging etc.) If units need hand-holding from experienced officers to accomplish important tasks like that, the loss of these personnel is going to hurt a lot.
• I’ve seen several more Tochka-U boosters fired at Ukrainian targets, and most tellingly a new batch of Tochka-U launchers showed in in Belarus on a Russian heavy airlifter. As others have observed, their rough looking condition indicates they were probably just pulled out of storage, which makes sense as Russia formally retired the Tochka-U from active service years ago. Russia must be running short on long-range precision munitions; either ones they’re willing to expend or the entire stockpile in general.
• The use of a Khinzal missile may also indicate overtaxed PGM stocks, as employment as such claimed by Russia is a waste of the resource if anything else is available. The Khinzal is literally just an Iskander that’s launched from a plane. There’s nothing fancy about it. Any ballistic missile is innately hypersonic. We have had hypersonics since the fucking V-2. Journalists are too stupid to understand this.
• Related: Lviv’s crucial airframe repair depot was finally attacked, but, incredibly, commercial satellite imagery shows only four weapons impacted and they were not optimally aimed. (Local officials said six cruise missiles were fired, but two were intercepted by air defenses.) Furthermore, one missile was directed at a parking ramp that any asshole with Google Earth could determine was mostly occupied by long out-of-service MiG-23s (and two Fishbeds.) It is unclear to me how much vital equipment could be stored in a single hangar, but in general such repair depots are rather sizeable and take multiple munitions to put out of action. Given the attack on the parking ramp I find it plausible that Russian forces were attempting to hit active-duty MiG-29s that had been flown in for rapid repairs and return to service – in other words another sniping attack on airframes, not a serious attempt to destroy Ukraine’s long-term capacity to make war.
• A nice example of the high-quality equipment the Ukrainian SOF has received to complement their Western-assisted training. Note this soldier’s holding a weapon reportedly favored by the SOF (and seen often in videos of them in combat,) a domestically-built bullpup rifle, which also highlights Ukraine’s rather advanced domestic arms industry.
• The first confirmed Russian gun truck has been seen (and captured.) Note the rifle ports and the open top. The angled sides are a nice touch as well. Seems they found at least one welder.
• More and more sightings of older Russian tanks in Ukraine. The B model is 80s vintage. This is roughly akin to seeing a National Guard M-60 on the frontline. It’s not as ancient as the A model however, and a few of those have already been seen, as previously documented.
• Additionally, multiple very rare T-80UK tanks (models that were intended for export, very high-end) have been seen in Ukraine; either knocked out or captured. Also, the one-of-a-kind T80UM2 tank – a prototype for testing the Drozd active protection system – was destroyed in Sumy Oblast. Additionally yet another ancient T-72A was just captured by Ukrainian forces. Russians are scraping the bottom of the barrel for materiel.
• Increasing civilian participation in the war effort, such as civilians applying the now-classic middle eastern trick of a small consumer quadcopter dropping hand grenades. The previously seen conversion of 1950s era RKG-3 anti-tank grenades to air-dropped munitions by adding 3D printed guidance fins has already yielded results. While Middle Eastern fighters are no less inventive, the people now turning their hands to war have access to more technology and the entire stockpiles of their national military to work with.
• I am still seeing multiple instances of Russian supply trucks being captured intact with their ammunition. How much of a difference this is making I cannot say, but given the low ammunition stocks Ukraine started with, every bit helps. It’s more significant in that it shows that Russian supply lines continue to be subject to interdiction.

• I’m seeing a lot less Territorial Defense Forces securing wins against Russian supply lines. But I’m still seeing SOF ambushes and regular forces hitting supply vehicles on the regular.

• First sighting of a Russian Tornado rocket; roughly analagous to the American M31 GPS-guided “70 kilometer sniper rifle.” UMoD alleged that Russia had recently ordered production of this system to go into round-the-clock work; (like with most of Russia’s most modern weapons, they typically can’t afford many and have limited stockpiles. Where’s the T-14 Armata, again?)
• This Russian-released video looks an awful lot like a thermobaric weapon going off. Area targets are a valid use for the TOS-1 thermobaric, but given we’ve yet to hear consistent reports of thermobarics used against urban areas, one wonders if the Russians aren’t using this for counter-battery because of larger accuracy issues with their artillery.

Operational

• The decline of video evidence of TDF destruction of supply convoys likely owes to increasing Russian efforts to provide them with proper protection. That this effort has already diverted almost three divisions from frontline duties is a success. However I think I’m seeing Ukrainian SOF adapt to this as I’m seeing more and more frequent evidence of mines laid along roads and command-detonated explosives. These allow for incredible destruction without leaving the ambushers very exposed at all. The incredible effort the US and its partners had to make to deal with IED attacks in Iraq illustrate the challenges for Russian forces nicely.
• A little more confirmation that Russian forces are now focusing on their efforts in the south/east based on casualty numbers from various fronts.
• A recent Russian strike on a shopping mall garage illustrates both the challenge imposed by both sides inability to effectively engage small recon drones, and the cost to Russia of Ukrainian air-denial tactics. The mall’s garage was being used to hide and reload MLRS vehicles between strikes. You can see the Russian drone follow them back to their hideout, allowing the destruction of both the launchers and their ready ammunition stockpile. But the Russians had to expend an Iskander to engage it (far too accurate for a Tochka-U.) Weapons costly as the Iskander (or a cruise missile) are best served by reaching far into hostile rear areas and engaging big ammunition depots located in enemy “safe” territory. This target needed a 500 pound LGB or perhaps a guided MLRS munition. Apparently neither was available.

• Persistent aerial surveilance capability by both sides, with neither side being able to effectively and routinely counter it, seems to be turning this into an artillery war even more than normal wars. Ukrainians continue to demonstrate impressive accuracy with old soviet quick-fuze shells (note the burning T-72,) and the Russians continue to lose logistical elements and entire columns to Ukrainian artillery attack. Obviously, this isn’t one-sided. But at worst Ukraine seems to be making very good use of their limited assets in this regard.

• Contrast Russians – the boosters of their MLRS rockets are more effective against their targets than the payloads.
• See this exhaustive catalog of hospitals deliberately attacked by Russian forces.

• Ukrainian Tochka-U strikes continue.
• I am continuing to see evidence of both Ukrainian and Russian aircraft shootdowns, indicating both forces are still active. Obviously the Russians are more active and taking more casualties. The value of the Ukrainian Air Force’s continued survival is obvious from this KA-52 lugging six air-to-air missiles; that’s payload space not devoted to air-to-ground weapons, but made necessary by either Ukrainian drones in the AO, or even Defensive-Counter-Air sorties by UKA MiG-29s. Failure to gain ubiquitous air supremacy – or perhaps even air superiority – is blunting advantages that Russia desperately needs to break the stalemate.

Maneuver

No major changes yesterday or today, hence the combination update. UMoD claims will be cited where applicable.

• I can’t believe I missed this the other day: this ambushed convoy was said to be hit near Snihurivka, 45km north of Kherson... along the TI505. The mad bastards are actually using that road and getting the expected results. So it wasn’t retreating from Mykolaiv, but the Russian front trying to push on Kryvyi Rih. Phenomenal... if it’s actually from there.
• None of it can be geolocated (because of the barren terrain) but I’m seeing an awful lot of footage of destroyed or captured Russian assets said to be around Mykolaiv (which in practice probably means the entire oblast,) most of them on the side of a road. (I saw a few on the 17th and 18th, several more by the 20th and today they’re practically pouring in!) Note the command vehicle; yet another rear-echelon asset that wouldn’t typically be exposed too close to the hot and heavy fighting. (See also this. The 126th is said to be the brigade that the BTG defeated up in Voznesensk was from, so this is likely Mykolaiv area too.) Given this I’d say news of a serious counteroffensive towards Kherson is real. A lot of this equipment may be from the forces that pushed north, too, who are now hastily retreating down the TI505.
• As noted in my big effortpost, the first possible evidence of VDV involvement in the assaults on Izyum. UMoD says the town is still in friendly hands. The video Russia released a few days back claiming the town was taken showed a railway bridge that had clearly been rendered unusable by demo charges, and I’ve seen no Russian propaganda videos showing off Izyum yet, so I’m sticking to my theory that the river is complicating their attack. The fact the city is still most likely contested despite them throwing operational reserves and VDV into the fight is not good news for the Russians.

• Imagery dropped today of hundreds of shell craters just south of Izyum. Checking this area on google maps shows it’s fairly well wooded. There also is (or was) a village there. The village of Snizhkivka is just north of the Donets river here, one of the ones UMoD indicated was of enemy interest. I suspect this was suppressive fire on area targets to try and support a crossing of some sort.

• See also heavy area shelling of this front north of Dontesk city.

• As UMoD noted yesterday there’s visible signs of Russian troops around Kyiv digging in. As I said in my artillery post, digging in is not a bad thing and units of any sort will do it whenever possible. However, given the Russian’s have displayed an obsession with blyatkrieg, the fact they’re actually bothering to dig more thorough earthworks for a change is probably more significant than normal.

• Just be aware that simply digging revetments doesn’t make for trench warfare. Many military vehicles come with a dozer blade attached so they can scrape their own protection. It only indicates that they’re not planning on an offensive in the very short term.

• Ukraine’s deliberate flooding of the plains north of Kyiv are producing dramatic results.
• Russia is once again shelling Odessa with its ships and the Japanese Ministry of Defense has spotted Russian amphibious ships from its far east fleet, decks loaded with military vehicles, underway. This might mean the Russians are stupid enough to attempt an unsupported landing and think they can manage it with just a few more landing ships, but more likely this is just more stripping of their garrisons and the shelling of Odessa is to further distract Ukrainian reinforcements from the front line. Given Odessa has mazes of catacombs under the city and local defenders have been entrenching since the war began, Ukraine can afford to keep a fairly light garrison here given the Russians have no chance in hell of a successful attack, even with a successful landing – they just can’t get enough of everything onto the shipping capacity they have to stand a chance of taking Odessa.

