The war continues even as there are estimates of Russia’s inability to operate at full capacity but this could be simply a lull. The naval blockade at Odesa needs to be resolved. War crimes trials begin. Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi says that with the support of Ukraine's military leadership, OSINT volunteers of InformNapalm released two decks of cards featuring Russian war criminals, politicians, and propagandists.
Senior intelligence officers are conducting a review of whether America’s spy agencies underestimated Ukraine’s will to fight before Russia’s February invasion, the top intelligence official announced this week.
In recent months, lawmakers have raised the issue of how well spy agencies can predict the will to fight, in the face of fiercer than expected fighting from Ukraine’s military this year, and the more rapid than expected collapse of the Afghan military last summer.
The new review is being conducted by the National Intelligence Council and will look at both how the United States evaluates a military’s will to fight and its capacity to wage war. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, said the issues of both will and capacity are “quite challenging to provide effective analysis on.”
There is no timeline for the review to be completed, American officials said. The intelligence council will examine analyses of Ukraine and Afghanistan as well as other examples, like the Iraqi military’s partial collapse in the face of the Islamic State’s offensive in 2014. Ms. Haines said that as part of the review, intelligence officers would look at different methodologies that could be used to gauge a military’s will to fight.
Some American officials believe the idea that the intelligence community misjudged the Ukrainian will to fight has been overstated. Many analysts, including at the State Department and elsewhere, did predict that the Ukrainian military would resist fiercely, but what was less clear at the time was how well the Russians would fight and how quickly Ukraine could take advantage of Western military aid and intelligence to thwart Russian attacks.
Nevertheless, the track record of the military in assessing how well other forces will fight is poor, said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine. In an interview Friday, Mr. King said intelligence agencies needed to consider other methods of assessing how well armies will perform. Had the United States had a better sense of the Ukrainian military’s will to fight, perhaps more aid would have been sent sooner.
“It’s much easier to count tanks,” Mr. King said. “That’s pretty straightforward. It’s very hard to assess something like the will to fight, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, because it’s an important piece of information.”
After the hearing, Ms. Haines’s office received a partially classified letter from the Senate Intelligence Committee. While the letter praised the intelligence agencies for accurately predicting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it said they had underestimated the Ukrainian military and overestimated the Afghanistan’s army. The letter, according to people familiar with it, raised questions about the methodology used by the intelligence agencies in gauging will to fight.
The classified letter, and the review by the intelligence community, was earlier reported by CNN.
www.nytimes.com/...
Key Takeaways
- Ukraine has likely won the Battle of Kharkiv. Russian forces continued to withdraw from the northern settlements around Kharkiv City. Ukrainian forces will likely attempt to disrupt Russian ground lines of communication to Izyum.
- Ukrainian forces have likely disrupted the Russian attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in force, undermining Russian efforts to mass troops in northern Donbas and complete the encirclement of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
- Russian forces have likely secured the highway near the western entrance to the Azovstal Steel Plant but fighting for the facility continues.
- Russian forces in Zaporizhia Oblast are likely attempting to reach artillery range outside Zaporizhia City.
- Ukrainian forces are reportedly attempting to regain control of Snake Island off the Romanian coast or at least disrupt Russia’s ability to use it.
Immediate items to watch
- Russian forces will likely complete their withdrawal from the vicinity of Kharkiv City but attempt to hold a line west of Vovchansk to defend their GLOCs from Belgorod to Izyum. It is unclear if they will succeed.
- The Russians will continue efforts to encircle Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, including by crossing the Siverskyi Donets River, but may have lost the momentum needed to complete this undertaking.
- Isolated and uncoordinated Russian attacks will likely continue along the rest of the Izyum-Donetsk City salient but will not likely make significant gains.
- Russian troops may attempt to drive to within artillery range of Zaporizhia City, although it is far from clear that they will succeed.
- The Battle of Mariupol will, apparently and surprisingly, continue.
Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and four supporting efforts);
- Subordinate main effort- Encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
- Supporting effort 1—Mariupol;
- Supporting effort 2—Kharkiv City;
- Supporting effort 3—Southern axis;
- Supporting effort 4—Sumy and northeastern Ukraine.
