Ukraine

[LFC]

The ability of the Russian military to conduct any real offensive actions outside of lobbing munitions to slaughter civilians may now be almost completely spent / squandered. At that point they may be shifting to a defensive and occupational stance. They may not fare much better as these too have risks and challenges associated with them.

While the Russian Army’s offensive in the east continues, it is likely in the short term that they will reach the limit of their offensive capability. As such, today I explore what transitioning to a defensive strategy might mean for the Russians in Ukraine. 1/25

6/ It is possible, to support their offensive in the east, the Russians may launch attacks in the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.

7/ But, given the scale of the Ukrainian military mobilisation, the amount of western aid, and the demonstrated inability of the Russians to competently undertake large scale operations, this too is unlikely to result in significant breakthroughs.

8/ For this reason, it is likely the Russian capacity to continue its offensive operations in Ukraine is close to reaching its high-water mark. The Ukrainians have corroded the physical, moral and intellectual capacity of the Russian military in Ukraine.

9/ The Russian President and military high command will continue to demand advances, but at some point in the next month or two, any capacity of the Russians to do so will be at an end.

The guess is that they're dug into eastern Ukraine for the long haul but the Ukrainians are motivated and well supplied by some of the richest nations on Earth. Meanwhile Russia is bleeding, both literally and economically. I suspect it's going to be a long, awful slog. Of course Putin just might be looking at holding out until Trump gets back in office and continues to pay his debts to him.

[andydp]

May 27, 2022 16:42:13 GMT LFC said:

The ability of the Russian military to conduct any real offensive actions outside of lobbing munitions to slaughter civilians may now be almost completely spent / squandered. At that point they may be shifting to a defensive and occupational stance. They may not fare much better as these too have risks and challenges associated with them.

The guess is that they're dug into eastern Ukraine for the long haul but the Ukrainians are motivated and well supplied by some of the richest nations on Earth. Meanwhile Russia is bleeding, both literally and economically. I suspect it's going to be a long, awful slog. Of course Putin just might be looking at holding out until Trump gets back in office and continues to pay his debts to him.

Thank you. Another great analysis.  While the Russians have shown themselves to be "paper tigers" we have to remember injured tigers can still hurt you.  Most important, while this is based on available data, its still  conjecture, 

[LFC]

May 27, 2022 20:19:29 GMT andydp said:

Thank you. Another great analysis.  While the Russians have shown themselves to be "paper tigers" we have to remember injured tigers can still hurt you.  Most important, while this is based on available data, its still  conjecture, 

Imagine if Putin had been more realistic and used all of his initial forces to take the land bridge to Crimea and maybe push to steal the entire coast. I can't imagine he would have failed at that more limited objective. Instead he went for the whole thing and pissed away men, equipment, and money.

[LFC]

Unhappiness over the war is showing in the upper ranks as well.

Top Russian Military Brass Caught Venting: ‘You’re Fucked, Putin—Motherfucker!’

Two high-ranking Russian military officers have been caught shit-talking Kremlin leadership in unimaginably colorful language. The two colonels blast the defense minister and lash out at that “motherfucker” Vladimir Putin for his poor strategy in Ukraine, according to a leaked recording of a phone conversation.

While Western and Ukrainian intelligence agencies have routinely reported on plunging morale among rank-and-file Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, many of whom have been heard complaining of dysfunction in intercepted communications, the latest audio appears to be the first to expose frustrations among high-ranking officers.

Radio Free Europe’s Ukrainian service published the curse-laden recording late Monday, reporting that it was provided by Ukrainian intelligence. One of the men heard in the purported intercepted call—identified as Colonel Maksim Vlasov—is no stranger to the eight-year war in Ukraine’s Donbas. He has been wanted by Ukrainian authorities since 2018 for the 2015 shelling of Mariupol—an attack in which he previously implicated himself by carelessly blabbing about it by phone in an earlier intercepted phone call covered by Bellingcat.

