Ukraine War, 7 January 2023: Part 2
Hello everybody!
Sorry for another delay: this is a ‘Part 2’ of what I started writing on 5 December, then got interrupted. Anyway, here you are: having made it ‘clear’ I’m as mad as frustrated by this tragedy known as ‘War in Ukraine’ or ‘Ukraine War’ (or whatever else you want to call it) — and that as much by corruption and incompetence of Vladimir Putin (which is the central reason for launching his aggression on Ukraine), as by corruption and treachery of certain Ukrainian strongmen, or by corruption and incompetence of the collective Western oligarchy and the politicians they control — and thus having ‘warmed up’ my brain in the ‘Part 1’, now let me take a look at the developments of the last few days in this ‘Part 2’…
My disclaimer for today: I apologise in advance for certainly missing a few important developments of the last week. Sorry, but got really a lot of work on my hands.
STRATEGIC
Yes, yes…. We’ve all heard it: Putin ‘ordered’ a 36-hours-cease-fire for the Orthodox Christian Christmas. Nothing unusual: with pools showing that over 50% of the Russians want an end of his war in Ukraine, he had to demonstrate his ‘good will’, show himself as a ‘man of peace’, and that ‘it’s Ukrainians who want war’. To make sure: I’m not ‘horny for more fighting’, but that’s about all the time and electrons worth wasting about that issue. If Putin seriously wants peace, he can start withdrawing his hordes from Ukraine at any time, instead of claiming up to 40% of country for Russia, denying Ukrainians the right to exist and promising them extermination, continuing to terrorise them with missile strikes, mass detentions, torture, summary executions and similar…
From my point of view, more interesting turned out to be the fact that now Shoygu now has his own private military company (PMC). This is called ‘Patriot’ and has its first ‘battalion tactical group’ deployed in the Vuhledar area — and thus well away from the competition of Prigozhin’s Wagner. Is important because the two can’t stand each other, i.e. might start infighting.
I’m joining the club of those who cannot wait for Medvedev to turn up with his own private militia: in the long term, that’s simply unavoidable considering the Putin-inducted process of degenerating the Russian armed forces (VSRF) into oblivion as a ‘payback for their failure on him’… See how bad they are: meanwhile losing even ‘re-purposed’ T-90S manufactured for India… Man, I’m looking forward to hear from all the Indians proud about this.
BTW, while guards mechanised formations of the VSRF are nowadays re-equipped with 30-years-old T-80s, or even poorer stuff, Wagner is driving ‘super modern’ T-90Ms. Because, at least in Putin’s opinion, his private militias have proven far more dedicated and loyal to his aims than the regular Russian armed forces, and because the VSRF — and the GenStab in particular — all failed on him… because, you know, Putin is infallible, and if anybody is making mistakes: it’s not him.
At least as interesting was the announcement by Kronshtadt Enterprises to have delivered eight Orlan complexes of six UAVs each, and is to follow with deliveries of 12 complexes (i.e. 72 additional UAVs) in period January-February this year. Whether the company can really make as many — not sure: this appears on the ‘enthusiastic side’ to me. But, it’s definitely so that what is left of the Putin-controlled Russian defence sector is striving to improve its output: thanks to the poor ability of Orlan-10/20/30 to operate at low temperatures, this might appear ‘irrelevant’ right now, but it is, potentially, ‘no good news for the spring’…
Finally, on 30 or 31 December, Putin officially declared both the ‘1st Donetsk Army Corps’ (i.e. the ‘armed forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic’), the ‘2nd Guards Luhansk-Severodonetsk Army Corps’ (I.e. the ‘armed forces of the Luhansk People’s Republic’), and the Donetsk Higher Combined Arms Command School, for ‘parts of the Russian Armed Forces’. Official statement quoted something like ‘eight years of combat experience’ as the reason to consider them for ‘combat-ready units of the Russian Army’. With other words: Putin is continuing his Anschluss of large parts of Ukraine to Russia.
On the other side, the USA and several allies have announced the ‘next round’ of arms deliveries to Ukraine. Between others, this is going to include something like ‘battalion-worth’ each of French-made AMX-10RC heavy armoured cars (de-facto ‘light tanks on wheels’), M113 armoured personnel carriers (and their sub-variants in form of infantry fighting vehicles), M2 Bradly and Marder infantry fighting vehicles (no ‘tanks’, ladies and gentlemen from the media!), ‘but’ and ‘just’ 70,000 artillery shells calibre 155mm, ‘just’ 500 guided artillery shells, ‘just’ 18 additional self-propelled artillery pieces, and ‘just’ 36 towed artillery pieces.
