Assessing Military Situation in Crimea and Donbass
Gonzalo Lira, Mark Sleboda, Alex (History Legend), Dima (Military Summary)
Dima, following many different maps from different sides to the conflict, talks about alleged missile strike on Crimea. Is in the middle of Crimea, involving 11 explosions. Not HIMARS. Significant damage. Russia says it may have been a result of a local military mistake, requiring an evacuation of the area. If it was the Ukrainians, then Russia has a significant problem. There are witnesses who say they saw no rockets; and if there were rockets from the Ukrainians they would have hit the Kerch bridge. And the Russians are talking about an explosion. Are the Russians pretending there wasn’t an attack, and if witnesses did not report rockets, then perhaps this was sabotage? Perhaps using drones?
Sleboda, who has family in Crimea and throughout Donbass, notes there are Ukrainians fighting on both sides of this conflict and a lot of ground fighting involves former east Ukrainians of the Donbass republics, fighting and killing other Ukrainians. The Russian government has a big motivation to play down the kind of attacks as seem to have occurred in Crimea which has just passed through a weekend of great celebrations for the navy. Sleboda speculates a drone attack that has little physical significance but feeds an information war. Ukrainians need to demonstrate to their western patrons that they are doing something, even if the “something” is not in itself terribly significant. Another possibility is a Ukrainian attempt to divert the attention of the Russians from their main military objectives. Dima compares the incident with the visit of Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan. These events are provocations deployed to assess the reactions and what these reactions show of their opponents’ strategies and resources. Perhaps the West is behind the attack in Crimea, seeking to find out where is the “red line” - at what point would Russia respond. It may be an attempt to make Russia spread out its rather limited force of 200,000 invaders and thus to weaken the force in any given area. This kind of tactic was quite common in World War 2, in respective German and British bombings: striking at non-essential facilities (often civilian) to distract and to divert.
The rest of this conversation is quite challenging to follow and make sense of, but here goes:
On the ground, not much change. Ukrainians are shelling Donetsk city, using petal mines which cause many casualties to civilians. Russians right now are tackling the most fortified Ukrainian positions in all of Ukraine between Seversk and Bakhmut. Russians appear to be penetrating to the west of Peskiy and they have taken an important town nearby, an area which Ukrainians will find it difficult to fortify. This operation could take up to three weeks. Wagner Group is in east side of Bakhmut, centering in a champagne plant (1) from which they have fire control over local road transportation. Entire fall of Bakhmut seems very likely, but Ukraine has 8 infantry brigades in Bakhmut/Solidar area - which represents (over 20,000?) soldiers.
How many Ukrainian losses? A recent leak (from a Ukrainian source?) suggested losses of approx. 191,000 armed forces of Ukraine, not border guards, nor police. A lot of ambiguity as to how many were killed - KIA (possibly 50,000), how many were permanently disabled, and how many deserted or MIA. (I also hear a total figure of 300,000 bandied about in this conversation). Dima thinks desertions are very high. Sometimes these try to get help from officers where they have explanations (e.g. insufficient arms); deserters typically end up in jail. Ukrainians lost 13,000 soldiers from rocket attacks in July alone. The scale of Ukrainian losses should have been so demoralizing as to make one question as to why the Ukrainian forces are still there. Dima puts it down to the strength of Ukrainian patriotism.
Russian losses: BBC suggested 5,000 killed but doesn’t take into account Donbass soldiers (for the people’s republics) - allow 2,000, perhaps the same for Luhansk, and perhaps 1,500 for Wagner. The BBC has been monitoring all social media, and was very disappointed because in May they counted 3500 dead, and this went up to 5,000 in June. Russian losses so far are very, very small. Russia has two million reservists available!
(That is all I have time for today. I may come back to this, but I may also turn my attention to some other, more up to date or compelling conversation).