The latest recording, dated April 14, is said to show Vlasov and another colonel, Vitaly Kovtun, a doctor at the Naro-Fominsk military hospital said to hold many military honors, raging against the many failures of Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

They both express particular ire for Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

“There are horrible losses of our guys, fuck. And you know, I am familiar with military history a bit, and I compare this to the fucking Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. It’s fucking one and the same,” said Vlasov, referring to a war in which the Soviets are estimated to have lost 126,875 troops.

He goes on to take aim at Shoigu, whom he describes as an “incompetent fucking layman.”

“He’s a layman in his work. This is not his fucking thing. He’s just a fucking showman,” the man identified as Vlasov says.

Kovtun responds in kind, saying, “Shoigu is fucking shit. [There are] no contracted forces. Of course not! Why would there fucking be? They paid them 30,000 rubles [$490], where are they going to get contractees?”

[LFC]

Two good threads on how the Russians are adjusting and learning from their spectacular failures to notch up some smaller successes.

93 Days

95 Days

[LFC]

Equipment destruction update:

Date   Vehicles     Tanks       Since 2/24
3/18:  1574         244         3 weeks
3/25:  1831 (+257)  289 (+45)   4 weeks
4/01:  2175 (+344)  359 (+80)   5 weeks
4/07:  2614 (+439)  449 (+90)   6 weeks
4/14:  2885 (+271)  505 (+56)   7 weeks
4/21:  3068 (+183)  528 (+23)   8 weeks
4/28:  3248 (+180)  580 (+52)   9 weeks
5/05:  3417 (+169)  605 (+25)  10 weeks
5/12:  3623 (+206)  664 (+59)  11 weeks
5/19:  3675  (+52)  671  (+4)  12 weeks
5/27:  4150 (+475)  733 (+62)  13 weeks
5/19:  4207  (+57)  747 (+14)  14 weeks

Slowing down again. With the new weapons including a longer range missile systems the U.S. is soon to be sending I suspect on the ground verification of destruction will become less and less common.

[LFC]

Equipment destruction update:

Date   Vehicles     Tanks       Since 2/24
3/18:  1574         244         3 weeks
3/25:  1831 (+257)  289 (+45)   4 weeks
4/01:  2175 (+344)  359 (+80)   5 weeks
4/07:  2614 (+439)  449 (+90)   6 weeks
4/14:  2885 (+271)  505 (+56)   7 weeks
4/21:  3068 (+183)  528 (+23)   8 weeks
4/28:  3248 (+180)  580 (+52)   9 weeks
5/05:  3417 (+169)  605 (+25)  10 weeks
5/12:  3623 (+206)  664 (+59)  11 weeks
5/19:  3675  (+52)  671  (+4)  12 weeks
5/27:  4150 (+475)  733 (+62)  13 weeks
6/02:  4207  (+57)  747 (+14)  14 weeks
6/09:  4273  (+66)  762 (+15)  15 weeks

They are in the slog period. I suspect this could go on for years.

[LFC]

The list of Russian war crimes continues to mount. They are allegedly going to use Ukrainian civilians to clear landmines.

As Russian authorities plow full-steam ahead with a deranged PR effort to “restore” the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol that Putin’s troops nearly wiped off the face of the earth, Ukrainian citizens detained in other cities occupied by Russian troops will reportedly be used to perform the deadly task of removing landmines from the area.

That’s according to Ukraine’s Security Service, which released audio Thursday of what it described as an intercepted phone call between an officer of Russia’s FSB and a colleague apparently tasked with cleaning up the supposedly “liberated” city.

In the nearly three-minute recording, the purported FSB officer identifies himself by the call name “Kaspii” and asks his colleague if he’s been briefed on plans to de-mine Mariupol “the natural way” and send those “detained” in Russian-occupied Melitopol to complete the task.

His colleague, who says he’s located in Basan in the Zaporizhia region, responds that he had not yet been informed of that plan but “that wouldn’t be bad.”

They have also sentenced 3 foreign fighters to death.

Three foreign fighters captured by Russian forces as they fought alongside Ukrainian troops in Mariupol have been sentenced to death by a court in occupied Donetsk, Russia’s Interfax news agency reports.

