The War in the Ukraine

Footage of Russian kamikaze Lancet drones hitting the Spanish Skyguard Aspide air defense system of the Ukrainian army has been published. The Spada / Skyguard Aspide air defense system is a rather old complex, it was created in 1983 and then modernized. The range of destruction of the targets of the air defense system is up to 25 kilometers. Judging by the video, the air defense system was observed for quite a long time, after which the Lancet drones hit the Skyguard Aspide air defense system and radar. This is the first defeat of the Spanish Skyguard Aspide air defense system in Ukraine.

Footage of Ukraine's FPV drone attempting to attack a Russian tank. The drone missed, after which the Russian tank changed position.

We are starting to see Ka-52 with ATGM activity in the Bakhmut sector. Alligator activity with Vikhr had been exclusively to the south. Here a Ukrainian armored vehicle gets popped.


Gerans arrive at critical infrastructure facilities in Izmail near the Romanian border.


A large oil storage facility explodes and burns in Izmail.



Kazak-2 and Kirpi both destroyed as Staromayorsky.


Abandoned Leopard 2A4 after hitting a mine in Zaporozhye.


Lancet takes out a T-64BV in Zaporozhye.


Camouflaged M777 hit by a Lancet in Krasnolimansky area.


Ukrainian vehicles burning and detonating.


Ukrainian positions and shelters tracked by drones and hit by D-20 and Gvozdika howitzers.


Kozak-2 in the service of the obtf Kaskad at the DPR Ministry of Interior. Incidentally the head of the DPR Ministry of Interior is the head of Kaskad.

Column of units from the 'Siberian Association' of special forces both under fire and dishing out fire at Ukrainian positions.


One hit kill on a Ukrainian vehicle by mortar? Could be via a Kitolov-2 guided shell fired from a mortar or a Nona-S firing in direct mode.


Lancet hit on a howitzer at Artemovsk sector.


Lancet hit on a BTR-4.


Three Bradleys. One was hit by artillery or direct fire. Another was hit by ATGM. Third managed to rescue survivors and retreat.



Hyacinth-S won a counter battery duel with a PZH-2000.


Destroyed Ukrainian vehicles towards Rabotino.



Artillery of the Russian 123rd Brigade hitting Ukrainian positions at forest line in the Artemovsk area.


Ranged altitude attack via LMUR fired from a Mi-28N on a Ukrainian deployment center.


Lancet hit on a PT-91 tank.


Lancets finishing off damaged vehicles, including a T-72M1 and an IMR-2 anti-mining vehicle.


Another Lancet attack on an IRIS-T though I am not sure this is a certain kill.

Dailybeast article about the offensive.

An injured soldier that had to be rescued from Bakhmut mentions things aren't good and a lot of information is being hidden from the public regarding the situation in the front, he mentions they aren't getting enough supplies. More mentions of mines everywhere.

Another soldier says they have been fighting for almost two months straight without rotation


Another NYT article about the offensive. Talks about how there were situations of Units getting lost, another one that was supposed to do a nightime assault actually waited for dawn to do it and another unit did so badly it was pulled out of the offensive altogether.

Apparently the americans hoped that the NATO trained and equipped brigades would be enough and show that the US way of waging war was the superior one. Part of the training involved teaching the Ukranians how to go on the offensive rather than be defensive like the years prior but the training only lasted 6 weeks which might be partially the cause of several blunders at the start of the offensive, including units not using cleared paths and running into mines.

In the first two weeks of the offensive, the Ukranians had 20% of their equipment lost or damaged



Ukranian MRAPs move forward, lose 3 vehicles in a row to mines

We seem to be back into long range artillery strikes today.

UAV discovered a car towing a mortar to it's deployment point, tracks it and lases it for a Krasnopol hit. This is Zaporozhye.


Lancet from the Osman special forces unit hits a Leopard 2A6.


Ukrainian SPG in Krasno-Limansky hit by artillery.


Ukrainian tank hit by Krasnapol in Kupyan region.


Ukrainian APC hit by artillery in Krasno-Limansky.


Russian artillery hits a Ukrainian mortar nest in Kremennaya region.


Mortar fire from the 127th hits a Ukrainian troop company. Shouts and comments from the firing side.


