Category: Military

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 8

Immediate items to watch

• Russian forces will continue reinforcing the Izyum-Slovyansk axis and attempting to advance to and through Slovyansk to encircle Ukrainian forces.
• Russia is likely cohering forces in Donbas to attempt a major offensive in the coming days or weeks.
• The Battle of Mariupol continues, and it is unclear how much longer the Ukrainian defenders can hold out.
• Russian forces have fully vacated the Sumy axis and are regrouping in Belgorod for likely deployment to the Izyum-Slovyansk axis.
• Some Russian forces are likely to return to home stations in Russia while others will re-enter the fighting in the east.

Ukrainian forces retain control of defensive positions in eastern and southwestern Mariupol, despite Russian claims to have captured most of the city. ISW was able to confirm the specific locations of ongoing Russian assaults on April 8 for the first time in several days. Russian forces continue to attempt to regroup and redeploy units withdrawn from northeastern Ukraine to support an offensive in eastern Ukraine, but these units are unlikely to enable a Russian breakthrough and face poor morale. Russian forces along the Izyum-Slovyansk axis did not make any territorial gains in the last 24 hours. Ukrainian counterattacks toward Kherson continue to threaten Russian positions around the city.

Key Takeaways

• Ukrainian forces continued to hold out against Russian assaults in areas of southwestern and eastern Mariupol, notably in the port and the Azovstal Metallurgy plant, respectively.
• Ukrainian forces continued to repel daily Russian assaults in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.
• A Russian Tochka-U missile struck a civilian evacuation point at the Kramatorsk rail station in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 50 and wounding around a hundred evacuees.
• Russian forces continued attacks south of Izyum toward Slovyansk and Barvinkove but did not take any new territory.
• Ukrainian counterattacks have likely taken further territory west of Kherson, threatening Russian control of the city.

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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 3.

Immediate items to watch

• Russian forces will likely complete their withdrawal from Kyiv along the Sumy axis in the coming days and will probably abandon their remaining positions around Konotop and Sumy thereafter.
• Russian troops around Kharkiv will likely continue to focus on supporting the shift of the main effort via Izyum toward the southeast and may pull back from the immediate environs of the city.
• Russian and proxy forces will attempt to increase the scope and scale of offensive operations to complete the linkup between the Kharkiv-Izyum axis and occupied Luhansk.
• Russian forces will likely secure Mariupol in coming days, and may attempt to launch renewed offensive operations northwest from the city in an effort to seize Donetsk Oblast.

Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv. Russian forces are completing their withdrawal, but not in good order. Ukrainian forces are continuing to clear Kyiv Oblast of isolated Russian troops left behind in the retreat, which some Ukrainian officials describe as “lost orcs.” Russian forces had attempted to conduct an orderly retreat from their positions around Kyiv with designated covering forces supported by artillery and mines to allow the main body to withdraw. The main body of Russian troops has withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro and is completing its withdrawal from the east bank, but the retrograde has been sufficiently disorderly that some Russian troops were left behind.

The war is far from over and could still turn Russia’s way if the Russian military can launch a successful operation in eastern Ukraine. The current line of Russian occupation in southern and eastern Ukraine is still a significant gain in Russian-controlled territory since the start of the war. If a ceasefire or peace agreement freezes a line like the current front-line trace, Russia will be able to exert much greater pressure on Ukraine than it did before the invasion and may over time reassemble a more effective invasion force. Ukraine’s victory in the Battle of Kyiv is thus significant but not decisive.

The disorder of the Russian withdrawal suggests that at least some of the units now reconcentrating in Belarus and western Russia will remain combat ineffective for a protracted period. Russian troops attempting to refit after pulling back from around Kyiv will likely have to reconsolidate into their units, identify which soldiers are still present, sort out their equipment and assess its combat readiness, and generally reconstitute before they can even begin to receive replacements and new equipment and prepare for further combat operations.