Ko-fi link because someone keeps yelling at me to it was already on the tumblr ffs

D+24 & 25 (March 20th and 21st) Supplemental Update (@11PM March 21st)

• The Azov “BTR-4 go BRRR” guys are back at it again, and this time they took out a BTR-82 and a god-damned T-72. With 30mm. How even?
• A Russian state media mouthpiece admitted to literally over nine-thousand KIA in Ukraine before the article was deleted within minutes. Naturally it was already archived. Given standard high intensity war ratios of 1/3rd KIA, that’d mean 27,000 casualties. With ~190,000 personnel in Ukraine, and a tooth to tail ratio of one to one (which is insanely and unrealistically low) that means 90,000 frontline combat soldiers to start with. So that leaves them 63,000 troops... to conduct urban fighting with... against at least equal numbers of Ukrainians. And remember, Ukrainian reserves and TDF include about 50,000 combat veterans of the Donbas war. The Donbas “rebels” are likely better soldiers than some Russian contract servicemen simply because average training is easily outweighed by poor training + combat experience. Conscripts (in any army) can do very little and require constant supervision to achieve even basic logistical tasks like unloading trucks or traincars. And remember – 9K is the massaged number a Russian media outlet thought safe to admit to, before someone else who knows the ratios above rushed to kill it.
• The United States military cannot determine who the top commander in Russia actually is, which, given how much of their communications are unsecured with American SIGINT assets overhead, means there likely isn’t one. This is staggeringly incompetent and makes better coordinated Russian strategy a very unlikely prospect.
• This 3M-51 “Alfa” anti-ship cruise missile being used against a land target (it has a secondary land-attack capability) is further evidence Russia is running out of missiles. This is an expensive missile to use when there’s dedicated and cheaper options available. The fact we’re only seeing them used now is also a hint. It’s still bad for Ukraine that it had to absorb the majority of these attacks and couldn’t shoot a bigger number down; however given the strike on the mall (and the use of the Khinzal against a barn near the frontlines in Eastern Ukraine, that had already taken shelling) it seems that a good number of these strikes may have been employed against tactical targets, greatly lessening the strategic/infrastructure impact. Russia has also failed to focus these strikes very well or use sufficient munitions to achieve decisive results, e.g. against airfields. This also means they will not have many weapons available for the tactical targets they’ve been hitting up till now.
• More Russian diplomatic threats.
• LOL
• Someone used geolocation to establish that the TB-2 drone observation of the Kherson airfield MLRS strike was done from 48 kilometers away. While the TB-2 is almost Predator-sized (and priced) this does illustrate that larger, more capable drones can carry larger, more capable optics and thus effectively conduct ISR from distances that make them more difficult both to detect and engage. A quadcopter is already hard to shoot down, but a good shot with a 10 gauge shotgun can still deal with them, or a simple shoulder-“fired” directional jammer. The Orlan-10 costs between 90-120,000 dollars, and a Stinger missile, 40,000. A proximity-fuzed Stinger fireable from a Javelin (to use the Javelin’s CLU to find the drone against the sky) has been trialed. This gives you an idea of the challenges both armies face right now – even leading armies are still playing catch-up to develop countermeasures that are properly scaled for aerospace threats that have expanded to fill a previously empty part of the spectrum, and it’s a wide enough space that there’s few (if any) one-size-fits-all SHORAD solutions.
• Another officer killed while overseeing bridging operations. It would seem the Ukrainians are very good at hitting those bridgeheads, and every time they do the Russians lose both pontoon sections... and the people capable of wrangling the cats to get them set up. Geethatsucks.png
• A Russian tactical map was found in one of those captured command post vehicles, this likely shows operations around the 10th of March. Should help OSINT trackers clarify the order of battle greatly.
• Very interesting thread from yet another anonymous DoD source, but it does track well with everything we’re seeing with our own eyes. The detail about air ops on both sides picking up is telling; I’m willing to bet this revolves around the heavy fighting around Izyum.

D+26 (March 22nd) Update Part 1 @ 8PM EST

Sitrep: Maneuver/OOB

Kyiv AOO + Analysis

If you are new and unaware of the “Finnmap,” it’s the best and most up-to-date front-line OSINT tracking I’ve seen.

• Makariv is undeniably in Ukrainian hands. A formal claim was made to this yesterday, but now there is a wealth of geoconfirmed footage from the town to demonstrate it: [1] [2] [3]
• There seems to be a general Ukrainian counter-offensive NW of Kiev underway. This released footage of drone-observed Ukrainian artillery strikes has been geolocated to a point not 600m south of the E-40 highway (50.4237968, 30.0169103) on the south-east outskirts of Berezivka village. See also this video geolocated to 50.4302299, 30.0207238 not 300 meters east of the town on the main highway. Note this is north of the furthest southern attacks reported by UMoD a few days back against the town of Motyzhn. There is also this video from Berezivka, (which has not been geolocated yet to my knowledge.) The Finnmap authors report that there’s persistent rumors in (native language) social media that Ukrainian counterattacks have proceeded to and through Borodiankya, but as he notes there’s no solid proof of this yet. I am also unable to find any imagery or even official statements pertaining to this as well. Additionally pressure is still being kept on the Kyiv suburbs vs. Kyiv proper front; as this geolocated Ukrainian artillery strike in Irpin shows. (Note this hit the railyard in Irpin, more on this in Sitrep:Operational.) Additionally, the village of Moshchun proper is confirmed to be retaken by Ukrainian forces via geolocated video. I’ve previously reported Ukrainian troops fighting near Moshchun, but as internet rumor attests and the timeline + video seem to confirm, the fighting was on the outskirts of Moshchun for a solid two weeks (UMoD claimed to have retaken Moshchun on D+14, March 10th or so,) possibly changing hands a few times.

Analysis: This could either be a major counter-offensive aimed at encircling Russian forces or a limited/methodical one to put pressure on the enemy, inflict higher casualties, and force them to withdraw. Obviously given my earlier analysis I favor the latter explanation, but as I said, I am privy to only a fraction of the information required to make that decision. One of Ukraine’s reserve regiments, the “Jagers” have received special training in operating in this wooded northern area, as well as handling the swamps near Chernobyl. As the shelling of a Russian truck park along the P02 highway not 20km south of Belarus at Poliske a few days back shows, the Russians still lack sufficient defensive depth on much of their flank; it’s not unreasonable to think that Ukraine could counter-attack further north to cut supply lines; using light infantry tactics. Proximity to Belarus makes this risky in multiple ways however (possible Belurussian involvement; high proximity to Russian tac-air etc.)

The main Russian force concentration NW of Kyiv is fairly dense; an area of 40x40km or so. This means they have a lot of massed firepower (20 BTGs worth, even if they’ve proven inept at using it in more than regiment strength) but also not a lot of space or strategic depth. With the role indirect fire is playing in this war that matters significantly. Recall my D+19/20 update, on the Russian pontoon bridge over the Teteriv River at 51.03762, 30.12761 (at Orane, bypassing the destroyed road bridge at Ivankiv 20km southwest.) That point is 50km from Moshchun. Ye Olden Grad rockets of USSR vintage can push 45km range (9M521.) (Ukraine has some Smerch systems and a few domestic 300mm that can push further but these are more scarce assets.) This is what Ukraine can hit with their most plentiful long-range artillery system from Moshchun:

As you can see, it’s pretty much the whole contested area. And of course this works both ways. This is the problem with encircling this force. The entire point of maneuver is to defeat the enemy in detail, i.e. concentrate a great amount of force against a smaller amount of his, and thus destroy it utterly. As Sun Tzu said, “with the few I can defeat the many for the many with whom I do battle are restricted,” or alternately, “to attack and surely win, attack where the enemy is weakest. It is like throwing a grindstone against an egg.” (Think of Sun Tzu as “Baby’s First Army” Golden Book for dumbass court politicians and Clausewitz as the post-grad course on the same fundamentals.) In modern war the emphasis on “fires” is due to them reaching a good 45km+ like this; you can spread out your force a lot further and still concentrate it in a few seconds. To destroy this force in detail would require great local superiority, and given the numbers in this war this’d be tougher for Ukraine to generate.

The penalty for not having greater defensive “depth” (i.e. space) is what you see in that image above – the Ukrainians don’t have to encircle the Russians (and risk tons of firepower being concentrated on that blocking force, destroying it,) they just have to bring their rear areas into artillery range. And they have; I am seeing a lot of images of Ukrainian artillery hitting supply depots/trucks and performing counter-battery; not nearly as much tank sniping. Now let’s consider the floodplain north of Kyiv that’s literally underwater due to Ukraine blowing some dams:

As you can see, the floodplain is pretty obvious, following the Irpin river. Note that it makes the land impassible starting just south of Demydiv. Given the problems Russia has had throwing bridges over even modest streams, in the face of Ukrainian counter-strikes, the only way they’re projecting force over that mess is with air or artillery.

Here’s what Ukraine could reach from the tip of this flood-protected salient:

Remember, counter-battery is no joke and the Russians have plenty of well-wooded places to hide their guns in, too. But you only need one good swipe at a pontoon bridge to blast it, and given the ubiquity of drone ISR we’ve seen they’ll probably get that swipe. The Teteriv river is going to be very difficult to cross for the Russians if the Ukrainians keep pushing north; and this effectively closes down both main highways running south from Belarus, as the Ivankiv crossroads are north of that river. The whole length of the river as concerns Russian operations will be in Ukrainian artillery range.

Remember, the point of maneuver is to apply firepower, and because of how compact Russia’s front in this area is, it means Ukraine can apply firepower to their rear area and supply routes with relatively restrained maneuver/advances. This will actively interdict Russia’s ability to resupply, repair, rehabilitate their forces, and reinforce; with sufficient artillery (and ammo) assets to break through the siege of Kyiv. A grand masterstroke of maneuver is not necessary here to start punishing the Russians.

