Ukraine War, 8 August 2024: Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Hello everybody!

I’m sure I’ve said this already several times: wars are affairs full of ironies and quite a few absurdities. This time I’ll add the remark that they’re also like ‘exotic living beings’: as systems of systems, they have their own ‘life’ and nobody can predict what might a war ‘do as next’…. Or how one might end (all provided one or another war ever ends…). There are very few as good examples for this as what the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU) are doing in the Kursk Oblast of the Russian Federation of the last two days.

….which, amid an almost ‘total emission control’ by all the talking-heads in Kyiv, is precisely what are most of observes wondering about: what exactly is the ZSU doing there in Kursk… and why…. and how long?

Well, amid the lack of an official explanation, lets try to assess few thingies.

***

Strategy

For the start, all the available indicators say that the Trio Fantasticus in the White House is, generally, prohibiting any kind of offensive operations by Ukraine inside the Russian Federation. Essentially, the ‘Biden-Blinken-Sullivan animal’ is banning not only the deployment of US-supplied weapons by Ukraine on the Russian turf, but (despite public statements of the contrary) also the Ukrainian strikes on the Russian oil industry, on the Russian power network, and on the Russian air bases. As far as they are concerned, any such actions might make this war ‘even more unpredictable’, definitely something against their own interests and designs - and therefore such actions are ‘nyet, nyet, and nyet’.

Then let’s have a look at the government in Kyiv and the GenStab-U. They are facing a situation where they can’t be sure if, after elections in the USA of November this year, they’re still going to have the US support. Already months before it’s so far, the ZSU is also lacking almost everything: not only artillery ammunition, but also surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) for air defence purposes, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, armoured and mechanised vehicles, even utility cars. Even US supplies of artillery ammunition beyond November this year are also anything else than certain. Those from the EU are lagging years behind the plan. Mind that although the first consignment (around 100,000) of shells from the ‘Czech Arms Deal’ has reached Ukraine in late June and early July, the mass’ is yet to follow. And because the ‘allies’ in the West couldn’t even do as much as to agree who is going to pay how much for what of the Czech Arms Deal, not to talk about transhipment of the shells in question, there’s still no certainty the rest is really going to follow. The same is valid with the follow-up deal for 2 million of shells supposedly found somewhere else: nobody is even trying to talk about it anymore.

With other words: Ukrainian ‘allies’ are so ‘dependable’, they have also all failed to deliver the promised/pledged amounts of artillery- and mortar ammunition from own production – principally because their talking-heads proved to be exactly that: incompetent talking-heads, unable to act without permission from their oligarch-masters, therefore unable of effective administration, lacking far-sight, and ability to govern in interest of the people, instead of the oligarchy. Moreover, meanwhile they’re delivering no armour, while it’s left to the troops of the ZSU to buy utility cars, UAVs etc. – usually for their own money (and with help of donations like yours for the 151^st Mech).

An unsurprising result is that in frontline sectors like that of Avdiivka-Pokorovsk, the ZSU can’t hold its positions: this is constantly pulverised by the Russian UMPK glide-bombs, and oversaturated by Russian infantry assaults. Sure, in northern Kharkiv and elsewhere the ZSU did manage to stop the Russian onslaught, but this came at a price – both in terms of ammunition expenditure and the number of units it had to deploy, and which are now exposed to relentless Russian air strikes, too. Another result is that the Russian reconnaissance UAVs continue roaming up to 200 kilometres deep over Ukraine, and both the ZSU and the air force (PSU) can to relatively little against it (shouldn’t mean they’re not trying, and very hard at that).

Atop of this, the Russian missile strikes have devastated the Ukrainian power supply system to the degree where nobody can reliably say whether this is going to function the coming winter. So much so, the Russians are meanwhile free to use up to 6 Iskander-Ms to blast just one target (like that heavily fortified UAV-factory in Brovary, hit in the night from 5 to 6 August… where the PSU then reported just 4 Iskanders, and to have shot down 2… while nobody in Ukraine is talking about results of that attack….).