Mortar fire against Ukrainian trench positions in Ugledar.


D-30 of the 177th Marines Regiment firing in Zaporozhye. This appears to be among the new units reinforcing the region.

A

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featuring Michael Kofman dropped today.
Key takeaways:

• Kofman reiterated his previous position that the Ukrainian decision to fight for Bakhmut was a strategic failure: -> he claims that the overall casualty ratio for the battle was 3-to-1 or perhaps even as high as 4-to-1 in Ukraine's favor, but they traded the lives of their professional units largely in exchange for Wagner convicts. He further argues that if Ukraine had pulled back earlier, Wagner would've had no luck advancing further into the heights around Chashiv Yar and they would've been stuck holding the poor terrain of Bakhmut. On top of that, the highly skilled, well experienced Ukrainian units that were stuck defending Bakhmut weren't able to rest and refit in time for the Ukrainian offensive where they likely would've been highly effective (veteran Ukrainian units have made most of the advances as part of ongoing offensive). Beyond all of that, the decision to hold Bakhmut meant that Russia seized the initiative from Ukraine, and allowed the majority of the Russian army (who weren't involved in the fighting at Bakhmut) to deeply entrench in the South at the level of the Combined Arms Army.
• Kofman also heavily criticized the decision to equip brand new units with Western kit. These units were made up of mostly mobilized personnel with no prior military service, and led by a hodgepodge of commanders pulled from other units. They were given a rushed training regimen on Western-style combined arms, but without enough time to learn how to operate cohesive and without the airpower that this doctrine relies on. Worse than that, these units were then sent to attack the most heavily fortified Russian positions in the entire theater as their first operations as a unit, with no knowledge of the terrain. The whole scheme was flawed from the get go, and the performance of these units has been pretty abysmal as a result.
• He seemingly implies that Western decisionmakers had a key role in shaping this offensive in a way that was likely to prove ineffective. 3 months of training in Western style training was insufficient to teach these units how to conduct a Western style advance, especially without the enablers the West enjoys like air superiority. Instead Western policymakers should have met the Ukrainian military where they are, supporting them in how they already know how to fight by ramping up Western military industrial capacity in order to properly supply the Ukrainian method of fighting.
• Kofman thinks it would've made much more sense to pull some of their veteran units off the line and retrain them on Western kit, arguing that their experience would mesh well with the new capabilities of the Western gear. Beyond that, instead of forming brand new units, Ukraine should have just continued its practice of building up existing formations by adding new battalions as they would be integrated into command structures and logistical arrangements that were already experienced and effective.
• Kofman seemingly suggests that political decisionmakers are influencing military strategy such as the decision to hold Bakhmut despite unfavorable conditions.* Exact quote: "What makes anyone assume that some of the core decisions being made are being driven by military strategy born of the general staff versus political leadership..."
• Suggests that the counteroffensive actually started in mid-May, but only in earnest in early June.
• The Ukrainian offensive involves three separate lines of advances, the main effort is pushing South from Orikhiv down to Melitopol, a supportimg axis pushing south from Velkya Novosilka down to Berdiansk, and a fixing action around Bakhmut. The Bakhmut effort involves some of Ukraine's most experienced units and has proven most successful, but is strategically irrelevant. Behind the existing Russian lines, they have defensive fortifications they can fall back to.
• Ukraine's offensive in the South and around Bakhmut left them weak around Svatove-Kreminna, which Russia exploited. A new Western Brigade there proved weak on the defense and was forced to retreat repeatedly, requiring the repositioning of other units to plug the gaps.
• A fair criticism of the offensive is that it was too broadly focused, which didn't allow Ukraine to obtain true artillery dominance on a single axis of advance, instead enjoying just modest advantages on several. This diffusion of effort is exactly the same problem that Kofman criticized Russia for in their Winter Offensive.
• Over the past 5 days there's been a renewed Ukrainian effort to push South of Orikhiv with much of the fighting around Robotyne.
• He believes the original plan was for IX Corps to break through the Russian front lines in the South and reached or possibly even breached the Russian main defensive line. X Corps was then supposed to follow up this advance and breakthrough the Russian main line, and then the reserves would've been introduced to develop momentum and push potentially all the way to the coast. This obviously didn't happen.
• Instead, the IX Corps struggled to make headway and the X Corps has been introduced in an attempt to reach the main Russian line of defense. The Ukrainian hope is that Russia will run out of reserves to plug holes in their defense, and while Kofman has seen some evidence of Russia utilizing some of its reserves already, the fighting of the last 4-5 days doesn't look much different from that of the past 7 weeks. They've only made modest gains, attaining limited ground around Robotyne. The newer brigades of X Corps haven't done well, similar to the other new Western brigades.
• He thinks the Russian forces have been on the wrong end of the attritional curve during the offensive, but have an easier task defending. Ukraine has been winning the artillery battle and counterbattery battle, especially as a result of the use of HIMARS at the tactical level. Storm Shadows used for deep strikes to target Russian command and control doesn't seem to have much of an impact on Russia's ability to defend. The Russian side is clearly being worn down, as a result of the fighting, but the fighting is now a slog.
• The main question of the offensive is will Ukraine be able to deplete Russian front line units enough to enable a breakthrough, without depleting their own forces too much in the process. He's unsure Ukraine will be able to make enough progress to achieve any of its strategic objectives with this offensive, and he's become more pessimistic having seen the results of the last two months.