This is likely to enable either the establishment of another mechanised brigade of the ZSU, or a complete re-equipment of one or another existing formation. That is a process that’s unavoidable: in the long term, the West can’t keep the ZSU resupplied without completely replacing all of its armament of Soviet/Russian design. It is not manufacturing the equipment in question, ammunition and spares for it, nor can it continue buying enough of all of it from secondary sources (and even if, that would be anything else than reliable). However, this round of arms supplies is not going to be enough to ‘promptly’ help sort out the existing disparity between existing units of the ZSU: currently, no two of ‘mechanised’ brigades have the same complement of heavy weaponry, and thus their fighting capacity is not the same. That process is going to take much, much longer.
On the negative side: I simply can’t stop wondering how many more DIFFERENT weapons systems NATO wants to supply to Ukraine? It’s one thing if the US Army, British Army, French Army, and German Army each operates entirely different weapons systems. But, by now, the ZSU has got DOZENS of DIFFERENT self-propelled- and towed howitzers, armoured vehicles etc., almost every single one of which requires a different set of spare parts (even different tyres!), not to talk about different ammunition. That’s like with cars: if our chancellor is driven around in a Mercedes, and your boy/girlfriend is driving a Seat, and I’m driving a KIA, each of us needs different spares and different tires. Indeed, different car mechanics, too. Thus, cannot avoid wondering: what IDIOTS there in Brussels, Washington, Paris, Berlin, London etc. think the ZSU can continue maintaining and operating all these DOZENS of DIFFERENT systems in the long run…?!?
…sigh…
Perhaps of bigger immediate importance: Germany is going to deliver a full PAC-2/3 Patriot air defence system to Ukraine. That’s going to be the second such system, right after the one delivered by the USA.
At least as important: RUMINT has it that there are works on mating US-made RIM-7 Sea Sparrow air defence missiles to the Ukrainian Buk surface-to-air missile (SAM) -systems of Soviet origin. Per se, no ‘news’ as such: related testing has been run — on private/commercial initiative (especially in the Czech Republic) — already over a decade ago. Back then, there was no interest in realising the idea, though: i.e. it found no paying customers. Technically, the Sea Sparrow (used to be the principal short-range air defence system of the US Navy), its Italian version (Aspide), and the Buk are relatively similar: their guidance systems depend on so-called semi-active radar homing (SARH, which means: the radar of the system is guiding missiles to the radar echoes of the target). Thus, it should be relatively simple to fine-tune seeker-heads of the US- and Italian-made missiles to the working frequencies of Soviet-made radars. This all is going to be extremely important because the supply of Sea Sparrows is going to keep some 72 Ukrainian Buk M1s — perhaps the most effective air defence tool of the country — in operations: their stocks of original missiles are meanwhile critically low.
For the end of this section, two points of interest for ‘weapons buffs’:
- this Twitter-thread on the Ukrainian S-300V1 SAM-systems, and
- Ukrainian investigation into Russian operators of Iranian-made Shahed-131/136 UAVs:
AIR/MISSILE WARFARE
….which is bringing me to my, meanwhile usual, discussion of the air/missile warfare.
Up front: Ukrainian power grid. The situation is not even ‘stabile’. It’s rather ‘shaky’ and ‘fragile’. The system is damaged to a degree where mere improper/undisciplined use by millions of its customers can bring it to a collapse, and intentional power shut downs are not only pre-determined, but 1000% sure. Every single day. That is: too many people turning on too many electric machines at the same time (re-loading the smart-phone and watching TV at the same time, plus washing machine and cooking at the same time…) and similar are all ‘as dangerous’ for large parts of the Ukrainian power grid as additional Russian missile strikes. However, power grid is holding out, and some elements have been restored over the last week.
The reason Ukrainians were capable of doing that is that, quite suddenly, on 31 December 2022 Putin and Surovikin decided to change their strategy. Instead of continuing to maul the power grid, they started targeting what the top Keystone Cop in Moscow, Konashenkov, declared for ‘Ukrainian facilities for production of drones’.