Oh jesus that was just the west um also:

• UMoD indicates further attacks on Brovary have bounced off; they likely weren’t big or serious. Eastern Kyiv is in no serious danger for now.
• UMoD indicates that Russian offensive action is also lacking around Chernihiv.

Sumy/Kharkiv AOO:

• UMoD says nothing happening here aside from continued bombardment of Kharkiv and I’ve seen nothing but obligatory shelling from Russians on social media and other sources.

Dontestk AOO:

• Serious fighting for Izyum reported:

• Statement by “US defense official” to the effect that Ukraine is trying to “take back” Izyum (probably referring to the surrounding area as much as the town.) (Note: these anonymous sources have been very chatty in the last 24 hours about Ukraine’s counter-offensives in general. See this generalized statement about Ukraine being “able and willing to take back territory” that dropped today. One gets the feeling they’re excited and/or smug, or perhaps finally have something concrete to say within the limits of the very limited details they can safely “leak.”)
• Confirmed Russian crossing of the Siversky Donets river south of Izyum by commercial imagery: this image showing two bridges in the area, one at 49.14871, 37.23472 and another at 49.15289, 37.25006. This image from March 12th shows the easternmost bridge was up by that date, and the date of the first image linked (0830 Zulu March 22nd) indicates an erection date of between 19th and 22nd of March, as evidenced by imagery posted by this same OSINT account on March 19th of the same area, showing no bridges.

• Note that my prior analysis of the massed area fires visible in the March 19th imagery being suppressive fire to support a bridge crossing is now confirmed.
• Given that at least one of Russia’s known slain officers was an engineering brigade Colonel killed while overseeing bridging operations of this same river in the Izyum area, we can presume Ukrainian efforts against these bridges are currently underway.

• UMoD reports on this area at approximately 8AM EST indicated Russian forces around Izyum were not taking offensive action still, so the rumors now coming out about heavy fighting at Izyum are probably Ukrainian counter-attacks in progress.

• Also reported: a repelled assault at Yampil, a village just north of the Donets river and 31km south-southwest of Rubinzhe; this helps delineate the frontline further:
• The attack against Maryinka (south of Dontesk) that was confirmed by social media video of Russian troops in this town, was reportedly repelled,
• Enemy priority objectives remain Rubizhne/Severodonetsk, Popansa, Vugledar, and Mariupol.

• Translation: Russia is still trying to close a pocket around Severodonetsk but simultaneously trying to turn the “corner” of the eastern and southern fronts’ flanks where they meet at Vugledar. Pick ONE, Ivan.

• UMoD reported shelling in Kramatorsk; this is a crossroads 70km west-southwest of Severodonetsk and a likely forward supply/line of communication hub for Ukraine. This further signals a shift in strategy visible elsewhere; see Sitrep: Operational for details.
• Mariupol: Recent geolocated imagery from Mariupol (the last one originally released by Russia, claiming to be TOS-1 fire,) shows that fighting seems to be active in the northern and eastern parts of the city. Ergo, while Russian forces may have pushed close to the city center from other directions, significant chunks of other parts remain in Ukrainian hands.

• Remember we don’t know when these images/video were taken, so this might give an incomplete picture, but it does fit everything else we’ve seen regarding the Ukrainian’s willingness to fight for every block.

• Perhaps making the Azov battalion the centerpiece of “All Ukrainians Are Nazis” campaign and promising to skin them alive and shit had the opposite effect than desired on Azov’s willingness to fight. Hmm.

Kherson AOO

• Still seeing an awful lot of Russian equipment (including rear-echelon assets) captured in the Mykolaiv oblast: [1] [2] [3] The stream of such media continues to pour in. My confidence that Russia is being forced into a retreat from their northern advance along the Dnieper’s west flank grows.
• See also: the destroyed bridge recently shown in Mykolaiv Oblast has been, by some genius, geolocated to 47.365417, 32.261694. This is quite far west; 50km north of Mykolaiv city itself, over a branch over the Inhul river. Note the normal road bridge nearby that was destroyed (by Ukrainian forces presumably.) This seems to indicate a broadening of front by the Russians that would have definitely protected the TI505 highway north. That it’s being filmed by Ukrainian troops (and given destroyed Russian vehicles were reported at a village ON the TI505 the other day) this would suggest Russian forces have been pushed back a good 50km, not just from Mykolaiv to Kherson, but along the entire area between the Inhul and Inhulets rivers; north to south.
• The captured tactical map of this area from about March 10th has been fully analyzed; OOB assessments are here.

I’ve been working all day and need to eat, but there’s also a lot more to talk about. Operational, Strategic and Materiel/Logistics sitreps yet to come. Please stand by.

D+26 Update Part 2 @ 11:30 EST

Sitrep: Materiel/Logistics

• A report that Ukrainians are using Uzhorod airbase to fly in western aid, and Russia cannot risk striking this airport because it literally touches the border of Slovakia, a NATO member.
• I have not mentioned it, but there is a regular stream of evidence of both Russian and Ukrainian aircraft losses. Both sides are continuing to operate aircraft and take losses – obviously, Russia is launching more sorties and taking more losses.
• Russia has had their most modern, sophisticated and powerful ground-based electronic warfare system fall into Ukrainian hands around Kyiv, likely due to the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives in the area.

• Unverifiable scuttlebutt says that this system is already in Germany, it was only publicized well after Russia had no chance to deliver a missile strike against the system and deny the West an intact example of one of their crown jewels to study.

• AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

• Commentary from the ~anonymous defense officials~ as regards a higher-than-usual failure rate for Russian long-range PGMs.

• Note this is not necessarily unusual. Even American weapons like the Tomahawk have a failure rate of 5% or so. These are complex weapons, and occasionally things go wrong. I have also been told by Engineers that a higher failure rate for nations that are not the United States is not unusual. The Tomahawk was built in the 80s and has undergone many upgrades and refinements over the decades to render it the advanced, state of the art weapon it is today, and has also been fired many times, and there’s 4,500 in inventory right now, not counting thousands fired in previous wars. Russia has not done these things, (as have most anyone who is not America,) so this is not a surprise.

• This also makes it curious that people who would know these things are still commenting on it. Mayhaps their failure rates exceed what would be expected even with these concerns. Bigthink.png

• A recent sighting of knocked-out Ukrainian T-72s at a roadblock near Chernihiv. **This may indicate commitment of Urkaine’s reserve tank brigades, as they are the only ones who operate T-72s. The 3rd and 5th reserve tank brigades operate T-72s exclusively.

• These may have been thrown in as replacements (which is considered part of the point of the reserves) but it may also indicate a greater commitment. The 1st Tank brigade was deployed to the Kyiv/Chereniv region; committing the 3rd or 5th could free them up for offensive operations.

• More anti-ship missiles fired against land targets fired right from the pier. Lol. LMAO.

• I have been drinking

• Russia has deployed the SA-17 “Grizzly” to Ukraine. This is the “M3” iteration of the Buk system. Given that prior incarnations of this system were given the NATO reporting names “SA-6” and “SA-11” it should give you some indication of how much more modern and advanced this missile system is. The SA-17 is honestly an impressive system; it’s modernized with an AESA radar and, like the SA-11 before it, has at least one TELAR per battery – a combination radar and missile launcher vehicle. It also has significantly longer range than its predecessor SA-11. The fact that it is only being publicly deployed to Ukraine now probably suggests they are available in very limited numbers, like a lot of more modernized Russian weapons. Russia released a propaganda video informing the world of its deployment to Ukraine.

• AND THE UKIES HAVE ALREADY BLOWN ONE UP AHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

• AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA BITCHES

• Defenders of Mariupol demonstrated why ATGMs make littoral operations hard.
• Another fucking T-72A. How many museums are they robbing holy shit
• Having seen gory video of this same unit posted by the Azov battalion (warning!) I can confirm this ORBAT analysis is likely correct.

Sitrep: Operational

• There has been a (possible?) shift of Russian tactics to targeting logistical line-of-communication hubs, some deep in Ukrainian territory. Specifically, rail yards. See this strike on Savyansk (geolocated,) Kharkiv (geolocated), and Pavlohrad. Note Pavlohrad is a key junction deep in Ukrainian territory on the way to the Donbas front, (requiring a cruise or ballistic missile to reach) and Slovyansk is jus tnorth of Kramatorsk; i.e. near the area between the Severodonetsk front and Izyum. I’ve seen Russian shelling of the railhead at Chereniv before but attention to rear-area rail junctions I have not noted before.

• Given the importance of rail to Russian logistics and the general “blyatkrieg” attitude that characterized their early efforts before they were clearly stymied, this might (if the trend is real and not an artifact of sampling bias) indicate acceptance of a shift to a much more methodical and costly advance. Targeting forward area railheads makes sense; it doesn’t require precious long-range munitions and can easily hit unloading areas, destroying materiel without necessarily blocking rails by destroying rolling stock to the point it cannot, well, roll, (requiring more intensive clearing efforts involving heavy equipment.) To really jam up a line, you want to do that. Hitting rear areas implies Russia knows they’re not going to be blyatkrieg’ing up those rails deep into enemy territory anytime soon.=

• Drone-captured footage of Russian troops looting civilian homes (geolocated to 50.562110, 30.271274, southeast Hostomel) serves as third-party confirmation of the reports in the Wall Street Journal story on the battle of Voznesnsk of similar behavior (not just stealing food, but valuables from locals.) An army that thieves and loots is highly unprofessional. I have lost track of how many battles in antiquity and even into the gunpowder age turned on a dime because victorious troops found a stash of booze during their sack of a city and got falling-down drunk, only to be unable to resist devoted counterattacks later on.

• This may be overstating the operational impact, but do not overlook the emotional and morale one – the Russians are fucking animals, and the citizens of Ukraine are going to hate and loathe them accordingly.
• Besides reminding everyone that the American M110 was a beautiful thing and should have never been divested from inventory, this video of Ukrainian 203mm SP guns going to work shows that they are operating in the standard Russian three-gun battery (if it matters.)
• This video of an alleged Javelin missile engagement neatly illustrates the ranges at which a lot of combat seems to be taking place; i.e. easily within NLAW range. Note the BTR-82A using buildings to cover its flanks; good tactics.

