SITREP 7/2/24: Ukraine Bleeds Troops and Territory as New Russian Tactics Prove Unstoppable
On the heels of Zelensky’s recent tone-switch we have some interesting new information floating up about the situation behind the scenes which may have called for the shift.
The biggest was a new Die Welt piece yesterday which broke down some numbers. I use the more easily translatable Tass headline which covered the story:
The Die Welt piece starts off calling the Ukrainian lack of troops an ‘existential’ crisis, and that they’ve been opening up prisons relentlessly now to staunch the losses:
The lack of soldiers for the Ukraine existential. During the mobilization of the demand, recruited the army now in prisons. The prisoners used for a specific purpose. Many are wondering what the freedom is worth it.
But the key revelation is this—mind the slightly wonky auto-translation:
So, according to ‘European security sources’, Ukraine requires 50,000 soldiers per quarter and 200k by the end of the year just to maintain losses. Of course, this is less than Russian sources have calculated, which claim Ukraine needs 30k per month just to stay even. That being said, the interesting thing is that the 200k required by end of year calculates to exactly 33,000 per month for the remaining months. Though they do acknowledge in the next paragraph that Colonel Reisner of the Austrian army believes the number is even higher.
What’s interesting about all that, is how Western thinktanks are slowly starting to catch up to a plan obvious to us for a very long time now. ISW’s latest theorycrafting propounds the ‘novel’ idea that Russia is seeking to win the war of attrition by way of the boa constrictor strategy I’ve been detailing since nearly the conflict’s start:
“Putin has articulated a theory of victory that assumes that Russian forces will be able to continue gradual creeping advances indefinitely, prevent Ukraine from conducting successful operationally significant counteroffensive operations, and win a war of attrition against Ukrainian forces.”
Well, uh, yeah—that’s exactly what Russia is doing and will do. And there’s nothing Ukraine or the West can really do to stop it because to do so would require a force disparity. And Ukraine cannot generate a force disparity because—surprise, surprise—it is losing more men than Russia.
Take it with a grain of salt as everything, but it’s one more data point to consider—MacGregor states his European sources have told him that Ukraine is now over 600k dead with 1M+ total casualties, while Russia has 50-63k dead.
But to continue the ISW’s groundbreaking analysis:
“The Russian military command is currently prioritizing consistent offensive operations that achieve gradual tactical gains over conducting a large-scale discrete offensive operation that aims to make operationally significant gains through rapid maneuver.”
It took them two years to finally peck away at our scraps and understand the plan?
“Putin and the Russian military command likely view creeping offensive operations as a more guaranteed approach to making gains in Ukraine than larger mobile offensives and appear to be accepting the reality that Russian forces may have to pursue individual operationally significant objectives over the course of many months if not years.”
Why wouldn’t they view it this way—it’s succeeding isn’t it? Every day there are dozens of new gains and advances—a fact ISW sourly omits in their attempt to paper over the tactic as some sort of ambiguously questionable idea.
Also, note how close they come to admitting another big point we’ve been making for what feels like years: that the Western conception of Russian “Soviet-style” top down command is a total fraud, and in fact Russian units are granted independent autonomy at the tactical level to generate their own combat initiative.
And finally, the big admission:
“A protracted war favors Putin’s calculus since he likely assesses that Russia will be able to hold any ground it takes and that Russian forces will be more likely to achieve his current stated territorial objectives of conquest in Ukraine.”
So, after presenting the approach in as ambiguous a set of terms as possible, they simply flat out admit that a protracted conflict—and what other kind of conflict can it possibly be?—favors this approach. In short: Russia is following the exactly correct plan for victory.
“Protracted war will likely incentivize Putin to explicitly set new territorial objectives as long as he assesses that Ukrainian forces can neither stop his advances nor conduct meaningful counteroffensives.”
Does anyone else get the sense these Kagans are really hurting for IQ? Why wouldn’t a clearly winning conflict incentivize Putin to, effectively, finish the objectives he literally announced at the start of the very same conflict? That’s basically saying: “We fear that as Russia continues winning, they may consider such winning as to be bringing them toward their stated objectives of victory, and therefore it will cause them to keep winning and push towards those objectives.”How vapid can these people get?
The truth is that they’re playing dumb on purpose, to an extent. The reason is Western media and thinktanks have adopted this deliberately obscurant smokescreen where any talk of Russian victory is to be downplayed or treated as improbable as possible. Therefore, things that are openly evident to even a blind man are treated as novelties or with great skepticism. In this case, we all know Russia is handily winning and marching toward its objectives but they still purposely characterize it as some sort of fluke, where it’s not a ‘given’ that Russia will succeed. Unfortunately, their game only makes them look hopelessly clueless and out of touch.
In the end, all they can come up as ‘solution’ is the same uninspired: “Give Ukraine more stuff to confound Putin’s plans.”