Russian forces are likely abandoning the east bank of the Dnipro fully as well, withdrawing from around Chernihiv to the north and from Brovary to the east. Russian troops will likely seek to hold a salient around Konotop and Sumy long enough to allow their forces to complete their retrograde from near Kyiv but will then likely withdraw back to Russia from almost all their positions west of Kharkiv.

Moscow is attempting to concentrate reserves and some units pulled from the fight around Sumy to reinforce its offensive operations in the east but is encountering serious challenges in that effort. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on April 3 that Russian soldiers are resisting and in some cases refusing orders to enter or re-enter the war effort. The General Staff asserted that the two battalion tactical groups (BTGs) that moved from South Ossetia toward Donbas less than a week ago refused to fight and that plans to move them back to South Ossetia are in train.[1] The General Staff claimed that about 25 soldiers of the Russian 31st Separate Airborne Brigade refused orders to re-enter combat citing excessive losses.[2] The General Staff also asserted that commanders at various echelons in the Russian 3rd Motorized Rifle Division have refused to participate in combat operations.[3] We have no independent verification of these reports, but they are credible in light of the losses Russian forces have suffered and of independent reports of Russian soldiers killing commanders and commanders committing suicide from earlier in the conflict.

Russian efforts to advance its offensive operations in eastern Ukraine made limited progress in the past 24 hours. Fighting continues in Mariupol and on the Izyum-Severodonetsk axis.

Key Takeaways

• Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv, and Russian forces are completing their withdrawals from both the east and the west banks of the Dnipro in disorder.
• Russian forces retreating from around Kyiv will likely need considerable time before they can return to combat.
• Incidents of refusals of orders to engage in combat operations among Russian units continue and may lead to the redeployment of two BTGs that had arrived near Donbas within the last few days to their home stations in South Ossetia.
• The continued existence of an independent Ukrainian state with its capital in Kyiv is no longer in question at this time, although much fighting remains and the war could still turn Russia’s way.

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1 dead, 2 rescued after Navy plane crashes in water in Accomack County

ACCOMACK COUNTY, Va. (WAVY) — One person is dead and two others were rescued after a U.S. Navy E2-D crashed near Chincoteague in Accomack County Wednesday night, according to military officials.

Lt. Cmdr. Rob Myers, a public affairs officer with Naval Air Force Atlantic, said the plane was doing a routine exercise when it went down around 7:30 p.m.

Three people were on board in total. Two injured people were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard and one was found dead in the aircraft, Myers said.

The plane is based out of Naval Station Norfolk and assigned to an East Coast Airborne Command and Control Squadron.

Naval Air Force Atlantic Public Affairs said the two crewmembers have injuries that aren’t considered life-threatening.

The name of the deceased crew member will be released once next of kin is notified.

The Navy said the incident is under investigation.

Well, until the next one. Because if there’s one thing learned, it’s that the next war will be different than can be imagined, or ‘properly’ prepared for. That’s why you always hear ‘they trained to fight the last war’

Ukraine Changes the Face of War Forever

There’s a powerful David vs. Goliath lesson emerging from Russia’s brazen, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine that should give deep pause to global superpowers who still think they can simply muscle the world into any shape they want.

Every Russian tank that gets fried in Ukraine is sending the message that traditional armies can no longer expect to dominate simply because they have more troops, weapons, and money. Russian armored vehicles are falling victim to Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons (NLAWs), which can be carried by individual soldiers, unslung in seconds, and deployed with little training and fatal accuracy. There are credible reports that Russia has already lost $5 billion worth of military equipment in a month of fighting in Ukraine. The human cost for Russia is even more staggering: Nearly 10,000 soldiers have been killed in action, including at least five generals.

That’s the reality of contemporary warfare: Smaller, nimbler groups fighting back effectively against lumbering, dumb relics of the past. Despite being the fifth largest fighting force on the planet and starting the war with five times the number of active military as Ukraine, Russia has been stymied in what virtually all observers expected to be a cakewalk.