Key Takeaway:
Russian President Vladimir Putin likely intends to annex occupied southern and eastern Ukraine directly into the Russian Federation in the coming months. He will likely then state, directly or obliquely, that Russian doctrine permitting the use of nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory applies to those newly annexed territories. Such actions would threaten Ukraine and its partners with nuclear attack if Ukrainian counteroffensives to liberate Russian-occupied territory continue. Putin may believe that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would restore Russian deterrence after his disastrous invasion shattered Russia's conventional deterrent capabilities.
Putin’s timeline for annexation is likely contingent on the extent to which he understands the degraded state of the Russian military in Ukraine. The Russian military has not yet achieved Putin’s stated territorial objectives of securing all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and is unlikely to do so. If Putin understands his military weakness, he will likely rush annexation and introduce the nuclear deterrent quickly in an attempt to retain control of the Ukrainian territory that Russia currently occupies. If Putin believes that Russian forces are capable of additional advances, he will likely delay the annexation in hopes of covering more territory with it. In that case, his poor leadership and Ukrainian counteroffensives could drive the Russian military toward a state of collapse. Putin could also attempt to maintain Russian attacks while mobilizing additional forces. He might delay announcing annexation for far longer in this case, waiting until reinforcements could arrive to gain more territory to annex.
Ukraine and its Western partners likely have a narrow window of opportunity to support a Ukrainian counteroffensive into occupied Ukrainian territory before the Kremlin annexes that territory. Ukraine and the West must also develop a coherent plan for responding to any annexation and to the threat of nuclear attack that might follow it. The political and ethical consequences of a longstanding Russian occupation of southeastern Ukraine would be devastating to the long-term viability of the Ukrainian state. Vital Ukrainian and Western national interests require urgent Western support for an immediate Ukrainian counteroffensive.
www.understandingwar.org/...“-ramp”
Kremlin Plans to Annex Southern Ukraine:
Russian President Vladimir Putin likely intends to annex occupied southern and eastern Ukraine directly into the Russian Federation in the coming months to consolidate his control over these territories and possibly deter Ukrainian counterattacks. The Kremlin likely plans to annex much of the Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russian forces—portions of Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts in the south and the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in the east that Russian forces and their proxies control. Moscow may also annex other Kremlin proxy statelets like South Ossetia (in Georgia) and Transnistria (in Moldova). ISW has previously detailed the ongoing Kremlin conditions-setting to annex or recognize occupied Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk.[1] That conditions-setting includes replacing local media with Kremlin-run media outlets, installing Russian internet and communications networks, forcibly transitioning local economies to the Russian ruble, kidnapping, executing, and replacing local Ukrainian officials with Russian collaborators, and likely hunting and eliminating anti-occupation activists and partisans. Widespread Russian atrocities against Ukrainian civilians are part of the established Kremlin playbook to gain control over occupied areas.[2]
www.understandingwar.org/...“-ramp”
The Kremlin no longer conceals its intentions to annex areas of occupied Ukraine. The secretary of United Russia, Putin’s political party, visited Kherson on May 6 and announced that “Russia is here forever.”[3] The Russian-appointed deputy head of the Kherson Civil-Military Administration, Kirill Stremousov, announced on May 11 that Kherson would develop a legislative framework for joining Russia by the end of 2022 and would entirely forgo a public referendum after reports that Russian occupation authorities were preparing for a fraudulent Kherson independence referendum.[4] He said that the international community did not recognize Russia’s (rigged) referendum on annexing the Crimean Peninsula after Russian forces invaded and captured that Ukrainian territory in 2014, and that a Kherson referendum was therefore unimportant.
Stremousov said aloud what Russians have tried to obfuscate: Russia will annex Kherson despite widespread local opposition to annexation. Stremousov’s statement shows that the Kremlin likely realizes any attempt to conduct a “referendum” in Kherson would be met with widespread resistance even after months of Russian brutalization and intimidation of the local population. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov did not contradict Stremousov in a May 11 press conference, stating that the Russian annexation of Kherson “must have an absolutely clear legal background, justification, [and] be absolutely legitimate, as was the case with Crimea” but explicitly did not mention a referendum. Russian-appointed Kherson regional head Volodymyr Saldo said on May 9 that “if the Russian Federation is here, then the entire set of laws, the structure and construction of power will be precisely Russian.”[5] He said that he expected “some kind of [Russian] federal district will be created, which will include the Crimea, Kherson, and Zaporizhia regions,” though the Kremlin is not bound to administer an annexed Kherson Oblast in this manner and regularly contravenes the stated expectations of its other proxies.
