So, I’ve teased this a couple of times in the comments sections over the last three weeks. Now, I think there’s enough of an established trend for A CHART (WooHoo)!!!
Above is the net amount of territory taken by Russia in Ukraine each week (according to Owl Project OSINT) since the beginning of 2024. The dates at the bottom of the chart are the beginning of the week. I identified a few key events to remind folks what was happening when.
Note: For all you bored math majors out there, the trend line is a 5th order polynomial with an R value of just under 0.6.
What I’ve teased and what this chart shows is a precipitous drop at the end (RED oval) in recent weeks. The totals for the past six weeks are 168, 117, 78, 77, 65, and 26. Now that’s a pretty noticeable drop. Actually, that’s more like the bottom fell out. If this were a race car, someone or something done turned off the engine.
And if you throw in this week’s Ukrainian efforts in Kursk, the total Russian gain for last week was …
ZERO. NOWT. ZIP. ZILCH. NADA. NIL. NUTHIN’.
If this matched up with a similar drop in Russian casualties, it might not be anything more than Russia pulling back on the reins a bit in anticipation of Trump bailing them out. That doesn’t seem to be the case, though. If Ukrainian estimates are at all accurate, Russian casualties remain quite high. That would seem to mean they are still trying to move forward, but they are failing.
I don’t want to be the first person to use the “C” word here, but … could this possibly be consummation, completion, climax, crowning, critical mass, capper, … oh damn. What was that word? </s>
WHY THE DROPOFF? There are many factors that could be weighing on Russian efforts. I have no inside information track on what is happening, so these are educated guesses (and this is an updated repeat of a comment I made about 3 weeks ago), but here goes:
- Weather has an effect. While operations continue, things take longer, especially movement.
- Russia’s supply of artillery shells appears to have slowed. Perhaps other things as well. This is likely due to deep interdiction (blowing up BIG depots in Russia) rather than local activity.
- As has been noted here, Russia is running out of proper combat support vehicles, both armored and soft-sided. It’s now loafs and Ladas. It may also be running out of people to use them.
- Much of the previous rapid (for Russia, but not anyone else) pace of movement was a series of flanking maneuvers that threatened Ukrainian held territory with encirclement. Velyka Novosilka (now done) was the next-to-last of these that is apparent and the last one hasn’t moved much in a while (W/SW of Kurahkove). You can grab a large territory by causing your enemy to withdraw rather than fighting him for each inch and Russia has been doing this for several months.
- Fatigue: Russian individual troops and units have been attacking HARD, CONSTANTLY for well over a year (Avdiivka). That takes its toll.
- Fatigue: The Russian army as a whole is a shambling wreck that is stumbling forward with poor leadership and little logistical support.
- Ukraine caught itself. One of the quickest ways to lose a position is to have lost the position before it. When you are backpedaling from one place to the next, you can’t stop and dig your heels in. You can’t dig a proper defense. The more you backpedal, the easier it is to backpedal more. If you catch a break long enough to reestablish a proper defense, it’s easier to stop. Time makes a HUGE difference in defense.
- Lastly, Ukraine is finally able to attack in a few places itself. They have done this S of Pokrovsk, S of Kupyansk, and, S of Sudzha. This means Russia may be forced to guard against attacks in other places.
The only places where Russia is seeing even success right now:
- N of Kupyansk on the right (W) bank of the Oskil River. I don’t think that will amount to much since they still have to support a force logistically across a river. It’s a VERY narrow river in many places, but water and mud are water and mud. Ukraine should have the drone/HIMARS power to mess with any attempts to maintain bridges for a long period.
- They had some small success N of Andriivka (town W of Kurakhove and S of Pokrovsk), but that has petered out in the past week or two.
- Chasiv Yar, though this seems to have stalled in the last three weeks.
- Finally, they SHOULD close out the small pocket (25-30 sq km) I mentioned above W/SW of Kurakhove, though they should have been able to do that over the past three weeks and haven’t.
Ground gained or lost is often pretty unimportant in this war, the actual sq km of ground itself, that is. However, success or failure in that metric is a good indicator of the overall condition of the relevant forces involved. In other words, this seems to show that RUSSIA IS ON IT’S ASS AND UKRAINE HAS STAUNCHED THE FLOW!
Time will tell.
Here’s hoping this trend continues at around zero or even goes negative.
