Military Assessment
Ukrainian sources, backed by some Russian channels, reported that over the past 48 hours, Ukrainians had successful hits on airfields and air defense facilities in Crimea, (including an S400 system in Dzhankoi and two S300 systems near Yevpatoriya and Chornomorske), although had these been as extensive as claimed by Ukraine they would presumably have been followed up immediately to take advantage of the degraded air defense. The follow-up had not occurred at the time of writing. Ukraine also claimed to have destroyed a Russian Su-57 on the Akhtubinsk airfield in the Astrakhan region in southern Russia, 360 miles from the front line. The Su-57 is a supersonic, twin-engine, fifth-generation stealth fighter jet. Critics of the Ukrainian claim were skeptical about the poor quality of the images purportedly showing damage. If indeed this attack, by drone, was successful, then it certainly raises major questions as to why such a valuable machine should have been left on the airfield fully exposed to enemy surveillance. Finally, Ukraine claimed to have hit the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in southern Russia on 5 June, with significant disruptions as a result, according to Russian sources.
These Ukrainian attacks notwithstanding, I assess the picture across Ukraine as:
Severe damage by Russia to Ukraine’s energy, air defense and transport systems.
Brave or foolhardy but largely unsuccesful Ukrainian counterattacks against recent Russian advances.
Slow, incremental Russian advances along almost all of the combat lines.
Russia opening up of an increasing number of new fronts and in this way further stretching Ukrainian forces.
Reports of several Ukrainian battalions and even of brigades being diminished to the status of combat inoperability.
Concentration of Ukrainian forces in the northern borderlands, while leaving positions in other locations undermanned or unmanned, amidst reports of greater Ukrainian reliance on older conscripts.
Ukrainian successes that are more and more dependent on NATO-aided missiles on land and sea.
If these summary statements are correct, then I believe what we may be seeing is a Ukrainian army that is still capable of inflicting significant damage, and offering resistance, but which is being eaten away within by a range of debilitating forces that include corruption, poor training, insufficient recruits, damage to power and transport systems and an increasingly unconvincing legitimacy, and lack of popularity, of the political leadership. There is unlikely to be an instant collapse at this or at any other time short of an explosion of political tension at the top. More likely, Ukrainian forces will suffer heavier losses. The Russian MoD claims that these have recently mounted to over 2,000 a day.
As they suffer more losses, Ukrainian forces will be less able to offer steep resistance and will be forced to draw back. As they draw back, they will set up new lines of defense that will severely slow the pace of Russian advances from the North, East and South. But each cycle of retreat, establishing a new line of defense and a new Russian advance, will grow steadily shorter until Russia reaches the Dnieper. At this point Russia must decide what it wants to do with major centers of population as in the cases of Odessa, Dnipro, Zapporizhzhia, Kharkiv and Kiev. These decisions will depend on Ukrainian or Western appetite for negotiation and significant concession, and on Russian calculations that take into account the losses and costs that Russia is suffering and the likelihood or otherwise of continuing instability, even if Russia stops its advance, one way or another, on the Dnieper.
I note some alignment between this assessment and one from Gordon Hahn a few days ago (Hahn)
“A kind of perfect storm is coming. This autumn there likely will be: the collapse of the Ukrainian front and/or army and/or regime; the Russian army’s approach to the Dniepr and perhaps encirclement of Zaporozhe, Kharkiv, even Kiev; and an American political crisis (given the guilty verdict against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump). The possibilities are almost endless, and some rather dire ones are becoming increasingly more probable”.
Major jokers in the pack include the scale of NATO boots on the ground, Western-supported attacks on Russian allies (including Iran and Syria), Russian supply of weapons to its allies for use against Western-supported targets or direct Russian attacks on Western assets outside of Ukraine; Western supported attacks on targets in Russian territory; and Russian or Western resort to the use of nuclear weapons; unanticipated moves by Poland, Romania and the Baltic countries.
The Battlefields
As I have indicated above, the overall narrative is one of slow, incremental, Russian advance. I am tempted to call it “excruciating.” And it does boost the perspective of those who argue that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has taken relatively little territory overall, much of it in the form of recovering territory that had been taken from Russia during the Ukraine’s perhaps over-maligned counteroffensive (e.g. Staramaiorske), and still leaving a great deal of territory (over a hundred miles or so) or of territory still to be taken between the current combat lines and the Dnieper.