More specifically…
On 30 and 31 December, the Russians run some 80 attacks with artillery rockets (BM-27s and BM-30s), 29 air strikes, and a stream of 10–16 Shahed-136 LPGMs on north-eastern Ukraine. The list of targeted places read like back in April-May: most were along the frontline, from Sumy, via Lyman and Bakhmut, down to southern Zaporizhzhya and Kherson. In most of cases, Ukraine was unable to return the favour, with one known exception: the Russian battery that shelled Kherson on 31 December failed to change positions on time and was hit back, with Ukrainians claiming the destruction of 6 artillery pieces and 12 support vehicles.
On the same two days, the Russians claimed a total of three Ukrainian helicopters shot down, and Ukrainians claimed one Russian.
Then, around 13.00hrs of 31 December, Tu-95MS bombers of the VKS then released a stream of about 20 Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles. As usually, NATO early warning systems — including a Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS oribiting over Romania — issued a timely warning. Six missiles were claimed as shot down over the Kyiv Oblast, 5 over Zhytomyr, and 1 in Khmelnytskyi region. It is possible that some of these were felled by Polish-supplied 9K33 Osa-AKMs (NATO reporting name ‘SA-8 Gecko’) which recently appeared in Ukraine, but it’s at least as likely that these are deployed closer to the frontline. Tragically, except for a building ‘suspected’ to be used by the special forces of the ZSU in Khmelnytskyi, most of those missiles that did get through have hit civilians — especially so in parts of Kyiv named Solomyansk, Holosiivsk, Dnipro and Pechersk: up to 16 are known to have been killed.
On the next day (1 January 2023), the Russians intensified the deployment of their Iranian-made Shahed-131/135 LPGMs: by that evening, Ukrainians claimed the downing of 45 of these over the last 48 hours: 13 over the previous two days and 32 on the first day of 2023, of which six over Mykolaiv and nine over Dnipro and Zaporizhzhya. Subsequent Ukrainian reports increased the number of Shaheds shot down on 1 January 2023 alone to 40 (plus one Orlan-10 and one Kh-59).
Air strikes and Shahed-131/136-attacks on the Kyiv-, Zaporizhzhya- and Kherson Oblasts were continued into 2 January. From available info, Ukrainians recorded 6 missile-, 52 air-, and 77 MRLS-strikes, of which 6 missiles, 30 air strikes, and 27 Shaheds have primarily targeted civilians. Ukrainians claimed at least five Shaheds as shot down: of those that got through, two or three hit an object related to the Ukrainian power grid in the Stanislav area.
This 6-days-long-‘stream’ of Russian attacks subdued by 4 January, but even then, Ukrainians claimed the downing of one Su-25 (apparently over eastern suburbs of Bakhmut), one Ka-52, and one Orlan-10. Wagner is claiming this was an Ukrainian Su-25. The only things sure are: something was shot down but the crash site is outside the reach and thus nobody can provide clear evidence for what.
On the other side, Ukrainian HIMARS-operations have been significantly intensified, the last week. Around 01.00hrs of 1 January 2023, ZSU’s M142s have targeted an ammunition depot and the nearby building of the 19th Technical Training College (‘school’) in Makiivka, in Donetsk, which was used to house mobiks of the VSRF: the ammo depot blew up, pulverising everything around it… Russian social media began claiming between 300 and 600 casualties (all military personnel), the Keystone Cops in Moscow first reported some 60, then Surovikin increased that to some 89…. Whatever it was, the number of casualties was such that even Putin’s propaganda machinery couldn’t hide it, causing a fierce discussion in the social media — indeed, complaints that this ‘cynical murder of dozens of Russian soldiers on the New Year’s eve cannot be ignored’. Well, perhaps they shouldn’t have been sent there, first and foremost…
Me and my unpleasant questions…Anyway… eventually, Ukrainians announced that the School №16 housed:
- 24 troops from the 20th Special Purpose Detachment of the VKS
- 20 troops from the 360th Communications Training Regiment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and
- 242 troops of the 631st Regional Training Centre of the Artillery Corps VSRF.