This isn’t to say that Russia isn’t also inflicting massive, horrific violence against Ukraine—or that it won’t prevail in this conflict, especially the longer things drag on. But this war underscores what James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg called the changing “logic of violence” and “the diminishing returns to violence” in their prophetic 1997 book The Sovereign Individual.

As weapons have become smaller, cheaper, more effective, and more widely dispersed, it’s harder and harder for old-style militaries and countries to quickly and effectively achieve their objectives through brute force as they meet resistance at every turn. That resistance includes “information warfare”—which includes hacking and cyber attacks—but also the use of social media, which Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy has excelled at to project an aura of invincibility and to cast the conflict in stark terms of good vs. evil.

This lesson shouldn’t be new to Americans, as our failures over the past two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq underscored the new reality that old-school invasion and occupation is more expensive and temporary than it is quick and effective. But Russia’s incompetence drives home in graphic detail to us—and, one hopes, to the Chinese officials supposedly eyeing an invasion of Taiwan—that even if Goliath does take out David, the price is too high and the victory too transient to bother undertaking.

If the collapse of the Soviet Union—that gargoyle incarnation of belief in top-down authority, power, and decision-making—was the beginning of the end of the 20th century’s romance with the nation-state, then Russia’s blundering in Ukraine and the United States’ disasters in central Asia and the Middle East may be its epitaph.

The future belongs not to the ignorant armies of the night who seek to command and control but to those who embrace and empower the decentralization of weapons, technology, information, currency, and individual ingenuity and courage.

BLUF:
Immediate items to watch

• Russian forces will likely capture Mariupol or force the city to capitulate within the coming weeks.
• Russia will expand its air, missile, and artillery bombardments of Ukrainian cities.
• Ukrainian officials suggest that Ukrainian forces may launch a larger counterattack in western Kyiv Oblast in the coming days.
• The continued involvement of the Black Sea Fleet in the Battle of Mariupol reduces the likelihood of an amphibious landing near Odesa, Russian naval shelling of Odesa in recent days notwithstanding.

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian forces continued to settle in for a protracted and stalemated conflict over the last 24 hours, with more reports emerging of Russian troops digging in and laying mines—indications that they have gone over to the defensive. Ukrainian forces continued to conduct limited and effective counterattacks to relieve pressure on Kyiv, although the extent of those counterattacks is likely less than what some Ukrainian officials are claiming. Russian efforts to mobilize additional forces to keep their offensive moving continue to be halting and limited. Russian progress in taking Mariupol city remains slow and grinding. Increasing Russian emphasis on using air, artillery, and rocket/missile bombardments of Ukrainian cities to offset forward offensive momentum raises the urgency of providing Ukraine with systems to defend against these attacks.

Key Takeaways

• Russian forces continue to go over to the defensive, conducting restricted and localized ground attacks that make little progress.
• Ukrainian forces are conducting limited and successful counterattacks around Kyiv to disrupt Russian operations to encircle the city (which has now become extremely unlikely) and relieve the pressure on the capital.
• The Battle of Mariupol continues as a block-by-block struggle with fierce Ukrainian resistance and limited Russian gains.
• Russia is likely struggling to obtain fresh combat power from Syria and elsewhere rapidly.

Click here to expand the map below.

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Appears the Ukes are TCOB. They may lose in the end, but they’re sure making Putin pay for it.

Did the true number of Russian troop deaths in Ukraine just leak?

I can’t understand how, or why, a pro-Kremlin paper would publish a number like this. As juicy as it is, surely they would have realized how embarrassing it is for their masters and what sort of consequences there might be for revealing it.

I can’t understand either who would have leaked it, as this information must be closely held.

And frankly, given how incompetent the Russians seem and how indifferent they are to loss of life, I’m surprised they’re keeping a count of their own fallen troops to begin with.

But the figure is shocking if true. In less than a month of war, this would easily exceed the number of U.S. KIA in Iraq and Afghanistan, two conflicts that spanned nearly 30 years combined.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, the pro-Kremlin tabloid, says that according to Russian ministry of defense numbers, 9,861 Russian soldiers died in Ukraine and 16,153 were injured. The last official Russian KIA figure, on March 2, was 498. Fascinating that someone posted the leaked number. pic.twitter.com/LHrBWIQ49z

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) March 21, 2022

The Red Army lost 15,000 men during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Over 10 years.

