For the most part, these updates on the status of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine shy away from domestic politics. That’s not just out of awareness that the audience for this daily update goes beyond the political range of those who might otherwise be considered Daily Kos regulars, but because it seems like a disservice to the people actually risking their lives on the ground to wander too far afield.
However, there are occasions where it can’t be avoided. In the last week, Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson has made support for Vladimir Putin a touchstone for would-be Republican nominees in 2024. Carlson’s all-in support for Russia had seemed like such an out-there position at the start of the war that some even questioned whether Fox might choose to drop his program. Of course, that didn’t happen. Instead, support for Russia only grew within the GOP, thanks to nightly hammering from Carlson and other right-wing media hosts insisting that Ukraine was corrupt, the U.S. is weak, and Russia is the future.
Earlier this week, a Russian propaganda video appeared that shows middle school students in Crimea assembling weapons and drilling in military uniform. The video is inherently ghastly, a scene lifted right from the later days of Hitler Youth with fascist overtones so heavy it only needs a little brass-heavy soundtrack to serve as one of the commercials in the film version of Starship Troopers. But this morning, right-wing media is pushing that video as proof that Russia is superior to the U.S.
Here’s that video. Note that it’s not taking place in Russia, but in occupied Crimea, where trenches are currently being dug across beaches, following reports that Russia may withdraw from occupied regions to the north.
This isn’t “cute.” It’s not even about creating a “warrior mentality” for the future. This is about grooming children to stand in the front lines of a conflict that’s happening right now at a distance that could be driven in less than an hour—a conflict that the people instructing these children very much expect to come to their door.
I’m not going to link to the sites promoting this video as a good thing. If you want to find them, they’re all too findable. But I will point out that this isn’t the first time. Two years ago, Republicans—including Ted Cruz—lavished praise on a Russian training video and circulated a heavily edited version of a U.S. recruitment video while complaining that America has a “woke, emasculated military.” I’m also not going to answer those charges. Veterans have already done it well enough.
But since this nonsense is still going on, here’s a little reply concerning what really happens when the U.S. military meets the Russian military in a battle where 500 Russian soldiers and their allies, supported by T-72 tanks, went up against 40 Americans.
In the end, 200 to 300 of the attacking fighters were killed. The others retreated under merciless airstrikes from the United States, returning later to retrieve their battlefield dead. None of the Americans at the small outpost in eastern Syria — about 40 by the end of the firefight — were harmed.
Those weren’t just Russian military forces; they were Wagner Group. Right now in Ukraine, Wagner Group is the only force advancing at any point along the whole line. So, Ted Cruz, tell it to the Marines.
And God protect us from people who think what’s happening in that video is a good thing.
What if Bakhmut never falls?
The idea that Ukraine might be holding fast to Bakhmut because they believe Russia is about to exhaust its forces in the area seems to have hit some news outlets like a revelation this week. The only possible response is provided in the immortal words of Billy Eilish.
On Friday morning, there’s a good deal of excitement around claims that Russian forces seem to be culminating, not just in the area around Bakhmut, but essentially everywhere, all it once (Sorry, couldn’t figure a way to get an “everything” in there). Part of this comes from a prediction that seems to have originated with The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which said on Thursday evening that a decrease in Russian operations around Bakhmut supported their Wednesday claims that the Wagner offensive in Bakhmut is “likely nearing culmination.”
Meanwhile, at least two Russian attempts to cross that river between the east and west parts of the city, shallow and narrow as it is, appear to have failed. Reports also suggest that Ukraine has pushed back Russian forces west of the city, though it’s unclear if they’ve managed to improve access along that critical road through Khromove.
There’s a reason ISW doesn’t get quoted here a lot, and it’s because they frequently make predictions of this sort. Or the opposite sort. And they are frequently wrong. They also regularly publish claims from Wagner, Russian military, or Ukrainian sources that lack confirmation and make assessments of territory lost or gained that don’t match reports from the ground.
However, in this case, their assessment seems to align with something notable in reports coming from both the Ukrainian general staff and front-line sources: Russia is slowing down.
Over the last week, the pace of Russian attacks being conducted on a daily basis has fallen from over 100 to 70 to around 30. Even the relentless, boneheaded, hideously wasteful daily attempts to drive armor across the field to Vuhledar appear to have stopped in the last two days. So have the wave attacks that were being conducted elsewhere.
