There can be no
meaningful disagreement on the significance of the loss of Bakhmut. If there is disagreement it's just ignorance. I explained it recently in a post about Vuhledar:
Vuhledar it seems only a diversionary strike for the Russians and it does kind of makes sense that they did it half-assed Do you know Radio Yerevan jokes? This reads like a setup for one of them. Vuhledar is extremely important because of Russian logistical dependence on rail transport...
www.sinodefenceforum.com
The rationale for capture is taken directly from Soviet and Russian manuals on operational art. There's nothing arbitrary about it.
Whenever an army does something the first thing that you do is check their manuals. Armies fight according to doctrine unless they break it. Only if what happens is not described in the manual can there be a disagreement about the commander's intention or other factors. If anyone argues otherwise that's how you identify someone who needs to be deleted from your sources.
The reason why Ukraine defends Bakhmut is because Russia
needs to take the railway link. Therefore Ukraine can predict the place of battle and its tactical character.
War is nothing like computer games and because of that people who draw their understanding from computer games have it all backwards. In war you know
less than Jon Snow and the first thing that you fight for is
information.
Though not obvious at first
reducing uncertainty is the main objective of all war planning. You plan to know what can happen better than your enemy because resources in war are expended every time you move your forces. Every decision has a cost that is irretrievable. This is why you can lose a war despite winning all battles.
When you have a natural objective such as Bakhmut you can plan your defense knowing where the enemy is going to come from and how because you can prepare the battlefield. This way you have the information advantage and your enemy has to deal with higher uncertainty. While you fight the incoming enemy, the enemy has to fight you and the fog of war at the same time.
The danger of choosing a place of battle is always that your enemy can refuse to give battle and exploit your position. That can't be done with main objectives and Bakhmut is one such objective. So as counter-intuitive as it may seem the decision to stay in Bakhmut is not wrong, and it depends on the expenditure of resources from both sides.
Therefore the decision to continue persistent defense rather than withdraw can be explained by Ukraine's perception of
advantageous casualty distribution. Otherwise defending forces would have withdrawn to the next defensive position. Below is topo map with black line denoting current Russian position and blue line denoting natural defensive line for AFU after withdrawal.
View attachment 108472
Losing this position means withdrawal to large urban areas of Slovyansk/Kramatorsk/other i.e. repeat of Severodonetsk/Lysychansk in a larger setting.
Reznikov recently said that the ratio of Ukrainian to Russian losses is 1:7 which doesn't say much considering he's not an objective source. But the fact that Ukraine persists means that the ratio must be at approx. 1:3,5 (the demographic ratio for conscripts) or higher otherwise it wouldn't make sense to continue defending the city for so long. As long as Russia is losing manpower at a higher rate than the demographic ratio it is an effective strategy because casualty rates indicate the amount of resources that you have to commit for success. The higher the casualty rate the higher the use of manpower, the higher the need for rotation, the higher the rate of morale deterioration force-wide etc. Meat-grinders unfortunately have a mathematical dimension that signals "solution" which is why they are used in war planning. People think that it's because commanders are stupid but that's not it. It's about sunken cost and
attrition of support networks, and
not attrition of fighting force.
This is also why I would conclude (although this is my subjective assessment and without high confidence) that Russia has already started their counter-offensive but it responsibly chose to conduct it as a "crawling offensive". That is because Ukrainian defenses are prepared and any concentrated Russian push that would attempt a more traditional offensive maneuver would be annihilated in the same manner as the attempts near Vuhledar. Russia can't take losses any more than Ukraine can. There's a difference of threshold for both but as soon as Russia is on the offensive it has mathematics working against it. For traditional assault you need at least 2,5:1 ratio of forces and during assault attacking force will take greater casualties unless they can suppress the defenders - which Russia can't despite greater volume of fires and air support (why is another question). Therefore in any major offensive operation against prepared defenses Russia would take much higher casualties than the proportional rate of casualties for Ukraine would be.
To successfully perform a major offensive Russia would have to open a completely new front to draw away enemy strength and supplies and so far it seems that they are out of means to do so. This is why it's pushing at Vuhledar, Bakhmut and Kupyansk and will likely attempt to encircle and capture Siversk. Once a continuous frontline is established the "crawling offensive" will gain some flexibility which may free up resources for more decisive pushes.
Or not. It's difficult to tell.
It isn't. That's the whole point.
But to build that 100-200km rail track Russian authorities would have to first accept that it is needed in a war against Ukraine which implies that "Russia not stronk". If you recall the clip where Putin was scolding SVR chief Naryshkin you can see what type of mentality was in charge and what type of personality was dominant in the decision-making circles in Moscow.
People capable of accepting the possibility that this track was necessary because otherwise it would be a weakness would not approve the current invasion because it contained multiple such flaws. People who approved the invasion were psychologically incapable of accepting that reality. To them one minor flaw didn't even register.
Also:
On operational level the entire invasion suffers from Russia's inability to decouple from railways as logistical support system. Every vector of attack that wasn't supported by existing railways collapsed by April. Russians couldn't capture Mikolaiyv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv which are all important railway hubs located in cities. The supply lines along the roads were attacked because it was improvised logistics. As soon as supplies ran out the entire front folded.
Map on 31 March 2022:
View attachment 108480
As for Kiyv - these are Russian losses from WarSpotting:
View attachment 108481
This sums to
three motor rifle brigades worth of destroyed equipment and most likely another three brigades of evacuated or withdrawn damaged vehicles.
Maps of identified RU llosses west of Dnipro:
View attachment 108482
The units which took part in fighting in the north were (MR - motor rifle, refers to actual TOE, T- tank):
- 35 Army: 38 MRBg, 64 MRBg, 69 MRBg,
- 36 Army: 5 TBg, 37 MRBg
- 41 Army: 35 MRBg, 55 MRBg, 74 MRBg
- Pacific Fleet: 155 MRBg
- VDV: 104 Rgt (76Div), 331 Rgt (98Div), 137 Rgt (106Div), 31 Bg
Russian losses approach 1/3 of TOE and withdrawn units would be combat ineffective over the next ~30 days minimum. Close to 600 supply trucks were destroyed.
We can speculate if truck-based logistics or additional rail connections would result in better performance but it would still be just one problem of many.
IFF is necessary for identification at distance in contested airspace. Not for when your side has air supermacy and a single aircraft is flying nearby.
In this situation the commander should have used judgment. Ideally the station would have been monitoring the situation continuously and remained in contact with command so they would know that a Russian aircraft was in the area. Therefore if it's not extreme incompetence of the SAM crew then it's even more extreme systemic incompetence within Russian air defense.
