UPDATE: Thursday, Feb 2, 2023 · 10:04:12 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Based on the latest information, Bakhmut holds, but things are definitely not good.
Russia is again reported to be advancing to the south of the city, moving toward the highway south of Ivaniske. To the north, Russia is in the village of Mykolaivka and is reported to be attacking both to the east and the west from that location.
These twin assaults place Russia in a position to cut off supply lines on either side of the city. It’s not an encirclement. Ukrainian forces are not trapped. For now Ukraine still has a firm grip on the M03 to the northwest, enabling troops to come and go from Bakhmut. But the situation in the city is looking very, very ragged with constant artillery bombardment and forces scrambling to new positions.
Things have been critical in Bakhmut before and Ukraine has pushed Russia back. If that’s going to happen this time, it needs to happen very soon.
UPDATE: Thursday, Feb 2, 2023 · 8:09:16 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
If you’re looking for a detailed breakdown of what Russian assaults in Ukraine look like, why they are taking such heavy losses, and why they’re able to scrape out gains anyway, you won’t do much better than this article at Wavell Room.
The assault was not led in by a reconnaissance force. It is uncertain whether there was any reconnaissance at all. As previously described, there was no artillery support after the fire plan lifted. The lack of artillery forward observers; the described inadequacies of tactical communications; and ‘old-fashioned’ fire control practices mean an infantry company cannot conduct dynamic or ‘on call’ offensive support.
UPDATE: Thursday, Feb 2, 2023 · 5:20:30 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Breaking with the usual rules to touch on this thread, even though images are genuinely sensitive (and of course, are not marked). The reason for including this is the detailed accounting of how Russia’s human wave attacks are intended to work. It’s not just throwing people away with no goal, it’s throwing people away with a plan.
Overnight, there were repeated reports on Telegram channels, from both Russian and Ukrainian sources, that Russian forces had made significant advances south of Bakhmut, that supply lines into the city were in danger, and that Ukrainian forces had begun falling back to defensive positions west of the the city. However, as of this morning, Bakhmut holds, Ukrainian forces still seem to be in similar positions to those held for weeks, and there are other reports of fighting in Soledar. That would be the same Soledar Russia reportedly captured back in mid-January. There are videos showing what are reportedly large numbers of Russian prisoners and horrific losses in what is reported to be the Soledar area. But wait! There are videos that claim to show a Ukrainian counterattack into Soledar being crushed.
All of this is to say that the fog of war lies especially heavy over the Bakhmut area this morning. Let’s pull up the Tuesday map for reference …
It’s a pretty fair bet that, when all the bulls**t settles on Thursday, this is still not a bad representation of where things stand.
Russian sources are claiming that they’ve not only moved through the area west of Ivanivske on the south of the city, but that they are approaching Chasiv Yar. However, there has been no confirmation of any of this. On the north, they also claim to control Paraskoviivka and Krasna Hora. That claim seems to be an outright lie.
In this Russian view, Bakhmut is “nearly encircled,” cut off to both north and south, and Ukrainian forces have no choice but to leave. And that’s setting aside the Russian sources claiming that Bakhmut has completely fallen, and that an improbably large number of Ukrainian troops in the city (50,000! 100,000! 130,000!) have either surrendered or been slaughtered.
On the other hand, Ukrainian sources are saying little about any Russian movement south of the city and talking about continued fighting at Soledar. That includes images of reportedly large numbers of prisoners taken (not going to show) and body-strewn fields (not going to show) and still more of those videos in which a well-placed drone grenade hits a whole squad of Russian troops (nope, not going to show). Ukraine also reports having repelled a Russian attack on Paraskoviivka. Both Ivanivske and Paraskoviivka are among the locations reported shelled on Thursday morning, which is a good indicator that they are still under Ukrainian control.
At this point, it seems clear that heavy combat is going on both north and south of Bakhmut. In addition, Russian forces (reportedly still Wagner Group at this location) continue in the attempt to push into the city from the east. There are some indications that Russia has made it into the first few streets along the T1302 highway south of Pidhorodne. Otherwise, reports are still talking about the same winery, meatpacking plant, and other industrial sites that have been the area of fighting for months.
The best sign that things in Bakhmut really aren’t that different than they have been for weeks may be also one of the most horrible: images of Russian artillery strikes in civilian areas, and of Ukrainian forces still working to evacuate injured and isolated civilians who have been reluctant to leave even after months of destruction. Both soldiers and emergency workers continue in the effort to get people out of Bakhmut, sometimes at very high personal cost.