The trial against British citizens Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, as well as Moroccan citizen Ibrahim Saadun, was rushed through by the Donetsk People’s Republic’s Supreme Court within a matter of just three days, with the first hearing held Tuesday and the death sentence handed down Thursday. They have one month to appeal the sentence.

[LFC]

Russia's war crimes seem endless.

A well-known Ukrainian photojournalist was “executed in cold blood” by Russian forces when he tried to retrieve footage he’d shot shortly after the Feb. 24 invasion, an investigation has found.

Maks Levin, a photojournalist who freelanced for Reuters, the BBC, Associated Press and several Ukrainian news agencies, vanished in the early days of the war, just a day after his 2-year-old son’s birthday in mid-March. After frantic search efforts by family and friends, his body was found outside Kyiv in early April, along with that of Ukrainian serviceman Oleksiy Chernyshov, a friend with whom Levin had been traveling.

Now, Reporters Without Borders has revealed that its investigators found “overwhelming” evidence of a straight-up execution at the scene in Moshchun, outside Kyiv. An investigation by the group published Wednesday said evidence suggested that Levin, who was wearing civilian clothing and a bulletproof vest labeled “PRESS” at the time of his death, was likely either ambushed by Russian forces and executed at point-blank range, or interrogated first by Russian troops who set Chernyshev on fire before executing both men “by shots to the head.”

“Analysis of the photos of the crime scene, the observations made on the spot and the material evidence recovered clearly point to an execution that may have been preceded by interrogation or even acts of torture. In the context of a war heavily marked by propaganda and Kremlin censorship, Maks Levin and his friend paid with their lives for their fight for reliable information. We owe them the truth. And we will fight to identify and find those who executed them,” said Christophe Deloire, the secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders.

Levin’s burned out Ford Maverick was found at the scene with at least 14 bullet marks. His body, found about 14 meters away, was found “lying on its back” with “three bullet impacts… one in the chest and two in the head,” the report notes.

Investigators also determined that three Russian trenches had been dug at the last crossroads Levin had passed through in his car.

Tragically, the investigation found that Levin had been killed as he tried to recover his drone, which contained images of Russia’s takeover. Vladimir Putin’s troops had moved in to seize control of the area in the three days since Levin lost his drone there.

[LFC]

Interesting analysis on how a major limiting factor in the war is manufacturing capacity.

2/ This week, an article by Alex Vershinin at @rusi_org explored the consumption rates of ammunition in the Russo-Ukraine War and how industry capacity to manufacture the large quantities of ammunition needed for modern war is limited.

3/ You can read the full article here:
The Return of Industrial Warfare
Can the West still provide the arsenal of democracy?
rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare

4/ The article argues that “war between peer or near-peer adversaries demands the existence of a technically advanced, mass scale, industrial-age production capability.” This is true.

5/ But it is also an old lesson re-learned. In the wake of the Cold War, and the draw down on military spending, military forces were downsized (reducing demand), and militaries engaged in operations that only had short periods of high intensity combat.

6/ As a consequence, most military organisations lost the institutional memory of industrial scale activities. And the decline of war theories peddled by some lulled western societies into a false sense of security about the capacity needs of potential future conflicts.

7/ Therefore the article from Alex Vershinin is an extremely important one. In drawing observations from the war in #Ukraine, it can assist all of us to ensure we are better prepared for large scale conflict in the 21st century.

8/ And the reality is however that Vershinin’s article is only part of the story. While he does a magnificent job examining the production of munitions, industrial scale war has other dimensions.

9/ I will briefly explore three other aspects of scaling up military capacity beyond that of munitions. These are: equipment, infrastructure and people.

[LFC]

An analysis of Russia trying to hold both the Donbas and the southern coastal areas, along with the an explanation of Ukraine's pre-planned national resistance initiative. Preparations were made in advance, over a year ago, to make things as hard for the Russians as possible. Putin's f***ing fiasco is going to bleed both nations dry just to salve his pathetic ego.