The Kremlin has many models for the governance of annexed territories based on Russia’s complex and varied federal system. Occupied territories could be incorporated as oblasts (the administrative unit roughly analogous to American states that comprise most of Russia), republics (like the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula), federal cities (like Russia’s two main cities of Moscow and St Petersburg and the city and naval base of Sevastopol), or an entirely new organizational structure.[6] The Kremlin could also choose to first turn occupied territories into proxy “people’s republics” as an intermediate step, or offer a phased path to annexation. ISW cannot currently forecast which path to annexation the Kremlin will likely pursue, but the recent Russian official comments noted above suggest that outright annexation is currently the most likely.
www.understandingwar.org/...“-ramp”
WASHINGTON — Shipping traffic in and out of Russia has remained relatively strong in the past few months as companies have raced to fulfill contracts for purchases of energy and other goods before the full force of global sanctions goes into effect.
With the European Union poised to introduce a ban on Russian oil in the coming months, that situation could change significantly. But so far, data show that while commerce with Russia has been reduced in many cases, it has yet to be crippled.
Volumes of crude and oil products shipped out of Russian ports, for example, climbed to 25 million metric tons in April, data from the shipping tracker Refinitiv showed, up from around 24 million metric tons in December, January, February and March, and mostly above the levels of the last two years.
Jim Mitchell, the head of oil research for the Americas at Refinitiv, said that Russia’s outgoing shipments in April had been buoyed by the global economic recovery from the pandemic, and that they did not yet reflect the impact of sanctions and other restrictions on Russia issued after its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Crude oil typically trades 45 to 60 days ahead of delivery, he said, meaning that changes to behavior following the Russian invasion were still working their way through the system.
“The volume has been slow to decline, because these were contracts that have already been set,” Mr. Mitchell said. Defaulting on such contracts is “a nightmare for both sides,” he said, adding, “which means that even in the current environment nobody really wants to breach a contract.”
Russia has stopped publishing data on its imports and exports since Western governments united to announce their array of sanctions and other restrictions. Exports of oil or gas that leave Russia through pipelines can also be difficult for outside firms to verify.
But the global activities of the massive vessels that call on Russian ports to pick up and deliver containers of consumer products or bulk-loads of grain and oil are easier to monitor. Ships are required to transmit their identity, position, course and other information through automatic tracking systems, which are monitored by a variety of firms like Refinitiv, MarineTraffic, Kpler and others.
www.nytimes.com/...
IOW, 43% of the total committed Russian mechanized combat vehicle fleet and likely the best 29% of the total Russian combat vehicle fleet have been destroyed or captured.
Percentage casualty rate wise, this is the institutional equivalent of the III Armored Corps in Ft Hood
2/
... Texas catching a high yield tac-nuke for the US Army.
Per the Oryx visual compilations, Ukraine is losing one vehicle destroyed or captured for every 3.5 Russian vehicles.
If the current Ukrainian casualty rates match the 2014-2015 fighting.
3/
Ukraine is taking about one casualty for between 5 & 7 Russian casualties right now.
The Ukrainian diaspora email list I participated in carefully collated Ukraine versus Russian casualties in the 2014-2015 period of Donbas fighting.
4/
The aggregate Ukraine vs Russia losses in 2014-2015 were:
AFU Losses in total: ~3,000 "KIA";
AFU Non-Combat Losses: 1,294;
AFU Combat Losses: ~2,000 KIA;
Russian Combat Losses: ~15,000 KIA;
5/
This yields two kill ratios:
Aggregate Kill Ratio: ~5:1 counting all AFU losses;
Combat Kill Ratio: ~7.3:1 counting only AFU losses due to Enemy Action;
Note: "AFU" is Armed Forces Ukraine
6/
An unknown are the claimed ~800 Ukrainian MIAs. If those men are counted as KIAs, it pushes that kill ratio number for the AFU down.
Suffice it to say I expected Ukraine to do far, far, better than most defense analysts when this latest round of fighting kicked off.🤷
7/
Chief Military Prosecutor of the AFU, Gen Matios stated in this article:
Shocking statistics of non-battle casualties of Ukraine's army
web.archive.org/web/2016081515…
8/
...that the single largest cause of AFU non-combat losses was lethal medical conditions, resulting from inadequate medical screening of personnel who were being called up during the conscription campaign, that covered men of up to 45 years of age.