Latest reports are indicating the recovery of 196 bodies (and body-parts, as long as recognisable as such), and a total of about ‘270 missing in action’. Of course, the Keystone Cops in Moscow promised to hold the ‘responsible officials accountable’ — especially for ‘unauthorised use of mobile phones’, because, you know, it’s ‘them’ to blame, and not Putin for completely failing to reform and upgrade the VSRF, and then sending it into a war it can’t win…
At least as interesting, around the same time and/or by 4 January, Ukrainian M142s have pulverised:
- a kindergarden in Shakhtyorsk, also used by the Russians to house their troops. RUMINT has it (another 20–50 VSRF casualties);
- a recreation centre used as a military base by the VSRF in Oleshky (southern Kherson): over 50 casualties reported;
- main VSRF supply depot in Svatove;
- two other VSRF supply depots (one in Kostrohryzove, other in Velyk Kopani),
- something else hit by the 92nd Mech, in the Svatove area,
- a VSRF base in Vasilivka (on the southern bank of the Dnipro, where ‘commander’ was reportedly killed, together with ‘many others’),
- one VSRF base in Tokmak (over 80 casualties reported); and
- the Shokolad restaurant in Tokmak, used as a Russian military base, too.
…to which the Keystone Cops reacted by claiming the destruction of two, then three, then four, then six M142 HIMARS launchers, and targeted a storage depot for humanitarian aid in Druzhkivka with S-300 SAMs deployed as ballistic missiles.
Of course, if I complain about the lack of evidence for the VSRF destroying even one Ukrainian M142 launcher so far…. then I’m biased, even a Russo-phobe…
BATTLE OF DONBASS
Up front: weather. After weeks of wet weather, temps are already freezing and in the process at ‘stabilising’ at around -5°C to -10°C. Means, the soil is going to get firm.
…and ‘up front no. 2’: for days already, artillery duels are raging all along the entire frontline in the Donbass, from Kupyansk in the north, to Vuhledar in the south.
Kupyansk-Svatove… The fighting of the last few days focused on the area between Tavilzhanka and Lyman Pershyi, i.e. the question of whether Ukrainians can widen their bridgehead of Dvorichne, or the Russians might be able to push them back on the Oskil River. Sufficient to say, nothing changed in regards of positions there.
West of Svatove… Ukrainians (including the Kraken Regiment) have managed to slightly widen and deepen their penetration of the first line of Russian defences east of Stelmakhivka: have secured Kolomychykha, then liberated what’s left of Pidkuychansk (10km north-west of Svatove), attacked Novoselivske (western side of Kuzemivka) and, finally, came as far as that the Russians have to shell them on approaches to Zmiivka, 2,5–3km outside Svatove. Indeed, the Russians not only shelled the ZSU units there, but reacted by heavy air strikes and raids by Mi-24 and Ka-52 attack helicopters, back on 29–31 December — which, usually, is an indication of things really developing in worst imaginable way, at least for Putin. That said, as far as I know, there was no major change in this sector of the frontline since 29–30 December. Probable reason is (or was) the weather: back then it was ‘wet’, but meanwhile this is on the best way to ‘freezing’.
Siversk-Soledar and Bakhmut… Generally… some are claiming that the ZSU has got a total of 13 brigades with 90,000 troops deployed in and around the town. I would like to ask any of characters coming to such ideas if they’ve ever spent a single second thinking on how should Ukrainians stack so many troops within such a small area: like sardines in a can, and horizontally or vertically?
Seriously now: actually, there are ELEMENTS of some 15 different brigades of the ZSU there. Mostly one battalion from another brigade — but NO 13 complete brigades. Since I’m at ‘discussing cars’ today: it’s like with any parking lot next to you. There’s always a limit of how many cars one can stuff into it. In Bakhmut, there is simply no way the ZSU can squeeze 90,000 troops into such a small area (at least not without risking these getting killed by hundreds from every single hit of the Russian artillery).
Back to really important things: until around 31 December 2022, it didn’t matter what day in the week it was: the Russians were assaulting in ‘wave after wave’ fashion, and suffering their 400–600 fatalities a day, too. The usual ‘flow’ of action was something like this: in 8–9 out of 10 cases, Ukrainians detected the next Russian assault early (and that with help of UAVs for which the Asia Times, leaning on multiple Western media reports from April and May, is reporting the Russians are ‘shooting down in droves’), and cut it to pieces with their artillery well before the enemy could reach the range of their assault rifles. In that one or two cases where the Russians did get closer, the question was if they could report their findings about Ukrainian positions on time for their artillery to provide support before getting cut to pieces by the Ukrainian machine gun- and mortar fire. …or how quickly could Ukrainian artillery (meanwhile: including tanks of the 4th Armoured deployed as self-propelled artillery) deploy effective counter-battery fire against the Russian artillery. The high point of such practices was their assault on Pidhorodne, in which they’ve lost about 50% of the involved force, for absolutely no gain in return (indeed, RUMINT has it, ZSU suffered not a single casualty).
