UPDATE: Wednesday, Mar 1, 2023 · 6:51:03 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
Def Mon has a good track record when it comes to looking at positions with clarity rather than blindly pushing the go-go-go approach taken by many on-line analysts.
He also frets that Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukrainian ground forces, is planning a counterattack south of Bakhmut that seems to have no real potential to shift the course of events in the area.
”If this is the case they are wasting future offensive potential on a lost cause. I hope I'm wrong about Syrskyi, but he has made some strange calls.”
As usual, no reporter or analyst, even those who have hit the nail on the head in the past, are privy to anything like the level of information that Ukrainian command enoys. Maybe they see something in the situation that isn’t clear to those of us just watching from the sidelines. However, this is all very worrisome.
On Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning in Ukraine, there was clearly heavy fighting going on around Bakhmut. The counterattack that had supposedly pushed Russian forces away was clearly nothing but hopeful rumors; Russian forces were continuing to drive south from the area between Yahidne and Berkhivka, and reports at the end of the day placed Russian troops within 1 km of the vital “road of life” connecting Bakhmut to forces outside the city.
The map above is actually more reflective of where things stood at the end of the day on Tuesday. It doesn’t reflect changes due to fighting overnight or on Wednesday morning, because I don’t have the information to accurately map those changes.
Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from the eastern third of the city, Russia appears to have secured the complex of roads to the north that had become the “hell intersection” and there has been renewed fighting in the south. Operational security was tightened on Tuesday evening, and, the obvious assumption was that Ukraine was planning to withdraw its forces from the city under cover of darkness.
That didn’t happen. As of Wednesday in Ukraine, Bakhmut holds, and according to at least one official source, more Ukrainian forces are on their way in.
The situation around Bakhmut hasn’t just appeared to be critical for the last month, it has been critical. After Russia occupied the town of Soledar to the north in January, it set up a situation in which Russia could both attack Bakhmut from the north and potentially encircle the city from that direction. Then, at the beginning of February, Russia managed to capture the town of Klishchiivka to the south, including a point of high ground that seemed to position Russian forces to push further west.
Just days into February, the M03 highway on the north, and the T0504 highway on the south were both under fire control from Russian positions. Video showed that Ukraine still made runs down each road (until a downed bridge stopped traffic on the T0504), and Ukrainian armor confronted Russian troops that tried to cross the M03 in mid-month, but for any series transport of men and materiel in or out of Bakhmut, Ukraine was reduced to a single, smaller paved highway, one that runs through the village of Khromove before joining another highway at the town of Chasiv Yar. That road became Bakhmut’s “road of life.”
Russia seemed absolutely aware of this weakness and immediately announced that it was moving for Chasiv Yar. In fact, Russian sources—including state media—reported that it had already taken Chasiv Yar. Instead, Ukrainian forces near Ivaniske successfully threw Russia back to that hill near Klishchiivka. Despite repeated attempts, Russian forces south of Bakhmut have still not been able to cross the T0504 highway and approach the western end of the road of life.
The big threat has been, and likely remains, that Russian push from the north. While descriptions in the media insist on calling it “pincers closing around Bakhmut,” for the most part, the southern line has been stagnant for the last month. Movement on the north has threatened to cut off access and effectively encircle the city.
The pro-Ukraine Telegram channel Deep State called the Russian assault on the north and east of Bakhmut on Wednesday morning “colossal.” Even so, there are also reports that Ukraine engaged with Russian forces at almost every point of the line, especially in that area around Yahidne on the north, and regained some of the territory lost in the last few days. Deep State is also reporting, incredibly, that as many as 4,500 civilians remain in Bakhmut, including 48 children, despite months-long efforts to get them to evacuate.
Both Ukrainian and Russian planes and helicopters were active over the city on Tuesday and Wednesday. Russia may now believe it has incapacitated Ukrainian anti-aircraft positions in the city as they seem to be flying many more sorties and striking locations closer to central Bakhmut.
What happens next is currently confusing—and that’s probably on purpose. At around midnight Eastern time, the Ukrainian military indicated that they were sending more forces into Bakhmut. Three hours later, and advisor to President Zelenskyy indicated that Ukraine was considering “strategically pulling back” and said “We’re not going to sacrifice all of our people just for nothing.”
The feeling on some Telegram channels is that Ukraine has been continuing to hold at Bakhmut because they feel Russia’s assault is close to culmination — that if they can hold out just a little longer, not only will it force Russia to continue expending huge numbers of men, it will leave the Russian force so depleted that Ukraine can mount an effective counteroffensive. However, analysts have declared that “Russia’s assault on Bakhmut has culminated” since well before the end of 2022.