9/
As the list-admin observed at the time:
"1. Russians are accustomed to taking heavy combat losses and the political blowback is much smaller than would be seen in any Western nation;
2.The high combat loss rates deplete the aggregated experience pool in the Russian military
10/
... dumbing it down, and making it more likely to take foolish risks, and offer bad assessments to the nation's political leaders;
The realities of (1) & (2) have been observed repeatedly in the Ukrainian war, and given the losses sustained in middle ranking and junior
11/
...officers in the campaign, the propensity to blind optimism and the tendency to starting fights that sane people would not start will obviously continue for decades.
The punchline is that the culture of yes men surrounding the leader, the general insensitivity to combat...
12/
...losses, and the depletion of talent and expertise will make the Russians prone to starting fights they cannot win for the foreseeable future.
Put differently, the Ukrainian war has made the Russians much more dangerous than they were before this war."
13/
The previous passage was why I was stating Twitter in January & early February 2022 that the Russians really were going to go for a full regime change invasion.
The reason I didn't surface any of this then was Russian disinformation had so overrun Western government policy
14/
...makers, the ranks of senior intelligence officials, and corporate media that anyone mentioning it without months of videos showing incompetent Russian military performance versus superb Ukrainian combat tactics would be labeled a flipped out kook.
15/
The applicable proverbs which applied while I waited to surface this:
"There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see."
"There none so deaf as those who do not wish to hear."
16/
Simply _No One_ wanted to see or hear that the Russian Military is really a uniformed version of the movie "Idiocracy."
25,000 dead Russian soldiers still isn't enough for many of them right now.
"Directed Cognition" does that.
17/
For the rest of you, we have this BBC screaming headline:
Ukraine entering new phase of war, defence minister says - BBC
bbc.com/news/live/worl…
18/
Ukraine is going for a one million citizen military mobilization.
The six years of Donbas fighting conscript classes plus prewar Ukrainian military is ~650,000 right there.
Add in the mobilizing territorials, & yeah, one million Ukrainians under arms are here by 30 June.
19/
These Ukrainian reinforcements include the six conscript classes who fought in Donbas in 2016-2021.
That is, the Ukrainians are calling combat veterans back to the colors fighting in the same areas that they served six to nine months of combat in, working with NCO's
20/
...who are already fighting there.
Russian conscripts present in Ukraine & being called up are barely trained greenhorns with no NCO's to speak of.
Effectively, 100 Ukrainians are generating the same combat power as 300 Russian troops.
21/
And this combat effectiveness value ratio is increasingly in Ukraine's favor over time.
As the Russians lose more and more of their best soldiers & vehicles.
Their greenhorn replacements die faster & kill fewer Ukrainians.
22/
The Russian offensives at Izyum and Severodonietsk failing beyond recovery is confirmation that my prediction of the Russian tactical truck fleet collapsing right now is close to the mark.
Russia has lost the ability to do more than a single push out of the Donbas, and then
23/
... only with civilian trucks.
We are in the beginnings of a Russian Lanchester square law curve collapse.
24/
Like Japanese airpower in WW2's Pacific theater. There is no easy way to analytically predict when that sort of collapse happens.
I've publicly stated on Chicago Talk Radio that the end of June is when the trend lines say the Russian Army falls apart.
25/
Ukrainian J2 MGen Budanov was just interviewed & predicting the Russians will break in August.
Kyiv, in the first week of the war, called out for all Ukrainians anywhere with any military experience to come home and fight.
26/
Ukrainians are returning from all over English speaking world. This is a enormous pool of manpower with diverse skills.
Whatever else you want to say, in the manpower game. Russia has lost absolutely.
27/End
• • •
Moscow appears to be withdrawing forces from around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where it has been losing ground, Ukrainian and Western officials say, in one of Russia’s biggest setbacks since its retreat from Kyiv last month.
Officials say the Kremlin will probably redirect troops to the southeast, where it is said to be bolstering its forces in Izium, a city it captured last month. Izium, about two hours southeast of Kharkiv, has become a crucial operations center for Russia, which is said to be making gains in the eastern Donbas region, where fighting has been relentless.
Some military analysts say the Russian actions are similar to what its military did last month in a retreat from around Kyiv, the capital.
“The Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kharkiv is starting to look very similar to the counteroffensive that ultimately drove Russian troops away from Kyiv and out of western Ukraine entirely, although it is too soon to tell if the Russians will make a similar decision here,” according to the latest analysis from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.
www.nytimes.com/...