By all the promises and pledges of the West, that’s unlikely to change before around 2027 – even if Harris might win elections…

….and that whether because the West (including the USA) can’t even properly ramp up its production of SAMs, or because it’s uncertain if it’s going to continue delivering even its old stuff like RIM-7 Sea Sparrow/Aspide/Spada…

As if all of this is not enough, official Kyiv is even prohibited from complaining: it’s been reported, several times, that Biden prohibited Zelensky from complaining about the US aid. Moreover: even if he would be permitted to do so, the Pudding-allied oligarchy like Bezos, Musk, Thiel, Trump etc. would be certainly very happy if he does - because that would be playing straight into their hands (see ‘no money for Ukraine’, even though 90-95% of ‘money’ provided by the Trio Fantasticus is actually spent in the USA).

Then add Kyiv’s own failures to this calculation: the failure of the belated and poorly conducted offensive of the last year (because this was launched months too late and thus based on obsolete planning); the failure to fully mobilise the population (and that on time); the failure to finance its ‘conventional’ defence sector (and then on time, too), so that this would start manufacturing SAMs and other weaponry of own design; the failure to reform the GenStab-U so that this starts providing fundaments of reformed ZSU instead of commanding in micromanagement-style, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Such circumstances are resulting in situations where one – in this case: Ukrainians – is ‘damned if he/she does, and damned if he/she doesn’t’. Left with little choice but to continue playing to the music of the others (USA, Russia, EU etc.), ‘or else’…

The issue was only to do something not only bold, but also determined and effective enough – and then something nobody expected. And even if somebody expected it, then: not to this extension.

Sure, the GenStab-U could’ve deployed the ‘1,5’ brigades it’s deployed for this ‘raid’ into the Kursk Oblast in the Avdiivka-Pokrovsk sector. It could’ve bolstered shipments of ammunition and other supplies to that sector, too. To stabilise the situation there, for example. But, ask yourself: what would this gain? Eventually – and whether in 1-2 weeks, or 1-2 months or longer – the troops and equipment in question would be pulverised by the Russian glide bombs and UAVs…

Now it seems that official Kyiv grew fed up to the level where it opted for ‘else’. It did something similar to the US Union Navy’s Admiral David Farragut during the Battle of Mobile Bay, in 1864, during the US Secessionist War, when he issued the famous order, ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead’ (where one should keep in mind that ‘torpedo’ at the time was what would be called a ‘mine’ nowadays: torpedoes in sense as we know them nowadays were not yet invented).

Read, ‘damn the Trio Fantasticus and all the glorious allies in the West, and damn Pudding: attack into Kursk’.

***

Operational Level

That much about ‘strategic level’. The next question was that of the ‘operational level’…To understand this, please imagine the GenStab-U using all of its brigades newly-established in early 2023, to drive over the (at that time) de-facto unprotected border into the Russian Federation (instead through 20+ kilometres of the Russian minefields in southern Zaporizhzhya…)

Is a ‘what if’: it didn’t happen, and thus it’s de-facto pointless to discuss. But still: one should keep in mind that, gauging by what Prigozhin’s ‘elite’ Wagner PMC has managed during its mutiny the last year, if doing something of that kind, the Ukrainians could’ve reached Moscow before there would be a meaningful reaction from Pudding and the Russian GenStab…. If for no other reason then because it’s always easier (a lot easier) to breach poorly-protected enemy positions, than those that are heavily fortified. Finally, nowadays, it’s on hand that there was a need for the ZSU to hit somewhere into Russia: the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (VSRF) were in the process of reaching the peak of deployment of their reserves in the Donbas. Foremost in the Avdiivka-Pokrovsk sector. Thus, better to force them to deploy these somewhere else. And nothing is as good as to force them to deploy these within the Russian Federation, instead in Ukraine.

