Ukraine War, 24–25 June 2022
Good morning everybody!
Good morning everybody!
I’ll start this one with some self-analysis and critique: what went wrong?
As explained yesterday, for me Ukrainian decision to withdraw from Severodonetsk came as a big surprise. For days, all I could hear from there is that the garrison was splashing Russians and Separatists so badly, the captured survivors from the LNR were making jokes about their para-state changing its designation to LWR.
Should stand for ‘Luhansk Women’s Republic’ — because after all of Separatist losses in men of the last four months, only women would be left alive there.
…and one has got videos like this one to see, shown the aftermath of ‘yet another’ failed Russian/Separatist attack attempt:
At least since Kyiv of late February and early March — though, and actually: since Maidan of 2014 — it should be clear that Ukrainians are of the kind who’s taking things into their hands, and searching for solutions on their own — no matter what their political parties, oligarchy, military commanders, or foreign politicians say, or want, who is ‘sure’ they’re going to be ‘defeated’ by Putin etc. So much so, this Ukrainian will is precisely one of Putin’s primary aims in this war: to destroy that spirit and convert Ukrainians into same ‘drones’ like Russians he’s ‘manufacturing’ for 20+ years….
A logical result is that the ZSU’s command structure is de-centralised to the level where brigade commanders rarely know what exactly are their troops doing. They find out in the evening, when their battalion commanders inform them about developments of the day. Meanwhile, squads and platoons of troops keep on roaming the battlefield on their own, and hitting the Russians when and where they expect this the least. We’ve seen this ‘creating miracles’ when Ukrainians mauled the 35th CAA by destroying three BTGs of its crack troops west of Kyiv, in late February, and then 1st GTA and the 2nd GCAA in north-eastern Ukraine, in March.
This is ‘fine’ as long as these squads of ‘roaming technoguerrilla’ have enough space to manoeuvre and avoid the worst of the Russian artillery fire. Along the LOC it worked too, because there they’ve had years to entrench themselves and thus have enough cover (and there’s no doubt the Ukrainians are highly skilled in constructing excellent fortifications ‘in the middle of nowhere’, if there’s enough time; see this). It worked in urban combat of Rubizhne (the one north of Severodonetsk), back in March-April, and in Severodonetsk, too — because there was enough cover.
The net result was that the commanders — even politicians in Kyiv — had to accept what the troops were demanding: to quote a gent who’s in a better picture than I have, they used ‘utilitarian approach’, and decided to keep the troops in Severodonetsk, because these were highly efficient in causing additional massive Russian losses, thus further degrading the overall Russian military capability. Their mission was successful.
What I did wrong was to, in my ‘usual rush’, think something like, ‘OK, this is enough to keep the Russians at bay for few days longer’. Therefore, I didn’t pay enough attention at their preparations; did not cross-check what is going on ‘there’ carefully enough. Yes, there was a rumour about Dvornikov and Zhidko preparing an ‘operational reserve’ of about 15,000; there were reports about Shoygu receiving the visit of the Belarusian Minister of Defence and his consorts, resulting in the Russians hauling all the ammo they could get from there to Ukraine; there was a report about re-deployment of up to 11 BTGs to the Severodonetsk area, and, meanwhile ‘usual’, videos of trains bringing additional T-80s and T-62Ms to Ukraine….but, amid of reports about Ukrainian artillery and ballistic missiles knocking out one Russian ammo depot near the frontline after the other, my impression was: the next Russian offensive is going to take ‘a while longer’…
Finally, the actual question was not the garrison of Severodonetsk: it was the fact that south and south-east of Lysychansk there was not enough cover, not enough space, and not enough time to fight the usual way Ukrainians fight. And the problem was that the troops in Severodonetsk could not know what’s happening there — at least not before it was (almost) too late. They did not know that the troops south of the town were exposed to this and to what can be seen in the following video, for days and then weeks without an end. After all, they were going through the same, but with relatively good cover.
(Mind: that’s not even the worst kind of Russian shelling: ‘just’ something like ‘average’.)
So, what happened on the Russian side, ‘the last week or so’?