As gaudy as the apparently leaked number is, it’s in line with other estimates. Five days ago, sources in U.S. intelligence told the Times they believed 7,000 Russians had been killed — conservatively.

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US military aircraft crashes in Norway with 4 on board

A U.S. military plane carrying four people crashed in northern Norway on Friday. Officials said they found “no signs of life” after reaching the crash site hours later.

The U.S. Marines confirmed the crash in a statement on Twitter early Friday evening.

We can confirm an incident has occurred involving a Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey aircraft.

The aircraft was conducting training in Norway as part of Exercise COLD RESPONSE 22 at the time of the incident.

— U.S. Marines (@USMC) March 18, 2022

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 17:

March 17, 5:30pm ET

Russian forces did not make any major advances and Ukrainian forces carried out several local counterattacks on March 17.[1] Russian forces made little territorial progress and continued to deploy reserve elements—including from the 1st Guards Tank Army and 810th Naval Infantry Brigade—in small force packets that are unlikely to prove decisive. Russian forces continue to suffer heavy casualties around Kharkiv, and Russian attempts to bypass the city of Izyum are unlikely to succeed. Russian forces continued assaults on Mariupol on March 17 but did not conduct any other successful advances from Crimea.

Key Takeaways

• Russian forces continue to make steady territorial gains around Mariupol and are increasingly targeting residential areas of the city.
• Ukrainian forces northwest of Kyiv launched several local counterattacks and inflicted heavy damage on Russian forces.
• Ukrainian forces repelled Russian operations around Kharkiv and reported killing a regimental commander.
• Ukrainian intelligence reports that Russia may have expended nearly its entire store of precision cruise missiles in the first twenty days of its invasion.
• Russian forces deployed unspecified reserve elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army and Baltic Fleet Naval Infantry to northeastern Ukraine on March 17.
• Russia may be parceling out elements of the reserve force that could conduct an amphibious operation along the Black Sea coast to support ongoing assaults on Mariupol, further reducing the likelihood of a Russian amphibious assault on Odesa.
• Ukrainian forces shot down 10 Russian aircraft—including five jets, three helicopters, and two UAVs—on March 16, and Ukrainian forces continue to successfully contest Russian air operations.

Russian forces face mounting difficulties replacing combat casualties and replacing expended munitions. The Ukrainian General Staff stated on March 17 that Russian forces will begin another wave of mobilization for the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DNR) 1st Army Corps on March 20.[2] Ukrainian intelligence continued to report Russian forces face difficulties manning both combat and support units and increasing desertion rates.[3] The General Staff further reported that Russian forces are increasingly using indiscriminate weapons against residential areas because they used almost their entire supply of “Kalibr” and “Iskander” cruise missiles in the first 20 days of the invasion.[4] It is unclear if the Ukrainian General Staff means Russian forces have used almost all precision munitions earmarked for the operation in Ukraine or almost all missiles in Russia’s total arsenal—though likely the former.

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“In 36 days of fighting on Iwo Jima during World War II, nearly 7,000 Marines were killed. Now, 20 days after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia invaded Ukraine, his military has already lost more soldiers…”

“… according to American intelligence estimates. The conservative side of the estimate, at more than 7,000 Russian troop deaths, is greater than the number of American troops killed over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. It is a staggering number amassed in just three weeks of fighting, American officials say, with implications for the combat effectiveness of Russian units, including soldiers in tank formations. Pentagon officials say a 10 percent casualty rate, including dead and wounded, for a single unit renders it unable to carry out combat-related tasks…. ‘Losses like this affect morale and unit cohesion, especially since these soldiers don’t understand why they’re fighting,’ said Evelyn Farkas, the top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine during the Obama administration… ‘It is stunning, and the Russians haven’t even gotten to the worst of it, when they hit urban combat in the cities,’ [said] Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado….”

