The_Capt

These are the key questions right now with respect to RA re-establishing some sort of line other than the Russian border - "Can they?", "Where?" and "When?". I suspect they can, plus the UA will need to reset at some point, their logistical system is also being strained by success. But remember this entire week is a result of months of slow but steady - and highly precise...getting that dig in - attrition of the entire RA operational system. Once again the UA, thru the use of deep strike capability combined with what I am sure is a historic ISR suite, has projected an enormous amount of friction on an already pretty badly shot up RA (I suspect losses in Phase I were on the high end of estimates). This form of corrosive warfare - combined with some of the best IO I have ever seen - does not disappear, the RA system has cracks, bad ones that do not magically disappear if Putin declares "full mobilization" (the boogy-concept of this war, right next to WMDs). It takes a military months to re-tool the damage caused by sustained HIMAR strikes, which really acted like an ersatz air superiority. Russia's big mistake, likely the biggest of Ph II was convincing itself that it was still the attacker. I am giving a special shout out to @Hapless here as he called this way back in Aug - the UA offensive had started with the deep strike-thru-firepower manoeuvre way back in Jul. As the effects of this precision strikes campaign accumulated the RA system got weaker and weaker. However, they did not pull back to more sensible and defendable positions - not one step back! And still tried to convince themselves, and the world to some extent that they were leading this dance. Ukraine did a brilliant campaign of negative undeciding Russian offence, they then initiated a double offensive operation which has left the RA in null decision paralysis, and are now damned well creating positive decision all over the freakin place. The trick was seeing that initial campaign for what it was - it wasn't desperate defence of the Donbas, although it may have started out as such, it was the beginning of this whole thing. UA will likely culminate at some point, Russia will dig in and try and pretend this was a planned withdrawal or some BS. But the UA has solved for operational offence...done, and we have been waiting for that since March. They can do it again, likely faster and better equipped. The RA is reeling and its reserves are qualitative garbage. And then there is the other question...how long can Putin hold on in the face of all this? This is looking a lot like 1905 again, and that did not pan out so well for the czar and led to that basement in the Urals.

Heh, once again a word we - especially Steve- have been using here for months has found its way out into the world. I am betting mainstream media will start using it in 24-48 hours. I am not popping champagne until the UA pushes out a third axis towards Melitopol. If they can cut that line and divide the two theatres the entire western front will likely collapse back to Crimea - and maybe beyond. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-9 ISW report for yesterday dropped. Punchline is that the RA is not having a good week.

Well this is very encouraging. We probably need to wait another few days to really get a better idea but the long awaited, and forecasted collapse looks like it may be happening. How complete a collapse is still in the air, as is whether or not the RA can re-establish defensive lines. That said if this keeps going at its current pace we had better move the conversation to Ukraine’s reconstruction - and dealing with a possible violent fracture in Russia.

Definitely has that collapsing feeling doesn't it? Answer likely is: the Russians spread themselves too thin, wasted people and resources to take tiny patches of ground in the Donbas, for "reasons", UA HIMARed them in depth breaking logistics, and now the whole rotten side of the house is caving in. A little later than we had hoped (I think we were talking Jun-Jul) but hey, looking very promising.

Wow. If those forces are accurate then this was a hybrid offensive - lotta light and SOF out front, heavier stuff on shoulders. This wasn't fog eating snow, this was steam flash-melting snow.

This was my thinking as well. By pulling the RA in two different directions they may stress the middle - the infamous "strategic land bridge" - to the point of breaking. The central question is whether the UA has enough left in the gas tank to pull this off. A double operation separated by 500km internally is tough enough, if they have enough for a third and can pull it off, the entire rotten RA house may collapse. This entire thing has been built on months of attrition, highly accurate attrition that has made the entire RA system brittle. Of course, it is too soon to tell. It will be a major victory if the UA can disrupt the RA near Kherson to distraction and re-take Kherson. A third central push would be simply brilliant but they also do not want to overstretch. It is all in the wind right now.

There is a point when this narrative starts to sound like they are trying to convince themselves. “This isn’t happening, this can’t be happening!” First stage is denial, then anger, bargaining, depression and finally, regime change. It’s a process.

My guess it that it is a combo of things: - Lack of effective CAS system in the RA - Dispersed UA makes hard to find and hit concentrations - Nasty UA ISR superiority plus wicked next-Gen MANPADS makes getting in and out very dangerous. Add these up and… Oh and getting airfields HIMARed or whatever that was, might also mean the Russian Air Force is also in the process of pulling back.

They bagged a Lt Gen? I thought this guy was a LCol. What the hell is a Lt Gen doing far enough forward to get snatched?

So, again, do not get too focused on the tactical here. The UA currently looks like it is balancing two simultaneous operations at either end of the front, one in Kharkiv and one at Kherson. They are seeing gains in both and look like they are balancing resources to each of them...at the same time. This is by no stretch "basic competence" for any military, to the point that I highly doubt 3 out of the 5 EYES militaries could pull this off right now without a lot of prep time - and even the UK may be stretching it. C4ISR, logistics - especially transport, force generation and projection and deep strike are all being coordinated at a high level between these two operations, and they look like they are doing very well. No more "oh but the Russian's suck" on this one, what the UA is doing is on the upper end of difficult for any military, let alone one that has been in a meat grinder over the summer. The last time the west did anything even remotely like this was Gulf War (Iraq 03 was a single axis), and we had air supremacy and it still took months to pull off, and we were not being attacked the whole time.

