Jul 10, 2022 08:17 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 10, 2022 08:24 PM by Yazata.)
Latest briefing from the Austrian Military Academy. Valuable because these briefings are unbiased and free of exaggerations in favor of one side or the other.
Starts with a summary of the battle in Donbas up until the loss of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. Then it continues with this officers assessment of where the battle will go from here.
Several big points. First is that when the battle started, both Russia and Ukraine were roughly equally matched in Donbas in terms of size of forces. But in the subsequent battle, the Ukrainian side has suffered about 25% attrition, from ~80 battalion groups down to ~60. Meanwhile the Russians have been bringing in reinforcements from Russia and have increased the number of their battalion tactical groups. So the Russians have gradually come to outnumber the Ukrainians in this particular area by approaching 2-1. So the situation is gradually turning against Ukraine. The large envelopment maneuvers the Russians failed at earlier might start to become possible in the future.
The other big point was that the M-777 howitzers supplied by the United States have not been as valuable as hoped. They only manage to get off a few rounds before the Russians hit them with counter-battery fire, damaging the guns (and likely killing their crews). (Thus showing the advantage of self-propelled guns' "shoot and scoot" tactics.) And repairing them requires transporting them to Poland and back to eastern Ukraine. The HIMARS rockets have proven much more valuable, but they haven't been supplied in large enough numbers to be game-changers.
It sounds like the Russians learn from their mistakes and have switched away from fast Feb 24 style lightning strikes across the border by relatively small units in hopes of winning a quick cheap victory, towards a more slogging war of attrition, with massed troops backed up by mass artillery and small incremental advances. The goal now seems to be to wear Ukraine down in hopes of making faster progress possible in the future.
And even if the Russians are satisfied taking eastern and southern Ukraine, that would be most of Ukraine's vital grain-growing region, a major component of its GDP.
And the briefing ends on a sad note as the Austrian officer notes the battle death of a friend of his in the Ukrainian army.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/dEbLuAPobao
Starts with a summary of the battle in Donbas up until the loss of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. Then it continues with this officers assessment of where the battle will go from here.
Several big points. First is that when the battle started, both Russia and Ukraine were roughly equally matched in Donbas in terms of size of forces. But in the subsequent battle, the Ukrainian side has suffered about 25% attrition, from ~80 battalion groups down to ~60. Meanwhile the Russians have been bringing in reinforcements from Russia and have increased the number of their battalion tactical groups. So the Russians have gradually come to outnumber the Ukrainians in this particular area by approaching 2-1. So the situation is gradually turning against Ukraine. The large envelopment maneuvers the Russians failed at earlier might start to become possible in the future.
The other big point was that the M-777 howitzers supplied by the United States have not been as valuable as hoped. They only manage to get off a few rounds before the Russians hit them with counter-battery fire, damaging the guns (and likely killing their crews). (Thus showing the advantage of self-propelled guns' "shoot and scoot" tactics.) And repairing them requires transporting them to Poland and back to eastern Ukraine. The HIMARS rockets have proven much more valuable, but they haven't been supplied in large enough numbers to be game-changers.
It sounds like the Russians learn from their mistakes and have switched away from fast Feb 24 style lightning strikes across the border by relatively small units in hopes of winning a quick cheap victory, towards a more slogging war of attrition, with massed troops backed up by mass artillery and small incremental advances. The goal now seems to be to wear Ukraine down in hopes of making faster progress possible in the future.
And even if the Russians are satisfied taking eastern and southern Ukraine, that would be most of Ukraine's vital grain-growing region, a major component of its GDP.
And the briefing ends on a sad note as the Austrian officer notes the battle death of a friend of his in the Ukrainian army.
