Great Power contentions

[Montmorency]

As I said in my followup comment, once I realized that the leak was more than a single dump of 8 or 10 documents from a Ukraine briefing, I discarded the deliberate leak theory. If military intelligence somehow tricked a young, far-right wargaming gloomer into leaking a vast and varied, but curated, document dump, it would have to be the most elaborate disinfo op in history. I don't believe we have that level of competence in our ranks, particularly with respect to the realm of virtual culture (I've veritably posted at least one video from the Youtuber whose Discord was caught up in the chain on the Org before).

Macron was rather misrepresented in the headlines. If you read the original interview he was arguing - as he has in the past really - that there should be a coordinated European agenda helping set the pace of global affairs, that the EU shouldn't just be in a position to be trailing American whims. We should know by now not to put too much stock in media pull quotes.

I don't understand all the videos I've seen from both sides of tanks pulling up to within 50m or less of a trench and laying down fire to neutralize. I never thought I would see much of that outside videogames, since the danger of exposing the tank like that is immense and the whole purpose of contemporary optics is to allow such work to be carried out from beyond naked visual range. If the enemy squad or whatever has literally any friendlies nearby, a tank parked by a trench for 5 minutes is an easy target for artillery, drones, air support, ATGMs, anything really.

[spmetla]

Macron was rather misrepresented in the headlines. If you read the original interview he was arguing - as he has in the past really - that there should be a coordinated European agenda helping set the pace of global affairs, that the EU shouldn't just be in a position to be trailing American whims. We should know by now not to put too much stock in media pull quotes.

I read his comments as well but he articulated it poorly and did not strongly correct it. Yes, Europe should be able to have an independent course of the US and China, that would start by taking strong unified stands on issues. Macron's constantly trying to help Russia save face and not seeing the Taiwan straits as a European issue is ridiculous. Which nation or politician really represents Europe right now? Certainly not Macron, Scholtz, or anyone else at the moment.

I don't understand all the videos I've seen from both sides of tanks pulling up to within 50m or less of a trench and laying down fire to neutralize. I never thought I would see much of that outside videogames, since the danger of exposing the tank like that is immense and the whole purpose of contemporary optics is to allow such work to be carried out from beyond naked visual range. If the enemy squad or whatever has literally any friendlies nearby, a tank parked by a trench for 5 minutes is an easy target for artillery, drones, air support, ATGMs, anything really.

The way I see it is that's why the tank rolled up first, to assess if they have anti-tank capabilities after which it was followed up by the IFV and infantry.
Seeing as there is a drone filming this is one of those situations where a mounted Mk-19 grenade launcher would be absolutely ideal and that's one of the strong points of the older wester APCs where to have that capability you merely need the right CSW mount.

This unit must be tasked at that moment to be a mop up unit and I imagine the front line of troops is a few hundred or thousand meters away at this point with other units in contact with other Russian forces. That trench is certainly isolated and looks like it was given the job of essentially being a speedbump which it arguably did by delaying/distracting some UAF for a bit.

[Montmorency]

As a matter of national security, it's well past time to acknowledge that DoD needs a Dank Online Materiel Exploitation program to coopt the groypers and gamers (healthy young men who seek patriotic, violence-infused, and racially-charged companionship online, per the media).

Just heard MSNBC live reporter say that there are no indicators Jack Texiera—hard right Catholic gun zealot & conspiracy theorist who hated government, called Ukrainians pigs, and screamed racist & antisemitic memes—has any “political motives.”

You're right, the footages we see of tanks in close with isolated trenches could be carefully-selected set-piece actions with bounded risk. I still hope it isn't SOP for Ukraine though (sending out poorly-supported tank platoons as screening or vanguard forces has been a common cause of Russian armored losses anyway).

But then, I also wonder why in these clips the tanks belch out what seems like half their HE allotment for a couple of guys in a trench, as fast as they can. What happened to MGs?

[Montmorency]

Investigative report by independent Russian media into why Putin decided to go to war.
https://verstka.media/kak-putin-pridumal-voynu

[Montmorency]

I'm beginning to come around to there being a serious case for expecting a Ukrainian offensive in the Bakhmut area. Relevant factors include the large Ukrainian grouping present since the winter and the arguable fact that RuFOR is weaker here than in any other sector of the contested front. If the offensive advanced the line 25km, it would erase Russian gains in most or all of North Donetsk since the beginning of the invasion (with Russia being unlikely to ever be able to, in the context of these hostilities, gather up enough strength to grind through this territory anew), and to advance 50 km would allow Ukraine to threaten the long separatist-held cities of Alchevsk and Horlivka, or more precisely Horlivka's primary GLOC to Russia.

However, I find it very hard to believe that UFOR would give up this year's opportunity to attack in the south for a crack at inherently-lesser gains in the central front. The only way I can see my way to it is in the case of a dual offensive, and yet I find it even harder to believe that UFOR could successfully and productively divide its whole, limited, strategic reserve (including scarce artillery and air defense ordnance) between two theaters.

Also, UFOR in the sector is itself seemingly-exhausted, even if not to the same extent as their counterpart, so strategic reserves would likely have to be routed there to support an offensive. Such a movement should be detectable to OSINT at any rate.

But maybe a secondary offensive to draw off and tie down Russian reserves, with the stretch goal of recovering the line of contact as of December, is feasible. Or maybe the entire discourse is disinformation of the sort we saw last summer.

[spmetla]

I personally think there will be a limited counterattack at Bakhmut beyond what we've seen today in order to keep those VDV and wagner forces fixed there to set conditions for an offensive elsewhere. Russia doesn't appear to have a large strategic or operational reserve given the forces wasted on fruitless winter assaults. Fixing their tier 1 forces at Bakhmut given that it's a prestige fight now, kinda in the line of Stalingrad may allow for greater success elsewhere.
Still think the major offensive will be in the south and not toward Svatove though, if the UAF can reach the Azov Sea and limit Crimean GLOCs to the kerch bridge they may be able to siege or if fast enough take the peninsula.

Sitting on pins and needles wondering how/where/when it will start though. Will it be a shock and awe rapid start or rather a gradual but relentless increase of pressure at multiple points before selecting the right point for penetration and exploitation?

[Montmorency]

AFAIK the core RuFOR present in the Bakhmut sector (S of Rozdolivka down to the canal W of Klischiivka) are no more than 10K Wagner bayonet strength, and between one and two nominal divisions of VDV. Simply put, the starting point for Ukraine is with own force better matched to opfor around Bakhmut than anywhere else, namely the equivalent of 10-15 full brigades as of now. As I've pointed out time and again since the beginning of the year in various parts, RuFOR has done a better job of pinning many UFOR formations in Bakhmut than vice versa (and UFOR could have avoided this by performing a brigade-size counterattack to stabilize the Soledar-Yakovlivka breach around New Year's...).

But UFOR around Bakhmut hasn't done that swell a job holding back the enemy since the period of peak strength (late February), and its pretty drained itself, hence my doubt as to whether it could mount a serious offensive in the sector without directing additional resources there - resources I don't believe they can spare from a southern offensive.

Kofman is a good analyst, though even he habitually tilts toward overestimating the Ukrainian side of the equation:

In Bakhmut UA sought to attrition Russian forces and fix them long enough to launch the spring offensive. But, the evidence is scant that UA still enjoys a significantly favorable attrition ratio, or that it is fixing a substantial Russian force... The reason Bakhmut matters is not because it will directly impede UA offensive prospects, but because force quality is difficult to regenerate (and ammo finite). What UA spends now it may miss later this year when the offensive is over, and may struggle to sustain momentum.

Given the totality of factors as I have recently assessed them, I have come to believe that it is not outrageous to expect that GSUA specifically will determine to conduct a feint, even if the prospect seems suboptimal to me. But if it occurs it really depends on the goals and subsequent costs. Optimistically, we could say that if there is a successful gradual break-in against the VDV that RuFOR frontline and reserve assets from Donetsk City northward will not be available to reinforce the south.

Another needless failure and drain on resources is of course not out of the question.

