Friday 26th of April 2024
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catch-22…..

 

On July 2 Lysichansk came under Russian control:

This comes only a week after the cauldron around Lysichansk began to close. Until a few hours ago there was still a chance to flee from Lysichansk but the only passable road was under Russian fire. It is not know yet how many made it out or how many gave up and were taken prisoners.

Some of those who retreated went to Siversk some 20 kilometer west of Lysichansk. That city will be the next bigger target in that campaign sector.

The speed of this operation was much faster than the one in Mariupol. That points to diminished capabilities and soldier motivation of the Ukrainian forces.

The now much shortened frontline frees up several battalion tactical groups on the Russian side which can now be refitted and rested to then move elsewhere. 

The font line  since consolidated:

In a week or two those BTCs which now rest and resupply will be back. They will create a new cauldron around Siversk and maybe Bakhmut, decimate the Ukrainian forces within it to then capture the whole area.

The artillery preparations for the next push had began immediately after the fall of Lysichansk. The ‘week or two’ have passed and the attack on the next defensive line (yellow line in the east) from Siversk to Kurdiumivka has begun. Yesterday ground fighting was reported within Siversk and Soledar.

 

By Moon of Alabama

 

In a week or two the line down from Siversk to Krasna Hora will probably be under Russian control. Bakhmut, which is very fortified, may take a few more days to fall.

The battle will then move to the next defensive line further west (also marked in yellow). That line is anchored in the north on Sloviansk which has a railway line (black) coming in from the west. That railway line allows the Ukrainians to supply their current frontline with heavy artillery ammunition and fuel.

Sloviansk will be attacked from the northwest, the northeast and southeast. The force disposition map below shows that the Ukrainian defenses in that area are rather weak.

(SEE MAP)

(The map above uses NATO symbology. The marking within the blue (friendly) rectangles shows the type of the unit. ‘Crossed bandoliers’ are infantry, ‘tank tracks’ stand for armored units, a black dot designates artillery, a combination of tank tracks and crossed bandoliers means mechanized infantry. The marking above the rectangle shows the size of the unit. An X means brigade (3,000-4,000 men), three vertical lines a regiment (1,000-1,500 men), two vertical lines a battalion (300-600 men) and so on. Each unit is ‘organic’ in that its has its own artillery or mortar group and other attached support like transport and medics)

The Ukrainian lines in the northeast of the Donetzk oblast are [being] held by pure infantry troops of dubious quality (i.e territorial defense brigades). Most of these have already been mauled by Russian artillery attacks and are down to 70% or less of their original strength. They have little capability to withstand the motorized (and armored) Russian forces that are moving against them. The Ukrainians have very few armored reserves behind the front that could intervene and oppose those Russian attacks.

Now let’s look at the bigger picture in east Ukraine. I have marked 5 defense lines (yellow) which all run north to south along major highways or railroads.

 

 

The two in the east (right side) will fall within the next two or three weeks. The only really major one of the other lines is in the west (left side) running from Kharkiv through Dnipro down to Zaporizhzhia in the south. It will be nibbled up piecemeal. Kharkiv, the anchor in the north is already under attack. Zaporizhzhia in the south is under long range artillery fire. The center around Dnipro will be attacked from the east as well as from the west side of the Dnieper river (see below). I believe that the Russian side intends to completely take that western line before the winter sets in.

Now let’s look at the southern front where the Ukrainian forces attempted a counterattack on Kherson. For orientation: This map has Dnipro in the upper right.

Kherson in a major city on the western side of the Dnieper river. If the Russian side holds onto it it can move up to the economically important industrial mining area of Kryvyi Rih and from there launch an attack on Dnipro from a southwestern direction.

This is a major strategic danger for the Ukrainian side. That is why it collected lots of forces around Mykolaiv (Nikolaev in Russian transliteration) and attempted a counterattack on Kherson. On the force disposition map we can see motorized infantry, marine infantry, artillery, helicopter,  and missile brigades all positioned in or around Mykolaiv.

Over the last days those forces used heavy artillery in an attempt to destroy the reservoir dam and river crossing near Nova Kakhorvka on the right side of the above map. This would have flooded the area south of Kherson and would have made its defense way more difficult. But so far all major Ukrainian attacks on the dam and along the southern frontline have failed.

The next map shows the main reasons for that failure.

All the Ukrainian units in and around Mykolaiv have come under very heavy artillery fire by the Russian forces. Major targets were unit headquarters, ammunition dumps and any larger groupings of soldiers. The planned Ukrainian counterattack on Kherson was thereby destroyed even before it took up its starting position. I am not aware of any Ukrainian reserve forces that could be moved there to revive it.