• I am seeing many videos involving drone-observed Ukrainian artillery fire on Russian rear echelon assets (not just counterbattery, but supply trucks.) Despite increasing use of natural cover, they keep taking losses even so. I cannot say if Russia is not applying lessons learned or if co-ordination issues are keeping them from moving supply dumps further back and making more frequent forward supply runs, or if the fuel supply situation precludes this, or if they have and it simply hasn’t helped.

• Note the frequency with which these strikes are observed by quadcopters may indicate this forward observation is being done by SOF teams carrying drones into the field, but Ukraine’s prewar gamut of drones; including volunteer kitbashed ones that later entered serial production, could well include some larger and longer-ranged quad (or sexto, or octo) rotor designs. Nonetheless aggressive SOF recon elements/w backpack drones would be an extremely difficult combination to defeat.

• Territorial Defense Forces are still actively operating. [1] [2] Note the last one is from Sumy. Whatever the Russians are doing to deal with the threat there, the locals are still making active sorties into the countryside to take the fight to the enemy.
• A rare look at Ukrainian T-64s in battle, this time defending a wide boulevard in the north-northwest. So far, aside from the glimpse of a T-64 company deploying along a road in the SE near Kherson/Crimea in the opening day of the invasion, I have only ever seen Ukrainian tanks operating singly or in two’s. I am informed that Ukraine’s tank brigades had already switched to a Western style of organization by the time the war broke out (two-tank elements, four-tank platoons, three platoons to a company + a two-tank command element,) and the tank complement of mechanized brigades was still Soviet-style organization (three three-tank platoons and a single command tank.) The Ukrainian national guard is apparently independent of army organization, so we are possibly seeing a tank element of the 12th National Guard Brigade’s tank battalion fucking shit up. (Thanks to Butch R. Mann on the-sietch.com for this information.)
• Russian strike efforts against Ukrainian airbases continue. Note that there are three impacts. This continues the trend of very small salvos involved in Russian attacks. Do not discount the cumulative impact of these strikes; Russia has done damage to Ukraine’s military infrastructure. But it has been very much spread out between a lot of targets. Remember, it can easily take 50+ weapons on a single airbase to properly put it out of action. Also, we know that the Russians have expended at least some of these weapons against 1. airframes that have been out of service for decades decorating a ramp and 2. tactical targets that should have been serviced by artillery. In short, Russia is doing too little damage across too many targets, and allowing Ukrainian forces too much time to repair or otherwise deal with the damage inflicted to their infrastructure.

• Are these motherfuckers for real.
• Both UMoD statements and actual video evidence show that Russian landing ships are now arriving at the port of Berdyansk. See also this statement from the Kyiv independent about Russian tugboats clearing the piers at Berdyansk. It would seem that, with a breakthrough over the Southern Bug river now impossible, Russia has conclusively given up on their breakthrough efforts, transferred their embarked Naval Infantry ashore as replacements (UMoD indicates mostly around Izyum) and are now using their amphibious ships to make supply ferry runs across the sea of Azov, as I predicted.

• Just, you know, like two weeks later than anyone with a realistic view of their chances of reaching Odessa would have.

• See also this reference to a now-deleted image (from a good source) of their landing ships loading vehicles in Novorossiysk, on the Russian side of the Azov sea. If anyone finds a mirror of these images, please let me know.

 D+27, D+28 and D+29 (March 23/24/25) (Posted March 25th @ 4PM EST)

Sitrep: Maneuver

Kyiv AAO:

• Continued combat in Irpin. [1] [geolocated] [2] [geolocated] [3] The fact that Irpin is still contested even as Ukrainian forces take back territory elsewhere NW of Kyiv does not bode well for Russian forces.
• Further evidence of the fighting in Makariv contines to trickle in; likely from the 23rd, 22nd or earlier: [1] [geolocated] [2]
• A claim of the liberation of Lukyanovka, a village 40km east of Brovary. (Link provided because Google has the name as belonging to a district of Kyiv; the village’s “proper name” according to Google Maps is Luk’yanivka.) This is confirmed by the following:

• Widely-circulating images of a destroyed church match photos of the Church of The Ascension in the village, from Google Maps. Note the fence, white cross on the top of the center gate, and the tree. The church is/was located at 50.49264762036238, 31.37645090438957.

• This was a beautiful church.

• This war memorial overlooking two destroyed Russian tanks is probably from the village but Google Earth imagery is too poor resolution in this area for me to geolocate it from overhead, and the village (like most of Ukraine) has no Street View data. I will try to locate this via the text on the monument’s plaque.

• This video is from the same location is said to be Lukyanovka as well.

• The video of pro-Ukrainian Chechens Aloha Snackbaring in combat on the 22nd has been geolocated to 50.571448, 30.904428, which is on the rail line that demarcates the south-southeastern border of the suburb city of Velyka Dymerka (see purple pin “Chechen attack.”) Compare this to my map from a few updates back:

• I assume Velyka Dymerka is still enemy held as no news to the contrary has emerged. Thus this amounts to proof of a 4km advance into this Russian-held salient, one that threatens to cut the H07 east-west highway. Paired with the assault on Velyka Dymerka it shows that constant pressure is being applied to Russian forces in this area.
• See also this reported destruction of a bridge over the Desna river just south of Cherenihiv by Russian airstrike. (Geolocation to 51.4584818,31.3004786) This is a serious attempt to interrupt communications between the city and the areas south of it, and there are no other bridges over the Desna other than one that is in Russian control. (A pontoon crossing is very possible but would have to be made further east to be safely out of Russian artillery range.)

• Given a dearth of Russian bridging ability they have proven loath to destroy bridges themselves in most cases. Combined with the fact that their last reported positions should still invest the E95 highway from Kyiv, this attack is likely as much to deny the city’s defenders a supply route as it is to deny them the ability to supply forces fighting south of the city from supply dumps in the city.

• Bearing in mind how little information we have on this area that is third-party verified, given what is in hand it seems that Russian forces are being hard-presssed on three sides in this area. (Remember, these forces main line of supply is from the east, as the only good crossings over the Dnieper are all either in Ukrainian hands, or within easy range of Ukrainian artillery.) If Russian forces are not retreating from this possible salient up to nine, perhaps more Battalion Tactical Groups will be encircled.

• Drone footage showing the severity of flooding in the Moshchun area.
• Presumably recent evidence of very heavy combat in Borodyanka, north of Makariv. [Gelocated.] [Second video, from a vehicle observer’s perspective.] [Geolocated] Remember, this is a crucial crossroads 20km north of Makariv.
• On the eve of the 23rd I heard rumors of fighting near Teterivske on Twitter, which was later reinforced by this curious statement by UMoD regarding Russians trying to take that town back and failing. However, this village is a solid 15km east of the villages of Kropyvnya, Zakharivka, Oliva and Kukhari, which the UMoD previously reported as being Russian frontline defensive positions. Note this area is a good 40km north-west of Borodyanka, which is itself 20km north of Makariv. Previously, observing the map, I identified this general area – only slightly further north than Malyn’s latitude – as an ideal place to for a counter-attack to encircle and cut off the Russian forces NW of Kyiv. I didn’t even think to mention it in my prior analysis as I figured the specific UMoD mention of Russian defensive efforts in this region was reflective of Russian realizations of this. The reason it is a good place to attack is 1. it is roughly equidistant between the furthest southern Russian advances south and the Belorussian border; ergo it gives some space from the artillery concentrations of the main Russian assault on Kyiv and the airpower lurking over the Belorussian border, and 2. contains a main highway running east to the ever-important crossroads of Ivankiv. This also makes it crucial for Russians to defend – note the Teteriv river anchors the southern end of any line there, and the forests south/southeast of the river would make a good “rear” area for the forces pushing on Kyiv (out of artillery range of Kyiv and offering lots of cover from aerial observation.)

• This would mean Ukrainian forces have advanced 13~km east of their previously reported frontline.
• Teteriviske is only 15.5k due south-west of Ivankiv. That puts the crucial crossroads of Ivankiv well within 152mm range.

• If these reports are true and Ukraine has the force to hold this town, they can interdict the P02 highway and Ivankiv crossroads with artillery quite easily. They can move around the Teteriv river using their own interior lines of communication further west. There is a real possibility they could push on to Ivankiv, and then along the river’s north bank clean to the Dneiper and effectively encircle the Russian force. This will be hard slow fighting but favors the advantages Ukraine has – more light infantry and good terrain in this AOO with which to use them.

Analysis (Kyiv AOO):

Russia has obvious and previously-described difficulty in conducting bridging operations due to ubiquitous drone surveillance and highly competent Ukrainian artillery employment. On the above map I have highlighted the course of local rivers of significance as well as the flooding north of Moshchun as well. Recall that Demydiv, north of Moshchun, the entire curve of the Teteriv river is within long Grad MLRS range (and is well within the range of 300mm systems like Smerch, of which Ukraine has some, already.) Gold arrows indicate known Ukrainian counterattacks against Berezivka, Makariv (taken,) Borodyanka, Irpin, Moshchun (taken) and likely counterattacks against Teterivske (allegedly taken, but at least indicates attacks in this direction even if not,) Horenychi and Hostomel (possibly from the east with light forces and swimming IFVs, if not then after (if?) Irpin is retaken.)

It should be obvious from this map what is happening – the rivers divide the AO into sections that are very problematic for an army fighting in an environment of heavy artillery usage and ubiquitous drone observation for both sides, that is also extremely vehicle-dependent due to their usage of “BTGs” which give a regiment’s worth of artillery to a battalion-sized maneuver force. Against this, they are fighting an enemy with a superiority in light infantry numbers in terrain that favors them, who are pressing them on all sides, pinning their forces and making the shifting of forces from one flank to another difficult. If Russia does not have the strength to rebuff this assault, they will have to shorten their lines; either giving ground on their western flank, and endangering their supply lines, or giving ground in the eastern flank, the suburbs of Kyiv they have fought so bitterly to take multiple times.