Svatove/Luhansk, as I detailed half a year ago or so, only makes (made) sense to pursue inasmuch as it could open an axis of attack into core Donbass from the north. Without that access it's a road to nowhere. It is also an area where RuFOR will simply always be better-supplied than its counterpart (as opposed to Bakhmut, where it's about equal at a good level, and Zaporizhzhia, where UFOR is better off with a major city in their rear). We know for sure that UFOR is distinctly outnumbered in Luhansk and has historically done a terrible job overcoming prepared defenses there. There's veritably been a pure stalemate north of the Severodonetsk River for more than half a year! I expect it to remain that way. I contextualize it in terms of the Italian theater in both world wars.

The Russians notably struck the Pavlohrad rail junction with missiles a few days ago, but that doesn't tell us much, since its location makes it essential to the supply of basically all active areas of the front.

Something that took me by surprise was the early-spring weather. Usually the advance forecasts available throughout the war have been pretty accurate a month or even two months out. Thus, in February and early March, I expected that there should primarily be rain along the frontline in late March and early April, and not too much thereafter for the rest of April. As it turned out of course, late March saw a major snowstorm and April was just an unremitting wall of rain. There seemed to be appreciable precipitation on the vast majority of days. And when it comes to Bakhmut, the city sits in a river valley... This week the rain has finally let up, and forecasts tell us to expect June and the second half of May to be dry enough. Hopefully the April forecasts were just a fluke.

My baseline prediction, against which to judge deviation: There will be a Ukrainian offensive within 2 months; at least 90% of it will be in the south; which will cover a frontage somewhere within 100km of the Dnieper (i.e. before the Zapo-Donetsk admin border, which is a longwinded way of saying "in Zaporizhzhia"); it will secure two of the theater close pivot points (Vasylivka, Tokmak, Polohy) before culminating.


Catalogues of full-strength brigades that might be involved in the offensive:

[Montmorency]

I'd like to talk a little about how I came to a figure of 10K Wagner "bayonet strength" around Bakhmut (in the given geographic definition). Note that I had not seen Prigozhin's May 2 remark that 26000 convicts had completed their 6-month contracts at the time of my comment.

Some history of Wagner's participation in the war is required:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Wagner's strength at the beginning of 2022 was rather murky, and AFAIK no good estimates existed. But based on older estimates, it was a minimum of 5K globally, perhaps much more.

Wagner as I understand typically maintains several thousand, say 1-2K personnel, in Russia at any time as its training, recruitment, and admin base, as well as personnel on rotation. Some thousands are present at any time at Wagner's bases of operation in Syria and throughout Africa. I do not expect a significant level of rotation between Africa/ME and Ukraine, because of the difference in built-up expertise between branches, as well as the complications of long-distance travel. I have always excluded Wagner personnel outside Ukraine from my calculations.

Wagner first appeared publicly in Ukraine in March, right around the seasonal transition. AFAIK Wagner was considered to have 5K personnel in Ukraine by the height of the spring offensive in May (when it was relying on LDPR conscripts for bulk infantry, somewhat akin to the future role the convicts would fill). Wagner was fundamentally implicated in the Popasna salient, the outflanking of Lysychansk, the grind towards Bakhmut - more or less all RuFOR progress on the central front since the start of the invasion.

IIRC public information on the convict recruitment campaign indicates that Prigozhin was visiting prisons from June, clearly looking ahead. It took until late summer for recruitment to really pick up, during which time the separatists were given some form of reprieve and the Russian military's draft was initiated. July and August in general were the quietest months of the war up to then, as both sides regenerated their expended resources and HIMARS caused a temporary shock to Russian logistics. UFOR also fully integrated 155mm artillery platforms and RuFOR focused on preparing to meet future UFOR offensives.

Throughout the fall Wagner escalated its activity in Donetsk again, maintaining a heavy presence along the central front from Toretsk/Mayorsk all the way to Bilohorivka. Progress was very slow. The absorption of and transition to penal assault waves was not complete and UFOR still had some space to trade along the Bakhmut Line.

By December, US intel releases claimed that Wagner fielded 10K pros and 40K convicts. This is one of those curiously-low figures that comes out of US intel. For example, I seem to recall a US estimate last summer of 5K Wagner KIA, a number I can no longer locate cite for, and which I suspect includes casualties of separatists commanded by Wagner. As of early February this year, the estimate was at least 9K KIA total, most of which over the winter, obviously inconsistent with the earlier elusive estimate. This week's estimate was of around 10K Wagner KIA from either the beginning of the year or the beginning of December (unclear). 1K Wagner KIA in almost 3 months of fighting in Bakhmut is absurdly low and well below Prigozhin's intimations anyway, even if over the course of the year Wagner's area of responsibility in the central front has shrunk and shrunk until by the early spring they were pretty much only actively fighting in Bakhmut itself and its immediate outskirts, with regular military and a few minor/new PMCs (which may or may not themselves be offshoots of Wagner) supplementing them. 10K Wagner KIA January through April would at least be more consistent with the US February estimate. As of late March, Milley attested that "It's probably about 6,000 or so actual mercenaries and maybe another 20 or 30,000 recruits that they get."

But in the end we do know US intel relies heavily on media reporting and OSINT of varying quality to generate these reports, and as this article points out, the product is often flawed or even figmentary. So I only use those figures as another guidepost.
https://ridl.io/lies-damn-lies-and-s...lly-recruited/

Here are the figures I use that I think fit best with the totality of the evidence:

In December/January I entertained higher estimates of Wagner convict recruitment, such as 65-70K, but by now I've settled on 60K, with the last 6-month contracts signed in January.

Over the course of 2022, a total of 70-75K unique individuals served in (we could say "passed through") Wagner. 60K of these were convicts, 10-15K pros (Wagner has been recruiting heavily throughout the war). It should be clear that this does not mean that Wagner's available strength at any given time was 75K. I estimate 12-15K of the convicts were already 'irrecoverable' casualties consequent particularly to the fighting in October-December, along with 3K pros. Thus for 2022 I estimated at least 15K irrecoverable Wagner casualties (including desertions but excluding pros who declined to reup their contracts, who are discussed later).


I have always used a heuristic of two irrecoverable WIA for every KIA with RuFOR losses btw. Assessments from the US and many other sources use a 4x multiplier, which I halve to crudely exclude those returned to duty after recuperation. There may be a better argument for a 1.5x multiplier, the consequences of which I explore briefly below, but that's a matter for another day.

Based on the February US estimate of 9K Wagner KIA in total, a contemporaneous Russian media investigation documenting through paperwork a floor of 8K Wagner dead, and ground-level reports from both belligerents, I figure that on average in January-April there were 2.5K convict KIA and 0.5K pro KIA per month, for a total of 10+2K KIA and 20+4K WIA.

Total Wagner losses: Convict: 14-15K KIA; 28-30K WIA
Pro: 3K KIA; 6K WIA
KIA: 17-18K
WIA: 34-36K
SUM: 51-4K

Round to 55K to include short-term pros passing through the group, as I assume an outflow of 10-33% of pros per year of combat (Wagner contracts are usually 3 or 6 months and evidently more flexible than those with the MoD). Captures are negligible.

Subtraction leaves us with a range of 15-20K Wagner in Ukraine. So how did I get 10K at Bakhmut? Well, it is known that Prigozhin and/or Russian higher-ups like to keep some Wagner detachments scattered throughout the theater of war as security forces and perhaps a strategic reserve. For example, IIRC two Wagner battalions (500 men?) were dispatched to help stabilize the Luhansk front in September. Moreover, some proportion of Wagner forces will be involved in garrison and support duties, including Wagner's independent artillery branch. Wagner does predominantly receive its logistical and artillery support from the MTO and SVRF respectively, but it is known to have its internal capabilities.

So I rounded it down to 10K "bayonet" strength at Bakhmut.


An interesting question is whether the new information in Prigozhin's figure of 26K completed convict contracts includes those with significant, or even disabling, injuries. The output is affected quite a lot depending on the answer. Obviously 26+55 is a lot more than a cumulative strength of 70. We might compromise by assuming that convicts past some level of injury serve as support, transport, or other miscellaneous personnel, but that's highly speculative. Would Wagner bother to keep around or invest in individuals who may need weeks of rehabilitation just to become available for heavy manual labor? In this case, 30-26=4K heavily injured convicts retained by Wagner.

