There was a NY Times media spin on decapitation operations where command and control gets attacked, but it distracted from the beginning of a final assault on the Azovstal steel plant citadel. Mobilizing Belarus military to freeze northern sector Ukrainian troops in place is part of the plan.
Complainers about US and NATO support for the Ukrainians should remind themselves which side retains a numerical advantage even after two months of battle. Precision intelligence targeting can only succeed in concert with strategic innovation that might operate with less command staff oversight. It’s worse when some generals get too close to a front where the enemy is targeting your brass.
Like the Morgan sharpshooters in the American Revolution, the Second Battle of Saratoga featured the targeting of officers, some of whom chose to identify themselves as such, leading to the defeat of the British by killing General Simon Fraser.
The problems from 2014 signify the nuances of generalization for a Ukraine kleptocracy where “certain elements of the Maidan opposition, including its extremist far right wing, were involved in this massacre in order to seize power and that the government investigation was falsified for this reason.”
Not all Maidan was right-wing, much like the current Ukraine Resistance for better or worse, supports elements like the neo-nazi Azov battalion. This was made even more obvious during the Trump attempts to manipulate the 2019 administration by currying favor with pro-Russian political groups.
The pre-invasion Russian framing of reasons includes a need to distinguish between anti-fascism and neoliberal militarism, among many competing political forces. The corruption that has typified the Ukrainian economy must be reduced as a precondition of EU participation.
"The Ukrainians have, quite frankly, a lot more information than we do." — John Kirby
“U.S. intelligence support to the Ukrainians has had a decisive effect on the battlefield, confirming targets identified by the Ukrainian military and pointing it to new targets. The flow of actionable intelligence on the movement of Russian troops that America has given Ukraine has few precedents.”
WASHINGTON — The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials.
Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts.
The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That intelligence also includes anticipated Russian troop movements gleaned from recent American assessments of Moscow’s secret battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said. Officials declined to specify how many generals had been killed as a result of U.S. assistance.
The United States has focused on providing the location and other details about the Russian military’s mobile headquarters, which relocate frequently. Ukrainian officials have combined that geographic information with their own intelligence — including intercepted communications that alert the Ukrainian military to the presence of senior Russian officers — to conduct artillery strikes and other attacks that have killed Russian officers.
The intelligence sharing is part of a stepped-up flow in U.S. assistance that includes heavier weapons and tens of billions in aid, demonstrating how quickly the early American restraints on support for Ukraine have shifted as the war enters a new stage that could play out over months.
[...]
The administration has sought to keep much of the battlefield intelligence secret, out of fear it will be seen as an escalation and provoke President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia into a wider war. American officials would not describe how they have acquired information on Russian troop headquarters, for fear of endangering their methods of collection. But throughout the war, the U.S. intelligence agencies have used a variety of sources, including classified and commercial satellites, to trace Russian troop movements.
www.nytimes.com/...
- Russian forces continued ineffectual offensive operations in southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts without securing any significant territorial gains in the past 24 hours.
- Ukrainian officials and military officers confirmed that Russian forces have breached the Azovstal facility itself and confirmed that Ukrainian forces are losing ground. Russian forces will likely capture the facility in the coming days.
- Ukrainian offensive operations around Kharkiv likely intend to push Russian forces out of artillery range of Kharkiv city, force Russian units to redeploy from the Izyum axis, and potentially threaten Russian lines of communication.
- Russian forces conducted limited offensive operations toward Zaporizhia City but did not conduct any attacks in Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts in the last 24 hours. Ukrainian forces claimed to recapture additional territory west of Kherson, but ISW cannot independently confirm any advances.
Immediate items to watch
- Russian forces will likely continue to merge offensive efforts southward of Izyum with westward advances from Donetsk in order to encircle Ukrainian troops in southern Kharkiv Oblast and Western Donetsk.
- Russia may change the status of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, possibly by merging them into a single “Donbas Republic” and/or by annexing them directly to Russia.
- Russian forces have apparently decided to seize the Azovstal plant through ground assault and will likely continue operations accordingly.
- Ukrainian counteroffensives around Kharkiv City may unhinge Russian positions northeast of the city, possibly forcing the Russians to choose between reinforcing those positions or abandoning them if the Ukrainians continue to press their counterattack.
- Russian forces may be preparing to conduct renewed offensive operations to capture the entirety of Kherson Oblast in the coming days.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive out of Kharkiv city may disrupt Russian forces northeast of Kharkiv and will likely force Russian forces to decide whether to reinforce positions near Kharkiv or risk losing most or all of their positions within artillery range of the city. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zalyzhnyi stated on May 5 that Ukrainian forces are transitioning to counteroffensive operations around Kharkiv and Izyum, the first direct Ukrainian military statement of a shift to offensive operations. Ukrainian forces did not make any confirmed advances in the last 24 hours but repelled Russian attempts to regain lost positions. Russian forces made few advances in continued attacks in eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces may be able to build their ongoing counterattacks and successful repulse of Russian attacks along the Izyum axis into a wider counteroffensive to retake Russian-occupied territory in Kharkiv Oblast.
www.understandingwar.org/...
Time, however, is not on Putin’s side. He must have something impressive to announce at the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow. The Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, has speculated that Putin could declare a “mass mobilisation”, escalating his “special operation” into a “war with the world’s Nazis”. This week the Kremlin categorically denied this, but the likelihood is that only Putin knows what he is planning.
The storming of the Azovstal steelworks-turned-fortress may enable the Russians to claim that, after a siege lasting more than two months, they have finally taken what is left of Mariupol. A grotesque parade, perhaps forcing emaciated and brutalised prisoners to march through the streets, is also said to be planned, just as Stalin displayed columns of captured Germans in the Great Patriotic War. Amid the burnt-out ruins of what was once a city of half a million people, the Russians can celebrate this Pyrrhic victory. But who, other than the dictator’s most fanatical followers, will be impressed by such a spectacle? Putin’s triumph is as empty as his threats.
Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the decision by Finland and Sweden to end their long-standing neutrality by joining NATO. Though the fast-tracking of the Scandinavians may be galling for Ukrainians, it represents a strategic defeat for Russia of historic proportions. Other vulnerable states, such as Georgia and Moldova, may join the queue. If the aim of the invasion of Ukraine was to intimidate the neighbours (and members) of the Russian Federation, it has utterly failed.
The most that can be said with any certainty at this point is that even at home, Putin no longer enjoys the nimbus of invincibility that was carefully cultivated by his propaganda machine. The catastrophe he has visited upon Ukraine is now threatening to engulf his own regime. Russians are watching aghast as one humiliation follows another: the retreat from Kyiv, the sinking of the Moskva and now the failure to break through in Donbas. The President may not care about the young soldiers left dead or missing on the battlefield, now estimated at 25,000 by the usually accurate Ukrainian military. But their families assuredly do.
Meanwhile the noose is tightening on Russia. Western sanctions grow ever tougher, with the EU now imposing an embargo on Russian oil. Even spiritual leaders are no longer exempt from sanctions: Kyrill, the Patriarch of Moscow, is now being targeted as one of the Kremlin’s most odious toadies. Pope Francis may not be the only significant figure to voice criticism of NATO, but he is almost alone in wanting to visit Moscow to listen to Putin’s tirades. Others prefer to make the pilgrimage to Kyiv, where the Orthodox Church has broken with Moscow. Even Lukashenko, Putin’s ally in Belarus, is offering only verbal support. Russian isolation is anything but splendid.
www.thearticle.com/...