There are good reasons for the slowness of the advance. These relate to the conditions of modern peer-to-peer fighting as these have emerged over the past two years to create a historically and situationally unprecedented conflict: the constant presence of surveillance drones and of attack drones by both sides (The Guardian reports today that Volodymyr Zelenskiy, decreed in February the creation of a separate branch of the armed forces devoted to drones and the order was endorsed last week by the government); the near equivalence of forces maintained on the combat lines (even though Russia has a far larger pool of reserves); the logic of attritional warfare which is all about who loses men and machines fastest, not so much about territory; and, I would guess, Russian avoidance of shock developments that might precipitate an escalation in the kinds of weapons supplied to Ukraine.
A claim by Ramzan Kadykov, leader of Russia's Chechnya region, that Russian forces, led by a Chechen-based special forces unit, had seized control of a border village, Ryhivka, in northeast Ukraine has been disputed by a local Ukrainian official. It appears generally agreed that there has been a significant build-up of Russian forces north of Sumy and that the village of Rhyivka has been the target of Russian attempts to advance. In the neighboring Kharkiv area it appears that attempts by Ukraine to counterattack against Russian forces near Lyptsi and in Hlyboke have been unsuccessful. In Vovchansk major clashes continue in the northern sector of the city above the Volcha river. Russia claims to have made advances in the industrial zone, while Ukrainian forces have been launching counterattacks from this area of Vovchansk against Russian positions north and northeastwards. But Russia is extending the territory that it controls to the east, between Lukianski and Zelene.
In Kupyansk area, Russia is reported to have seized the abandoned village of Timovka, west of Orlyanka, to have taken more territory between Ivanivka (under Russian control) and Novoselivka (under Ukrainian control), and, further south, between Miasozharivka (under Russian control) and Stelmakhivka (under Ukrainian control) to the north, and Andriivka/Rozorka (now under Russian control as of yesterday) to the south. From Andriivka, Russia will likely try to move westwards towards Vyshneve, Popivka, Pershotrayneve and Yvshneve.
In the Siversk area Russia is still battling Ukrainian positons in or around Bilohorivka and trying to secure territory between Bilohorivka and Hryhorivka. Russia is taking more territory in the direction of Verkhnokamiankse which, if taken, will allow Russia a much stronger platform for bombing and shelling of Siversk.
In Chasiv Yar there are continuing reports of Russian advances in the eastern microdistrict, and troop concentrations to the north and south of the main settlement. Around Avdiivka area, near Ocheretyne, Russian forces have moved towards or are in control of Novooleksandrivka and Sokil and Novoselivka. To the south in the area of Konstyantynivka (still mainly under Ukrainian control) Russian forces are taking more territory to the south of the settlement and between Solodke (under Russian control) and Vodiane (under Ukrainian control), all with the purpose of degrading the security of Vuhladar to the south. Russia now pretty much controls Staramaiorske to the west as well as southern Urozhaine. Recent deployments of Ukrainian forces in all this area from Chasiv Yar down to Staramaiorske indicate a significant lessening of Ukrainian resistance.
Russian Nuclear Exercises
In presumed response to recent NATO permissions to Ukraine to use western weapons on targets in Russia as well as to NATO military exercises including a simulated nuclear attack on the Russian Baltic Sea port of Kaliningrad, the Russian Admiral Gorshkov frigate and the Kazan nuclear-powered submarine have conducted an Atlantic exercise that was intended to simulate a missile strike on a group of enemy ships over 600 kilometers away. The Gorshkov is armed with new Zircon hypersonic missiles. These can target both ships and ground targets. The Zircon is said by Russia to be capable of penetrating any existing anti-missile defenses by flying nine times faster than the speed of sound at a range of more than 1,000 kilometers (over 620 miles). The Russian warships will be in Havana between Wednesday and June 17 but reportedly are without nuclear weapons.
These developments should be seen in the context of a steadily escalating war of rhetoric between Russia and the West concerning the willingness to use nuclear weapons. This escalation is chronicled today in Responsible Statecraft by James Carden (Carden). Scott Ritter today told Judge Napolitano that Russia is the strongest, most lethal, nuclear power in the world today, that has classes of missiles that the West does not. He notes that Putin has a track record for consistency between words and deeds. He further notes that for Ukraine, NATO is a “safe zone,” providing all the more reason why Russia, under the threat of NATO escalations, may need to look at options involving hits on targets outside of Ukraine. Considerations like those indicated recently by Poland and Romania of their willingness to host F-16s is just one of many further confirmations of this. Such measures fall well short, thankfully, of nuclear war. No sane person can want one, and we know at least that Putin is sane (I cannot say the same of Biden and his neocon advisers). But they exponentially increase the chances of one.