At any rate, if the 26K figure is truthful, it makes it unlikely that Wagner recruited only 40K convicts between June and January, although it is possible if the figure does include all the seriously wounded, and the very smallest KIA estimates are used. We can pretty much rule out that a light/moderate wound is grounds for amicable release on these terms, as that would only be compatible with very small KIA or recruitment figures, given that the majority of all convicts would have passed the 6-month threshold by now even had none of them died (half a year ago was already November).

Separately, I realized we should also add a few thousand, maybe 5K, to the number of unique Wagnerites to account for 2023 recruitment. This includes their extensive public campaign as well as some number, likely between 1-10%, of convicts who decided to join as pros following completion of their term of service (these not properly added to cumulative unique individuals but to active strength at a point in time).

If we try again with 1.5x WIA ratio this time:

Total Wagner losses: Convict: 14-15K KIA; 21-22.5K WIA
Pro: 3K KIA; 4.5K WIA
KIA: 17-18K
WIA: 25.5-27K
SUM: 42.5-45K

If we subtract all convict WIA from the cumulative fulfillment figure, we get a range of 3.5-5K, which we add to the sum as representing a small set of convicts outlasting their term without grievous harm, for the new range of 46-50K, comfortably rounding up to 50K to fudge the short-termer pros. In this case though there would be 25-30K total Wagner in Ukraine as of now (70 or 75 + 5 - 50 = 25-30). For reference, Milley's late March range of 26-36K would transform to about 16-26K as of early May if applying my cumulative attrition numbers.

According to the foregoing too, Wagner has run through 2/3 of all its convicts, and no more than 10% of convicts can expect discharge without death or significant injury. Sounds about right.

What I take away from this is that despite the wide plausible ranges in which we can tweak most of the variables (total recruitment, KIA, WIA ratio), my baseline estimates of at least 60K convicts recruited, and around 15-20K Wagner remaining active in Ukraine, are at least plausible. What I have previously been most tentative about is my treatment of the pros; it is admittedly daunting to conclude that anywhere from a third (7.5/20) to 90% (9/10) of everyone who passed through the core of Wagner in Ukraine left as a casualty in the war so far. The latter should be dismissed; I would bet the true figure is between 25-50%.

I would update my current estimate to 20K total Wagner in Ukraine in light of the additional information presented by Prigozhin altogether. But it doesn't greatly affect my assessment of Wagner strength around Bakhmut, especially as one to two thousand are still being drained by the week to all causes.

Read the wall above to get a better sense of why for the past 2+ months Prigozhin has been warning that he will remove Wagner from active hostilities before long. Just abstractly, it was obvious that since his shtrafbat campaign was cut off and coopted by the Russian military in January he only had at most until the midpoint of the year to conduct bulk infantry tactics (the first formal separations or fulfillments by convicts were around the time of the capture of Soledar) before his self-imposed contractual time limit left Wagner almost where it had started the war with no further sources of rapid expansion.

So it wasn't surprising that throughout February and March Wagner was reckless in trying to storm Bakhmut, a target with some strategic value but moreover immense prestige value to Prigozhin personally. The motivation also explains how as Wagner progressively shrank it largely abandoned (by the start of spring) its attempt to operationally encircle Bakhmut and instead focused on the conceptually-inadvisable approach of just grinding out UFOR from Bakhmut through frontal urban assaults. This was actually the best case for UFOR in staging a fighting retreat from Bakhmut and preserving the grouping there, in that the pace and axis of engagement did not threaten UFOR with a hasty retreat of compressed forces across a muddy plain. But Prigozhin did emphasize as far back as February that he literally just wanted to secure the city to declare his victory.

What does surprise me is that by available reports the Russian MoD is signing thousands of convicts on similar 6-month contracts. If you're going to go as far as abolishing your prisons at least squeeze as much performance out of the ex-cons as you are from your stop-lossed contractors and draftees! Not like prisoners have more leverage over the government...

[Montmorency]

Indeed, Prigozhin claims he is in the process of moving Wagner to the reserve and assisting Kadyrov's Chechens (most of whom serve formally as part of Rosgvardia AFAIK) in taking up the slack in Bakhmut.

Butthurt as he may about not fully capturing Bakhmut before the 'deadline', this is the best option for our budding Bond villain. Not only does he still get to keep up the PR rivalry with the Russian military, he can cultivate his year-old alliance with Kadyrov by allowing him the chance to win valor for his own personage (in taking the credit for "victory"). But moreover, Prigozhin as warlord gets to retrieve and reconstitute a much-enlarged and battle-hardened Wagner Group for all manner of profitable adventures in Africa. Wagner with the full support of another state sponsor would definitely beat up most African militaries and steal their slave labor colonies.

I predicted at the beginning of the war that one unintended consequence, besides increased unmonitored weapons flows around the world, would be the presence of many thousands of Ukrainian and Russian mercenaries around the world for decades to come. Clearly part of that inheritance is going to be more organized than I envisioned.

(A few weeks ago, Prigozhin did comment that Putin should place Russian forces wholly on the defensive and preserve territorial gains, and the US intel reporting seems to indicate that Putin is committing to that course. OTOH intelligent observers were pointing that this was Russia's best option back in the summer of 2022...)

Side note: Wagner confirmed difficulties with rotating personnel between Ukraine and Africa (one of my assumptions in working out Wagner losses above), but blames the MoD for a lack of assistance.



TIL that the Bundestag is across the street from the Russian embassy in Germany.

A few years ago, working at the Bundestag's foreign affairs committee, I was told to please leave the windows unlocked during my break so the builders outside could use the restrooms on our floor. When I suggested this may be unsafe (computer passwords on post-its etc) I got a

My supervisor then turned around, pointed at the embassy across the street, and - enunciating every word - said, "if they wanted to listen to us, all they'd need to do is read my lips." A few months later, the entire infrastructure had to be ripped out for Russian penetration

The German security state has an amusing bifurcation of people so absolutely paranoid they haven't used their real first names in years, whose products it takes a week of bureaucratic wrangling to even read, and people who absolutely do not give a flipping .

And naturally, these two feed each other. The paranoids find highly classified info in Spiegel or Russian diplomatic cables, and the ordinary bureaucrats spend undue time trying to get an intelligence briefing which turns out to be little more than a three week old news summary.

[Montmorency]

As some predicted, the Bakhmut sector has heated up; Ukrainian attacks have been conducted up and down the line over the past 48 hours, with some success. So Wagner won't get to extract itself one way or another. So far only locally-available UFOR assets participated according to public reporting, although I have seen rumors that two fresh brigades have just arrived. While it's not exactly an Operation Uranus so far, if local Ukrainian units can gain momentum against the local enemy units, then it may force GSRU's hand on the allocation of reserves.

Weather in the south - accounting for the gradual soil drying process - should be optimal starting in two weeks.

[Montmorency]

Following some battalion-scale attacks a few weeks ago around Bakhmut, UFOR gained some ground and the intensity has reduced somewhat - though smaller attacks continue around the flanks daily, while Wagner continues to grind forward in the city. It's honestly shocking and fantastic that (a) Wagner committed since the end of winter to frontal urban assaults instead of expanding the salient north of the city; (b) UFOR managed to secure the flanks to the city just as 90+% of it was in enemy hands.

Had Ukraine been able to fight at Bakhmut with such secure flanks for the past 3 months, the situation could have been called very good. Now there's practically no Ukrainian salient into the city, and for the first time in 3 months the LOC into the city and its outskirts are relatively free. So while the winter breach north of Bakhmut was an error on GSUA's part, it has functionally been corrected at last and there's nothing but frontal assaults in store for RuFOR in the sector. Also, reducing or removing the canal bridgehead between Bakhmut and Toretsk - maintained by RuFOR since around the start of the year - is important for denying them future opportunities and axes of attack.



Given RuFOR's net progress of 10-15km in 6 months, it seems likely that they'll never have the capacity to even threaten Slovyansk/Kramatorsk ever again. Note that Prigozhin just now blogged the original OPLAN for clearing out the whole area south of Siversk east of the Donbas Canal (which, to be clear, was widely recognized at the outset because it's obvious); after the key tactical successes we witnessed in the winter almost everyone expected substantial progress towards this goal by now, as opposed to a costly urban combat quagmire. It's a dramatic underperformance from even relatively-low expectations. (And I'm not talking about the pro-Russian clowns who have been insisting for months that the final collapse of the Ukrainian lines is imminent, along with the encirclement of 15000, or other such very specific and implausible figures, in Bakhmut itself.)