So here we are at metrics again. The actions at Kharkiv support the overall collapse of the RA on both physical and morale dimensions. There will be a lot of strain to reposition a defensive line, somewhere which will translate into logistics and ISR strain as forces reposition etc. That plus a healthy bagging of RA PoWs is all good...however..... The big payoff, the biggest, is that the UA appears to have solved for offence on what is looking like an operational scale. This is significant as only the RA has been able to sustain anything that looks like offensive operations and this was done through WW1 levels of massed artillery, which the UA does not (and likely will not) have. So what? Well if the UA can make large scale offensives work - and this is all the shaping and setting of pre-conditions beforehand - and can do it with what they have then this is potentially an entirely new war. If the UA can push out to the line you have drawn, all the way to the SD river, while also pushing and more importantly attriting at Kherson then the probability of a forever war has just dropped significantly. Personally I am not celebrating yet but nothing in the last week has pointed to this being a failure, nor do I think the UA has culminated yet.

Russia had one shot at this sort of approach and they blew it in about 72 hours back in Feb. They had enough horsepower to attempt 5 major axis of advance that got very good penetration, just went nowhere meaningful. They did not figure on this weird dispersed hybrid omni-defence Ukraine put up, which eroded their axis in about a month. I think estimates of just how broken the RA was after Ph I were low-balling significantly because the RA never was capable of more than single a axis mass pressure after that down in the Donbas. My guess is that they got so badly mauled in Ph I that single axis 100m at a time was all they could do...while some in the west freaked out and treated like some sort of "turning point". Now in Ph III, I would not get too focused on where the main effort is, or is not, at this point because the main effort is likely wherever things are working. This is brilliant stuff the UA is doing, really professional work. I was impressed at Kherson as they had linked deep strike with a tactical attrition approach (fog v snow) that is clearly making gains. Then they had enough in the tank to do a simultaneous attack back at Kharkov all the way on the other side of the line. Both attacks threaten to bag/cut off large quantities of RA and have possibly gripped the Russians in what I refer to as a null decision space. The RA has a dilemma that it cannot likely solve - its capabilities are too shot up, its logistics hammered, its C2 is divided and uncoordinated, and its ISR is last gen. So how does the RA solve a two front attack? It likely doesn't and just digs in and holds on and does local flailing - no decision is a decision. This means the UA can shift the main effort based on conditions it has set. It has all the ISR and can see the RA stress in high resolution so it can bounce between the two poles with transportation infrastructure that still works (another complete Russian strategic failure in pre-conditions setting) and hit the RA where it "ain't good" to largest effect. If they do this right they may bagging both operational objectives. Tempo and timing on this are brilliant, they have some real talent in the planning backfield on this one. The RA is getting bounced around like a ball between cat paws, which causes enormous stress to their entire system, which was not world class to start with. The fact that the UA had the depth to even try a competent double simultaneous operation is a clear sign they are damned healthy. Mud starts in Oct-Nov? So they have at least a month to play this game out, I expect that the RA system will buckle somewhere by then. I swear to gawd if the UA now pulls another rabbit out of the hat and drives right up the middle and takes Melitopol this thing might be "over by Xmas" - but I really try to avoid saying that phrase as it has a lot of bad historical baggage. My guess is that they will not, but will continue to hit lateral LOCs as the RA flails around trying to play Dutch Boy to stop the bleeding. I can only hope this shuts up the "Ukraine is doomed" crowd for a good long time. Broken, barely holding on militaries do not wage operations like this - they behave much more like the RA in response to them.

There is also a shock effect on western sensibilities. We have not seen a war like this, even from afar, in some time (or at least not one we pay attention to - sorry Yemen). We are invested in the war, but it does not look like any war we have been in since Vietnam or Korea. For example, attacking a peer force that is dug in, 5:1 casualties is not crazy at the tactical level in an attack, they are trading lives for results and that is an equation we have simply forgotten. None of our recent wars, and we had days on them trust me, are anywhere close to this. In fact if we had an entire platoon wiped out in Iraq of Afghanistan it would have had major political results. We make the mistake of applying our old metrics to this fight and they do not add up because this is a very different fight.

Should caveat "options" as "effective options", or simply good ones - you always have a near infinite set of bad options, which Russia also seems to often view as good ones (see: war crimes). Ultimately, at this progression trend Russia will be down it its last effective option, negotiate and/or withdraw, particularly as it defensive options collapse. If those in power continue to choose the bad ones, hoping they will somehow turn out as 'good' then the regime change theory starts to take on more weight. I have heard a lot on how "Putin will never go", "regime change in Russia is impossible". Well first of all it is definitely 'possible', history backs that one up, the question is probability. If Putin and cronies decide to end this, then regime change is less likely, at least right away. If the Russian people decide the war is over, well that is a different story. Not many governments who lose a war where the people decide in the end survive - Franco-Prussian France, WW1 Germany, Vietnam etc. Then the issue is how that power is redistributed and things don't look good for a peaceful transition in Putin's Russia. To the 'Putin never-fall" circle, I can only look at history and point to governments and regimes failing for a lot less than the gaping maw of political and strategic failure forming up on this one. Well one second to midnight at a time.