9/ The Ukrainians, however, have another element of their campaign to eventually re-take their territory in the south and make things difficult for the Russians: the Ukrainian resistance movement.

10/ This is not a movement that has risen organically in the wake of the invasion. Back in May 2021, the Ukrainian parliament passed its ‘Bill #5557’ which provided for the ‘foundations of national resistance.’

Ukrainian Parliament ( Verkhovna Rada) registered a bill #5557 “About foundations of national resistance” – Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center
May 25th the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky submitted for consideration of Verkhovna Rada projects of the bills of Ukraine “On foundations of national resistance”, “About changes in article 1…
uscc.org.ua/en/ukrainian-parliament-verkhovna-rada-registered-a-bill-5557-about-foundations-of-national-resistance/

11/ Additionally, in the lead up to the war, weapons caches appear to have been pre-located in various locations in the south and east of Ukraine. It is likely that there are small teams of military specialists who are training and leading resistance cells across the south.

12/ This dangerous, behind-the-lines warfare aims to absorb the attention of an occupying Army, to slowly bleed its capacity and its morale, in preparation for conventional offensives that will liberate that territory.

[andydp]

Jun 22, 2022 20:44:06 GMT LFC said:

An analysis of Russia trying to hold both the Donbas and the southern coastal areas, along with the an explanation of Ukraine's pre-planned national resistance initiative. Preparations were made in advance, over a year ago, to make things as hard for the Russians as possible. Putin's f***ing fiasco is going to bleed both nations dry just to salve his pathetic ego.

11/ Additionally, in the lead up to the war, weapons caches appear to have been pre-located in various locations in the south and east of Ukraine. It is likely that there are small teams of military specialists who are training and leading resistance cells across the south.

12/ This dangerous, behind-the-lines warfare aims to absorb the attention of an occupying Army, to slowly bleed its capacity and its morale, in preparation for conventional offensives that will liberate that territory.

I said this before: I'm betting there are Special Ops teams from every NATO country in UKR right now, doing that "voodoo they do so well".

[LFC]

One advantage of being a powerful dictator is that you can plan well in advance. Putin made sure he hobbled Ukraine's ability to respond starting nearly a decade ago.

Russia’s recent gains on the battlefield can be attributed in part to a quiet, nearly decade-long sabotage campaign to block Ukraine from vital ammunition supplies, according to several reports.

The tactics include bullying ammunition sellers not to deliver to Ukraine and secretly blowing up depots across Eastern Europe prior to this spring’s invasion, The Washington Post reports, citing Ukraine Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar.

Russia and Ukraine use the same artillery, thanks to their common military hardware that dates back to the Soviet era. It’s a specific type of of ammo, mostly consisting of 122mm and 152mm caliber rounds, which are no longer common in modern warfare.

The Post found that Russia has for years been making sure Ukraine is not only in short supply, but experiencing difficulty resupplying. “Even if everyone gives us this ammunition, it will still not be enough,” Malyar told the paper. Russia pops off around 60,000 rounds a day, which is tenfold more than Ukraine has the capacity to fire back. And since the inventory is so specific, the global supply does not have the capacity to meet Ukraine’s wartime demand.

Weapons brokers who are working to covertly supply Ukraine told the Post that they are being regularly threatened with death if they make deliveries, which has acted as a successful deterrent. In other cases, Russian brokers working undercover outbid Ukraine suppliers, adding a further layer of delay. “The Russians are working very hard to ensure that we can’t sign contracts for this,” Malyar told the Post. “And then if we sign a contract, to prevent us from getting the shells delivered here.”

[LFC]

Putin is stepping up his senseless murder campaign.

Russia fired a series of rockets at a shopping center in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, on Monday, raising alarm bells that Russia is stepping up its attacks on civilian structures regardless of the loss of life.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday there were more than a thousand civilians inside the shopping mall and the casualties to come might bring even more shock and horror to Ukrainian people already confronting so much death and destruction as Russia has been waging war in Ukraine for 124 days.

“The number of victims is impossible to imagine,” Zelensky said on Telegram. “The mall is on fire, rescuers are fighting the fire.”