After cross-checking the Russian and ‘allied’ reporting in the social media of the last few days, the impression is that they didn’t even use any kind of ’11 BTGs of the RFA’ for this attack. Instead, they deployed two BTGs of Wagner PMC and one or two recently refreshed BTGs of LPR-Separatists south-east of Lysychansk, and a third BTG of Wagner PMC south of Popasna.
I.e. I’ve ignored my own conclusions regarding Wagner taking over as the primary offensive tool: one ‘must’ constantly monitor their reporting to find out what are the Russians going to do as next — and where.
What happened next appears to be something like this. The Wagner BTG south of Popasna run a series of diversionary attacks along the M06, especially in the Klynove area. Wasn’t particularly successful (especially not in comparison to what they actually intended to do; see the map attached below), but it did cause enough problems to force Ukrainians to re-direct the focus of their artillery away from shelling ammo dumps around Donetsk to that area, around 21 June.
A day later, the other two Wagner BTGs hit in the north of the Popasna Bulge from two directions simultaneously: over Toshkivka in the north, and over Vryubivka in the south. By the time the LPR-Separatists were showing videos of their troops advancing into western Toshkivka, the two Wagner BTGs were already in the process of taking Myrna Dolyna, and then entered Vovchoyrivka and pushed for Verknokamyanka and Topolivka.
Simultaneously, the Russian artillery shelled not only the nearest Ukrainian positions, but also most of the T1302, de-facto making it useless all the way from Verkhnokamyanka down to Bilohorivka…
That was on 22–23 June (and, essentially, is the situation ever since). By that time, the Ukrainian Command East was already in the process of evacuating the Zolote-Hirske pocket, but also the Severodonetsk garrison: the former was a ‘last minute’ decision, the latter, ‘just in time’ to run a _controlled_ withdrawal.
That much about the last few days. Now back to latest developments. As of yesterday, Ukrainians have withdrawn from the Azot Works: reargaurds seem to still be holding a bridgehead from the southern side of Severodonetsk to Voronove. The way out runs through Lysychansk, then Bilohorivka to Serebianka and then Siversk: Wagner has captured Vovchoyarivka and is pushing for Verkhnokamyanka (it could be they’re already inside the latter). Separatists have taken Bila Hora and are probing into southern Lysychansk.
The Russians claim to have encircled ‘2000 enemy troops’ in the Zolote-Hirske area; including 1,800 Ukrainians from the 3rd and 24th Mech, 15th Mountain Assault, 42nd and 57th Motor Rifle, 128th Mountain Assault, and the 101st TD Brigades, the ‘Right Sector Unit’ and ’80-strong Detachment of foreign volunteers’.. Kadyriov’s Czechens of the 141st Special Motor Rifle Brigade (Rosgvardia) have aired a video of themselves in the centre of Zolote, and there’s little doubt that even Hirske was captured. However, and foremost: the Russians were unable to show more than exactly 41 captured Ukrainian, no ‘hundreds’. In turn, Ukrainians have captured quite a few of Russians, too.
Is this all ‘bad’?
It’s not ‘good’.
But — except for those wounded or captured, or for those left behind by the fallen, of course— it’s not as terrible as it sounds. Contrary to the flight of inexperienced foreign journos in civilian cars down the T1302, ZSU’s withdrawal from Severodonetsk is controlled, there are indications that Ukrainians are doing quite well in holding Lysychansk no matter what’s happening south of it. The situation is well away from ‘doomsday scenarios’ spread even by some of versed Western ‘war monitors’.
Above all, keep the big picture in mind: this is all going on in a sector of just some 15 by 6km of a 1000km+ long frontline, and in grand total, the ‘Severodonetsk mission’ remains a success: the ‘2nd most powerful army of the World’ has — already by now — suffered such attrition that it’s rendered to little else but ‘artillery support for Putin’s mercenaries’. What is important is to get as many troops south of the Siversky Donets, get them rested, replenished, reorganised, and enable them to share their experiences with inexperienced troops, and thus improve their training.
Meanwhile, the ZSU is going to find a new position suitable for — at least — repeating the exercise: after all, and sadly, the war is far from being over.