Bakhmut is at a logistically simple location. Russia can unload men and artillery there with an ease it enjoys at few other points along the line. That’s precisely why they keep attacking at Bakhmut—because they can. Those same logistical factors make it unlikely that the assault on Bakhmut would culminate in the historic sense without a collapse of Russian defenses at other points coming first.
Overnight, Polish television reported that both U.S. Bradley fighting vehicles and German Leopard 2 tanks were approaching Bakhmut. One DPR commander said on Telegram that Leopards were already in the area and engaging with Russian forces north of the city. All of these accounts are, to put it mildly, extremely unlikely. The first Ukrainian crews just finished training on the Bradley yesterday. The first Leopards aren’t due to reach Ukraine before the end of the month. There is no indication that new Western tanks or fighting vehicles are being directed to this area.
It would be nice to think that Gandalf is going to appear over the hill, leading the forces of Rohan to relieve the siege of Bakhmut. But whether on a white horse or a Challenger tank, this is extremely unlikely. Ukraine has fought their way through another day. They still have access to the road of life. Whether they use that road to bring people in or send people out is a terribly difficult decision, and none of us outside the battle have the information needed to make that call.
Overnight, Russia charged Ukraine with making a drone attack on Moscow and Ukraine denied it. Ukraine may be lying to some degree, but it’s impossible at this point to determine to what extent because Russia has lied about every possible aspect of the events on Tuesday.
Images of what certainly appears to be carefully laid-out debris from a single Ukrainian UJ-22 surveillance drone have been released by Russian sources are reported as found at two different locations, hundreds of kilometers apart. There were reports of drones (or UFOs) in the air near St. Petersburg and a significant air space was closed to civilian traffic for over an hour. There was an apparent attack on an airbase at Yelsk, across the Sea of Azov from Mariupol. But before Russia began claiming that Ukraine had attacked Moscow, it claimed that the airspace closures were part of a “public safety exercise” and even though images show what appear to be facilities exploding at Yelsk, Russia continues to insist that never happened, and that explosions in the area were due to “military training.”
Ukraine’s denial also seems to have a good degree of the theatrical, apparently being done for Western politicians who somehow worry that Ukraine striking at any target across the border might somehow “escalate the conflict.”
Moscow is now claiming that a “wave of drones” was sent into Russia. However, there’s very little evidence for this wave other than that one wrecked UJ-22—a drone that would be a very poor instrument for any kind of serious attack.
Probably Ukraine attacked Yelsk. Likely they sent a surveillance drone into the area near St. Petersburg. Likely both things made Russia panic. But we can’t be sure about any of it at this point.
As March begins, Ukrainian officials are pointing out that Russia has lost another big strategic “battle”—the one to freeze out Ukrainian civilians over the winter.
Putin was convinced that attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure would have civilians freezing in their homes and overthrowing the Zelenskyy government. Like the capture of Bakhmut, it became not just a thing they thought would happen, but something that state media and Russian social media sources reported several times as already happening.
Remember when Russia claimed that cutting off natural gas would bring Germany’s economy to a halt, that Europe would turn on Ukraine, and that energy prices would increase by 1000%, leaving Russia sitting pretty as it decided who was worthy of sipping from its pipelines?
Russia’s economic strategy in this war may have been worse than the planning for the Battle of Kyiv.
The New York Times reports this morning about the series of Russian defeats at Vuhledar. It recounts the story of a Ukrainian tank crew driving an older T-64 and going up against some of Russia’s newest armor.
Blown up on mines, hit with artillery or obliterated by anti-tank missiles, the charred hulks of Russian armored vehicles now litter farm fields all about Vuhledar, according to Ukrainian military drone footage. Ukraine’s military said Russia had lost at least 130 tanks and armored personnel carriers in the battle.
There’s a vicious feedback loop at work for Russia.
Step one: Russia has lost so many experienced soldiers trained to use tanks and fighting vehicles that it’s now sending those vehicles forward with raw recruits who have little training or understanding of how to operate the armor.
Step two: These inexperienced crews rack up a very high loss rate, leaving the area around Vuhledar strew with flaming wrecks.
Step three: Russia loses so many armored vehicles that switches to human waves, but those attacks are no more successful than the armored assaults and result in ridiculously high numbers of casualties.
Step four: Russia decides to send in more armor … see step one.
The Russian army has focused on, and even mythologized, tank warfare for decades for its redolence of Russian victories over the Nazis in World War II. Factories in the Ural Mountains have churned out tanks by the thousands. In Vuhledar, by last week Russia had lost so many machines to sustain armored assaults that they had changed tactics and resorted only to infantry attacks, Ukrainian commanders said.
That’s an absolutely amazing paragraph.
On Tuesday, Russia did decide to switch things up. Rather than attack Vuhledar along the road that runs west of the town, they went with the one on the east. The end result was the same, but the Ukrainian soldiers probably appreciated the variety.
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