Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022-3

[dubsartur]

Ukraine will not be conscripting a new class of soldiers this fall, although it will keep the current conscripts in service  https://kyivindependent.com/uncategorized/zelensky-cancels-autumn-conscription-postpones-demobilization  That says a lot about what impact they think the Russian mobilization will have for the next six months.  (Yes, if they had more kit they might raise more units, but if they were short of soldiers they would keep raising them).

Russia continues its terror strikes against gatherings of civilians rather than saving its missiles for the Ukrainian army.

The Russian army is fighting hard and has plenty of brave people but their leaders put them in a very bad situation.

Edit: Perun the vlogger has an essay on Ukraine's shortage of heavy equipment (armoured vehicles, tube artillery) at the start of August and how captures and donations had not tripled Ukraine's heavy equipment to match its tripled army strength https://piped.mha.fi/watch?v=cVx3Nlifo4Q  He mentions the same thing I noticed earlier that without air superiority its hard for Ukraine to mass large forces for counterattacks without getting bombed and shelled until they scatter.

[Jubal]

Ukraine has reportedly captured the railway junction city of Lyman after surrounding it and cutting off the Russian garrison.

[dubsartur]

Ukraine has reportedly captured the railway junction city of Lyman after surrounding it and cutting off the Russian garrison.

There have been a lot of contradictory stories out of Lyman but we will see how many Russians were able to withdraw and what they could bring with them. 

Per the Guardian, Ramzan Kadyrov the podestà* of Chechnia is publicly calling for the Russians to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

* "strongman" sounds better in the original Italian doesn't it?  Just like the Russian "national community" in Putin's latest speech is a Volksgemeinschaft in the original German.

[Jubal]

Hm, the medieval podestà was usually a foreigner rather than a native (precisely to avoid them having a pre-existing bias between factions within a city) - so Kadyrov doesn't quite fit the bill normally referred to by that term, on account of being an actual Chechen. I can't really think of a modern equivalent to that particular practice.

[dubsartur]

The Ukrainians are pushing towards Kreminna (the next road / rail junction after Lyman) and along the west / right bank of the Dniepr towards Kherson.  Somewhere in Donetsk too.  Apparently Putinist Telegram is a mix of silence, panic, and rumours about high-tech BTUs, "new tactics that the enemy was not ready for," and how spirit can overcome superior weapons.

Part 2 on strongmen coming when I have energy.

[Jubal]

Elon Musk has reportedly weighed in suggesting Ukraine should come to terms with Russia including neutrality and returning Crimea. Twitter folks have observed that it's not clear whether the bit he empathises with Russia over is having a lot of very expensive vehicles embarrassingly break down when they weren't meant to, or having a recent major takeover bid fail very dramatically.

More seriously: reports are that a Ukrainian armour column has broken through Russian lines northeast of Kherson, so recapturing land there is still happening, though the Russians do seem to be putting up some resistance, we're not getting the speed of the Kharkiv rout at this point (possibly Russia has better troops in place in the south). The aforementioned strongman, Kadyrov, has apparently committed to send several of his children, including ones under any reasonable age for combat, to the front lines. It isn't really clear what the logic here is.

[Pentagathus]

The southern region is made of open fields and plains, whilst the northern region is heavily forested. Apparently this is a large part of why Ukraine has had more success in the north, as their infantry can move under cover and undetected, whereas around Kherson it is very difficult to hide troop movements so any counter-offensive is bound to be more of a gruelling push.   

[Jubal]

Makes sense - though I guess when a line breaks on open plains, it may be harder to roll it back to another spot? Having the Dnipro behind the Russians I guess is a large natural obstacle though, and they'll be dug into the towns.

[psyanojim]

The southern region is made of open fields and plains, whilst the northern region is heavily forested. Apparently this is a large part of why Ukraine has had more success in the north, as their infantry can move under cover and undetected, whereas around Kherson it is very difficult to hide troop movements so any counter-offensive is bound to be more of a gruelling push.

Kherson is also where Russia moved a lot of their best troops in response to Ukraines highly telegraphed announcement that it would be the focus of their attacks, leaving east of Kharkiv outside Izyum/Lyman defended by the dregs.