If this is not a terrorist attack, then what!? If Russia is not a terrorist country, then who are they? pic.twitter.com/jWhQdtSkSB

— Roman Hryshchuk (@grishchukroma) June 27, 2022

[LFC]

This is an interesting take on the impact of crowdfunding on the war. The part about America now funding all of its wars with credit is interesting as well.

Since the start of the war in #Ukraine, we have seen a range of initiatives from private citizens to raise funds for different aspects of the war. I have found this fascinating. So, today, a short examination of crowd funding the war.

In her superb book, "Taxing Wars: The American Way of War Finance", @sekreps explores how war financing has evolved in America. Her key findings were that funding wars has shifted from a broad tax on all citizens, to government borrowing from the Korean War onwards.

There has been a shift from citizens having a transparent stake in war to an approach where accountability is masked – and the impetus for shorter wars is lessened. The Ukraine War has seen a different way of citizen participation & support for the war effort: crowd funding.

This was highlighted early in the war with a crowd funding effort through crypto currencies. More recently 4 x Bayraktar attack drones were crowdfunded, coordinated by @serhiyprytula, by a volunteer organisation that raises funds for military equipment & humanitarian purposes.

[jackd]

Citizens are, of course, paying for the war in part through the continuing inflation.

[indy]

[LFC]

Update on where things stand. Russia has taken the Luhansk region but are bleeding badly.  The calculation seems to be to continue sacrificing troops and equipment in an attempt to outlast Ukraine and its supporters.

[LFC]

It's been a while since I did an update.

Equipment destruction update:

Date   Vehicles     Tanks       Since 2/24
3/18:  1574         244         3 weeks
3/25:  1831 (+257)  289 (+45)   4 weeks
4/01:  2175 (+344)  359 (+80)   5 weeks
4/07:  2614 (+439)  449 (+90)   6 weeks
4/14:  2885 (+271)  505 (+56)   7 weeks
4/21:  3068 (+183)  528 (+23)   8 weeks
4/28:  3248 (+180)  580 (+52)   9 weeks
5/05:  3417 (+169)  605 (+25)  10 weeks
5/12:  3623 (+206)  664 (+59)  11 weeks
5/19:  3675  (+52)  671  (+4)  12 weeks
5/27:  4150 (+475)  733 (+62)  13 weeks
6/02:  4207  (+57)  747 (+14)  14 weeks
6/09:  4273  (+66)  762 (+15)  15 weeks
--
7/05:  4573 (+200)  830 (+68)  19 weeks

It seems like Russian equipment losses are now at a consistent level that is certainly lower than during their ill-fated attempt to seize Kiev.

[goldenvalley]

Perhaps this is a reflection of my rage filled last 2 weeks, but I now want NATO to go into Ukraine. The Russian military and Putin need to suffer a huge loss and end the destruction of a whole country.

[LFC]

W..T...F? Could things be so bad in Russia that it's worth selling out your own troops? Of course the alleged amount sounds enormous. If true I highly doubt it's the Ukrainians putting up the money.

A Russian colonel was accused of selling information on the whereabouts of his own men to foreign intelligence agencies by concerned Russians, according to Ukrainian authorities.

An audio recording of what the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate says is an intercepted phone call appears to suggest the colonel was not the first who was accused of selling out his own troops. The call, released Monday, includes a conversation between a man identified as a Russian soldier and a female acquaintance. No details were provided on where the soldier was based in Ukraine, but he can be heard in the recording complaining of constant shelling.

The conversation then takes an interesting turn when the unnamed woman notes that a squadron of the “31st Brigade” was given up by their own Russian colonel, apparently referring to the 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade.

“The airborne troops taken captive?” the man asks.

“Yes, yes, 76 people were taken,” she says, adding that “they were sold out by their own” and naming a “Colonel Matkovsky” for the betrayal.

“There have already been many such instances,” the man responds, noting that “they leak information” about the troops.

“It’s true, it’s true. I later spoke with a FSBishnik [an agent of Russia’s Federal Security Service] … and he said yes, it’s all true. They found 17 million in his account,” she said.