All together the Ukrainian forces are in a dire state. They have little to withstand further moves by the Russian side.

Now let’s look at the U.S. support for the Ukrainian forces.

Next to man portable small arms, Javelin anti-tank missiles and stinger anti-air missiles, a major U.S. delivery has been the 100 light howitzers M-777 and their standard 155mm ammunition. These are rather flimsy guns and slow to redeploy. Some 70% of these have by now been disabled or destroyed.

Those 100 howitzers did not have the digital systems that allows for precision ammunition to be used with them. The U.S. has since send another 18 M-777 howitzer with digital aiming systems and 1,000 rounds of precision ammunition to be used with them. The delivery included three artillery detection radars. Those three batteries, with six guns each, will thereby be used in a counter artillery mission against Russian artillery.

The U.S. has also delivered 18 12 HIMARS long range missile systems to the Ukraine. An additional 3(?) systems have come out of German and British depots. They are the new Wunderwaffe Du Jour.

The main use of the HIMARS system has so far been the destruction of several Russian ammunition depots (vid) some 50 kilometers (30 miles) behind the front lines.

The Russian side will use the obvious countermeasures against such attacks. Larger depots will move further back, smaller ones more near to the front will be dispersed and camouflaged. Missile and air defenses will be brought up to defend the depots. Special forces will move behind the Ukrainian front-lines to hunt down the HIMARS missile systems. I have seen two videos of such units attacking Ukrainian S-300 air defense systems far behind the front lines with anti-tank weapons and sharpshooter rifles.

Over the last weeks some HIMARS and other systems have been hitting Donetsk city and have caused a high number of civilian casualties. The Russians have launched special counter battery missions which have been successful in hunting some of those units down. Some Russian Tochka-U missiles systems, no longer in service with the Russian forces, have been given to the forces of the Donetzk Peoples Republic to defend their main city. The Tochka has a similar 100+ kilometer reach as the HIMARS but is less precise.

There is no oversight over where the ‘western’ weapon deliveries to the Ukraine go to. Here is a civil car with Albanian number plates loaded with British and U.S. anti-tanks missile. The Ukrainian military has admitted that such transfers are happening. We can only guess where those weapons will end up.

Of the 18 HIMARS the U.S. has delivered two were reportedly destroyed and one, including its ammunition, was allegedly sold to the Russian side. There were also reports that two French Caesar artillery systems have been sold to the Russians. Those will become nice show pieces right next to all those Nazi Tiger tanks that ended up in Russian military museums.

Tomorrow the parliament of the Russian Federation will hold a special session likely about the war in Ukraine. I have seen no hint of what it might decide to do but it will probably enable Russia’s president to use more forces in Ukraine than he currently does.

The Ukrainian side is losing hundreds of soldiers per day which leads to lots of funerals with questionable symbolics (old video).

It is high time for the Ukrainian and ‘western’ side to stop the war and to re-enter into negotiations with the Russian side.

Donate to Moon of Alabama by clicking here.

 

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2022/07/15/ukrainian-failed-counterattack-weak-defense-lines-and-oversight-free-weapon-deliveries/

 

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the west did not care…….

A view from Donbass: Ukraine has treated the people of this region as sub-humans, this made peace impossible

 

How Kiev has tried to dehumanize people in its former East – first domestically, then everywhere  

By Vladislav Ugolny, a Russian journalist based in Donetsk

 

The military conflict in Ukraine, which began on February 24, was preceded by a long war in Donbass. Over the course of eight years, it claimed the lives of at least 14,200 people (according to the OHCHR), over 37,000 were wounded, hundreds of thousands became refugees or had their homes destroyed. A de-escalation was achieved in February 2015, as both sides realized that a bad peace was better than a good war, and attempted to find a political resolution on the basis of the Minsk agreements. That, however, failed to bring peace to Donbass, which instead faced eight long years of economic and legal blockade, compounded by chaotic shelling of areas near the frontlines.

They were eight hard years, which involved rebuilding bombed schools, hospitals, and houses, a rather humiliating dependence of formerly well-to-do people on humanitarian aid, an economic slump due to the economic blockade imposed by the Ukrainian government, restricted access to pensions, and the risk of being wounded or killed for those who lived in urbanized frontline areas. People who voted for the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the referendum in May 2014 could never have imagined living in this endless terror.

 

They were eight hard years, which involved rebuilding bombed schools, hospitals, and houses, a rather humiliating dependence of formerly well-to-do people on humanitarian aid, an economic slump due to the economic blockade imposed by the Ukrainian government, restricted access to pensions, and the risk of being wounded or killed for those who lived in urbanized frontline areas. People who voted for the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the referendum in May 2014 could never have imagined living in this endless terror.