…that’s at least my conclusion – and then one primarily based on what one can hear from Russia of the last two days. Because, contrary to the situation during the earlier two Ukrainian ‘raids’ into the Russian Federation, alone the volume of UAVs and air defences the ZSU seems to have deployed inside the Kursk Oblast this time, is meanwhile indicative of this operation being… well… somewhere between ‘better planned’ and, certainly, ‘involving much bigger Ukrainian formations’ (not just the two battalions consisting of Russians willing to fight against Pudding).

A T-72 of the ZSU, advancing through tall grass in the Korenovo-Sudzha area of the Kursk Oblast, in the Russian Federation (and yes: this ‘white triangle’ is the new ‘quick means of visual identification’ of the Ukrainian armour).

***

Tactical Details

Now, what can be said about details of this Ukrainian operation?

Based on Ukrainian sources? Next to nothing. At least if one is depending on official Kyiv…

Based on Russian sources? Well, these are ranging from ‘total chaos and panic’, via ‘we’ve beaten the Assyrians, and Babylonians, and the Mars People…’, to the Israeli-style (i.e. to paraphrase IDF’s General Elazar from October 1973), ‘this is their final hurrah and now we’re going to break their bones’…

Where the mass of what they report is nothing else than silly. Definitely indicative of the Russians being taken so much by surprise, shocked so much, it’s hard to describe.

So, for example, they claim the ZSU to have deployed no less than ‘5 super-elite brigades’, including the ‘Bradley-equipped 22^nd Mechanised’, plus 72^nd, 80^th, and 82^nd Airborne Assault Brigades…

Ironically: the VSRF is known to have constructed a series of fortifications about 10-15km east of the border to Ukraine. However, the areas where the ZSU drove into the Kursk Oblast are WEST of that line. For example: Sudzha – a strategically important place (because it’s in that area where three Russian pipelines transhipping gas to the West are joining into one, see the map below) – turned out to have been quickly seized by Ukrainians approaching it from multiple directions,  and that completely without a fight. Because there was actually no Russian garrison there.

A map of gas pipelines through Ukraine. You can find Sudzha in form of the fourth red arrow from the left.

‘No problem’, so the Russians, and thus their PRBS-industrialists went into an overdrive and reported the recovery of Sudza already yesterday around the noon – only to, in the same report, brag about this being heavily shelled and hit by air strikes, and then conclude that the VKS has bombed one of VSRF’s units withdrawing from there….

Seems, nobody there in Russia wonders how comes they have to bomb and shell a place that has already been ‘liberated’… never mind: as next, they and the Russian mainstream media busied themselves with reporting the death of one of PRBS-industrialists in question…which then proved to have been wrong, too…

Another good example was that of the Russian garrison of Oleshnyi: this was reported as ‘surrounded and then captured’ by the advancing ZSU. Actually, about 40 troops were captured by exactly four (in digits: 4) troops of the Aidar Battalion (53^rd Mech). 

Four ZSU troops checking 40+ Russian POWs…

Why that?

Because, lacking any other troops, the Russian GenStab ‘secured’ this area by units consisting of poorly-trained, poorly-equipped convicts. Over 300 of these are known to have surrendered to the ZSU within the first 12 hours of the operation.

I.e. the Russian GenStab did a massive mistake.

Another group of Russian POWs in the process of being led away near one of border crossings…

….which is bringing me to the topic of that GenStab in Moscow and the Ministry of Defence in Moscow. If you think the one in Kyiv is making mistakes… haha! Wait to hear about the one in Moscow. Those following me since longer know that I’m calling them the ‘Keystone Cops in Moscow’ (and I’m doing that already since the Russian military intervention in Syria, back in August-September 2015). And I’ve got good reasons for this: meanwhile, even the Russians with memory better than that of the fish are calling the GenStab’s chieftain, Gerasimov, a liar. And all of his subordinated generals for incompetent drunkards. Because, Gerasimov was dumb enough to first announce that the Ukrainian attack included ‘250 militants and 50 armoured vehicles’, then that the Russians have ‘killed 250 Ukrainian militants and destroyed 50 armoured vehicles’, and then expanded this to, ‘killed 400 militants and wounded 3-4 as many’ etc… With other words: according to Geraimov’s own statements, the Russians have already now killed some 4 times as many ‘Ukrainian militants’ as he has reported are involved…