The funniest line from the above is: “Russia’s creeping advances hold no operational significance……if Ukraine can undo those gains…”
So basically they’re saying all these small gains do in fact have major operational significance because it’s clear Ukraine is not and cannot undo any of the gains. Again, it’s the tried and true, perfected MSM tactic of verbal gymnastics in never saying the un-sayable, and when absolutely necessary, only referring to uncomfortable truths in as indirect a manner as possible. It’s like saying: “There’s absolutely no possible way Russia will EVER win the war, whatsoever…unless Ukraine cannot undo the gains and the West cannot keep giving hundreds of billions every year.”
The above tactical considerations segue us into the next interesting offering, which comes by way of the X account of an active AFU member with a large following.
There’s been much talk recently about Russia’s shifting tactics, particularly utilizing smaller and lighter civilian-style vehicles in order to adapt to the pervasiveness of FPV drones. Ukrainians have been rabidly posting pictures of overturned bikes that successfully dropped off their riders and show no actual casualties, while some are astutely beginning to comprehend the significance of the tactic:
And many memes now abound:
With some statistics, like this one from NYT, claiming that Russian bike assaults now account for upwards of 50% of attacks in some areas:
It’s called adaptation. Russian commanders are reading the situation, and have found the AFU barely using any armor themselves due to both running low and wanting to conserve their remaining tanks/IFVs. That means on many fronts there is no real point to using armor as the only thing firing back at you are FPVs—and FPVs do not discriminate between guys on the back of a bike or in a tank; they take both out equally and the tank only makes a fatter, slower target.
Now we have an actual informed thread from an AFU soldier who explicates on the topic in a way that puts meme-makers to shame and validates the Russian thinking:
I’ll copy-paste the entire thing in sections for a breakdown. It mainly covers the current hottest frontline of the Pokrovsk direction, which is essentially the extension of the west-Avdeevka salient:
Russian banzai assaults on the Pokrovske direction. This very wording has already been used in some places by some observers. And it seems to me that it is mostly perceived as purely suicidal attacks without meaning and content. I understand it a little differently. 1/
Mashovets recently had a review of Russian forces in the Pokrovske direction. Tens of thousands of personnel, over 300 tanks, etc. So all this force is being used in a stretched time period. 2/
Having large resources, i.e., equipment, ammo and people, the Russians are still limited in their simultaneous use in a small area. This is due to the peculiarities of the terrain and the peculiarities of combat operations. They have to advance along a limited number of roads and forest plantations.
So, firstly he acknowledges that lay commentators are interpreting Russian tactics here to be ‘suicide’ attacks, then rebuffs them by saying he disagrees.
He goes on to state that Russia has tens of thousands of men and 300+ tanks on this narrow sector, but is prohibited from using them in a comprehensive and combined way because of the limited access of terrain.
I wrote about this long ago, but there is precise military theory on exactly how much terrain width you need per unit size, for instance a brigade requiring at least two parallel roads of a certain adequate size. They can’t be too far apart as to separate the brigade elements beyond their coverage zone, but cannot be too narrowly close either to stack the brigade elements too dangerously close together, as an example.
Thus, he goes on:
Accordingly, it makes no sense to accumulate dozens of units of equipment in one wave. Instead, a certain set, a combination of forces and means is used for a specific attack. At the same time, the enemy obviously has a certain calculation of what he can afford to lose over a certain period of time and can calculate the use of it. 4/
The less visible the equipment is, the closer it can be pulled up and accumulated. They try to keep large equipment away from the contact line or well camouflaged in Ocheretyne and the surrounding areas. Mortars, towed artillery, ammunition depots and infantry are also concentrated there. 5/
One important tangential point he makes above is how Russian command has a certain given amount of losses calculated into each assault. War is simple logistical mathematics. If you know you produce 1000 tanks per year, that means to keep parity you can only afford to lose 1000/12 = 83 per month, which is about ~21 per week or 3 per day. And that’s roughly what Russia averages, from memory around 2 to 2.5 give or take, which is a sustainable metric.
Commanders are basically told, look, you have 20 tanks worth of losses this week, plan your assaults accordingly. If you have 3 assaults planned this week and your first one already lost 10+ tanks, then cut it down to only 2 total assaults and next week you can restart. It’s basic math.
I explain this because some people treat the idea of Russia running out of armor as some mystical art, constantly hypothesizing when or how Russia could run out. Such people don’t understand how military science works. Everything is worked out by strategic planners down to the single digit. They know exactly how much they have and how much they can lose per day, per week, per month, etc., to keep inventories balanced.
Of course, that’s only possible because of the fact Russia has successfully shifted the entire war into their style of fight. If the opponent was capable of somehow upsetting the pace and forcing Russia to use resources in an uncontrollable way, it would not work. But Russia has effectively transformed the war into a stable, predictable managerial process, a totally controllable program, particularly now that rainman bookkeeper Belousov is in charge.