Kharkiv/Sumy AOO

• UMoD says only that Sumy is under bombardment, but not ground attack yet. Kharkiv is noted to be under very heavy bombardment.
• This tweet by UMoD offers a rare glimpse of frontline positions in this AO as it identifies the city of Okhtyrka as being in Ukrainian hands despite constant assaults. This city is about 70km directly south of Sumy. This serves as some confirmation that this part of the Finnish Scribblemap is still accurate:

• See also this geolocated imagery of shelling in Okhtyrka that appeared on March 25th and this geolocated data (from the 25th as well) showing the village of Klymentove north of Okhtyrka leveled, and these photos (geolocated) showing the leveled train station in Okhtyrka.

Donetsk/Luhansk AOO:

• Despite Russian claims to the contrary Izyum is likely still contested. See this image of shelling in the city seen on March 24th, easily geolocated to 49.1780045, 37.2788667 by the visible war monument. Note the terrain at this location (looking south-southeast here):

This hillside overlooking the Donets river is either wooded, or has significant structures all along its length; this would make it a very commanding position over not just the river, but the wooded areas north-west of it from which the Russians would have to attack. Shelling this area – a structure, specifically, as the post claims – strongly suggests that southern Izyum, where it’s protected by the curve of the Donets river, is still in Ukrainian hands.

• Note also this video geolocated to 49.19721, 37.27790. Note the heavy concrete or brick apartment buildings here. Note that these overlook an open soccer field not 230 meters away from one of the bridge crossings (a footbridge, it seems) over the Donets river:

Obviously, an assault took place here. The fact that no defenders are still visible and civilians are filming the area could mean the enemy has withdrawn, or that the Russians were able to cross and take ground. Either way, the heavy shelling southward implies resistance continues along the road south out of the city, and/or attempts to cross at a point further south to flank defenders that are resisting assault in urban fighting in the city proper.

• This propaganda broadcast has been geolocated to 49.034081, 38.373498 in northwesternmost Rubizhne. Presuming they wouldn’t let their canary too close to the frontline, this implies the Russians are (as UMoD has previously stated) established in north-west Rubizhne, but not in the center of the city yet.

• See also this big explosion from the 23rd.

• Fighting in Marinka continues, according to three geolocations done on damage to the city posted on the 24th. Prior video evidence of Russian troops probing here and UMoD statements of repelling assaults in this area make this no surprise, but indicate the Russians are not making much, if any, progress. Marinka is 20km south-west of Donetsk city proper.
• Recent UMoD statement from the 24th simply says Izyum is still repelling Russian attacks. The night before (still the 24th in the US,) UMoD reported attacks in Donetske (a village 10km north of Slovyansk and in the general area along the Donets river that anchors the salient up to Rubizhne/Severodonetsk) and Kam’yanka, directly along the H20 highway 10km directly north of Donetsk city. They also noted that Russian forces are (still) concentrating their efforts on Popansa (which anchors the southern flank of said salient), Marinka, and Verkhnyoteretske, which is most likely what Google thinks is “Verkhoyanskaya Vu,” a southwestern suburb of Donetsk and up the road east of Marinka:
• I can’t be sure that prior purple pins further east around Donetsk indicate the Russians have been gaining ground, because as long as I’ve been tracking UMoD statements the frontline has seemed to be right along the H20 highway, north of the city. Given the prior reporting by UMoD of Stepnoe being attacked (implying it’s being defended,) Marinka seems like the furthest thrust, but given the claimed attacks on Verkhnyoteretske it seems the Russian incursion into the line in this area isn’t so much south of the city as it is hugging the city limits as they advance along the furthest western extent of Donetsk’s suburbs – with those suburbs still being held by Ukrainian forces as stubbornly as they hold any urban area.

• See also this claim making the rounds that a much-hated rebel was killed by a sniper, reportedly “Near Avdiivka in Donbas province,” which is just west of Kam’yanka.
• No information I can find on Vugledar, where Russian forces were previously reported by UMoD as trying to turn the flank. This may be indication that the Russians are finally focusing their efforts more. Trying to break through north and south of Donetsk and around Izyum makes sense as these are the two pincers needed to encircle a large bulk of Ukrainian forces. However, continuing to smash their heads into Rbizhne/Severodonetsk in heavy urban fighting when this city could be encircled instead, then invested and assaulted, is moronic, esp. given that the eight-year occupation of the Donbas region means they should have fair control over those lines of communication, and thus don’t need to hold those cities like they do Sumy, Konotop etc.

Southern Front (Zaporizhzhia to Mariupol) AOO:

• UMoD simply says that the “Tavriya direction” (village northwest of Tokmak, indicating the entire defensive southward facing line) is quiet.
• Mariupol: I have made an attempt to quantify the distance Russian forces have pushed into the city with geolocated data: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] There is already a map being provided by this account, which you can view here, but I mapped it myself to utilize the most recent data that is evidence of direct fighting (direct fire, or artillery in support of units directly in contact):
• As one can see, all that can be said for sure is that fighting has reached the interior of the city. Extrapolating from this how much of the city is truly controlled by either force is still an open question. Given the Ukrainians are apparently fighting for every block (given the thoroughness of destruction being seen in media) it’s clear that they have plenty more blocks to go before they'll be hard-pressed.

• Watch for a Russian attempt to take, or at least control by fires, that center section of the city along the river. The bridge will likely be blown as well. The heavy shelling of the industrial area on the 21st was probably related to this; either suspicion of centrally located defender’s stockpiles, or in support of an assault from the north. The patrol boat that ate an ATGM was likely reconnoitering this area.

Kherson AOO

• The last reported shelling in Mykolaiv was on March 21st. This strongly implies that Russian forces are no longer in artillery range (40~km for most MLRS) of the city – which, if you have been following me, is no surprise.
• I have seen many claims that the Russians have moved helicopters into Kherson airbase and had them hit by MLRS fire by Ukrainians – not just the two confirmed incidents, but up to ten times. I doubted this. However it seems the airport has been hit a third, confirmed time on the 24th, given this video that certainly looks like MLRS (the bright flashes in the air might be unitary warhead rockets being engaged by surface-to-air missiles.) This has been tentatively geolocated as being in Kherson and looking towards the airport. There is also this video from outside the city, likely taken by Ukrainian soldiers. See also this second video from within the city that also shows the same pattern of detonations and lights/explosions higher in the sky. The audio/video of this one makes it very plausible that at least one attempted surface to air interception was attempted, but as you can tell from the weight of the barrage, it was a futile effort. I expect geolocation of this one will not take long.

• This means Ukrainian forces are within 40~km of Kherson, so they’ve at least pushed out of Mykolaiv proper by 7~km or so, and have done so without (serious) worry about counter-battery attack. I strongly doubt that Russian forces are still investing Mykolaiv in any serious strength.

• I am seeing strong rumors of a heavy Ukrainian counter-attack in this region, but as usual, there is nothing to back it up yet.

Sitrep: Operational

• This New York Times article (best viewed on Youtube) combines crowd-sourced Russian radio intercepts with geolocation of areas mentioned in their transmissions in the clear to paint a very damning picture of Russian operational failures. For once, the New York Times has done excellent work. This information dates from around Feb. 27th, during the first assaults on Makariv. Some interesting observations:

• Motyzhyn put up enough resistance that Russian troops retreated from it. UMoD’s statements gave this as the furthest-south area ever being held by Russian forces. This tracks very well with the radio intercepts indicating great resistance. More of a maneuver update but w/e
• Communication difficulties do indeed make combined-arms efforts a real nightmare for Russian forces; calling in supporting fires is badly delayed when they need it the most.
• The Russians (were) frequently giving away their positions and plans in the clear.

• Note, Their frequent use of code-phrases and Chechen code talkers they now use to address their open communications are neither very effective (the Ukrainians have Chechens too) and further exacerbate the delays in calling in supporting fires.

• Russian forces were taking heavy casualties at this time, and were frequently low or out of critical supplies, esp. fuel, with vehicles stalling in the road.

• Russians are indeed using cell phones more.

• I have confirmed that Russian military communications do, in fact, partly rely on fucking cell phone towers. Apparently their communication arrangements involved widespread use of encrypted cell phones. While these communications are secure, they are also useless against any non-braindead force, as cell phone towers only go about ten miles; the signals are pretty weak and many towers are needed for coverage. Any defending force could just send a man in a jeep to the local towers and unplug the damn things. Tom Clancy used this angle in his book “Rainbow Six” published in 1998. FUCKING 1998
• Higher-ranking Russian officers confirmed to be getting boots on the ground in order to unfuck things. Given one general has already been killed by Ukrainian forces when his transmissions in the open were triangulated for artillery strike…

• As one wag on my discord put it; “it’s like a video game; kill enough Russians and a Russian General appears to fight you like a boss battle!”

• This video showing Russian forces clearing IEDs was geolocated to 46.157853, 33.602842, which is nowhere fucking near Kherson, just in the oblast. It’s along the E97 highway out of Crimea, only 30km north of the peninsula proper! (This illustrates the importance of geolocating data!) This is indication that Territorial Defense Forces/local resistance is still active all along the Russian supply route, even in terrain that makes armed ambushes difficult.

• As this photo shows, IEDs are now being seen/talked about more frequently. This is not the first IED I’ve seen. This style of IED – wiring two (or sometimes three) large-caliber artillery shells together has long been a staple of insurgency operations in the Middle East. The sheer weight of explosive is easily enough to destroy or at least mission-kill a tank – sometimes by flipping it clean over.

• Continued Territorial Defense Forces’ activity against Russian supply lines in the North; likely around Sumy. See also this wiped convoy by direct TDF ambush (note their clothing.)
• More direct evidence of Russia employing thermite-incendiary weapons against dense urban areas. Its use against Irpin makes sense, as such weapons are most effective against suburbs where most construction is of the light wood variety.