Christopher Parry may have been lost doing this brave and necessary work, but there are others who continue that work today.
There’s fighting north of Bakhmut in the area around Soledar. There’s fighting south of Bakhmut in the area around Klishchiivka. However, for the moment just about the only sure thing is that Bakhmut holds. When some of the fog lifts, we’ll let you know.
To help with that aviation, how about some air defense?
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that the United States is preparing a new $2 billion assistance package for Ukraine. Included in that package is expected to be, at last, the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), a weapon that has been talked about almost since the invasion began. The GLSDB is a small missile system jointly developed by Boeing and Saab, marrying Boeing’s 110-kilogram GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb to a new rocket motor. The result is a weapon with a range of up to 150 kilometers.
It’s not the ATACMS that Ukraine wanted, which would provide a range just under 300 km, but it’s a significant upgrade from the range of the HIMARS rockets that have been Ukraine’s biggest precision-guided weapon so far. There are concerns that the relatively slow velocity of the GLSDB could make it more vulnerable to air defense, and it’s only about half the range of the ATACMS, but … it’s a compromise. Ukraine needs a weapon that can outrange Russian artillery as well as hit Russian supply depots and muster points located outside HIMARS range. Here it is.
GLSDB would bring targets such as Russia’s relocated HQ for the Zaporizhzhia area back into range, as well as making all of the rail access points in the east of the country vulnerable to strikes. And there’s a reason that the range increase offered by GLSDB is bigger than it seems: The brains of this system are essentially all in the rocket.
The official range of HIMARS rockets is closer to 70 km than 92 km, but there’s a reason why they seldom punch even that deep into Russian-occupied territory. With HIMARS, the launcher itself is a large, expensive, and vital part of the system. That means that with rare exceptions, Ukraine is reluctant to bring HIMARS close to the actual front lines. Losing a HIMARS system to a lucky shot of generic artillery from the Russian side would be a tragedy not easily undone, so HIMARS starts out “standing in a hole” 20 km or more back from the front lines.
GLSDB is a different beast. The key words from that video up above are “launcher-independent.” While the GLSDB can be fired from a MLRS launcher, it can also be fired from … pretty much anything. That includes a truck with a bunch of pipe sections mounted on the back. Sure, sure, there are official “pods” of six rockets that fit standard systems, but if you can provide a way to keep the rocket pointed up in its first second of flight, that’s just about all it takes to send GLSDB on its way. Once launched, the rocket burns out in seconds, after which a pair of wings deploy as the bomb glides down to its target.
The brains are in the bomb. It’s GPS-guided, but designed to defeat GPS scramblers. It can adjust its glide to avoid hills, trees, power lines, and other obstacles. It can carry a variety of warheads, including “bunker busters” designed to take out fortified positions. And it’s supposed to be accurate to within a single meter after traveling 150 km. That’s pretty damn precise.
But again, that “launcher-independent” criterion may be the most important item on the checklist. That means you can put a bunch of these things on the back of a plain old truck, drive them right to the front line, and fire them in a hurry. The launcher doesn’t need to be precise because the missile does the aiming. If they get taken out before they can be deployed, the missiles may be lost, but that’s all.
How effective is GLSDB? That would be a big shrug emoji. Unlike almost every system currently deployed in Ukraine, this would be the first time that GLSDB has been exported and the first time anyone has used it in combat. How many is Ukraine getting? We don’t know that either.
Stay tuned.
Since the start of the invasion, the real strategic goal west of Bakhmut has been Kramatorsk. That’s the city that Russia needs to take if it wants to make some real claim to Donetsk Oblast. However, when Ukraine liberated Izyum and Lyman, Russia lost what had been its best opportunity to press into the Kramatorsk area from the west and north. Since then, there has only been the months of endless grinding at Bakhmut. Russia now seems to be venting its frustration toward Kramatorsk with repeated missile attacks on—you guessed it—civilian homes.
Something to remember amid all the sudden right-wing claims that Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine can be handled simply:
“The aggressor is always peace-loving … he would prefer to take over our country unopposed.”
Carl van Clausewitz
Markos and Kerry are joined by University of St. Andrews Professor of Strategic Studies, Phillips P. O’Brien. O’Brien, an expert in military history, explains how we got to where we are right now, what is unique about the world’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the parallels between the conservative movement’s isolationism in World War II and now.