The counterattck north of Lyman is a small area in the grand scheme. And if you’re looking for signficance, you shouldn’t over react to the push-pull of front lines in small sectors.
But - there is maybe a story behind the story here. Several stories.
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The closest you’re going to get to The Truth and an honest insight of Russian thinking and awareness is probably an aggregate of similarly timed and themed milblogger Telegram channel freakouts.
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There’s a brittle chauvanism to the Russian invasion mindset that doesn’t respond well to ANY step backwards. That’s a very inflexible way to fight a near-peer war of conquest. It also indicates a weakness - Ukraine doesn’t have to fully expel the Russians to 2014 or 1991 borders for Russia to consider it a defeat. They treat every retreat like an irreversible loss with shrieking hysterics, searching for scapegoats. And usually at the opeational command level, which is kind of dumb. The failure may manifest there, but the real blame is several layers higher in the chain of decision makers.
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Ukraine remains capable of coordinated manueuver warfare. This is after a period where it seemed both sides seemed to accept that mutual drone mass has made zone operations fairly moot. And maybe it is - but that lapses in that drone mass coverage create opporutnity that conventional thinking considered a thing of the past. Ukraine isn’t in a mere “hold on” phase - they are capable of offensives, and they may be growing stronger as Russia’s man-intensive horde war approach is weakening.
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Taking several steps back - the Russian anxiety reacting to a localized rollback at least implies a palpable fear of a ‘turning point’. One that is past ‘culmination’, where you stop advancing, and instead suggests you’re at a point where you start to lose significant pockets that would require limited reserve strength you might not even HAVE to try to get back. That could create a dangerous domino effect both on the physical front lines, and in the collapsing confidence of a slow-but-inevitable strategy of grinding ever forward over a presumably weaknening ukraine.
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For all the talk of a September mobilization, it hasn’t happened yet. And the first fresh conscript, whose combat effectiveness is highly debatable, wouldn’t arrive to reinforce failing fronts for several months from this sentence if mobilization were announced. Nor is there much certainty that mobilized conscripts would be any good as assault forces in the first place to underwrite Russia’s “grind forward, meat bags” strategy. How many more pocket collapses might happen before those conscripts who have less support, less equipment and poorer leadership even arrive at the front to replace the low-funcntioning grunts that are currently being blasted into canned pasta in charred piles of timber and blasted concrete right now?
In short - they are not moving forward and are starting to move backwards. Slowly, then quickly.
That all implies a collective fear among Russky milbloggers that they understand their entire position and philosophy is very fragile. There’s lots of examples in history where a small local defeat reinforces a wider fear that the entire approach to the war is pointless.
It’s very possible that a few collapsed pockets clustered together makes Russia finally accept defeat and screw off home.
The courage that the Ukrainians show every day is truly historic stuff. Slava Ukraini.
The worst Russian defeat so far.
I think it’s the TYPE of defeat this is that particularly unsettles them. A classic pocket salient squeezed over weeks, and strangled out. In the past, when they had salients they bum rushed reserves in to at least flatten the line. But it’s exceedingly rare where a pocket got created and Ukraine was able to simply close it off like this one.
It’s small, but maybe indicative.
God I fucking hate Russia
Less a country than a collection of sociopathic behaviours. A case study in long term abuse and brutality pretending to be a society.
What’s crazy is that they redid everything from scratch at least already two times, but both times they got exactly the same as before.
To your point here that they don’t seem to be able to effectively, fundamentally change their approach. A better writer than me once described it really well - namely that Fascist and generally corrupt regimes love the aesthetic of militarism, but aren’t able to commit to the disciplines to make it actually work well. They’re bored by less sexy concepts that are CRITICAL to sustained state warfare like industrial efficiency, logistics, banking systems. Since they’re in mafia goon states that protect the leader, theft is expected and they incentivize blind loyalty over competence, systemic corruption limits how good they can ever be at those critical pillars.
Instead, they love army parades, tanks rolling through their capital in crisp order, aircrat fly-bys, drilled march stomping past proud leaders in big hats, with an absurd panopoly of medals hanging off their barrel chests and bloated bellies. Often there are frankly silly videos of their (often shirtless) special forces karate chopping boards, jumping around and doing feats of coordinated athleticism that don’t really translate to effective battlefield tactics. You see this all the time with North Koreans, Belarussians, Middle eastern Arab armies of the 70’s/80s and even the Russian VDV. Prancing around to choreographed pulse-pounding music, leaping through hoops and showcasing their high kicks. That doesn’t really help you seize airfields, avoid drones and flush out trenches. They’re a circus, not a professional army.