They were forced to wait for that terror to stop until February 2022, when Russia recognized the independence of Donbass and then deployed its military to, among other things, protect it and liberate territory occupied by Ukrainian forces since 2014. It hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park, but the people of Donbass now know that war will soon be over for them. The people’s militias of both republics are doing everything in their power to achieve victory as soon as possible.

 

It may seem to an outside observer that some citizens of Ukraine backed by the Russian military are fighting other citizens of Ukraine backed by NATO. This description, however, would satisfy neither side of the conflict. Donbass residents no longer consider themselves citizens of Ukraine, while the Ukrainian government and society at large deny their sovereignty and dismiss them as collaborators and mercenaries for Russia. Both are wrong.

In reality, it was precisely this denial of sovereignty that led Donbass to renounce everything having to do with Ukraine, and it started way before 2014. Let me add here that what was said above applies to the whole southeastern region of Ukraine, also known as Novorossiya; however, the case of Donbass was the most dramatic and revealing manifestation.

It all began with dehumanization. After gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine was too big to be uniform. The enthusiasm of Galicia in the west to build a nation-state was mixed with depression in the southeast over the loss of a shared economic space with Russia. Machine building in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, and Zaporozhye declined, Odessa’s Black Sea shipping operations were shut down. The country survived thanks to metallurgy and coal mining. Both industries were centered around Donbass.

While almost a million people poured into the streets throughout Galicia for the funeral of Ukrainian politician and Soviet-era dissident Vyacheslav Chornovol, Donbass workers were toiling in the mines. While Ukrainians traveled to Europe as labor immigrants, miners in Donbass were dying on the job because of poor safety standards (profits ranked higher than lives during those lean years).

‘Let those miners die. They don’t see the Ukrainian sky anyway’ – that was the reasoning of some Ukrainians back then. The citizens of Donbass weren’t doing much reasoning – they were too busy mining coal and melting steel. The most aggressively ambitious of them were not happy with that setup though, so they chose the path of crime and raider attacks. The 1990s were times of rampant crime in Ukraine, and the so-called ‘Donetsk gangs’ were among the most adept at it. Donbass was now perceived as a breeding ground for criminals, which further tarnished its image. At the same time, Ukrainians turned a blind eye to similar financial groups with criminal ties in the nearby city of Dnepropetrovsk.

Partially preserved industry (objectively speaking, metallurgy is easier to maintain than, say, rocket construction) and the concentration of capital in the hands of a narrow group of oligarchs made Donbass the vehicle for the Party of Regions, which was known as ‘pro-Russian’. In fact, there was little ‘pro-Russian’ about it – other than the fact that its leaders used the desire of people in the southeast to continue using Russian and keep their economic ties with Russia as a way to energize their base. This was the last step towards the dehumanization of Donbass, which was now perceived as non-Ukrainian. Instead of encouraging interethnic dialogue, it only led to Ukrainian nationalists’ promises to make Donbass more Ukrainized. It was just like what they had said about Crimea before – that it would either be Ukrainian or depopulated.

 

A caricature of the typical denizen of Donbass emerged – a foulmouthed alcoholic, a lowbrow menial worker who dreams of turning Ukraine over to the Kremlin. People in Donbass took offence, talked about their complex industry which required sophisticated skills, and called Ukrainians freeloaders. The divide within the country kept growing.

This was followed by the first wave of Maidan protests, which dismissed the southeast under the political leadership of Donbass as an entity which does not deserve a political voice. The presidential elections split the country into two halves, with one side accusing the other of falsifying the results. People in central and western Ukraine considered the residents of the southeast to be lowlifes with a slavish mentality who are incapable of fighting for freedom. They staged protests at the Maidan, demanding another runoff vote. Politicians leaning towards the southeast made some clumsy attempts at stirring up similar protests and convened a congress in Severodonetsk, which was later labeled by Ukrainians as ‘separatist’. Later on, however, they backed down for fear of upsetting the country’s newfound fragile stability. Donbass and the rest of the southeast retreated, waiting for a chance to take revenge.

That revenge came in 2010, when their candidate won the election. A derogatory chant was coined: “Thanks, Donbass, for the president who is an ass.” Tensions in the country grew, not assuaged even by the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, hosted jointly by Ukraine and Poland. Southeasterners got to enjoy their favorite sport, while Westerners tried their hand at organizing a European-level event. Everyone seemed happy, and yet western Ukrainian intellectuals, anticipating a forthcoming association with the EU, were smirking about how they had duped ‘the miners’ by enticing them with their beloved sport.