So whether or not there are any further offensive moves around Bakhmut, the situation finally looks favorably stable.



(Yellow circles represent areas recently cleared according to evidence from both sides)

Nearly 11 months' progress:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Graph purporting to show gross reported Russian missile (not drone) fires into Ukraine since last September (over 1000 including anti-ship and SAM in ground attack):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Montmorency]

There was a raid into Belgorod, bigger than previous ones, but still of no importance, which currently seems to have been conducted more as a PR stunt than to achieve strategic misdirection.


Prigozhin just delivered a major interview. Unfortunately, I can't find a transcript and I can't access the original on Telegram or any video platform (I haven't gone to the trouble of verifying an account, and the webview platform I used to rely on seems to be out of business). This is an important concern, as media paraphrases often fail to accurately convey some or all of the message, and indeed there are many divergent reports and commentaries on Prigozhin's words.

So this is what I'm relatively confident about was claimed by Prigozhin without seeing the original source:

Wagner is in the process of leaving Bakhmut and will be mostly, but not entirely, in the reserve from June 1 for regeneration. Prigozhin did indeed wait until the final capture of Bakhmut (May 20) to proceed. 

Wagner had 50K convicts available for the Battle of Bakhmut, which in Prigozhin's definition appears to include the area from the canal (~Andriivka) north to at least Soledar if not to the Donetsk-Luhansk boundary. 
The timeline offered is unclear however, since it is possible to define a Battle of Bakhmut as beginning anytime from early summer 2022 to late winter 2023 depending on bounding; 
or from the beginning of November if starting with the Battle of Opytne, Bakhmut's adjacent suburb; or from early January if counting from the fall of Soledar; 
or from late December if starting with the first Wagner inroads on Soledar; or from late July if starting with the first attacks on Soledar - and so on. 
If I had to guess though, I imagine Prigozhin counts from sometime in last December. 

20% of convicts were KIA. Either a similar number or a similar proportion of contractors were also KIA. (As we'll see the latter is more in line with his other claims.)

Ukraine suffered 50K KIA in the battle, and 50-70K WIA. 

Referencing his concrete claim on Ukrainian casualties, Prigozhin asserts that Wagner KIA were about three times fewer than UFOR KIA, and Wagner WIA were two times fewer. 
This would equate to ~16K KIA and 25-33K WIA. I assume in this interview he uses WIA to refer to heavily wounded. Even then, I would note that these are outlandishly-low 
KIA:WIA ratios for Ukraine (as little as 1), but plausible for Wagner specifically (i.e. roughly 1.5-2, mirroring my long discussion earlier in this thread).

This would also equate to ~6K KIA among contractors.

Comparing to my long analysis:

We have a claim of 50K convicts with 10K KIA; 30K contractors with 6K KIA (20% of 30K is 6K); +/- 30K WIA overall, all over a period of at least 5 months.

First point of order is that the implicit claim on the number of contractors is really high; it's hard to believe it can be true. And if we take some commentators' interpretation that Prigozhin said contractors took the same number KIA as convicts, rather than same proportion, then he would had to have possessed 50K contractors, which I categorically reject. Maybe Prigozhin's was improperly factoring in convicts who became contractors plus Wagner contractors around the world?

Regardless, what Prigozhin is saying about contractor death rates is definitely allusive to a higher death rate than I preferred to countenance.

And of course the stock figure of 50K convicts matches a lot of the wintertime reporting, lower than my estimate of as high as 65K.

Note however that a synthetic figure of 50K + 30K = 80K is extremely close to my former estimate of unique individuals who had passed through Wagner Group within Ukraine between March 2022 and the start of May 2023. Also, my estimate for total KIA was 17-18K, and 25.5-36K WIA in that period.

On Twitter today one of the Mediazona/BBC obituary researchers estimated with as-yet unpublished data at least 10K confirmed Wagner KIA.

This all makes a good deal of sense if you adjust Prigozhin's claims as follows, for example (they were never for taking at face value anyway):

55K convicts + 25K contractors unique wartime individuals (potentially counting convicts who became contractors)
5K irrecoverable convict casualties August-November '22 (e.g. 1.8K KIA + 3.15K WIA at 1.75x)
5K irrecoverable contractor casualties March-November '22 (e.g. 1.8K KIA + 3.15K WIA at 1.75x)
== 3.6K KIA & 6.3K WIA March-November '22 [Lower than my previous estimate to account for lower convict head count]
Ignore entirely any Ukraine-deployed contractors did not remain employed by Wagner in the course of the war; assume contract recruitment among ex-cons and the general public makes it all up
10K convict KIA December-May '23
6K contractor KIA December-May '23
28K WIA December-May '23 at 1.75x
== ==
19.6K KIA & 34.3K WIA overall (54K casualties)

This brings us down to 26K remaining Wagner in Ukraine before excluding convicts who have graduated without heavy injury. By the beginning of June, we can figure that a minimum of 80% of all convict recruits will have passed their 6-month milestone even had they all sat things out in Russia, playing bingo. We can guess from the estimates above that at least half of all convicts were either KIA or dischargeably WIA depending on how we play with ratios; the overriding thing is that, assuming attrition is evenly spread across convict cohorts - this can't be true but it's good enough for our purposes - there simply could not be more than 5.5K convicts remaining in Wagner employ.

That leaves Prigozhin with, as a broad estimate hinging particularly on how we interpret Prigozhin's contractor head count and distribute WIA between branches, 4K contractors and ~~5K convicts.

All those convicts will either be gone or contracted by early summer. RUMINT has it that the Russian military has meanwhile recruited 10K convicts for its own purposes.

I wouldn't be surprised if Prigozhin exfiltrates his professional core and leaves the depreciating asset of convicts behind in Bakhmut to face any Ukrainian moves.



The bottom line is that my earlier estimates comport surprisingly well with Prigozhin's claims on Wagner strength/losses, but leave my ultimate 20K estimate from 3 weeks ago too high by perhaps 5K - that is to say, my estimate of 15K prior to adjusting for Prigozhin's figures on convict discharges may have been inadvertently near-perfect.


NB. One thing Prigozhin could be lying about outright, with respect to own losses specifically, is the ratio of losses between convicts and contractors. In which case elements of my long analysis would be more correct instead.

[Montmorency]

This war has seen the development of improvised jousting between small observation drones as a method of neutralizing enemy assets.

In the absence of any good/available NATO kamikaze drones, and partially as a challenge to Russian kamikaze drones (e.g. Lancet), Ukraine developed a small cottage industry of makeshift kamikaze ("FPV") drones.

Someone put two and two together. At last, the problem of enemy tactical UAS observation has a systematic solution. (Note: DoD will not be funding this solution for the US military)

https://twitter.com/i/status/1661535520613183489[VIDEO]


EDIT: Just noticed the WSJ article mentioning offhand that the US has transferred "over 2 million" 155mm shells so far. As the US stopped publishing figures for PDA munitions transfers from February, the rate of 155mm donations between February and May (the latest PDA was a few days ago, so can't have been delivered yet) must have been at least triple that of the first full year.

Ukraine probably has more than 1 million 155mm stockpiled between all sources of donation and purchase, and 3-4 hundred 155mm cannon in active service. I had previously estimated around half a million.

I'm going to upgrade my prior forecast of the degree of success of the upcoming strategic offensive, though I'm unsure by how much that should be.

[Montmorency]

I've remarked before on numerous documented cases of tanks in this conflict, especially on the Ukrainian side, being used to attack/suppress enemy trenches at extreme close range, even 10-20m. On Twitter the Ukrainian officer Tatarigami offered his professional opinion that Ukrainian forces have no other means of covering the advance of mounted infantry across open fields. He also mentioned that it is hoped that bounding tanks very close to enemy positions will get them within minimum range of engagement of available AT platforms.