But sustained, large scale conflicts requires way more than for-show armies whose real function is internal repression to keep the regmine safe, while also NOT allowing charismatic, capable commanders who could threaten The Leader to emerge. Quite the contradiction. The quality of The Average Fighting Man in a corrupt, authoritarian regime starts low and can never really get that high. Since Power is the organizing principle of these societies, authority flows upwards and those who don’t have it are treated like trash. They get poor training, poor leadership, poorly supplied and supported. Because…the whole point of the society is to hoard power and authority, not delegate it down to be wasted on the low-functioning grunts. THEIR job is to obey orders and die - and they know it. So what’s the incentive for them to train hard and be really effective soldiers? None - so the ones that survive are the ones with the skills to avoid being sent on suicidial assaults. Put simply - they aren’t incentivized to fight that well.
This is a story as old as time, and is why throughout history slave armies almost always lose to citizen armies where the power dynamic is REMOTELY comparable between the two sides. You know, that old saying about an army of sheep led by a lion will beat an army of lions led by sheep. It’s been true since the days of the Greeks - soldiers fight harder for their identity and their freedom than they do to avoid the lash and just for the simple paycheck. Especially when they know their less-than-impressive commanders who don’t give a damn about them, and are ordering them to die are in the rear stealing the best food and lodging for themselves.
Went way off on a tangent there - but to your point - why don’t they seem to learn anything? The Russian army may be capable of evolving Tactically, but with their entire brutalist psyche where the point of power and authority is to hoard it, the quality of the Average Figthing Man trying to just earn a check or avoid punishment can never be anywhere near as high as someone fighting an existential war of surivival and cultural identity in their homeland.
A tangent I utterly enjoyed. Thank you!
Remember a few years ago when Ukraine managed to push Russia back a lot and even took over parts of Russia proper?!
I think that situation will inspire Russian chauvinists to convince themselves that this time is like that time - a temporary setback that they will recover from.
Personally I think that at a far broader strategical level things are very different now:
- Russia’s stockpiles of Soviet-era weapons are pretty much gone now. Russia is now at a new stage were for most things their access to military hardware is limited to what it can buy or make and it can’t just freely take stuff out from deep weapons stocks. Amongs other things that means their ability to react to territory losses by throwing tons of resources at it is limited when it comes to equipment.
- Ukraine has developed and is now mass producing weapon technology that counters Russia, not just in the front but also with a lot of depth meaning amongst other things that previously safe logitical hubs (which could supply large scale counter-attacks) and staging areas (were such large scale counter attacks could more easilly be organised) are not safe anymore. This also has strategical implications (see next).
- Ukraine is actually taking out economically strategical Russia assets thus reducing Russia’s ability to pay for the weapons or the components for the weapons it now needs to buy or make. This further throttles down Russia’s access to military equipment and ammo.
- Russia’s ages old “just thrown warm bodies at it since we have more of those than they have” strategy which is the one they seem to have devolved into as their access to equipment got worse, is now affecting people closer and closer to the centers of power and industry and away from the far-way peripheral poor provinces which were their initial cannon fodder sources, further negativelly impacting Russia’s Economy and increasing risk of rebelion against Putin. Also by all indications Ukraine’s weaponry (i.e. drones) is giving them increasing advantages in countering Russia’s “human waves” with reduced risks for Ukrainian personnel, though it’s unclear if the rate of casualties per country population size has already reached the point were it is now better for Ukraine than for Russia (my impression for a while is that casualty rates were evolving in that direction as Ukrained used more and more drones against Russia’s frontlines, who in turn had less and less training and equipment).
I mean, rationally I think it’s premature to celebrate because who knows what else Russia will find that they can stretch for a pushback, though there is now a lot more reasons to hope that the war in Ukraine has finally reached a sustained turning point unlike the last time Ukrained significantly regained territory.
Your 4th point is I think the pivotal, first paragraph explaining the outcome of this war on future Wikipedia pages. Mass drones have made death cheap, precise and personal. I think this is the crux of why Russia cannot ever “win” this war - because their strategy is 20th century thinking. Namely - infestation until the other side gives up and goes away and accepts that the land turns from blue to red, like you’re in a video game, just by putting a body there. The biggest problem with that strategy is that Ukraine can use drones to kill Russian occupiers on a nearly infinite basis as long as they can make and deploy drones.