• Naturally, this is a hideous warcrime.

• These destroyed Russian vehicles have been described as an infiltration attempt, but given they were ambushed before the Z painted on the side was eliminated I suspect these civilian vehicles were commandeered simply because the Russians had no other vehicles to use.
• This geolocated video of an S-300 TEL in Kyiv being found and engaged by a Russian drone surprised me – I’d have expected the Ukrainians to keep their S-300s further from the frontlines and use their long reach to threaten Russian aircraft at a distance. The fact the Ukrainians have gotten away with positioning theater-defense assets as far forward as Kyiv itself (using the city’s infrastructure to hide them) shows very bold and aggressive use of their assets. I say they have gotten away with it because, if the Russians had managed to find and attack an S-300 in or around Kyiv before this, they absolutely would have released this video sooner, given how much an impact the state of Ukraine’s air defense system has on public audiences in general (as you may recall from my D-Day/SAM posts.)

• Smaller Ukrainian SAMs also very active.

• Russian drone videos continue to be very jerkily cut, almost always refusing to let you see the actual impact of munitions cued by the drone. Failing that, they show you video with such fucking awful resolution you can’t tell if anything was actually present to be destroyed or not. They’re also typically very short. Compare to this glorious video showing unitary warhead MLRS hitting Russian (likely) Grad trucks; you can clearly tell kills are scored by heat signatures/secondaries. Or this video of of Ukrainian artillery fire being cued onto vehicles spotted at night on thermals.

• The continued heavy editing of Russian releases strongly suggests to me their artillery has dogshit promptness and accuracy unless it’s laser-guided. And even the United States’ stockpile of Copperhead rounds was minuscule compared to its dumbfire stockpile... for a reason.

Sitrep: Materiel/Personnel/Logistical

• Ukraine has successfully interdicted Russian supply efforts via ferry over the Sea of Azov. The big firey boom that hit some Russian LST’s unloading at the port of Berdyansk has been widely reported, but I can confirm the following:

• At least one LST is absolutely and properly fucked. See these two videos in which very loud secondaries are quite clearly audible. Note also the second LST de-assing that pier for that exact reason. The burning LST was clearly filled with enough fuel and munitions for a decent party, meaning:

• This vessel will soon be a fire-gutted total loss,
• This vessel was sank at anchor by its crew to flood the lower hold and prevent catastrophic damage, in which case it’s probably still a total loss (saltwater in every machinery space + fire damage above) but will have to be re-floated before tugs can drag it away and open that berth for unloading activities again.

• It was a Ukrainian Tochka-U/w sub-munitions strike that did this. This is very likely video of the strike. Note the primary target seems to be the larger tank farm further up the pier; you can clearly see a spread of sub-munitions going off, as well as the spent after section of the missile flopping into the water further on (the parent body will go long; it has more mass and isn’t slowed as much by wind resistance as the bomblet cloud.) While this seems like it hit too far forward to do the damage, if it caused a leak in the tanks at the more distant fuel farm, (as prior strikes with this weapon have reportedly done) there would be no immediate fire, but fumes that would likely ignite in a hurry. Or another weapon could have impacted shortly thereafter, or, incredibly, this could be an earlier strike and unrelated to the destruction on the 24th.

• While US intel support would have definitely informed UMoD of these activities and the exact berths in use, Russian propaganda channels helpfully boasted about it and showed vehicles being unloaded from these ships, at these berths. They even helpfully showed APCs/IFVs lined up along the pier, which you will note has a few big fuel tanks located on it. Incredibly, this same Russian propaganda channel also posted video of the rear/steering section of a Tochka-U SRBM and boasted that it had been shot down by Russian air defenses. Even if the above video isn’t of a previously successful strike, Russian command both incentive the striking of this target and made it crystal clear that defense saturation by multiple weapons was required. Sasuga Russia.

• In addition to establishing that Russian forces in every Area Of Operations continue to have supply lines interdicted, and for establishing that Ukraine has even more reloads for their captured TOS-1, these images of a destroyed truck and captured thermobaric MLRS rockets somewhere in Chernihiv oblast make it obvious just how bulky MLRS rockets are. They impose an even greater burden on the supply chain than tube artillery does, both in the bulkiness of their ammo and the speed with which they can dispense of it.

• Did I mention the Russians seem to be leaning very heavily on MLRS?

• Given the terrain this seems to be yet another example of lost rear-echelon equipment in the Kherson AOO. Recovery/engineering vehicles like this are ones Russia can scarce afford to lose.
• Izyum area continues to eat Russian engineering officers. Note this is the third engineering officer, the second in the Izyum area, and the second colonel to be lost; this one was likely killed overseeing pontoon bridging operations just like the other two.
• More confirmation that Naval Infantry are being deployed by Russia as reinforcements – these have been seen in action in Mariupol.
• To the shock of nobody, NATO officials have confirmed (~anonymously~) that no, the Russians did not “get hacked, bro” and the likely figure of 30-40,000 battlefield casualties for Russia so far seems to be in the ballpark. Reminder, that would be about 1/3rd of their frontline combat troops, given a very generous tooth-to-tail ratio (and given how shittily supported their logistics are, their having it at only 1:1 seems to check out.)
• Further reminder that Ukrainian SOF are getting extremely nice toys from the US.
• Some hints that Zelinsky’s recent request for anti-ship missiles may be entertained, which would be a massive boost to their combat potential and could end the de-facto blockade of Ukrainian ports, allowing for more food shipments to enter the country in bulk. Indeed this may be the motivating factor behind NATO’s consideration of the request.
• And just for fun, another win for the tractor brigades.

• UMoD has recently alleged that Russian forces are seizing trucks and “special agricultural machinery” from civilians in occupied areas, so, hilariously, they are learning to use tractors as well.

• Less hilariously, expect them to also prioritize earth-moving equipment whenever possible. Also expect local operators to be competent at sabotaging this equipment in ways that are reversible – if you fix it before you turn it on. Oil-soaked rags wrapped around an engine block that will get hot, etc.

• Note that UMoD has again stated that Russia is trying to seize in-situ fuel supplies whenever possible.

Sitrep: Strategic

• NATO is nervous.

• President Biden has openly put retaliatory WMD strikes on Russian forces on the table. This is a massive escalation in stance and follows over a week of constant warnings by NATO nations that Russia was clearly preparing an excuse for use of chemical weapons, and there has been growing disquiet over the possibility of tactical nuclear employment.
• NATO has openly stated that it has activated its “chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense elements” for the first time.
• French media openly reported (i.e. on behalf of their government) that three of France’s four SSBNs have been deployed, and its nuclear forces have been placed on higher alert.
• NATO has announced it will deploy four new NATO battlegroups to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. This is in addition to the ones already in the Baltics in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Poland, for a total of 8 multinational battalion-sized forces in total.

• Note these amount to about two regiments of troops in total, but 1. they are in addition to the native forces, 2. will possess technology and capabilities the native troops often don’t have and 3. with 75% of Russia’s combat power tied up in Ukraine and garrisons being robbed to pour the rest of it in, there’s no serious land threat to these nations that these forces, plus the locals, could not repel.

• Russia seems to be getting the message as they made a surprising statement that they would “only use nuclear weapons if faced with an existential threat.” The problem is that Putin has made it clear that he views the Ukrainian situation as an existential threat.

• See also this (recent) discussion from a Russian TV show (i.e. state approved media) which makes the same argument. Unfortunately there is more truth to this than not; assuming Russia’s stated policy goal is to confront NATO for regional dominance, then failure to take Ukraine will mean the failure of the Russian state. In case it still isn’t obvious, this is, in fact, Putin’s stated goals, and it remains to be seen whether he will recalculate and accept a guarantee of existential survival as provided by Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

• Sympathies/biases of the source aside, this article is both unsurprising and bears serious implications vis a vis the long-occupied Donbas region. A lot of people in that region have family who, even if they survived eight years of low-intensity war, are now dead due to indiscriminate Russian attacks. Donbas is unlikely to be a compliant Russian puppet state, occupation or no occupation.

D+30 (March 26th) (Brief) Maneuver Update:

Important things are happening so here’s a brief update on evidence of continuing Ukrainian counter-offensives. By tomorrow more geolocation-confirmed data should be available.

Sitrep: Maneuver

• Ukrainian forces have retaken Trostyanets. [1] [2] [3] This town is 20km north of Okhtyrka, which UMoD explicitly mentioned on their twitter account on the 23rd as having withstood prolonged Russian attack. A video of a Russian MLRS unit firing from here (recorded by a Ukranian fixed-wing drone) was geolocated this this area on March 11th, (near the rail yard, 50.481108, 34.965646,) so it has been in Russian hands since then.

• This town is only 50km south of Sumy, itself still not in Russian hands and a famously persistant thorn in the side of Russian forces long, overtaxed supply line.

• Russian forces are clearly on the defensive around Izum, as commercial satellite photography shows Russian forces digging in. See this image of Russian troops digging into a treeline and this especially telling image of Russian tanks in revetments.

• Note the complete lack of overhead camouflage, the fact that we are looking at very clear satellite photography provided by a company that publicly announced they are providing this to Ukrainian high command for free, and recall that Ukrainian artillery has been witnessed picking off individual Russian tanks with direct hits already.

• What the actual fuck
• Geolocated imagery of destroyed Russian vehicles indicates Ukrainian air/artillery strikes against the town of Novyi Bykiv, with the poster indicating his desire to show ground-level pictures soon. This town is 3.5km north of Petrivka, which is the furthest-east town (60km) from Brovary that was mentioned as Russian-held by UMoD some days back:

Ukrainian forces are clearly maintaining pressure on the Russians across the entire front.

• Another image of devestation in Izyum. Still waiting on geolocation. Clearly hard fighting here.
• First photographic evidence that both bridges across the Donets river in Izyum were blown by defending Ukrainian forces. As the commentator notes, and I said before, it’s highly likely Ukrainian defenders ceded the northern part of the city and mounted their primary defense along the southern bank of the river. See also yesterday’s report with the geolocated heavy damage to buildings that would have provided great defensive positions overlooking the footbridge to the west.