From “As Russian Troop Deaths Climb, Morale Becomes an Issue, Officials Say/More than 7,000 Russian troops have been killed in less than three weeks of fighting, according to conservative U.S. estimates” (NYT).

BLUF:
My guess is that the Russian infantry massing around Kiev isn’t even going to enter the city. They know what sort of losses they’d take in urban combat; there’s no reason to think they could outfight the Ukrainians on their own streets. More likely is that they’re going to lay siege to the capital a la Mariupol and wait for a surrender. The outcome of the war may turn on whether Russia is capable of doing that successfully or whether Ukrainian troops outside the city can mount the sort of counteroffensive described above to break the siege. If they can, the Russians will be faced with a scenario in which they can neither starve the Ukrainians into submission nor overpower them in combat. Maybe that’s when Fukuyama’s prediction of morale “vaporizing” comes true.

But it’s also when things would get really dangerous.

Is Russia going to lose?
One way to answer the question in the headline is “It already has.” Even to a rank amateur like me, it was clear by *day three* that Putin was facing a strategic debacle. He misjudged Ukraine’s desire and ability to resist, he misjudged the strength of his military, and he misjudged the west’s willingness to paralyze Russia’s economy with sanctions. “No Russian leader since Tsar Nicholas II has done his country so much harm, so fast, as Vladimir Putin,” David Frum tweeted a few days ago, marveling at how diminished Russian power has been by Putin’s folly in the span of a few weeks.

Nothing that happens in Ukraine from this point will undo that. It’s a fiasco.

But a strategic defeat is distinct from defeat on the battlefield. Even optimists have assumed that Russia would eventually brute-force its way to controlling Kiev and other major Ukrainian cities. The “real” fight for Ukraine would come after that when Russia’s occupying forces and Ukraine’s insurgency would wage a war of attrition. Eventually Moscow would run out of patience and withdraw, but “eventually” could take months. Years. Decades, conceivably.

But what if the optimists were too pessimistic? What if Russia is facing near-term defeat on the battlefield as well?

Realistically, there are three ways in which the Russian army might lose:

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“Appear strong when you are weak.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

What If Everyone Is Wrong About The Russian Military?

As a kid, the only thing close to as tough as the United States military was those communist bastards they were protecting us from. We were tougher, of course, but since we were the good guys we didn’t even consider invading them. Should they invade us, which we knew they wanted to do, we’d be ready to kick some commie ass! At least, that’s what we told ourselves, mostly to avoid thinking about the complete, total and world-wide nuclear annulation. Times have changed, and so has the Russian military…or has it?

We always assumed they were as strong militarily as we were, but mostly because of parades and their size. Everyone has seen the footage of battalions marching through Red Square, huge intercontinental ballistic missiles rolling along with them in a sea of soldiers and tanks. They sure projected strength and readiness. But maybe they weren’t ready?

All we really had to go on was the Soviet Union’s word, their propaganda videos, and the fact that they could push around so small countries. But maybe they were a super-power based solely on their huge nuclear arsenal?

We never really saw the Soviets take on another organized military, their power was largely acquired through propping up dictators and intimidation – they were very good at disappearing the disloyal and beating up the weak.

We were told they were strong, minus the nukes, mostly because they were big, and that assumption continues to this day. But their actions in Ukraine are not that of a world-class military, not by a long-shot. It’s more like a drunken douchebag indiscriminately launching rockets, quite possibly because they lack anything with precision. We can drop a missile down a chimney with the accuracy of Santa Claus, but what if the Russians couldn’t even hit a brick in a brick factory?

Remember what we were told about the Republican Guard in Iraq? They were the “best of the best.” Pick your Gulf War, when they started the story was about how we’d have no real issues with the regular Iraqi troops, but when we encountered the Republican Guard things would get hairy. They never did. The Republican Guard was as insignificant as the regular army. Both times the people in charge were completely wrong about what we were up against, the RG folded like a cheap tent. Could history be repeating itself with Russia?

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