We now assess that Russian forces have given up on encircling or seizing Kyiv at this time. Russian forces continue to fight to hold their current front-line trace near the city, however, remaining dug into positions to the east, northwest, and west. Russian forces withdrawing from the area around Kyiv appear to be moving north from behind the front line to positions in Belarus.
Russia is directing some reserves to the effort to connect gains southeast of Kharkiv and Izyum with its front line in Luhansk.
Ukrainian forces continue to defend in likely isolated pockets in Mariupol. The city will likely fall to the Russians within days.
A Russian offensive operation to take the rest of unoccupied Donetsk Oblast would be a significant undertaking. It remains unclear if Russia can harvest enough combat power from Mariupol after securing the city or divert reinforcements from elsewhere on a large enough scale to complete it.
Here’s also a good article comparing what happened in Grozny and Aleppo to what’s happening in Ukraine now. I think it’s incredibly fortunate that they haven’t been able to take Kyiv:
Dan Mogulof, who covered the first Chechen War as a producer for CBS News, recalled in an interview with Grid that the Russian advance was characterized by a mix of “incompetence and brutality.” He said that “in the initial conflicts in Chechnya between the Russian military and Chechen rebels, the Russian military was so decimated that they pulled back to the outskirts of the city and began indiscriminate shelling. Is this starting to sound familiar?”
It wasn’t just civilians who suffered in the assault. “One of the things I saw that, to this day boggles the mind, was that the Russian army left its wounded and dead on the field,” Mogulof said. “I’m a military veteran. One of the most profound and sacred promises a military makes to its soldiers is that they won’t be left behind. That was being violated, which says a lot about the army and national leadership’s attitude toward these young men.”
That’s what Speer said, in Inside the Third Reich (spoiler: must be read with huge spoon of salt handy). He wasn’t speaking so much of the military as the party leadership. Hitler gave every leader an area of operations, but with overlap, so they were constantly fighting, and having to come to him for clarification and direction. That meant that Hitler was in control, at the cost of tremendous inefficiencies. [checks forum title] It’s a management style that was in the news in the US a while ago.
I have to say It’s interesting that Ukraine has now sent missiles INTO Russia.
If Russia can’t maintain and supply a small ground force then it’s just a matter of time before they run out of missiles to shoot into cities. Imagine a Ukrainian force driving deep into Russia because there is no hardware available to stop them.
Which is yet another reason how you end up with this (also from the ISW report from today):
The [Ukranian] General Staff also reported that Russian efforts to generate reinforcements from the Pacific Fleet could not produce even a single battalion because of refusals to fight. We have no independent confirmation of these assessments, but Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu‘s March 29 statement that Russia would not deploy conscripts to “hot spots” corroborates assessments of Russian soldiers’ unwillingness to enter the war.
Assuming that Russia will pull their northern troops out of the line to make the trip to the Donetsk/Luhansk region, they will probably be able to make most of the movement by rail through Russian territory. Russia has a pretty good rail network, and most of their units moved to the front by rail, so they have recent experience doing so. It will save some wear and tear on their tracked and wheeled vehicles as well.
After a little googling, I’m seeing statistics on the order of 2,000-3,000 vehicles per US armored brigade - which seems a bit high, but not unreasonable. For a Russian division with similar vehicle numbers, they would take perhaps 20-25 hundred-car trains to move from point to point.
If they can embark them at Homyel in Belarus, and move them via Bryansk-Kursk-Voronezh toward the front near Rostov, transit time probably wouldn’t be more than 2 days, but the loading and unloading would take more time. There’s an article describing loading up a train in Ft. Carson, CO for a deployment, and they’re pretty proud about getting two trains loaded and on their way in a single day, and that’s with the permanent facilities of a military base helping. Unloading at the other end probably similar. Call it two weeks to make the complete movement, including maintenance happening at each end for the vehicles being sent.
I’m guessing Ukraine probably won’t be able to send units that deep (maybe 50km, or thereabouts?) into Russian territory to interdict the rail lines. Though, if you had really good intel on when a full train was about to cross over a long bridge, that might be a great target for an exceptionally risky air mission…
Man, you guys are awfully positive based on limited evidence. We are a MONTH in.
History is absolutely full of examples of large powers that for the first part of the war looked like bumbling idiots who couldn’t fight off a paper bag, and that ended up winning.
I am concerned Putin is willing to sacrifice everything to keep fighting.
A very different situation. The first campaign by Austria-Hungary was defeated. The second campaign, a year later, consisted mainly of Bulgarian and German troops, under German command, with the Austro-Hungarians making up only about a third of the forces.
That article says Serbia (the defender) won, so I don’t think that’s an example of an aggressor who stumbles out of the gate but then gets it together and kicks ass.
Ukraine doesn’t have Crimea. It has been occupied by Russia since 2014. Ukraine has a moral claim to it, that is about all.
Well, see, we can count their tanks, guns planes, and men, and know how technologically advanced they are. What is hard to spy out is just how corrupt Russia was, and how little will to invade the Russian soldier has.
If Communist China gave up it’s claim to Taiwan, would that be giving up territory? No, since they lost Taiwan a long time ago. Russia has had Crimea since 2014, and Ukraine has zero chance of getting it back. Since the Ukraine doesn’t have Crimea, it is only giving up a moral claim. The land the Russia wants is still in Ukraine, even though it there are Russian troops in much of it. Fighting continues there.
Well, Russia had Crimea since 1783. Ukraine had it from 1991-2014. Probably the majority of the population is still pro-Russian, even now. Russia has also made major infrastructure investments in Crimea since 2014. So it’s a very different situation from Donbas.
I don’t think there’s any real benefit to Ukraine in trying to get back Crimea. Ukraine is saying in current peace talks that they are willing to leave it under Russian control and look at the situation again in 15 years.
I dunno - the same way the Russians overestimated the capabilities of the Russian military? If the US information was based on human intel and those humans were themselves misinformed well, there ya go.
Also, satellite photos might tell you how many tanks and trucks someone has, but not how well they’ve been maintained.
Everyone seems so certain about Crimea, but when was the last time anyone asked the people actually living there? In a better world I’d say let it be decided by the Crimeans in a fair vote, but with a Russian gun to their head in the real world it will never be fair or honest.