• See also movement of Russian reinforcements moving south towards Izyum on the 24th.

• Russian attacks on Avdiivka, north of Donetsk, continue, as evidenced by yet more use of thermite incendiary weapons by the Russians.
• Russian propaganda video shows TOS-1 MLRS fire against targets in Kamyanka. You will recall this village lies directly astride the H20 highway 12km north of the edge of Donetsk city itself. Avdiivka is not 3.5km southwest of it, another town frequently mentioned as the frontline.
• Ukrainian forces are advancing out of Kharkiv. These three videos show Ukrainian forces advancing on and fighting in the village of Vilkhivka, about 8km east-northeast of Kharkiv’s outskirts. Note that Ukrainian forces took the town of Chuhuiv (a crucial crossroads) some 21km down the M03 highway over a week ago, but Russian forces were still hugging the outskirts of Kharkiv and have been bombarding the city nonstop, despite not launching many serious attempts to attack the city.

• Russian troops are reportedly entering Slavutych, a village near Chernobyl and almost 33km due west of Chernihiv. This village – which is barely four square kilometers in volume, according to google maps – has been behind Russian lines almost since D-Day. I will try to find more information on this town’s status as a probable “mini-Sumy.”

• This should illustrate the power of local militia forces; simply by forcing the diversion of frontline troops to rear-area security, they greatly inhibit enemy operations.

• Russian reinforcements spotted moving towards Nova Kakhovka, the small town north-west of Kherson with the nigh indestructible road/rail bridge over the Dnieper built atop a hydroelectric dam.

• Recent video of gunfire heard on the outskirts of Nova Kakhovka. The town offers much less urban depth than Kherson does, and as it lies at some distance from the city, it makes for a much more easily assailed hard crossing across the Dnieper. This would allow Ukrainian forces to move down the eastern bank of the river and cut off Russian forces in Kherson from resupply. This is a very tempting target.

D+30 and D+31 Update (March 27th/28th, posted 10:50PM EST on March 28th)

Note for the new: “UMoD” means “Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.” Since Facebook is once again blocking people from viewing this without logging in I am now linking directly to UMoD posts on the Ukrainian government’s own website.

Sitrep: Maneuver:

Kyiv/Chereniv AOO

• NASA FIRMS data indicates fires in Zaprudka (a small suburb town just southwest of Ivankiv) back on March 24th. This does not necessarily imply an advance (in force) by Ukrainian forces from Teterivske; as taking that town puts Ivankiv within 152mm range, it could simply be artillery strikes being directed at Russian forces positioned to defend the town form the southwest.
• There is no evidence of fighting or operations in Teterivske that I can find so far. Given the crucial nature of this area for both sides in this AOO, this is perhaps unsurprising (OPSEC.)
• At time of writing (afternoon of the 28th) I am seeing video of Ukrainian forces said to be in Irpin and a video said to be of the suburb city’s mayor claiming that Irpin is liberated. I’m also seeing smartphone footage that seems to be people just pointing cameras around as they walk around the town. Given that little to no footage has come out of Irpin in the last week, and that the town is supposedly mostly if not completely evacuated of civilians, this would presumably be soldiers entering the town and filming its current state. (Incidentally this video, said to be of a local city politician, is of him urging evacuated Irpin residents not to return to their homes yet.)

• While solid confirmation is yet to come, given overall trends and the heavy fighting for Irpin seen in the last few days, this seems credible.

• UMoD statements on the Kyiv/Chernihiv AOO:

• UMoD has stated that Russian troops are withdrawing to Russia proper in this area to resupply, regroup, and presumably absorb replacements.(UMoD stated on the 27th that at least two BTGs’ of the Russian 106th Airborne division were withdrawn to Belarus for the same reason.)
• Naturally, UMoD also noted Russian forces were not conducting offensives northwest of Kyiv on the 27th or 28th.
• Specific claims of Russian forces using the Chernobyl area as a headquarters area, transit route for ammunition, and logistical hub; including claims that they’re storing ammunition in the city of Chernobyl (near the abandoned city of Pripyat.) They specifically note that Russian forces are now using older, poorer quality ammunition from older stockpiles. More on these points later.
• Specific claims that Russian forces have destroyed bridges in the areas of the cities/towns of Snovsk, Konotop, Stara Rudnya, Smyach, Maly Dyrchyn and Velykyi Dyrchyn. All these settlements are east or north-east of Chernihiv.
• Russians were said to have attempted some sort of counter-attack or maneuver east of Brovary, but were halted. It was specifically noted that they continued to shell the recently liberated village of Lukyanivka.

• Regarding Lukyanivka (aka Lukyanovka,) combine earlier video/images from the town (the destroyed remnants of a church, clearly the Church of the Ascension by photos on Google Maps, and the destroyed Russian tanks right in front of a WWII “grave of the unknown soldier” style war memorial,) and combine them with newer footage, one gets a better look of this entire battlefield: [1] [2] (note the captured tank outside the still intact Church of the Ascension), [3] [4], [5] (these stills from [5] give a new angle showing the relation of the destroyed armor to the war memorial,) [6], [7], [8], [9] (note this is the American volunteer’s own twitter account he’s posting to), [10]. The gutted red brick building seen on the left in [3] is briefly glimpsed in the distance in 5, and the stills show an angle putting it behind the war memorial’s statue. Sadly, Google Earth imagery of this area is of such poor quality that I’d need to pay for commercial imagery to stand any chance of locating where this battle was in the village in relation to the Church of the Ascension.

• I mention this to illustrate 1. how difficult geolocation can be, and how some of the people doing it are spending money on it, god bless them, 2. how much of the temporal aspect of conflict is lost through these glimpses; the church was still standing after the battle, and thus was presumably leveled in retaliatory shelling by Russian forces later, and 3. how widely spread out and tiny the little glimpses of these battles are that we’re getting. The amount of video taken in this area is astounding, compared to most things we see coming out of this war, and yet it’s split up among several different people filming, the clips are very short, and they’re sometimes taken at different times, before/after some vehicles are moved.

Kharkiv/Sumy AOO:

• Images of the fighting in liberated Trostyanets are now confirmed by geolocation: [1] [2] [3]

• Russian forces seem to have taken heavy losses in this town, judging from the unusual number of unique images of destroyed assets being posted: [1] [2] [3] [4]
• This panning shot gives a new angle on this previously seen area and shows something of the defensive earthworks the Russians prepared. The fighting took place directly before a war monument with a T-34 tank on a pedestal – the T-34 seems to have been engaged by fire.

• Images of the fighting in Vilkhivka, 10km east-southeast of Kharkiv’s outskirts, are now confirmed by geolocation as well.
• Olkhovka, which appears to be the name of a nature reserve just north of Kharkiv has produced another (as yet ungeolocated) capture of a Russian R-149 series command vehicle. As I write, very recently posted imagery is emerging of a liberated village said to be Olkhovka. (More, with a rare glimpse of Ukrainian armored support: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]) Multiple villages/suburban housing areas hug this nature reserve; I can’t tell which one is considered “Olkhovka” from English-language maps.

• Note the number of prisoners taken. Note also this is the location of the much-circulated (and much doubted) video claimed to be of Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian POWs in the legs. While the video is suspicious, it’s also true this wooded area would be prime real estate for concealing artillery batteries, and given the weeks of hellacious and indiscriminate shelling of urban areas conducted against Kharkiv, I would not want to be a Russian artilleryman captured alive in this area.

• Unconfirmed video and claims of the liberation of Boromlia, 13km north of Trostyanets along the H12 highway and only 30km south of Boromlya. While most of the video shows destroyed vehicles in Trostyanets (the same areas previously geolocated) the sign seen in the first part of the video is definitely “Boromlia” in Russian Cryllic. (“Боромлия”).
• UMoD stated on the 27th that one BTG from the Russian 1st Tank army was withdrawn from this area into Russia proper to regroup. This was repeated again on the 28th (as with the mention of withdrawals from Kyiv AOO, without specific units/BTGs being named this time.)

Donetsk/Luhansk AOO:

• Ukrainian forces have retaken the village (and crossroads) of Husarivka. [1] [2] [3] [geolocation] This village lies west-northwest of Izyum by 40 kilometers and is 54 kilometers south-southwest of Chuhuiv. UMoD last mentioned this village (and the nearby village of Volobuivka, as well as the crossroad town of Balakleya 12km north of it) on March 19th as an area of active enemy operations, but without offensive operations while attempting to resupply and regroup. It is unclear if the town was in Ukrainian hands before and taken sometime in the last week; either way this does indicate a Ukrainian offensive success in the Donetsk region.

• One of the captured vehicles includes a 9S932-1 SIGINT/CP vehicle, part of the “Barnaul-T” system. This can network together various mobile self-contained maneuver SHORAD SAM systems and allow them to operate greater than the sum of their parts (e.g. offboard cuing and slew-to-cue; see my SAM post.) This is not a system you would leave to be present in a direct firefight; unlike at least some of the SHORAD SAM’s that accompany it. The number of more valuable and/or rear-area assets I’m seeing captured in these counteroffensives – especially the containerized ground-based EW system recently captured NW of Kyiv and the multiple command-post vehicles – strongly implies that Russians are not withdrawing from these assaults in good order, but are being flat-out defeated. Knocked out tanks and fighting positions indicate a defeated rear guard that nonetheless did its job – captured command vehicles and high-value assets are not.

• Note this is the fourth such system to be captured.