Gerasimov explaining his day-dreams in a teleconference with Pudding and Shoygu, yestesrday…

Gauging by his facial expressions (and corners of his mouth), Pudding also knew Gerasimov was lying - and was not the least amused…

Of course, the Keystone Cops’ announcement that the Ukrainian attack was ‘stopped already on the border’ was of similar ‘quality’…

Unsurprisingly, Pudding’s PRBS-industrialists then reacted in their usual fashion. See: fake news. Between others, they began using old videos of destroyed Ukrainian Bradleys & Strykers – actually taken in the Avdiivka-Pokrovsk sector, long ago.

Meanwhile, somebody there was kind enough to confirm: they have failed to recover Sudzha, just like they’ve failed to recover – for example – Zeleny Shlyakh: a VSRF counterattack on that village was literally smashed by the ZSU. On the contrary, as of yesterday late in the morning, first reports began to surface about heavy fighting along the highway connecting Sudzha with Korenovo, and then about the Ukrainians reaching the Workers District in the latter town (where about 50% of the population of around 4,000 already fled). As next, they began listing villages secured by the ZSU, including (just for example) Leonidove and Lyubimovka… With other words, something along the line shown on this map:

Certainly enough, data from the NASA’s FIRM-system (actually meant to show big forest fires, for example) are showing a ‘rather limited’ combat zone (at least as of yesterday in the morning).

Additional of the Russian ‘news’ – usually launched by exactly the same people who couldn’t stop boasting with ‘precise air strikes of the VKS’, ‘carpet bombing Ukrainian positions’ and similar - explained the collapse of the VSRF’s positions between Sudzha and Korenovo with ‘Ukrainians brought in lots of air defences’, which ‘prevented Russian aircraft from flying close to them’. This was then followed by reports about ‘several Ka-52s shot down by long-range AIM-120 missiles fired by Ukrainian F-16s’.

With other words: the Russians ‘know exactly’ what’s going on, and thus the situation is ‘clear’, and a victory on hand…

Actually, except for the GenStab-U (I guess… and hope) nobody really knows the extension of the Ukrainian penetration into the Kursk Oblast. Whether this might really have driven all the way to Korenovo… perhaps even further north along the highway to Rylsk (as some Russians are reporting): no idea. The only two things I’m sure is that

a)       within the first 24 hours of this operation, the VSRF rushed to withdraw the ‘mass’ of its forces from the area west of the line Rylsk-Korenovo. Especially the GRU’s Senezh special forces brigade was promptly driven all the way back to protect the nuclear powerplant of Kurchatov, south of Kursk.  

b)      the GenStab (in Moscow) has rushed elements of the 18^th Motor-Rifle Division from northern Kharkiv to the Kursk Oblast.

…which….well, you know how much I love politicians, and how gleeful I can get? …. made me wondering: how busy would the emergency services of the White House in Washington DC became, if the Ukrainians would have really driven all the way there…?

And,

c)       within the first 24 hours of this operation, the ZSU captured more terrain than the VSRF manage to capture in two months of assaults into northern Kharkiv.

Which is enabling another conclusion:

d)      Unsurprisingly, some of the Russian PRBS-industrialists are already comparing the results of this Ukrainian operation with the breakthrough at Balakliya and the defeat of their 1st Guards Tanks Army at Izyum, back in September 2022. Plus: considering the poor state of the 18^th Motor-Rifle (battered during assaults into northern Kharkiv), additional VSRF units are certainly to follow in the direction of the western Kursk Oblast, and that ‘before soon’…

…while I’m foremost curious to see if the ZSU might find enough troops to ‘close the trap’ by an advance from the border west of Korenovo to this town…

With other words: as usually, we can do little else but continue collecting for the ZSU, and wait and see what comes up from this one.