But next is where it gets really fascinating. Pay attention, as here he squashes all the phony stereotypes and parodies of Russian assaults once and for all:
According to my observations, in one of the areas where an active offensive is taking place, in addition to the usual infiltration of soldiers through the landings and folds of the terrain for replenishment/rotation, there is an average of one concentrated attack with a combination of means every day. 6/
In terms of armored vehicles, these are BMPs/BMDs or APCs that deliver personnel, tanks that support and cover them, all synchronized with artillery shells to nail the defenders to the ground, to bathe our art and drones. Sometimes even synchronized air strikes. All of this is spiced up with powerful electronic warfare systems on armor to combat fpv drones. 7/
They also try to cover the main routes of approach to the conditional attack line with electronic warfare. Ocheretyno is used as an intermediate stronghold, where they bring ammo and sometimes try to hide equipment. Obviously, everything is coordinated with the support of UAVs. 8/
Everything happens in a short period of time. Quickly, so that the defense has a minimum of time to react. In particular, some kind of conditional brigade RUBAK. They already know about the group's movement 15 kilometers from the contact line. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later. This distance must be covered in a flash. 9/
The armor drops the troops, or doesn't if the artillery and drones are accurate enough. Tanks shoot back and run away. If they can. Armor also, if it manages to survive. Infantry runs into the landing and tries to disperse and hide in the greenery. In small groups they approach their lines. 10/
So, firstly, he describes highly coordinated attacks that are the total opposite of the hapless bonzai ‘suicide’ charges they’ve gotten a reputation for being with the more toothlessly clueless of the pro-UA crowd. Not only are they mixed with combined arms, but professionally coordinated with a variety of special auxiliary units and effects.
He describes how Ukrainian recon forces detect the coming attacks from 15km out, which is just about the usual distance of the third line staging areas. Then he describes the usual troop dismount dropoffs on the hedgerow landing sites we’ve seen so many times before.
Quick look at a real assault/dismount action from yesterday as demonstration:
The grand conclusion:
At first glance, it really looks like a suicide attack, because we almost always cause them losses. The equipment either burns down irretrievably or suffers damage that requires repair. But in general, the task is being accomplished to a certain extent. 11/
The attack often ends with a certain number of personnel surviving and reaching the position.
This is followed by losses during assault operations and from drones that constantly pursue the occupiers. Regardless of whether they attack or try to hide. 12/
Sometimes armor that moves to the front line for a mission becomes the object of close attention of artillery and fpv units. If the enemy realizes that it is impossible to slip through, it sometimes tries to hide the equipment. In the same Ocheretyne. 13/
Certainly he has to add a little flourish for the sake of dignity, and to make sure his side doesn’t look worse by comparison, so I’m sure he embellishes the losses to an extent. Obviously, given the fact he admits the assaults typically succeed pretty much refutes any exaggerations of losses as an assault definitionally must survive with a certain percentage of its forces intact to successfully gain a foothold. If an assault party, for instance, loses 75% of its men on approach, the remaining men would not be able to hold the positions they just took. You need an adequate supply of men to not only overtake the positions themselves, which are crawling with enemy sentries, but to then hold that position indefinitely from immediate counterattack of adjacent enemy positions.
Thus, it’s safe to say that an assault group likely requires at least 75% of the force to ably make it into the enemy position to succeed there long term. I have seen numbers thrown around that something like 10-20% of assault groups are casualties on average. Yes, some are far, far worse, some are even wiped out entirely—but I’m talking about the average successful assault.
Lastly, what he says at the end attests to this:
Even without reinforcements in the area, the Russians can conduct hundreds more such assaults. What is important here is not only that they are trying to break through to the road from Pokrovsk to Kostiantynivka, but also that they are constantly honing the organization and coordination of such attacks, combining all the necessary means. That is, they continue to adapt. That is why repelling such attacks is a very difficult task. Each unit of destroyed armor, logistics vehicles and personnel is the result of enormous efforts.15/
That even without reinforcements, i.e. reserves, Russia can do hundreds more such assaults; if the assaults had heavy casualties, how could that be possible without reinforcing them with reserves? Remember, he said Russia does at minimum one such assault per day. Hundreds of assaults means up to a year’s worth of assaulting or more without reinforcement—does that sound like heavy casualties?