Personal note: Kofman sounds exasperated and frustrated during this podcast. He explicitly says he's more pessimistic about Ukrainian chances after seeing how things have played out over the past two months. Hard to blame him either, this offensive really hasn't lived up to the hype at all and may very well be Ukraine's last, best hope of achieving some of its key objectives in the war. We may have already seem the high water mark of Western support, and it was squandered in no small part due to Western influence on Ukrainian strategy, but also potentially by political decisions made by the Zelensky government.

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Credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/15h27gj/_/jumzb8l

CredibleDefense has really gone down the drain ever since the only permissible content has become to toe the party line in the MegaThread.

• Kofman also heavily criticized the decision to equip brand new units with Western kit. These units were made up of mostly mobilized personnel with no prior military service, and led by a hodgepodge of commanders pulled from other units. They were given a rushed training regimen on Western-style combined arms, but without enough time to learn how to operate cohesive and without the airpower that this doctrine relies on. Worse than that, these units were then sent to attack the most heavily fortified Russian positions in the entire theater as their first operations as a unit, with no knowledge of the terrain. The whole scheme was flawed from the get go, and the performance of these units has been pretty abysmal as a result.

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I listened to the whole podcast during lunch actually. I think that the poster is taking some creative license with how he phrases things.
I like Kofman, but I really do feel like that his crew has gathered a bit of a worship cult, where people treat his analysis as gospel. He has obvious biases.

• A fair criticism of the offensive is that it was too broadly focused, which didn't allow Ukraine to obtain true artillery dominance on a single axis of advance, instead enjoying just modest advantages on several. This diffusion of effort is exactly the same problem that Kofman criticized Russia for in their Winter Offensive.

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Kofman makes an interesting criticism here, because I actually think that Russia's actions in the Winter (I wouldn't call it an offensive) have actually borne decent fruit.

Russian efforts to marginally improve their positions in the anticipation of Ukraine's Spring Offensive (which was delayed to Summer due to the Battle of Bakhmut) have been successful. I would also argue that Russia's strike campaign was successful at degrading Ukraine's warfighting capability. They almost ran out of SAM ammo as the Pentagon Leaks show. They've also allowed the VKS to experiment with their strike options. Today's missile barrages are aimed almost squarely at military targets and appear very successful.

Now I'm not saying that it's all been "just as planned" for Russia in 2023. However, on the balance, Russian actions during the Winter and Spring of 2023 have had a lot of positive effects for the Russian side even if they fell short of their ambitions.

Eh, I will wait 5 years and read the analysis then. Till that point, I watch both Pro-Rus and Pro-Ukr sources like here and CredibleDefense, truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

HighGround said:

CredibleDefense has really gone down the drain ever since the only permissible content has become to toe the party line in the MegaThread.

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I am amused by the fact that some of them are still on the wunderwaffen train and that specific equipment will make a difference, when at this point it should be obvious the problem isn't the equipment