Ukraine War, 11 January 2023: Soledar

Good morning everybody!

Good morning everybody!

Another rather short update, entirely focusing on the Soledar-Bakhmut area.

For the start: the crisis is far from over, but I think it’s high point is over.

Prigorzhin’s bragging about Wagner’s ‘full encircling of Ukrainian troops in Soledar’ is hogwash. But, it is truth that as of yesterday in the morning, the 46th Airborne withdrew from the centre of the town back to the area of the Mine №4 — because of the threat of getting encircled by Russian assaults in direction of Blahodatne (no, not by Wagner, but by the Russian VDV units).

The T0513 road is still under a threat because of the Russian presence less than 1,000 metres east of Blahodatne (approximately along the railway line ‘looping’ south of the Mokra Plotva River and north of the Soledarske Lake).

As next: Krasna Hora… whatever Russian troops might have reached the place, are not there any more (or if, then as bodies only): over the last 36 hours, Ukrainians have smashed them — whether inside or on approaches to this village. Krasna Hora is firmly under Ukrainian control. With this, the M03 highway to Bakhmut was re-opened.

That said, Ukrainians have — definitely — lost Pidhorodne, and the last two days the Russians have tried to push from there towards the northern outskirts of Bakhmut and the joint of M03 with T0513, further north-west.

On the other hand, certain Ukrainian reports about ‘everything’s under control’ (or ‘brigade is controlled’) and ‘troops remain in their positions’ in Soledar… sigh…Gradually, it transpires it was a ‘command issue’ that led to the loss of (almost all of) Soledar: the problem is that ‘somebody there’ literally ‘pumped’ too much troops from too many different units into a much too small area. Worst of all, this was done without proper communications and coordination.

(…which, promptly, reminded me of the nick for the US General Westmoreland, who used to command US forces in South Vietnam, and earned himself the nick: ‘Waste-more-men’.)

Result: too many battalions from too many different brigades, and even from different branches and services of the ZSU, Border Guards (by all respect, but what are Border Guards doing in Bakhmut?!?), National Guard etc. fought next to each other. Sure, all are Ukrainian patriots, all highly motivated, many are combat experienced, and majority at least well-trained, but: if their command is not coordinated, all is in vain. In at least one case it happened a battalion on the frontline suddenly found itself in the process of receiving reinforcements — without its commander and troops knowing reinforcements are arriving. At the time the Wagner is deploying troops wearing ZSU uniforms, this was anything else than ‘good’ (see the character on the right of the photo below).

…and when one then adds all the possible ‘Napoleons’ between different commanders (whether at brigade-, battalion-, or even the company level), disparate levels of experience and quality of equipment of different units, and the Russian (severe) jamming of Ukrainian radio communications, chaos is pre-programmed, and the defence not working.

That’s nothing that is ‘better to talk about later on’, but something that had to be solved right away. The de-centralised command system of the ZSU is ‘nice and fine’ in most of other scenarios in this war, but not in this one. Unsurprisingly, a complete re-organisation of ZSU garrison of Soledar and Bakhmut is already underway: the situation might be critical, but it’s still good enough for some of units to be withdrawn (to lessen the command chaos), and — if necessary — replaced by those elements of brigades already in the area that haven’t been involved yet.

Above all, the GenStab-U and the East OK are obviously convinced they’re causing far more casualties to the Russians than their forces are suffering, i.e. that this battle remains ‘profitable’ for Ukrainian interests (even if the ammo supply for the artillery remains unsatisfactory, forcing the gunners to continue holding back, much too often): correspondingly, the ZSU continues fighting for both western Soledar and all of Bakhmut.

This was confirmed over the last two days by events on other sectors of the frontline. The Russians came in really huge numbers, pushed extremely hard — and were repelled with huge losses, too, and that on the eastern side of Bakhmut, in Opytne, and (especially) in Klishchiivka: the results of their latest assaults on the latter cannot but be described as a ‘massacre’ — and this regardless of ‘relative finesse’ they’ve shown only a few days earlier. ‘Back then’, they were advancing at least ‘medieval siege style’: they would rush one group forward and let it dig trenches while keeping Ukrainians busy by other means, then the next group, and the next…until a trench in direction of Ukrainian positions was at least 30–40cm deep and they could connect it to their rear. The last two days, they were back to ‘human wave attacks’, again, and all such assaults were stopped cold.

Of course, the Russian social media is claiming something else, including ‘fighting inside Klishchivka’: actually, the only minor advance they ‘achieved’ was into the ‘empty’ area south of Klishchiivka and north of Kurdyumivka: the terrain there is lower than the hills with Ukrainian positions west of it, and thus constantly subjected to murderous fire of the ZSU, with corresponding Russian losses…

Talking about Klishchiivka, I’ve been asked for — and I’m herewith offering — my apology for declaring the 3rd Assault Brigade for ‘re-organised Azov Regiment’. It is not. The 3rd Assault is a ZSU unit that came into being through a combination of several battalions and companies wearing the designation Azov (I’m leaving it to the Russians to find out exactly what units, in person, if they can), but: no parts of the ‘genuine’ Azov Regiment, which remains operational and is an element of the National Guard.

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A ‘Post Scriptum’ here: after following their official releases every single day for over a week, it came to my mind that — despite all the fighting for Bakhmut (including Soledar) — the Keystone Cops in Moscow are NOT mentioning Bakhmut (and/or Soledar) with a single word.

Konashenkov is babbling about everything else: he’s always running his reviews in similar fashion like me, ‘clock-wise’. Starting with the Svatove area, down to Kremina…. then ‘jumps’ over the Bakhmut area and goes down to Avdiivka, Marinka, and Vuhledar… Thus, conclusion is on hand that from the standpoint of the Sov….erm… Russian GenStab, there is no battle for Bakhmut, and all the dozens of thousands of Russians killed there: never happened.

Is certainly something we all need to keep in mind — at least ‘for sometimes in the future’.