That’s not a guarantee of culmination. It could simply be Russia gathering up ammo and men as they prepare to hurl themselves against the rocks again. However, it seems to match some of the chatter that’s been happening in Telegram channels over the last week. The bigger question may be: If Russia is halted and its momentum exhausted, what then? Does Ukraine have the reserves and the equipment necessary to turn a culmination on the part of Russia into an opportunity?
That’s not just the many billions of dollars question at the moment; it’s one that no one outside a few in the upper echelons of the Ukrainian government is likely to understand. There was one helluva lot not to like about The Washington Post’s gloomy assessment of the situation in Ukraine earlier in the week. However, it’s hard to know what to think about the fact that the officer who provided much of the background for that report has since been demoted.
Is that a sign that Ukraine’s situation is fragile and that leadership in Kyiv is slapping down those who dare speak the truth about a shortage of trained soldiers to continue the fight? Or is it just a signal that military commanders who open their mouths to complain to the media about their wartime leadership generally find that the army still has latrines? I don’t honestly know.
But if Russia’s advance is crumbling, this could be the best time to invert that advance and make significant gains. Hopefully, Ukraine is ready.
Excellent look at conditions on the front at Bakmut
If you want an excellent look at what’s happening right now in Bakhmut, it would be hard to do better than this video released last night by the BBC. It not only gives an overview of the whole tactical situation, but a close-up look at the conditions in which this fight is taking place. It’s impossible not to be reminded of fighting in World War I.
A sequence of unfortunate events … for a Russia MLRS
A neat series of video and images showing verification of the destruction of a Russian BM-27 “Uragan” multiple launch rocket system. Start with some counterbattery fire from an M270...
Next move on to confirming the geolocation of the site, and finally check with a FIRMS satellite to see that the hot spot from the weapon’s destruction was still glowing hours later. It’s worth clicking the tweet above and scanning the whole brief thread to see the elements of OSInt at work with this image.
It’s been a long time since we pulled out FIRMS data to show the intensity of fighting in an area. In large part that came because at the end of summer/early fall, both intentional and accidental fires in fields across Ukraine so drowned out any potential signal of fighting that it became nearly impossible to suss out anything worthwhile. But now that we’re in mud season once again, it’s probably time for a FIRMS reunion. Stay tuned.
Searching for the meaning behind a failed Ukrainian assault
Since December, when Russia supposedly opening its “big winter offensive,” Ukraine seems to have been content to sit back and let Russians everywhere struggle with the mud and deal with their inability to coordinate large-scale movements. Over that time, Ukrainian forces have made very few attempts to attack, even on the scale of small probing movements.
However, one Wednesday, Ukraine sent a group of armored transports toward the town of Polohy, about midway across the southern line between Vasylivka and Vuhledar. By all accounts, the effort was a failure — such a failure that Ukraine ended up losing three U.S. donated M113 APCs along with one YPR-765 (which is also an M113, slightly modified by the Dutch). Several Ukrainian soldiers also seem to have been lost in this attempt, and Russian media outlets have been promoting this as the Ukrainian equivalent of the Russian losses at Vuhledar.
See, those sources are essentially saying, Ukraine also makes fruitless runs across open fields, in which they lose half their force with the other half being forced to retreat!
But some Russian chatter suggests that this small assault, and another that happened further to the east, were done with a purpose.
Polohy had a prewar population of 20,000, putting it on par with Lyman or Popasna. It’s a pretty significant target to be assaulted by a single line of vehicles on a muddy road. But apparently those vehicles advanced until they were practically nose to nose with Russian forces before a combination of artillery and anti-tank missiles took out the four vehicles and the rest turned around.
It seems likely that this was more in the nature of a reconnaissance in force designed to test whether the fields were too muddy to be crossed (no) and whether they were mined (also no). But this kind of action seemed wasteful when Russia did it, and it seems just as wasteful on the part of Ukraine. Hopefully, the information they gained was worth it, but that will only be the case if—like any possible culmination around Bakhmut—Ukraine is ready to exploit the opportunity.
On Wednesday, Poland stepped up to say it was sending jets to the Ukrainian air force. Just as with previous such announcements, this seems to have put a big crack in the dam, and now others are following. Eduard Heger is the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic.
The MiGs on their way from the Slovak Republic are reportedly MIG-29 fighters, a plane with which the Ukrainian military is very familiar.