[spmetla]

Well looks like the counter-offensive has started to enough of a degree that Russia blew the Nova-Khakova dam. Wonder what the river level and floodplain will be like after the flooding ebbs. Tragic for the folks living downriver though, bad enough being the frontline of a war without a manmade disaster washing into your town.
Curious as to how this affects the water supply to the rest of Kherson and into Crimea, I'm aware of some canals that fed from the reservoir not sure how many will function with lower water levels. Same question for the Zaporozhe nuclear power plant's cooling system.

The reporting is difficult to follow on open source info right now so just hoping the Ukrainians do well in their attacks. Russian media has thrown out a lot of plainly false numbers and videos that are showing not-Leo2s under attack.

Best of luck to the Ukrainians in the fight!

[Shaka_Khan]

As someone who questioned the chances for Russia's quick victory early on, I'm impressed at what the Ukrainians have accomplished so far in their current counteroffensive. This is considering that the Russians were expecting it to start eventually and considering that the Russians had a lot of time to prepare their defenses. Ukraine still needs to be careful because there are multiple layers of the Russian defense lines. I find this to be similar to the tactic that the Soviets used during the Battle of Kursk. And Ukraine forces don't outnumber the Russian ones overwhelmingly. Looking on the bright side, I heard that the southern front is harder for the Russians to supply due to its geography. The location sticks out from the rest of the Russian positions. Behind them is the sea. As the offensive continues, the Russians at the southern front might run low on supplies.

I hope this war ends in Ukraine's favor, and I hope the war doesn't continue on for too long after this offensive.

[Montmorency]

The vast majority of the strategic reserve remains uncommitted. UFOR has been attacking in most sectors of the theater of war, for whatever reason, but the most resources seem to have been applied to the Orikhiv-Tokmak and Velyka Novosilka axes in the south. Almost all progress has come on the latter so far, and it's a decent candidate for main effort. I wonder if it's just a matter of keeping it small brained for GSUA; that is, the Novosilka axis is the border between Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk provinces, and it's pretty much been long recognized as the least-reinforced sector of the southern front for RuFOR. The Ukrainians have placed the most pressure, and made the most gains, just attacking straight down the local highway and belt of villages leading down from Velyka Novosilka toward the Russian main line. The road network in the area isn't great, and I barely considered the strategic implications of an offensive along the provincial border, but if they break through the sole RuFOR defensive belt in the sector UFOR could continue south on the road to Mariupol (though there's no advantage in focusing on a narrow salient to attempt to besiege the city), east toward Volnovakha and the relief of Vuhledar, or west toward Bilmak and outflanking Polohy.

"Keep it simple, stupid?"

[spmetla]

Yup, seems a very simple strategy so far, probing attacks all along the southern front, continued pressure on the Bakhmut area and retain the gains from last year in the northeast. The progress from those probing attacks has been okay so far, am a little surprised that there's so little SHORAD support there but I guess there's only so many gepards and air defense systems on had so probably tied up defending cities and logistic/command nodes.
I know the vaunted 'defense lines' haven't been approached yet but honestly it doesn't look like the Russians have the manpower to defend the length of those lines anyhow. The towns/cities around key intersections like Toma will certainly been defend more vigorously but I don't envision 'fortress' defense to the last man efforts if threatened to be cutoff.

I think if they reach the main M-14 coastal highway they'll have met their initial objectives as the land bridge would depend on supplies via Crimea/Kherson for everything west of any such salient. That's still pie-eyed wishing for me though, there's a lot of farmland and plenty of small towns in the 85kms to the highway and we've seen how effective those border hedges/treelines have been for defending forces.

If they get close the highway though, I don't think they'll try to take Mariupol as its too much an icon of the war so far and has overstated political value for both sides to retain, getting the port of Berdyansk would lengthen the supply routes for everything to the West, make the defense of Tokmak more difficult as forces would be needed for retaining Melitopol too. Offensively this would also enable the use of ASMs to threaten shipping the sea of Azov and seagoing drones to threaten Rostov too. Though this threat would be more useful in keeping leverage to keep the grain deal on and denying the black sea fleet another place from where to operate.

We've only seen a few of the new brigades in the offensive but suspect the others are being used as strategic and operational level reserves as well as to rotate out the current forces to prevent culmination too soon. Glad to see the western gear isn't 'tossing turret's and has been for the most part keeping the crews alive.

[CrossLOPER]

I hope this war ends in Ukraine's favor, and I hope the war doesn't continue on for too long after this offensive.

There is the issue of asymmetry related to end-goals. For Ukraine, it is relatively simple: restore pre-2014 borders. Anything after that will be determined by the state of the world. The country will need funding for rebuilding long enough so that it can support its own military industry. It does not have a choice so long as massive threats on its borders exist.

For Russia, the situation is odd. The goal is... hold Krim? Hold The eastern edges? To what end? Crimea will eventually become a battleground like that in Donbas. No one except the desperate would want to live there while it is in that state. What could it do even if it did hold them? The Russian economy was never a strong one, and there is less and less incentive to remain. So the goal is perhaps to wait out the outrage like Assad? Syria is not in good shape and probably will not be for some time.

Speaking of which, the third party, the world, will have to decide long term goals, as well. Will Ukraine be abandoned? Will Russian oil and gas flow freely again, or will alternative sources be used until greener alternatives eventually become as common? What use does Russia have beyond this frankly outdated fuel source? My father told me about burning brown coal for warmth and the haze that resulted. Will Russia just be an outdated village?

Lots of uncertainty. It will depend purely on the strength of leadership and the attention span of the dominant generation.

[spmetla]

For Russia, the situation is odd. The goal is... hold Krim? Hold The eastern edges? To what end? Crimea will eventually become a battleground like that in Donbas. No one except the desperate would want to live there while it is in that state. What could it do even if it did hold them? The Russian economy was never a strong one, and there is less and less incentive to remain. So the goal is perhaps to wait out the outrage like Assad? Syria is not in good shape and probably will not be for some time.

For Putin and his like, that's probably acceptable to him. He wanted to be one of the Great Russians of history and expand/reclaim its borders. Sad for the folks in Russia though, unless the leaders in Russia agree to a formal peace recognizing Ukraine's borders I don't see how they rejoin the international order again in a meaningful way. They may be resource rich but that on its own doesn't build a diversified economy. Could see them more and more dependent on China for investment.

Speaking of which, the third party, the world, will have to decide long term goals, as well. Will Ukraine be abandoned? Will Russian oil and gas flow freely again, or will alternative sources be used until greener alternatives eventually become as common? What use does Russia have beyond this frankly outdated fuel source? My father told me about burning brown coal for warmth and the haze that resulted. Will Russia just be an outdated village?

Lots of uncertainty. It will depend purely on the strength of leadership and the attention span of the dominant generation.

I don't think Ukraine will be abandoned like Syria, it is much closer to the European economies, on a path to join the EU and will be opened up for greater market integration. Ukraine still needs to conduct a lot of domestic reforms to do this but I could see continued investment from the US and EU into Ukraine as no one in Europe can allow so large a state to become a failed state. Modern day Marshal plan would be very much expected.

Sadly, for Russia though, if it continues with this same political class in charge will likely remain a pariah state. Russia has always had the potential to be one of the wealthiest countries around, blessed by geography to have lots of resources, access to lots of markets etc... Unfortunately, it has historically put way to much into its military. Given the countries Russia borders, that's understandable, however not to the degree that currently happens. You don't get such a large military with broad capabilities with an economy smaller than Italy without cutting corners and spending way to much GDP on the military.

I think Putin and his gang would merrily sell Siberia in all but name to China for the ability to continue to flip off the US and NATO and not have to admit that the Ukraine war has not gone in their favor so far. It's been repeated in history too often when aging rulers feel a need to cement their legacy through some drastic action at the expense of their country's future.

[Montmorency]

After a brief pause since last weekend, there's a lot of Ukrainian attacks up and down the front again since Friday. My comments below won't take developing events into consideration.

Ukrainian senior officer Arty Green asserts that the Ukrainian campaign this year will be focused on grinding attrition of Russian forward defenses and incoming reserves, or like Kherson but without the big costly assaults (Ed. most of the losses this month were basically in the one failed action of the first week on the Tokmak axis I guess). Others believe there will be no traditional offensive, and that Ukraine will remain on the strategic defensive while trying to force defenders out of their positions through artillery pressure on all echelons.