Then, on or around 31 December, Wagner — meanwhile reinforced by the VSRF, which brought in additional artillery with it — switched tactics once again, and is exploiting the continuous shortages of Ukrainian artillery shells to operate in very small groups of troops which are infiltrating Ukrainian positions. The result was three-fold:
- A) Ukrainian UAVs couldn’t track all of small groups of Russian troops;
- B) Ukrainian artillery couldn’t target ‘every 2–3 Russian troops around’; and
- C) the fighting regularly ended at the short range, in turn causing a growing number of Ukrainian casualties to small-arms fire — and the loss of several positions.
On 3 January, Wagner claimed the conquest of Bakhmutske and ‘success east of Soledar’. By now, it’s certain that it captured at least Bakhmutske. Over the last three days, it continued pushing, relentlessly, in similar fashion, north and south of Soledar, in direction of Krasnopolivka and Krasna Hora, and into southern Soledar, plus on Pidhorodne. By 5 January, the position of the Ukrainian garrison in Soledar was ‘critical’, to put it mildly (and yes: human losses on both sides were ‘at least heavy’).
Now, the town of Soledar was held (mostly) by the 46th Airborne, and this was reporting to have stabilised the situation. That said, there’s no doubt that they were ‘de-facto surrounded from three sides’ as of 5 January, and that Russian claims to have taken the centre of the town were ‘at least partially truth’. Unsurprisingly, as of the last evening it was confirmed that the 46th withdrew from the southern side of the town towards the north: it couldn’t risk getting encircled by the Russian advance. For a while it looked like this entire section of the frontline might collapse…
In turn, as of this morning, news was that Ukrainians — which is the 3rd ‘Azov’ Assault Brigade (the re-organised former Azov Regiment) — counterattacked and recovered not only the salt factory in Soledar in the course of a nocturnal operation, but most of the town, too, with — between others — the following result:
…that much about Putin’s ceasefire…
Pidhorodne is still holding out, but since the Russians have managed to get back to the wreckage of that gas station south-east of it, it’s under pressure from three sides, too. Unsurprisingly, most of descriptions of the situation in Bakhmut of the last three days are something like, ‘quiet, but tense and grim’: if the Russians manage to break through to the T0513, north of the town, the Ukrainian garrison is going to lose one of its supply connections. This is even more important because recently the Russian artillery destroyed the bridge in the centre of the town, connecting the eastern with the western part of it.
That said, Ukrainian positions on the eastern and south-eastern side of Bakhmut have even been improved, the last few days. Between others, the ZSU mopped up the Patrisa Lumumby Street and recovered most of the garbage dump. But, the situation in Opytne remained critical, with the Wagner pushing its small infiltration teams into the northern sector of the village.
Of other places with ‘unusual’ developments:
Mariinka… over the last week, the 1st CA VSRF (read: the remnants of the ‘Armed Forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic) continued assaulting into the centre of the village. Might have gained a few houses, in exchange for severe losses, foremost their own, though some Ukrainian, too.
Hulaypolye…On 3 January, the Russians assaulted the village of Dorozhnyanka, south of Hulaypolye. Ukrainians first withdrew, then returned, kicking the Russians out.
Kherson… the situation in regards of Oleshky has meanwhile cleared enough for me to say: sorry, the place is still under the Russian control. The Russians stabilised their frontline there by deploying the 10th Spetsnaz Brigade.
They were less successful in regards of their assault on the Potemkinsky Island on the Dnipro, announced as something like ‘another glorious Russian offensive’ in the social media, about a week ago: Ukrainians counter-attacked there, and seem to have smoked out whatever Russians were there — and these were foremost from the Spetsnaz and the VDV. One cannot avoid the impression that this was just another entirely useless Russian operation, undertaken for no reason and purpose, and ending in a catastrophe. That said, have no doubts: Potemkinsky is certain to remain a site of further, similar action for a while longer. That is: attacks and counterattacks by special forces. This because neither side has enough troops and the means to keep these supplied on that island, and thus can’t ‘protect it 100% for sure’.
So, think, that’s about it for today.