• Geolocated imagery of an apartment block heavily damaged by some sort of strike indicates offensive (or imminent offensive) operations near Milova village; which lies not 13km north-west of Husarivka. This strike could have been done by either side; large apartment blocs – especially of the characteristic “Concrete Looks Awesome” style of Soviet design – make excellent defensive structures (naturally, evacuation of civilians is typically done beforehand and such structures are not engaged until fire is taken or enemies observed in them, if you’re not treating the Geneva conventions as a handy to-do list.)
• UMoD statements from the 27th and 28th say the following:

• Popasna and Rubizhne continue to be enemy priority targets,
• Enemy shelling all along this front continues to be ubiquitous,
• Generalized statement of continued combat around Izyum,
• An assault in the direction of Terny on the 28th was attempted, but was repulsed and the Russians retreated to Makiyivka, (see map below for implications of what this suggests for the northern line defending the Rubizhne/Severodonetsk salient,)
• Two assaults on New York, (“Niu-York”) were attempted and driven off,
• An attempt on Verkhnotoretske was defeated on the 28th,
• An attempt on Krasnohorivka was defeated on the 27th.
• An assault on Marinka on the 28th was repulsed.

• New York and Verkhnotoretske are new mentions, though very close to villages mentioned in previous reports as areas of active fighting, and Krasnohorivka was on my map already. To illustrate:

• Recall that all purple pins are settlements UMoD has previously identified as being contested, under attack, or the object of Russian designs. In the south, this seems legible; Ukrainian forces still hold the edge/suburbs of Donetsk city, and a Russian advance out of the city’s north-west side was stopped in the vicinity of Krasnohrivka. It’s less clear with New York. The locales surrounding Horlivka marked with red “!” symbols were mentioned on D+23 (March 17th) by UMoD as being objectives of major Russian assaults (see my previous report here.) If they are now fighting in New York, that makes for a 15km Russian advance over 11 days.

• This is also known as “slow.”

• A last note. This very low level, close-up drone footage of one of the Russian pontoon bridges near Izyum was recently released – by whom, I’m not sure. Note the knocked-out IFV on the right, likely sunken tank on the left and debris (from wrecked pontoon sections?) lying by the near bank. Note also that the bridge was set up in close proximity to a dead-end road to shorten the overland travel distance required. This bridge is at 49.152741, 37.250156. The extremely low altitude of the drone and the cinematic flyover makes me think it was a Russian propaganda release; but repeatedly advertising the location of a bridge who’s location was known to the enemy since the 24th (and obviously shelled) seems unwise at best. Given I have seen absolutely zero reports of fighting anywhere further than 2.75km from this bridge’s location, it is easily within 81mm mortar range, much less proper artillery. Hell, it’s within 60mm mortar range.

• One wonders if this bridge still exists. If not, it could be reason for releasing a propaganda video at this time (to imply otherwise.)

• These images from the 25th, showing a closer view of the more westerly pontoon bridge (at 49.148388, 37.234572) show something curious. This does not look like a modern pontoon bridge at all, but rather an old-fashioned kind; where pontoons (literally open-topped boats or inflatable rubber rafts) were lined up side by side, and a road surface affixed atop them. The modern style of “ribbon bridge,” as exemplified by the Soviet PMP bridge (which the US efficiently and shamelessly copied as the Improved Ribbon Bridge) replaced this ‘round the 70s. However, (as you can read for yourself in TC 5-210,) the US Army still retained its older WWII style pontoon bridges as war reserves well after the introduction of the IRB (see page 40 of the PDF; the WWII era M4T6 raft-based floating bridge.) Compare this to the bridge shown in commercial imagery:

Bridges like this can be constructed for both infantry and vehicular traffic. However, for infantry traffic they’re typically built with far fewer pontoons that are spread out more. For vehicle bridges, they are built with the pontoons touching side-to-side across the whole span. Without knowing the resolution of the image it’s hard to say how wide the trackway is. In either case, this could either be a dedicated infantry crossing (with extra pontoons added for whatever reason,) or it’s a vehicular crossing, using very old stockpiled equipment. The implications for the state of Russia’s engineering equipment could be significant – if anyone has more information on this, please contact me.

Kherson AOO

• Little of substance to report at this time.

Maneuver: Analysis

The obvious takeaway here is that Russian forces are attempting to redeploy units from other fronts to the Donetsk front; giving up on unattainable objectives and instead trying to annex the entirety of the Dontesk and Luhansk oblasts before seeking terms. This is likely the reason why Ukrainian advances around Sumy have been so rapid, as well as the unprecedented destruction of many bridges in the area east-northeast of Chernihiv. This is likely also why Russian forces have started striking at rail depots deep behind Ukrainian lines and have recently directed cruise missile/ballistic missile strikes not at avgas reserves on airbases, but towards general oil/fuel distribution infrastructure (see Operational section below), in order to inhibit Ukrainian forces’ ability to rapidly shift reinforcements using their internal lines of communication. That this is happening faster around Sumy is not surprising; the distance to the Donetsk front is shorter. Destroying bridges NE of Chernihiv is likely an attempt to slow Ukrainian advances in this area that could threaten rail lines in southern Belarus (even if only by use of long-range indirect fire.) Alternately, it could just be to cover their own retreat as they haul for the Belorussian border.

The efficacy of this strategy depends on 1. NATO and the EU being lackluster in providing logistical support (such as diesel fuel and even tanker trucks/rail rolling stock to help move it) and the Ukrainian forces simply letting Russian forces disengage. The constant pressure being applied to Russian forces – northwest of Kyiv, especially – clearly shows they are not going to let the Russians go easily. I do not envy Russian forces trying to move towards Belarus when they have to go through the Ivankiv crossroads and past the “Egg of Death” in that roundabout, given the Ukrainians are likely putting as much artillery on that miserable place as humanly possible. This is the scenario of internal vs. external lines of communication now in practice – the Russians must somehow avoid being those who are “held by the nose and kicked in the ass.”

I do not believe the Ukrainians will release their nose anytime soon – and they have something like 12-13 BTGs (effective) at a minimum held northwest of Kyiv. Moreover the Ukrainians have a specially-trained “Jager” infantry brigade specifically meant for operations in the forested, marshy areas north of Kyiv, such as the swampy areas in/around the Chernobyl exclusion zone specifically. If Ukraine decides to take advantage of Russian force reductions in this area to slam the gate to the Kyiv AOO closed, they have an entire brigade especially trained to do so.

Sitrep: Operational

• Continued evidence of Territorial Defense Forces’ rear-area interdiction operations against Russian supply chains.
• A previous sighting (and subsequent destruction) of a contact sea mine near the Bosphorus strait has been followed by this spotted free-floating (after its’ anchor broke) contact mine destroyed by the Romanian navy off their coast. Markings on the mine indicate it’s an old Soviet mine which was refurbished by Ukraine in 2020; ergo we have hard evidence that Ukraine is deploying defensive minefields near their shores. (These mines anchor cables occasionally break and send them a-wandering.)
• Speaking of mines; another example of IED employment against Russian armor.

• Also, a new example of Ukrainian SOF using spaced-out explosive charges along an entire roadside to destroy Russian columns.
• This abandoned T-72 buried in a huge crater in a paved road was likely the victim of an IED placed in an under-road culvert – or the culvert simply collapsed under weight it wasn’t designed for.

• Also speaking of mines, Russian forces recently released a propaganda reel showing an artillery-delivered minesystem in use near Kharkiv, further reinforcing the fact that they are now on the defensive on all northern fronts.
• I have not yet undertaken an extensive review of light recon drone downings because it’s typically impossible to tell the difference between a drone knocked down by microwave DEW/navigation interference EW and a simple malfunction (not uncommon for smaller, cheaper drones) but this ORLAN-10 seems to have been hit by a laser. While nothing has been said publicly, likely for OPSEC reasons, there are a good number of commercial and military systems on the Western market aimed at defending against small drones (from quadcopter to model-airplane sized) and it’s almost certain Ukraine has been provided with some.
• This cockpit/HUD video allegedly from a KA-52 evading a Stinger MANPADS around Izyum is very informative as to the effect Stingers are having on Russian tac-air operations. Note how the pilot lifts his nose and salvos off his rockets at almost a 25 degree angle; repeating the same maneuver we’ve seen before; sacrificing all hopes of point-target accuracy to avoid approaching a target area too closely. Despite this, the pilot has to enter a hard diving break-turn to (presumably) avoid an incoming Stinger.

• In other words, the Stingers seem directly responsible for forcing Russian pilots to launch inaccurate area barrages from standoff distances. To say this degrades the utility of Russian tactical air is a vast understatement. Unguided rockets are one of an attack helicopter’s best weapons; cheap, plentiful, yet reasonably accurate... if they can get close enough. Stingers represent an anti-air threat that can’t simply be eliminated with guided weapons from standoff ranges. Compared to MLRS systems, this kind of area bombardment is effectively useless... and extremely expensive, in terms of the cost of flight hours and the risk to hideously expensive assets, compared to old Soviet-era Grads.
• Incidentally, a Russian SU-3X of some mark was just shot down near Izyum.

• Russian MoD claims this drone video of a Ukrainian Buk “SA-111” TELAR (Transporter, Erector, Launcher, Radar) was engaged by an Iskander missile. While generating the target planning fast enough to hit a mobile asset is impressive (or alternately, careless on the Ukrainian’s part) expending a precision-guided SRBM to attack a single SHORAD unit is incredibly wasteful, and is not something the Russians will be able to afford for much longer. The absolutely massive size of the blast makes it likely that it actually was an Iskander…

• If the video was actually real. Russian state TV has previously shown footage from ARMA 3 (a videogame) and passed it off as real combat footage from Syria. The Russian Ministry of Defense itself has previously passed off game footage of “AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron” as combat footage from Syria, as well. (This is the incident to which a US spokesman famously replied Russian allegations were “about as accurate as their air campaign,” a statement that has proven prophetic.) Given the consistently poor nature of released Russian drone footage (very short, poor resolution, heavily clipped and almost never showing munitions impacts if it’s unguided tube artillery,) I’m beginning to wonder if some of these clips aren’t faked. The Iskander would make more sense in that context, as it’s one of Russia’s most heavily propagandized weapons (as it represents a capability with no direct NATO equivalent yet in service.)
• This HAS been geolocated. Whether or not the explosion is real, I cannot say.