I straight-up assess that if this is indeed the strategy, it will fail both in seriously degrading RuFOR or in reclaiming strategically-significant territory, by the end of the year.

Separately, it has long been doubtful to me that the military-political leadership of Ukraine would hype themselves up domestically so much on intent to reclaim territory and just not follow through, since there will be a price to pay. Political pressure does always influence military decision-making.

Yup, seems a very simple strategy so far, probing attacks all along the southern front, continued pressure on the Bakhmut area and retain the gains from last year in the northeast. The progress from those probing attacks has been okay so far, am a little surprised that there's so little SHORAD support there but I guess there's only so many gepards and air defense systems on had so probably tied up defending cities and logistic/command nodes.
I know the vaunted 'defense lines' haven't been approached yet but honestly it doesn't look like the Russians have the manpower to defend the length of those lines anyhow. The towns/cities around key intersections like Toma will certainly been defend more vigorously but I don't envision 'fortress' defense to the last man efforts if threatened to be cutoff.

I think if they reach the main M-14 coastal highway they'll have met their initial objectives as the land bridge would depend on supplies via Crimea/Kherson for everything west of any such salient. That's still pie-eyed wishing for me though, there's a lot of farmland and plenty of small towns in the 85kms to the highway and we've seen how effective those border hedges/treelines have been for defending forces.

If they get close the highway though, I don't think they'll try to take Mariupol as its too much an icon of the war so far and has overstated political value for both sides to retain, getting the port of Berdyansk would lengthen the supply routes for everything to the West, make the defense of Tokmak more difficult as forces would be needed for retaining Melitopol too. Offensively this would also enable the use of ASMs to threaten shipping the sea of Azov and seagoing drones to threaten Rostov too. Though this threat would be more useful in keeping leverage to keep the grain deal on and denying the black sea fleet another place from where to operate.

We've only seen a few of the new brigades in the offensive but suspect the others are being used as strategic and operational level reserves as well as to rotate out the current forces to prevent culmination too soon. Glad to see the western gear isn't 'tossing turret's and has been for the most part keeping the crews alive.

I would definitely not underestimate the resilience of the main defensive line, given that even the Russian screening line has already put up a good show. UFOR personnel losses haven't been heavy by what I can tell, but visual evidence indicates that the armored loss ratio has dropped to only ~1x in UFOR's favor this month, albeit a larger share of these vehicles may be recoverable (for an example). During the winter it was 4-8x.



Moreover, we've seen the vindication of yet another piece of equipment that many were ready to declare obsolete earlier in the war, namely the attack helicopter. Even where the attacker is willing to aggressively risk short/mid-range SAMS, the helicopter can still reliably pop up below minimum engagement altitude and deliver an ATGM/PGM snipe at maximum range before retreating (for an example, two shots and the retreat is sounded). N.b. The Ka-52 outranges the Gepard, which Ukraine absolutely cannot afford to lose even one of unless it's a maximally-decisive juncture. Maybe ironically, the attack helicopter seems to be least vulnerable in wide-open areas compared to the hillier or more wooded terrain in parts of northern and eastern Ukraine, because it's easier to camp at standoff range outside the engagement radius of available enemy SHORAD. It's evidently still got a place in the procurement framework.

Some articles on the subject.

And beyond that, the proliferation of Russian Lancet drones basically remains devastating to Ukrainian artillery and special equipment. Be it as it may that their control and accuracy characteristics are mediocre, there's plenty of them, they're easily and quickly dispatched at whatever Russian UAVs uncover, and most importantly, Ukraine still has no answer to them. Jamming is of some use, as it is against any drone either side fields, but the Ukrainians are at a similar disadvantage here as they are in SAMs.

There definitely seems to be a flaw in the skills or training of the commander and/or soldiers of the brigade (47th Mech) that saw most of the action on the Tokmak axis. Sending small units in a single column into unreconnoitered breaching actions with no or minimal artillery support, gutting companies and losing precious engineering vehicles, even repeating the error multiple times in the same general area in a few days, is already approaching the level of systematic blunder. Two months' training just isn't enough time to master the maneuver of such a formation, even if the Western vehicles are marginally more survivable - though to be precise this does seem most like a problem with the leadership.

[Montmorency]

Check out this sweet satellite survey (gif) of trenches between Tokmak and Polohy.
https://twitter.com/bradyafr/status/1670514216028065794

Anyway, out of interest, it's worth looking at some maps of the Velyka Novosilka axis in case this does become the area of the main effort. Despite appearances, and the underdevelopment of the fortifications compared to the Tokmak and Polohy axes, and allegations of shoddy work on individual objects, the Russian planners have in fact apparently put a lot of thought and doctrinal attention into the layout of defenses here. Furthermore, some of the downstream operational considerations apply equally to any form of southern campaign.

First, I don't know where this vision of a Ukrainian offensive came from, but it is pretty ridiculous, reflecting a conception of UFOR akin to the image of the US Armed Forces.



Anyway, here's a control map of the area with observed fortification overlaid. Take note of how the rail line runs (though AFAIK it has not been used during the war). Also note the hub town Bilmak/Kamyanka, and the road it runs on. This highway, the T0803, is the northern route that connects Mariupol to Melitopol, via Bilmak, Polohy, and Tokmak. Equidistant from - at the center of the triangle of - Mariupol, Volnovakha, and Bilmak is Rozivka, which is not labeled but is one of the fortified dots. It is also closely connected - a 10km bypass - to the minor highway T0518 leading leading from Velyka Novosilka. This is the highway that UFOR has largely thrust straight along in the sector, following as well the Mokri Yaly River and the belt of villages that runs along it.



Here's a topographic map of the region, overlaid with the shape of the Russian defensive belt. I've added other topographic maps of the region that I feel better demonstrate the gradation of elevation. Usually gradations are very gentle, associated with either ancient river valleys or the central plateau known as the Azov Upland. If UFOR were to enter this upland via Rozivka by following the river valley south, it would significantly complicate the LOC between Russian Donbas and Polohy. From that point, pushing just a little bit toward sub-envelopment - towards Bilmak from the east and towards Polohy from Orikhiv in the west - would leave Polohy in a geographically-untenable salient.

I suggest viewing the the full-sized images.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In other words, if it were to come to a breakthrough on the VNS axis, it would only be necessary to reach the main defensive line in the Tokmak-Polohy area in order to undermine the entire RuFOR defensive belt in the region.

But there are difficulties in a Ukrainian thrust down the T0518/Mokri Yaly:

1. Supply lines are more tenuous for UFOR than at Orikhiv/Hulyaipole, which are close to Zaporizhzhia City, the provincial capital and its Dnieper bridges. Whereas RuFOR is better supplied by being closer to Donetsk City and Mariupol. This means that strategic reserves can more easily reach the battle line.
2. Being heavily dependent on a single road leaves vulnerable flanks.
3. RuFOR took this possibility into account, even though the overall local defensive network is relatively weak.

If you look at the final map, it is a topographic of the VNS area (the lines roughly delineate UFOR starting positions pre-offensive, and current contact line, from north to south). There is a scale legend in the bottom-left. To avoid committing to an overly-narrow salient, UFOR will have to clear the heights beside the river valley as they move down it, largely cross-country work. The main defensive line here begins only just below the cutoff of the map. But it has an interesting feature. Rather than continuing eastward, there is a sudden perpendicular bend where the fortififcations begin to follow the west bank of the Mokry Yaly. So UFOR would have to break through the line at a joint, leaving blocking forces to defend the flanks along the continuation of the line westwards, while continuing to drive down the river valley with entrenched RuFOR positions running all the way down t that river valley for at least 10 km. These positions would provide sallying points for RuFOR to harrass the southward thrust.

UFOR would have to account for this by either breaking the line further north in multiple places, in order to force a retreat from the entire section running along the river, or expand the salient eastwards toward Volnovakha, which is still shielded by the defensive line at this latitude. Furthermore, in order to swerve from the Mokry Yaly toward the Azov Uplands, toward Rozivka and Bilmak, UFOR would have to break the main defensive line in one final place - the unlabeled Krasna Poliana - before it would have relatively-unhindered access toward Volnovakha or the Azov Uplands from below. And see also the strongpoints strung out along the T0803 up to Bilmak, which is ringed with significant emplacements similar to Tokmak, signalling its importance to RuFOR commanders.

