"DPR Defense Spokesman Basurin says that up to 4,000 Ukrainian soldiers could still be in Mariupol. Before the encirclement was completed, around 14,500 Ukrainian Marines, Azov & other AFU forces had taken up defensive positions there."
Ukrainian War Developments
- Thread starter james smith esq
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I think it is manifestly untrue that Russia never set out to achieve a fast victory. If they had done that their advance would not have been along so many axis without close air support and without adaquate troops to secure flanks and consolidate occupied areas. The many headed hydra shape of initial Russian advance strongly suggest the intend was to relies on rapid movement and rapid shifts of focus of attack to keep Ukrainians off balance to prevent the Ukrainians from being able to snipe at Russian flanks and rear. This kind of operation is highly dependent on strong logistic support and can’t be sustained for more than 1-2 weeks. clearly the intent was by the end of the 1-2 weeks, all ukrainian strong points would have been either reduced or bypassed and any reserves the Russians had would committed to exploiting ukrainian rear area.
clearly the breakthough phase of the battle did not fully work out, so exploitation phase never occurred. instead the russian has yet to have the chance to tighten up frontline and fully address the fact that the shape of front left by the failure of breakthrough is unsuited for transition to a different strategy.
the pull back from kyiv is clearly a step to tighten up the front and free up troops to deploy for an alternate strategy.
Also fast victories tend not to be more costly than the grinding attrition battles.
clearly the breakthough phase of the battle did not fully work out, so exploitation phase never occurred. instead the russian has yet to have the chance to tighten up frontline and fully address the fact that the shape of front left by the failure of breakthrough is unsuited for transition to a different strategy.
the pull back from kyiv is clearly a step to tighten up the front and free up troops to deploy for an alternate strategy.
Also fast victories tend not to be more costly than the grinding attrition battles.
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If those numbers are true, this would be an even bigger win for the Russians than I thought. I was expecting the Ukrainians lost at most 5,000 soldiers in the siege. But if it's anything north of 10,000, then huge loss for the Ukrainians.
Near future.
"The referendum on the issue of accession to the Russian Federation of the Republic of South Ossetia will be held in the near future, - Speaker of the Parliament of South Ossetia Alan Tadtaev."
"The referendum on the issue of accession to the Russian Federation of the Republic of South Ossetia will be held in the near future, - Speaker of the Parliament of South Ossetia Alan Tadtaev."
All those factors would be equally as useful in a long, drawn out war than a shorter one.
Keeping armies as close as possible to Russian and Belarussian borders as possible simplifies logistics. Not taking over too many cities reduces the burden of having to administer them.
What about the lack of CAS? Why aren't Ukrainian positions being carpet bombed continuously? The RuAF has largely been absent so far. I can't think of any reason why they aren't engaging Ukrainians except they don't want to inflict mass casualties.
The Russian strategy seems to be to wait for a Ukrainian military collapse rather than to force one through overwhelming power.
We'll see what happens to the troops around Kiev. I predict they won't go very far and won't be deployed to eastern fronts. I'd be surprised if they really are redeployed to the east. We'll know if Chernobyl and other regions north of Kiev come under Ukrainian control again.
If you look at their actions, you can interpret the Russian initial advance in getting to the major cities and positioning troops there without attacking. Clearly, having fought many battles of taking cities in Syria, the Russians know the number of troops needed to take a city like Kyiv and it is huge. They have not sent nearly enough troops there to do the job. I am sure they would be happy to take the city if it was undefended, but as a military planner, you would never rely on being lucky and have a game plan for the most likely outcome scenario. I agree the many headed advance seems like they were going for the whole Eastern part of the country, but the fact they never attacked Kyiv and quickly bypassed Sumy and other harder nuts seems they have plans for if these cities don't quickly fall.
Sitting around near a major city without surrounding it, attacking it, or interdicting all approached to it is waste of time. major cities are also transportation hubs that allows the defenders to be better supplied and more quickly reinforced than the attacker. Sitting on you hands next to the city to watch the defenders build up to resist you is lunacy.
Hard disagree.
The Russia did hope to blitzkrieg and surround the capital region to scare Kiev to sue for peace and quick negotiated victory.
Did they actually hope to capture Kiev? No.
Did they hope to scare it into submission by surrounding key cities as rapidly as possible? Yes.
Hard disagree.
When you dedicate ONLY 120K in the initial thrust across thousand mile front, you are expecting the enemy resistance to quit and sue for peace and quick negotiated victory. They did expect Ukraine to sue for peace quickly, but when that failed, now their new strategy is grinding them to ashes/rubble via attrition. And you need to concentrate your forces to grind them down.
They most definitely expected a quick negotiated settlement because they thought Ukrainians would give up very quickly.
They are not transportation hubs if they are surrounded... they are just becoming shortage hub after some time.
kyiv is not surrounded. The russians shouldn’t have committed major resources to approach it unless they intended to either invest it or assault it. if they intend to invest or assault it they obviously didn’t have things their way around kyiv.
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