Russian army’s failed attempt to build a pontoon over the Siverskyi Donets river
The British assessment appeared to verify that, and quantify the level of loss – effectively the equipment strength of one battalion of up to 90 Russian units operating in and near Ukraine.
Another open source analyst estimated 73 Russian pieces of equipment, including tanks and armoured vehicles, were destroyed, relying on aerial photography of the aftermath of the battle.
“Conducting river crossings in a contested environment is a highly risky manoeuvre and speaks to the pressure the Russian commanders are under to make progress in their operations in eastern Ukraine,” the British Ministry of Defence said on Friday morning.
Russian forces in the Donbas have made incremental progress on the north side of the Siverskyi Donets, and are assessed to be in control of Rubizhne to the north-west of Severodonetsk by the Institute for the Study of War.
Winning control of the town has taken Russian forces “two to three weeks”, western officials added, representing an incremental pace of advance by Moscow. “Russian doctrine in this kind of conflict would have its forces moving at some 40km a day,” an official added.
Nevertheless, despite suggestions by US intelligence officials earlier this week that the conflict had largely ground to a standstill, other observers still believe Severodonetsk is at risk, in what is set to be a crucial battle in the struggle for control of the Donbas.
“They will likely launch a ground offensive on or around Severodonetsk in the coming days,” the Institute for the Study of War said, but added it was “unclear if Russian forces can encircle, let alone capture” Severodonetsk, as the impetus in the Russian effort in the Donbas region appeared generally to have faded.
www.theguardian.com/...
🔴 Military experts agree that crossing any river in the middle of a conflict is not easy.
But the Russian army’s attempt to build a pontoon over the Siverskyi Donets river ended with a significant portion of a battalion wiped out in the process
🎥 Drone footage shows the aftermath.
❌ Russian army vehicles, including as many as three dozen tanks, were blown to smithereens as the battalion gathered to make the crossing
If the reports are correct, the failed crossing of the Donets would represent the single biggest loss of life suffered by Putin’s forces since the war began 78 days ago
🔴 In a coordinated counter-attack, a Ukrainian river boat squad was able to identify when the Russians began building the pontoon.
Visibility was virtually nil, because Russian troops had thrown smoke grenades and set nearby trees on fire
🔴 The drone footage shows the outcome of the Ukrainian assault.
At least two temporary bridges sunk, while Russian troops that succeeded in crossing the river were then left stranded and open to massacre
🇺🇦 The Siverskyi Donets (Donets for short) flows for 650 miles through the Donbas, the region in eastern Ukraine to which fighting has switched after Putin gave up on his plan to grab Kyiv and unseat Volodymyr Zelensky
❌ Russia’s progress in the Donbas has, like its previous assault on Kyiv, stalled badly. Its inability to cross rivers will play its own part.
Below, a railway bridge across the Donets lies in ruins after an earlier phase of fighting in late April
🗣️ On social media, a Ukrainian soldier named Maxim claimed he had “outplayed” Russia’s military engineer.
Russian engineers had "attempted to place a bridge RIGHT in the place where I guessed", wrote Maxim
🗣️ Russian forces had succeeded in putting in place the pontoon and troops and vehicles had begun moving across it. At that point, said Maxim, “the combat started.”
Read the full article for more on Russias 'catastrophic failure' ⬇️
• • •
Finland’s president and prime minister say they plan to end decades of neutrality and join NATO. Sweden is also expected to seek NATO membership. The Kremlin says Russia sees the expansion of NATO on its borders as a threat. “People on both sides will suffer,” says Reiner Braun, executive director of the International Peace Bureau, who warns Russia will escalate in response and move more nuclear weapons near the 830-mile-long Finland-Russia border.
[...]
REINER BRAUN: You know, it’s, again, a significant change in the security system in Europe. Above all and first, it is a break of a contract. Finland has a contract with Russia — first contract is from 1948, the second one is a new one from 1992 — which described neutrality and friendship between Finland and Russia as the background of their common relations. And Finland has not — had not canceled this treaty, so they are going against this treaty, which is a quite illegal action they are doing.
The second point is the relations between Central Europe or NATO and Russia by the military spending is about 50 to one up to now. Now it will be 70 or 80 to one. And it is obvious that Russia will be react. So we have again a continuation of the escalation spiral in the center of Europe, and this is not peaceful. What should be the next? Should be the next Moldavia and Georgia? Should be the next that we — that Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan will join NATO? It will be the next, Japan?
www.alternet.org/...