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.
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.