There is no ‘pacifying’ the exclusion zone that drones can cover. That distance, which technology continues to make larger and larger. The russian strategy of pushing small infiltration teams into soft areas until the Ukrainians retreat a bit technically moves Russians forward, but it doesn’t work as an occupation and pacfication strategy at all. It only works if Ukraine gives up and says the land is yours and agrees to stop killing your troops. And why would they do that? If you’re Ukraine, knowing that Russia will never honor a peace long term anyways, the best strategy is to keep the russian army bleeding until it dies. The only way to prevent the next war is to stop Russia’s capability to fight it.
Russia’s theory of victory depends on men and metal. Ukraine’s depends on being able to deploy machines and trade tiny slices of land until Russia leaves. This is what defeatists who say ‘Ukraine can’t push the russians out’ don’t accept. Russia is a 20th century army fighting a 21st century war with 7th century brutality, and Ukraine doesn’t have to push them out. They have to make it impossible for them to stay.
And they’re doing a great job of it.
Was that just before the USA cut critical help?
Pepperidge farm remember.
Edit: to clarify: Ukraine successfully punched into Russia, USA then stopped sharing intelligence and did everything to fuck the situation up for Ukraine. Ukraine had to abandon the salient.
Good thing that what makes more difference for Ukraine in the frontlines and even strategically is home-grown tech or at least not the kinds of kit the US is going through like crazy around Iran and to protect Israel (like Patriot missiles) and hence has stopped providing to Ukrained.
I mean, as far as I know the US still doesn’t let Ukraine use their missiles against Russian territory and it wasn’t that long ago that most of Ukraine’s European partners had the same artificial restrictions, plus still now Ukraine hasn’t been provided long range cruise missiles from anybody, only stuff like the the Storm Shadow which has about 250km range.
IMHO, the most genial thing Ukranians did after this Invasion started was heavilly investing in their own military tech, something which is now finally paying them massive dividends both in allowing them to hit strategical Russian economic targets far inside Russia and swamping the frontlines and the support lines behind them with drones.
As far as I can tell it’s not the course of the war itself that’s suffering from the US having stopped supplying Ukraine with needed ammo, it’s the civilians getting hit by missiles on balistic trajectories which is what Patriots were supposed to intercept (since there are other, better solution for drones which are not dependent of US-provide missiles). Also, let this be a lesson for anybody else choosing Patriot systems.
Correct. They are about to bring their own domestic ballistic missiles program online at scale.
https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ukraine-ballistic-missile-russia-fire-point/
Unknown how guidance will work - Ukraine doesn’t have their own satellite network or space launch capabilities. I have no idea how targeting works with ballistic missiles. But - presumably they’ve considered this in their production plans and they committed to developing this new capability because they thought it will work. They still have lots of friends, and may have more if Krasnov is neutered politically in the upcoming midterms, or triggers enough election interference that it leads to widespread chaos in the U.S.
Starlink still doesn’t allow guidance within Russia proper, but autonomous capabilities are getting better. Trump, as he always does, tried to use leverage he doesn’t actually have and ham-fistedly bully people into submitting to him. He cut US Aid immediately, and Ukraine didn’t collapse because they had other backers. Then he’s tried insane measures to invade allies and crash the global economy in an hope to a) manipulate markets for his own gain and b) goad Ukraine’s supporters into recession so they become more selfish and less inclined to support Ukraine. But - he’s an idiot who can’t understand what smarter people than him think, so that hasn’t worked either because the rest of Ukraine’s benefactors aren’t personally invested in Russian corruption money like he is.
The threat of what MIGHT happen if the U.S. pulled all aid has turned out to be more useful than the reality of having done it. And thus America really has almost no other cards to play to try and extort Ukraine into a bad peace. He really is one of the dumbest world leaders in history - like among the worst, lead-poison addled Roman emperors of all time.
Was what just before? US has already withdrawn almost all support. There’s still billions in draw down authtority from Biden that (of course) Trump refuses to allocate. Hasn’t helped Russians make a significant strategic breakthrough.
When the army is too afraid to even report facts within itself, then there’s a major problem in the Kremlin.
For Russian analysts, the deeper problem is that fabricated victories eventually corrupt battlefield decision-making. Once one Russian commander reports an imaginary advance, neighboring units and higher headquarters begin planning around territory that Russia does not actually control.
“What a great victory, Ivan. We’ll send lots of poorly guarded supplies to you immediately.”