Here's the control map again with junctures at which UFOR would be obliged to break through to secure their flanks and to progress southwards circled.



This is quite a challenging gauntlet, despite the sector seeming at first glance more vulnerable than a direct drive through multiple lines on the Tokmak or Polohy aces, and is one reason why I consider the overall Russian defensive belt to be well-formulated. The only maneuver it really doesn't ward against is a multi-axis breakthrough into deep cross-country geography, and that across narrow lanes given the standoff ranges of ATGM, PGM, and attack UAS.

Also, looking at the western end of the region, we can see that RuFOR has prepared a sort of fallback defensive line in the event that the whole region is lost to a UFOR offensive. It protects Melitopol from the north and east (but not the south), and is heavily committed to shielding the E105 highway running north from Melitopol, likely to enable coherent defense of the joint to the Dnieper River. After all, if this highway were cut, UFOR would essentially be given free reign to break out with flank to the river into the very rural interior border area of Zaporizhzhia-Kherson, which includes the Enerhodor nuclear facility; UFOR would be following a highway direct from Zaporizhzhia (P37), whereas there is no direct highway from south to north in the Russian zone.

My overall purpose here is to show that there are no easy axes to exploit here, but in the context of limited Ukrainian success, the T0803 highway and the axis from Vasylivka to Volnovakha, would be a sound stop line. It would place UFOR in a position to conduct future offensives from a stable line and from regional uplands down into coastal steppe. It would be much easier for UFOR to fortify along this line than for RuFOR, who certainly would not be able to fortify as well as they have along the old front.

@spmetla

[spmetla]

Anyway, out of interest, it's worth looking at some maps of the Velyka Novosilka axis in case this does become the area of the main effort. Despite appearances, and the underdevelopment of the fortifications compared to the Tokmak and Polohy axes, and allegations of shoddy work on individual objects, the Russian planners have in fact apparently put a lot of thought and doctrinal attention into the layout of defenses here. Furthermore, some of the downstream operational considerations apply equally to any form of southern campaign.

First, I don't know where this vision of a Ukrainian offensive came from, but it is pretty ridiculous, reflecting a conception of UFOR akin to the image of the US Armed Forces.

Yup, the Russian defenses are well laid out and make excellent use of local topography, their obstacles are tied into natural obstacles to great effect.

Also agree on the concept being a bit ridiculous. That timeline is impossible without air superiority. We're seeing much more brigade-division sized actions which are limited in scope and culminate rather quickly as breaching obstacles is extremely difficult, especially when you've only got finite amount of artillery to achieve the suppress and obscure portions of SOSRA.

I straight-up assess that if this is indeed the strategy, it will fail both in seriously degrading RuFOR or in reclaiming strategically-significant territory, by the end of the year.

Separately, it has long been doubtful to me that the military-political leadership of Ukraine would hype themselves up domestically so much on intent to reclaim territory and just not follow through, since there will be a price to pay. Political pressure does always influence military decision-making.

The goal of reclaiming significant peices of territory does look like it will fail. The offensive potential of the Ukraine just cannot sustain this attritional approach. Looking at Orynx it's easy to see how much western supplied equipment has been destroyed or at least severly damaged, especially in artillery.
Change in topic but this is why I'm fully supportive of the US Army seeking to regain significant long range fires capabilities over its adversaries. In contested airspace one cannot rely on airpower to strike deep in the enemy, especially if its in a short time window that the 96hour air force targeting cycle can't hit fast enough.

And beyond that, the proliferation of Russian Lancet drones basically remains devastating to Ukrainian artillery and special equipment. Be it as it may that their control and accuracy characteristics are mediocre, there's plenty of them, they're easily and quickly dispatched at whatever Russian UAVs uncover, and most importantly, Ukraine still has no answer to them. Jamming is of some use, as it is against any drone either side fields, but the Ukrainians are at a similar disadvantage here as they are in SAMs.

The lancet drones is more why I'm surprised the gepards are more forward deployed, not against attack helicopters. The very small pockets of NATOs SHORAD capabilities have certainly come to light. The threat from enemy helicopters though is where and why the F-16s can be such an important asset. It's not about dogfighting Russians but to contest the airspace enough so those attack helicopters fly low and cannot engage at max range. Certainly shows how every military needs a good mix of high and low tech capability across multiple service branches to truly do air defense.

There definitely seems to be a flaw in the skills or training of the commander and/or soldiers of the brigade (47th Mech) that saw most of the action on the Tokmak axis. Sending small units in a single column into unreconnoitered breaching actions with no or minimal artillery support, gutting companies and losing precious engineering vehicles, even repeating the error multiple times in the same general area in a few days, is already approaching the level of systematic blunder. Two months' training just isn't enough time to master the maneuver of such a formation, even if the Western vehicles are marginally more survivable - though to be precise this does seem most like a problem with the leadership.

The big flaw that I saw was it looked like they were clearing a single breaching lane instead of multiple lanes. Perhaps do to lack of engineer and breaching vehicles. If that's the case then there are only a few (in this case one!) lane down which you can attack which is just madness. The bunching up that we saw though kind of makes sense. Once those first vehicles in the lanes hit a mine or take contact everything behind tends to stop. The spacing between vehicles though is what really gets me though, US doctrine we'd be much farther apart with the only exception being vehicles moving up to provide local direct fire support for those in contact so that recovery vehicles can get the personnel or vehicles back from where they were disabled.
It takes a lot of training and competence to learn not to bunch up. Human psychology likes having a vehicle or person close by to support you but outside of trench clearing and urban combat that's not the right answer.
The western vehicles are certainly more survivable, the amount of Leo2s in which we then see the hatches open post-combat are good indicators that the crew was able to evacuate successfully. This brigade however seemed to have bought in the 'wunderwaffe' problem and used them in a stupid manner. I imagine that brigade commander is probably fired or on very short notice.

The major lesson learned out of all this that I see for the US is that we don't deal with minefields too well and have limited resources to deal with that. The gulf war was the last major breaching action but that was with total air superiority in relatively open desert against a foe that didn't have the morale, training, or equipment to seriously contest the coalition against them.
As the US doesn't use anti-personnel mines anymore (apart from M18 claymores) it means when we make training plans we typically don't have minefields in our way. Simple minefields take away all speed and momentum, we saw it in WWII on the Russian Front and we see it now.

[Shaka_Khan]

I wouldn't be surprised if this civil war in Russia turns out to be true. It reminds me of Russia during WWI.
It could also be deception. I remember a video of the leader of the Wagner Group (Yevgeny Prigozhin) complaining about the lack of supplies. It doesn't seem to be the case now.

[Montmorency]

The goal of reclaiming significant peices of territory does look like it will fail. The offensive potential of the Ukraine just cannot sustain this attritional approach. Looking at Orynx it's easy to see how much western supplied equipment has been destroyed or at least severly damaged, especially in artillery.
Change in topic but this is why I'm fully supportive of the US Army seeking to regain significant long range fires capabilities over its adversaries. In contested airspace one cannot rely on airpower to strike deep in the enemy, especially if its in a short time window that the 96hour air force targeting cycle can't hit fast enough.

Why tanks are still needed, including with the capacity to counter the latest counterpart tanks where encountered.

The lancet drones is more why I'm surprised the gepards are more forward deployed, not against attack helicopters. The very small pockets of NATOs SHORAD capabilities have certainly come to light. The threat from enemy helicopters though is where and why the F-16s can be such an important asset. It's not about dogfighting Russians but to contest the airspace enough so those attack helicopters fly low and cannot engage at max range. Certainly shows how every military needs a good mix of high and low tech capability across multiple service branches to truly do air defense.

The thing is, the Gepards are literally irreplaceable for the time being, and we did indeed see one struck by a Lancet while redeploying back in the spring! In other words, there will be dear Gepard losses whenever they are brought up for extended periods, and out of the three dozen in Ukraine, even if the civil air defense were stripped of them all there is no way they can cover all the enablers even in the south alone.