In addition, the Ukraine army is still a weird mish-mash of poorly trained 'territorial defence' units, Soviet-era troops and highly mobile NATO-trained/equipped units. It seems Ukraine were able to form new units for the Kharkiv counterattack consisting mainly of these NATO-style units, and they met feeble resistance except in the large towns of Izyum/Lyman, which they simply bypassed and surrounded.

The big advantage Ukraine have in Kherson is their almost total severing of the Dnipro river crossings, leaving Russian troops there starved of supplies. I would guess this is now starting to bite, especially with autumn/winter weather kicking in.

And if the Russians do try to withdraw from Kherson, that river will become a nightmare, especially for heavy equipment.

[Pentagathus]

Ahh I see. Iiirc there were reports of quite a few explosions in Russian munition stores/supply centres in Crimea, do we know if these are acts of saboteurs already living in the area or strikes by the Ukrainian military?

[dubsartur]

I think some of the Territorial Defense are pretty mobile, but they have mostly civilian vehicles, sometimes with mounted weapons to make them 'technicals'.  Ukraine would like more Infantry Fighting Vehicles so its infantry can move more safely in environments with artillery or machine gun fire, but tanks and IFVs are the two categories which the chancellor of Germany has refused to send. https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/09/fact-sheet-on-german-military-aid-to.html

Don't know why people keep giving narcissists with social media accounts attention.

Ahh I see. Iiirc there were reports of quite a few explosions in Russian munition stores/supply centres in Crimea, do we know if these are acts of saboteurs already living in the area or strikes by the Ukrainian military?

I think that Ukraine has been quiet about how it is causing things in Crimea to go boom and Russia insists its just aircraft accidents and misplaced smoking.  I would expect there are Ukrainian special operations troops in Crimea or at least on the mainland opposite.

[psyanojim]

I didn't mean to sound negative about the territorial defence guys btw, they and the 'old-school' regular army were absolutely essential in blunting the initial Russian blitz. Their defensive actions (eg around Bakhmut, fighting off constant assaults for 200+ days) have been nothing short of heroic.

By 'mobility' I'm not just talking about the speed of the vehicles. I'm talking about having the integrated logistics, comms/coordination and speed of decision making to perform high-tempo combined-arms attacks over multiple days or even weeks. This is where the NATO training and equipment gives a serious advantage over the Russians.

The Russian command structure simply hasn't been able to keep up with the sheer tempo of the recent Ukraine counterattacks. Hence Russian units constantly being unreinforced, surrounded and cut off.

[dubsartur]

Sure, "three SUVs full of volunteers speed through a gap in the Russian lines and drive around looking for convoys to shoot up" is a different kind of mobility than "three brigades systematically envelop a town."

I think a big part of the Russian problem has been a lack of troops.  Even if their commanders were clever and had a way to communicate with everyone, there is only so much you can do when your last reserves are dead in the fields outside of Bakhmut or on fire in a train station in Luhansk.

We have not been hearing so much about Russian communication problems as we heard in spring but they must still be an issue.

[psyanojim]

I think a big part of the Russian problem has been a lack of troops.  Even if their commanders were clever and had a way to communicate with everyone, there is only so much you can do when your last reserves are dead in the fields outside of Bakhmut or on fire in a train station in Luhansk.

Sure, but that doesn't explain things like the Russian retreats from Izyum/Lyman. In both cases, the slow Russian decision making ended up with panicked routs rather than controlled withdrawals.

In Izyum, they ended donating massive quantities of captured equipment to Ukraine.

And in Lyman, by the time they had made the decision to retreat, Ukraine had artillery fire control over the entire 30km road from Lyman to Kremmina which was the only Russian retreat path. The videos from that road are of utter carnage.

[dubsartur]

There are claims that Putin has issued "not one step back" orders.  That might be why Russian forces stayed in Lyman until the only way out was driving a 'highway of death.' 

It is amazing that Russians are still abandoning so much equipment without blowing it up or setting it on fire or melting key parts.  Armies have lots of tools to break things, that is kind of their job!

Of course the Russian officers are going to blame everything on Putin and his advisors, and Putin and his advisors are going to blame everything on the fighting soldiers and eevil NATO Polish African-American mercenaries.  And in 50 years historians will be writing very serious books about how the Russian army can not have been as incompetent as people at the time said.