So this is interesting - we are now talking operational options. Russian offensive options have pretty much condensed to what we saw in the Donbas over the summer. But UA does not appear interested in compressing Russian offensive option space any further, because it really does not have to. They are now working on compressing defensive options space though projection of dilemma. What is interesting is that if you look at the whole war so far it has been one long dying of Russian options: - Phase I saw strategic option spaces collapse from quick win-to-siege urban areas-to-'Donbas' while terrorizing as best can everywhere. - Phase II saw operational offensive options reduced to basically zero and all that has been left is "stalemate/long war and hope the west loses interest", particularly once they went into the operational pause that never ended. - Now in Phase III we are seeing Ukraine attack and compress operational defensive options spaces, which of course can break stalemate and counter western ennui - because we love a winner. Russia is having to chose where to defend because they simply do not have enough forces to cover an 850km frontage, so UA hits them at both ends at the same time. It is a steady consistent trend of collapsing Russian options space, which is why I am not sure why there are still commentators in the main stream that see this any other way. Unless the Russians can open up other options spaces - beyond the insanity of calling for WMDs - then this war will continue to go in the direction it has been since about 27 Feb. People can talk kit, stuff and training all day but until we see Russian options spaces either turn around, or they are able to compress Ukraine's options spaces, this whole thing has the same feel it has had since the beginning, watching Russia lose in slow motion...until it isn't slow anymore.

What a weird place to put in a LOC bridge: Connected to what? Unless they are barging supplies down the Dnipro...of course then why put in a freakin bridge? Just pull up alongside in Kherson. They will need to do at least two more bridging ops to cross the Konka and Chaika rivers and it is about 3km to an MSR, all over wide open country with zero cover. If they are stockpiling in that barge bay, it is just going to get clobbered by indirect fire - at the rate UA is advancing they are going to be in short (Ia) Excalibur range soon (they are already in mid-range, Ia-2, and of course HIMARs). If UA is smart, and they have demonstrated that quality, let them build the thing and dedicate the resources, get the stockpile up, and then hit it.

I do no think this is that kinda fight, more this:

That's about 400km to swing focus and resources. The UA clearly has much higher operational agility, on shorter LOCs. Still 400km in a warzone is a long way for land forces...space based ISR and HIMARS with ATACMS are a different story...nice. We have been talking a lot about precision, we should do some thinking on reach, particularly of enablers.

I think this whole Kharkiv/Izyum thing is designed to pin down RA forces while main effort is Kherson based on the shaping operations efforts; however, it could be the other way round as well.

Nope, but sabotage ops can. Russian stocks and production are likely down if they are buying that many rounds. A few possibilities: 1) the reports of their war stocks was way over blown, 2) the war stocks they have are crap due to poor storage, 3) they have fired so many rounds that they need to re-stock to sustain operations, 4) UA actions have added to losses more significantly than they admit, and 5) domestic production cannot keep up with expenditure. The reality is likely a combination of all of these. Regardless it is another indicator of the stress on the Russian military system - this time strategic. The only other explanation is if this was a pre-war buy that just came through but I do not see any evidence of this.

Hold the phone a minute...Russia is purchasing millions of indirect fire ammo from NK. I thought Russia had a bottomless ocean of artillery ammunition stocks? Why do they need to buy more? "HIMARS were a minor irritant and the RA was just going to blast the UA off the battlefield inch by inch with a never ending supply of ammo." Whoops.

So how many RA troops north of that river? Was it 20-25k, assuming they only take half, that is a lot of PoWs to deal with. Well looks like the Russians have a new clever strategy to hurt UA logistics; overburden it with Russian prisoners of war. Seriously, don’t mobilize just take 2 million Russian fighting age males, dress them in something that looks like a uniform, walk them over and surrender. Saves a ton of money and cuts out the problematic killing/dying part. UA buckles under weight of PoWs and sues for peace, the West sees poor Russian prisoners looking very sad and falters - now that is thinking outside the box!

So what do you suppose the distance from the “stores to river” looks like? And does the tractor spin pipe like a spider and it web? In order to keep “stores” out of arty, let alone HIMARS ranges we are talking many kms of those poor little tractors laying pipe, very slowly, across open ground with trucks with pipe loaded on them. It isn’t time, it is doing a fairly major infrastructure project in a war zone while under enough ISR to fry a seagull in flight. So the RA, the paragon of military engineering, pulled this off unseen and now are also able to hide all the refueler traffic to and from POL points, across a river and sustain refuelling ops for hundreds vehicles burning at combat daily rates. Ya, not buying it.

Heh, no one holds a grudge like an Afghan.