[LFC]

The money issue is coming up and many in the political class, and not just Republicans, are calling for Europe to pony up a greater share of the cost of support.

U.S. intelligence officials and leaders from other nations agree that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has entered a drawn-out stage, with no end in sight. And while Biden administration officials continue to support sending more aid to Ukraine, as each successive round of U.S. aid to Ukraine is announced, senior U.S. officials and lawmakers are starting to get on edge about just how much and how long the United States is going to keep footing the bill for Ukraine.

The Biden administration is trying to get allies to step up their aid to Ukraine, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Michael Carpenter, told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview.

“There is concern as well, and there should be, rightfully so, about burden-sharing. And we certainly are trying very hard to get our allies and partners to step up,” Carpenter told The Daily Beast. “Some of the countries that maybe haven't provided as much militarily, we will certainly look to them to also provide reconstruction assistance and macro financial assistance, and other forms of support.”

The United States has contributed the most by far to help Ukraine defend itself since the beginning of the year, according to a Kiel Institute for the World Economy analysis. But as reality settles in for policymakers and lawmakers that this war is not going away anytime soon, a sense of unease at just how much the United States is bankrolling the aid is emerging.

[LFC]

Putin is sucking his personnel and equipment wells dry.

The supposed “operational pause” touted by Russian military officials also comes amid reports of Putin’s troops taking increasingly drastic measures to hide losses and shore up depleted resources.

In Kherson, where an official from Russia’s Federal Security Service recently took over as the head of the “new” Kremlin-run administration, authorities have begun burning the bodies of dead soldiers “to hide the real number of losses,” according to Ukrainian intelligence.

“On the outskirts of the city, sites with a large number of burned human remains have repeatedly been seen,” the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said in a statement, noting that local authorities try to pass off the fires as if they were caused by artillery strikes.

Russia has also apparently been getting more desperate in its attempts to find fresh cannon fodder for the war—so much so that the military has begun trawling public employment agencies intended to help the unemployed, according to a new report.

The independent investigative outlet IStories reported Thursday that several Russian brigades that suffered the heaviest losses in Ukraine—including one that was accused of carrying out genocide in Bucha—have been using job-vacancy portals to prey on down-on-their-luck people desperate for work, and in some cases sending them straight to the frontline without any training.

[LFC]

Russia is turning to Iran for drone equipment. Gee, if only Trump hadn't completely torpedoed relations with them. Maybe if they saw the U.S. as a better route forward they wouldn't be in bed with Russia.

Iran plans to supply Russia with potentially hundreds of drones for its war in Ukraine, some with combat capabilities, a US official has said.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the information the US had suggested Iran was preparing to train Russian forces to use the drones.

He added that it was unclear whether Iran had delivered them yet.

Iran said technological co-operation with Russia preceded the war, without confirming or denying the US claim.

"There has been no special development in this relationship recently," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani Chafi was quoted as saying by Iran's Fars news agency.

Drones have played an integral part in the war for both Ukraine and Russia.

[LFC]

Another Russian general is killed along with 5 other senior Russian officers.

Ukrainian forces took out yet another Russian general in a massive counterattack in Kherson, local authorities said Tuesday.

A general and five Russian military officers were killed in a Ukrainian strike on Russian headquarters using the U.S.-supplied M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARs), according to Serhiy Bratchuk, a representative of the Odesa regional military administration.

“After a strike by HIMARS on the headquarters in the Kherson region, Major General [Artyom] Nasbulin, the head of the 22nd Army Corps of the Russian Armed Forces (military unit 73954, Simferopol), was killed. Colonel Kens, whose death we announced yesterday, died there as well. And apart from him, the commander of the 20th motorized rifle division (military unit 22220, Volgograd) Colonel Andrei Gorobyets, the head of the operational department of the headquarters of the 20th MRD, Colonel Koval, the head of artillery of the 20th MRD, Colonel Gordeev. In total more than 150 died, including 5 officers,” Bratchuk said in a statement posted on Telegram.