I heard fabricated intelligence reports were how this even started, so yeah, no issues at all
There’s gonna be oodles of study afterwards about why any of this happened, but I’d bet my left pinky toe that the biggest single factor is this simple: Putin was always going to do this in his lifetime. Period. This is a vanity revenge project meant to cement his legacy. It gets said often that Putin is a 4D Chess player running circles around naive Western leaders.
I don’t believe that. He’s not a chess player - he’s a poker player who always bluffs. He punches down on opponents he doesn’t think will hit back and relied on his fat chip stack to scare people. Relies on an assumption that nobody really wants to fight and that nobody else would be able to endure their reckless cruelty.
And it worked, most of the time. Georgia. Chechnya Part 2. Crimea. And no doubt, he was given delusional intelligence reports he received about what level of Ukrainian resistance he was likely to come up against in a case of invasion. That’s a consequence of living in a brittle kleptocracy - everyone tells the boss what they want to hear, so that their head doesn’t end up on a spike. Especially when life is relativley good, you just lurch along skimming your take of The Great Corruption Project that is modern russia. Who would be so stupid as to rock the boat to this wonderful mafia state we’ve created? Just lie, and steal. Who cares? Nothing is going to happen except the next mafioso over trying to take your cushy position. Keep an eye on that asshole.
Well…The Boss, who is never satisfied and wants to see certain things happen before he dies. This was supposed to be the great victory that the USSR was cheated out of by traitors and feckless weasels in the west. The final hubris of wicked fools trapped in 20th century grievances.
Putin is a cautoniary tale of investing too much power in one mortal man. Especially when that man is a vile, black hearted gangster ghoul. Russia would have been MUCH better off to use malign mischief to corrode and corrupt Ukraine instead of exposing their army as corrupt, useless butchers way less effective than even the most pessimistic pre-war observers imagined.
This is a vanity revenge project meant to cement his legacy.
Yeah, you’re probably right in that and that it would have happened anyway. It’s maybe even worse than just bad intelligence (but I’m inclined to believe he would have done something stupid anyway even if he did not start this war)
You know, it’s natural to consider the russian casualty counts, and watch videos of them just wandering in small numbers across open fields and wonder “why the hell do russians behave so stupidly and march forward into death?”. I mean - there’s several reasons. Poor training, simple brutality, awful leadership, base stupidity, but maybe the most illuminating one I’ve seen is from the rare russian accounts of survivors.
In short - their command lies to them. They tell them “go forward to position x, there will be comrades and supplies waiting for you”. Except the reality is that they are ordering them into an assault without them knowing about it. You see thousands of videos online of poorly equipped russian infantry just mushing through fields without any organization or apparent understanding of the danger they’re in, and then suddenly a drone swoops in and turns them into pink mist. The low-quality grunts who get blown to pieces are serving a purpose - they are bullet sponges that locate Ukrainian positions before the higher quality men and machines are sent in. Not a bad strategy if you’re a black hearted ghoul with no concern for your men’s lives. But that’s only a good strategy if you’re looking for relatively static defensive positions manned by a limited number of Ukrainian infantry that you can then pound with bombs and artillery once it’s revealed itself. But - just walking into a drone swarm only tells you that there’s an operator somewhere within 20-50km, but good luck finding him that way. Hence…their small scale infiltration’s ability to gain new territory has slowed to a nearly irrelevant rate.
Why do they meekly march into unbelievably predictable death? How do they never put two and two together and figure out that the guys who walked out of camp yesterday and never came back is a bad sign for them? How do they just willingly walk into the maw of ludicrous, certain death? I mean, there’s the institutional brutality, the certainty that they’ll be abused or killed if they refuse, but this situation where their commanders lie to them about the nature of their mission makes a lot of sense if you spend time watching videos of them being obliterated. They’re on an assault, and don’t even realize it in a lot of cases is the point.
It says a lot about who Ukraine are dealing with. And explains why they’re fighting so hard to not be turned into Russian slaves again.
And it worked, most of the time. Georgia. Chechnya Part 2. Crimea. And no doubt, he was given delusional intelligence reports he received about what level of Ukrainian resistance he was likely to come up against in a case of invasion. That’s a consequence of living in a brittle kleptocracy - everyone tells the boss what they want to hear, so that their head doesn’t end up on a spike. Especially when life is relativley good, you just lurch along skimming your take of The Great Corruption Project that is modern russia. Who would be so stupid as to rock the boat to this wonderful mafia state we’ve created? Just lie, and steal. Who cares? Nothing is going to happen except the next mafioso over trying to take your cushy position. Keep an eye on that asshole.
LOL
Die madder Ruzzia.