I guess it would be theoretically possible to succeed so well in counterbattery that RuFOR artillery is silenced, giving an opportunity to cluster entire brigades of own arty, EW, logistics, etc. while covering them with just a platoon or two of Gepards, but then that presents a great target for Russian UPMK and other air-dropped bombs, which Ukraine definitely doesn't have the long-range AD to deter reliably in this circumstance. Heck, at that point even tactical cruise missiles are a great bet. Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock...

The big flaw that I saw was it looked like they were clearing a single breaching lane instead of multiple lanes. Perhaps do to lack of engineer and breaching vehicles. If that's the case then there are only a few (in this case one!) lane down which you can attack which is just madness. The bunching up that we saw though kind of makes sense. Once those first vehicles in the lanes hit a mine or take contact everything behind tends to stop. The spacing between vehicles though is what really gets me though, US doctrine we'd be much farther apart with the only exception being vehicles moving up to provide local direct fire support for those in contact so that recovery vehicles can get the personnel or vehicles back from where they were disabled.
It takes a lot of training and competence to learn not to bunch up. Human psychology likes having a vehicle or person close by to support you but outside of trench clearing and urban combat that's not the right answer.
The western vehicles are certainly more survivable, the amount of Leo2s in which we then see the hatches open post-combat are good indicators that the crew was able to evacuate successfully. This brigade however seemed to have bought in the 'wunderwaffe' problem and used them in a stupid manner. I imagine that brigade commander is probably fired or on very short notice.

The major lesson learned out of all this that I see for the US is that we don't deal with minefields too well and have limited resources to deal with that. The gulf war was the last major breaching action but that was with total air superiority in relatively open desert against a foe that didn't have the morale, training, or equipment to seriously contest the coalition against them.
As the US doesn't use anti-personnel mines anymore (apart from M18 claymores) it means when we make training plans we typically don't have minefields in our way. Simple minefields take away all speed and momentum, we saw it in WWII on the Russian Front and we see it now.

In Military Aviation History's review of that battle, a German Leopard 2 crewman was quoted that the vehicles should be spaced apart by 100m according to Bundeswehr doctrine.

Inability to field multiple attacking columns or groups at the same time has been a tactical plague on both sides almost since the beginning of the war. You don't have to be well-versed in military affairs to rcognize the concepts of mass and momentum delivered in a short time frame. But the absolute modal tactic of the war is sending up a platoon or company in a column until it either retreats or secures the objective and if the former, rinse and repeat. Though of course in more positional battles a success doesn't always mean occupying former enemy positions; turning it into a gray zone is also a common mission.

Many explanations besides insanity have been proposed, though how they combine in reality is unclear: Units have too little skill in combined arms, officers can't figure out the tactical coordination of larger formations, battlefield commanders have their hands tied somehow, there is a pound-foolish lack of loss tolerance in conducting attacks as opposed to initiating them, the perceived risk of preparing larger attacks is too high (concentrations or gathering points in the close rear are frequently targeted by artillery) , or command just have no intention of trying to exploit local breakthroughs but want to see action nevertheless...

Resolving this challenge is evidently still beyond UFOR.

But the bottom line is, without Desert Storm-style air supremacy or North Africa/Kharkiv levels of density, in order to conduct ground maneuver one has to be prepared to push forward mass and absorb high initial casualties. Even against helicopters at standoff range, by being spread out in multiple robust columns while deploying smoke and moving quickly - that's another thing, in this war vehicles are usually driving at school zone speeds it seems - it is possible to make progress despite the threat.

(Re: mines, recall my discussion a few months ago of how potent even sparse minefields are against single-column attacks with low loss tolerance. In WW2, greater loss tolerance and mass plus a broader distribution of tactical maneuver made mines less of a strategic barrier.)



If you look at the large control map from my previous post, you'll see - I might have pointed this out in the past - the very rural triangle between Polohy/Huliaipole, Bilmak, and Velyka Novosilka. Russia put some of the scarcest effort in fortifying that area, likely because it is tens of miles of mostly cross-country driving and they knew it would be difficult for UFOR in its current form to push a large force in there and keep it supplied and on the move.

Is my impression correct that the US Army in this situation, under similar constraints as Ukraine is experiencing, would do their best to try to pierce this part of the front? It is almost guaranteed to be a 'free ride' away from minefields between major outposts, and once you're at Bilmak, you're in the deep rear.

I wouldn't be surprised if this civil war in Russia turns out to be true. It reminds me of Russia during WWI.
It could also be deception. I remember a video of the leader of the Wagner Group (Yevgeny Prigozhin) complaining about the lack of supplies. It doesn't seem to be the case now.

Definitely one for waiting and seeing.

[Montmorency]

Well, this definitely seems like the real McCoy.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I've seen significant resistance, which indicates a reaction, but far too little to influence the progress of events, which indicates a loss of grip on the security apparatus.

[Montmorency]

Well, that allowed for a great variety of explanatory accounts.

EDiT: In better news, Germany has made a very large commitment of Gepards to Ukraine.

[spmetla]

In Military Aviation History's review of that battle, a German Leopard 2 crewman was quoted that the vehicles should be spaced apart by 100m according to Bundeswehr doctrine.

Yeah, that was a good interview he did.

The thing is, the Gepards are literally irreplaceable for the time being, and we did indeed see one struck by a Lancet while redeploying back in the spring! In other words, there will be dear Gepard losses whenever they are brought up for extended periods, and out of the three dozen in Ukraine, even if the civil air defense were stripped of them all there is no way they can cover all the enablers even in the south alone.

You're right that they are irreplaceable. Just goes to show how there needs to be a good SHORAD mix that is currently not fielded in the west. I think those 'skyranger' systems look the most suitable thing to be added to the mix but there's no existing stock of spares to give to Ukraine beyond the few that went there for testing. Hope that it goes to line production soon though industry is undoubtedly waiting to see if there're significant orders. This seems a system that should be produced in the hundreds so it can be present throughout the battlefield but that's not looking to be the case for actual orders.

But the bottom line is, without Desert Storm-style air supremacy or North Africa/Kharkiv levels of density, in order to conduct ground maneuver one has to be prepared to push forward mass and absorb high initial casualties. Even against helicopters at standoff range, by being spread out in multiple robust columns while deploying smoke and moving quickly - that's another thing, in this war vehicles are usually driving at school zone speeds it seems - it is possible to make progress despite the threat.

That's one of the problems in this contested environment, the usual way to deploy smoke is with artillery and to keep up a screen of smoke for even 15 minutes involves a lot of tubes that become very vulnerable to counter battery attacks. The distances are too great for mortar based systems to provide smoke and the threat is too dangerous for ground based smoke pots to assist.

Yup, the progress is slow and against such well prepared defenses tedious. Still they're making gains and undoubtedly taxing the ability of the Russians to use their reserves.

Interesting the Wagner group fallout. I'm curious how many will be relocated to Belarus, if that's all 4k that were involved in the march north that's a brigade of potential combat power taken off the board. Curious to see if there end up being loyalty tests and purges throughout the Army ranks in the following weeks as we did see videos of Russian troops supposedly putting out pro-Wagner videos in the early hours of their taking Rostov.
Those aviation assets and aircrews lost as well as just the fact they had to apply combat power against their own forces behind their own lines is quite the toll. Having to strike your own fuel reserves to deny their use to mutineers is certainly not a high point of military power.

[Montmorency]

The Bradley brigade (47th) just keeps getting torn up. There's one long video in particular of a Bradley and its dismounts getting shit on by mines and arty. If it weren't for the Russians launching typical half-hearted counteroffensives up and down the front in an attempt to spoil the offensive, June '23 might easily be Ukraine's worst month of the war for comparative equipment losses.

[Montmorency]

You're right that they are irreplaceable. Just goes to show how there needs to be a good SHORAD mix that is currently not fielded in the west. I think those 'skyranger' systems look the most suitable thing to be added to the mix but there's no existing stock of spares to give to Ukraine beyond the few that went there for testing. Hope that it goes to line production soon though industry is undoubtedly waiting to see if there're significant orders. This seems a system that should be produced in the hundreds so it can be present throughout the battlefield but that's not looking to be the case for actual orders.

There is no doubt that such solutions as this will increasingly be doctrinalized in major militaries.