Nobody asked ordinary Ukrainians whether they thought an alliance with Europe or with Russia would be better for their future. Those who wanted closer ties with Russia thought the choice was obvious, since their presidential candidate had won. Their opponents reasoned that Ukraine, since it became independent in 1991, only had the option of going down the European path. Any proposals to hold a referendum were dismissed. But when the signing of the EU Association Agreement was put on hold, people in central and western Ukraine revolted.

Once again, they resorted to street politics, which Donbass despised. People in Donbass were used to working hard, earning enough to be more than comfortable, and delegating politics to politicians, expecting to receive competent leadership and the protection of Russian speakers’ rights in return. They wanted stability for a country recovering from the 2008 financial crisis and were pleading with their opponents not to incite a civil war.

Maidan activists took that as a sign of weakness and decided they could defeat these people that they considered ‘rednecks’, now referring to them as ‘titushky’, ‘Donbass criminals’ that they accused of beating up Maidan protesters. Southeastern politicians had enough power to disperse the protesters, but chose to wait instead and kept pulling back the relatively small units of Berkut special forces. This is how they were defeated and left the southeast on their own to face the new government, and even worse, the mobs and their lust for revenge over ‘the blood of the Maidan martyrs’. The first decision of the new regime was to repeal the regional status of Russian.

It was a move people in Donbass, Crimea, Kharkov, Odessa, and Zaporozhye could not forgive. People who used to prefer hard work to political activism were up in arms. Crimea, which enjoyed the status of autonomous republic and was the base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, was lucky to have Russia’s support. Odessa wasn’t so lucky. On May 2, Ukrainian Nazis and ‘ultras’ from across the country descended upon the city, dispersed pro-Russian fighters, and proceeded to Kulikovo Pole, where they burned down a tent city and the Trade Union House, killing pensioners, women, and other ordinary people who had barricaded themselves inside the building. The people of Donbass decided to wait it out, hoping that “after all, they couldn’t possibly…” – they couldn’t possibly use the army against their own citizens, they couldn’t possibly use armored weaponry against their own citizens, they couldn’t possibly use the air force against their own citizens, they couldn’t possibly use tactical missile systems against their own citizens…

 

No Ukrainian politicians were saints, and neither were the people of Donbass – not that anyone had asked them to be, though. The fact of the matter is that every escalation of violence was aimed at them. It was the Ukrainians who kept upping the ante, and nobody cared. The miners have always died, you know. Why should anyone feel sorry for them? They’re ‘dumb slaves’, they wear no balaclavas. Back then, in 2014, balaclavas were seen as a symbol of superior people, while the ‘stupid miners’ from Donbass (led by Valery Bolotov) and their volunteer supporters from Russia (led by Igor Strelkov) deliberately spurned them. The lives of the residents of impoverished mining towns cost less than the lives of those living in prosperous towns near the Carpathian Mountains. The air in Donbass stinks of soot and is full of coal dust and industrial emissions, so people die of cancer there, whereas the mountain air in Galicia is fresh and fragrant, and the wind of freedom blows in from Poland.

Children were killed in Donbass. Nobody gave a damn, except Russia and the repressed Russians in the rest of Ukraine. It was rather amusing for the other side – people scraping their dead children off the asphalt and saying: ‘We’re being bombed, we’re scared, our children are dying!’ Ukrainians thought it was funny, a just punishment for those dehumanized earth-diggers. They called their children ‘Colorado beetle larvae’, because the stripes of the Colorado potato beetle resemble the St. George’s ribbon, which became the symbol of the uprising in Novorossiya.

All of this convinced Donbass it had the moral high ground, which allowed it to stand tall and weather eight years of incredible hardship. The Ukrainians were granted the chance to reach a political settlement with the Minsk agreements, if they agreed to treat Donbass as a sovereign region within Ukraine. Had they done this, Donbass would have lost interest in politics, returned to its industrial roots, and left policymaking in the hands of western Ukraine again in a few years’ time. But they wouldn’t do this, even for the sake of stopping the war. Recognizing the sovereignty of Donbass was a red line for Ukraine, and so was dialogue with Donbass.

The Ukrainian leadership stuck to those red lines even after Russia said it was going to put an end to the ongoing slaughter at its doorstep. So, what we now have is a new season of war, which has been going on for Donbass since 2014. The two people’s republics’ armies are storming Ukrainian fortifications as the Ukrainian military continues to bomb residential areas in Donetsk. People in Donbass stopped wondering “what they are capable of.” Now they know that the Ukrainian army and government are capable of anything – bombing cities, torturing people, and trying to pass off Donetsk people that they killed for Kiev residents, supposedly killed by Russian missile strikes. The only thing they can’t do is admit that the citizens of Donbass are people just like them, people who have their own interests and are prepared to fight for them until they win or die in battle.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/559061-children-donbass-world-not-care/

 

 

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