More importantly, he affirms that Russia is ‘constantly honing the organization and coordination of such attacks, combining all necessary means.’ That sounds totally contrary to how the typical pro-UA shill on Twitter or elsewhere characterizes Russia’s approach. Recall what I had written many times about the current state of the war: the only way to break the deadlock is by highly attuned synthesis of combined arms, where each type of unit works perfectly in tandem. Recon must use extremely efficient and integrated communications to disperse targets on the fly as the assault group marches forward, while rear artillery/drone/mortar/fires units must work to immediately suppress dangers in real time, all coordinated to a high level with friendly electronic warfare units to counteract enemy UAV activity while coordinating with friendly recons to not inadvertently suppress their assets. Then add airforce and many other aspects to that long chain, and it’s the only way to overcome the current deadlock-esque difficulties. Judging by his description above, this is precisely what Russia is working out and improving on.
I’ve even heard whispers of Russian units working out electronic buss lanes—which makes perfect sense if you think about it—where suppression is done via tight antenna spreads just over the friendly units, to suppress any UAV activity there, since enemy FPVs will only be flying toward the friendly column which typically marches in file. Then to the flanks of this ‘lane’ is where friendly UAVs work—both the recon and attack varieties—and are not affected by the tight directional angle of the EW suppression.
Here you can see Russian forces even recently training with an EW engineer as fulltime crew member of the squad for assaults:
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As a quick nod to journalistic integrity, we show the other side of the story, since it happens to coincide with today’s report that New York Times just released a new article several days ago claiming insight on surging Russian losses in the Kharkov direction:
The article hinges on this primary claim:
May was a particularly deadly month for the Russian army in Ukraine, with an average of more than 1,000 of its soldiers injured or killed each day, according to U.S., British and other Western intelligence agencies.
But despite its losses, Russia is recruiting 25,000 to 30,000 new soldiers a month — roughly as many as are exiting the battlefield, U.S. officials said.That has allowed its army to keep sending wave after wave of troops at Ukrainian defenses, hoping to overwhelm them and break through the trench lines.
Firstly, this is astoundingly higher than current MediaZona/BBC estimates, which show an average of roughly 1000-1500 confirmed Russian KIA per month for the last few months. So the figure in no way, shape, or form comports with even extrapolated ‘estimates’ of ‘true losses’ by way of MediaZona data.
For instance, to get 25,000 total KIA, you’d have to go all the way back to May of 2023 to nearly present time:
So for them to profess 25-30k KIA per month just has no basis in any credible data whatsoever. What further discredits this article is the following utterly risible paragraph which exposes the NYT as the highly biased, unprofessional outfit that it is:
Oh, sure. This is “serious journalism” in practice. Totally disingenuous and gutless fraud with zero integrity—they move mountains to uncover every last grain of information on Russian losses but when it comes to Ukraine, they don’t bother with even a cursory level of due diligence. With the connections an outfit like NYT has, they could easily pull strings and get the real numbers, but they don’t want to—and that tells us everything we need to know about how horrifying the real numbers must be, that they’re forced to keep them hidden.
Some other updates.
The front remains hot with Russian advances continuing everywhere. In fact, some Ukrainian sources are near-to-panic:
Several units have reported some kind of “disasters” on the front, for instance this actual AFU unit commander claiming today was one of the blackest days of their history, though refusing to say why:
However, he gave a clue when he reposted this video of a mutinying AFU group pleading with their command, a translation of which I posted here—to which he commented:
Other cries of alarm:
In fact, latest news claims that Syrsky is close to ‘resigning’ after Zelensky has expressed his extreme dissatisfaction with him for the claimed specific reason of unmanning all the Donetsk-direction brigades in order to reinforce the Kharkov-Volchansk breakthrough. Due to this, Donetsk sector began to fall apart as seen above, for which Syrsky is being held responsible. This is all deja vu, by the way, as the same thing happened many times, from Bakhmut to Avdeevka and other places.
That’s not to mention the painful wound struck the AFU the past day when Russian Iskanders rocked two separate airfields—one a helicopter base in Poltava, the other an Su-27 base near Mirgorod, with estimates claiming 2+ planes destroyed with another 5 damaged with potential for destruction:
Ukrainian wails were particularly loud in regard to the fact that Russian Orlan drones flew that deep over their sensitive targets for several hours without notice, indicating a severe lack of SHORAD air defense.
In fact, one interesting AFU report claimed the total number of Orlans in the sky across the front was 15, giving us some fascinating insight into Russian recon operation scale:
What’s particularly interesting is that the bulk of the recon fleet appears over the ostensibly “dead” Kherson region, where no real fighting is even taking place. That is quite curious. Of course, I believe this refers to either specifically Orlan or generally long range ‘scout’ recon flights, while there are dozens if not hundreds more smaller local ones for tactical ISR which wouldn’t even register to detection.
—
Now the largest of the breakthroughs is claimed to be in the direction of New York—yes, for those wondering, the town of Novgorod was renamed to New York by Poroshenko several years back. It will take a few days to settle in and confirm the advance, but this is what’s claimed for now, from UA sources at that:
RusFor managed to break through south of New York to a depth of 3.68km according to pro-AFU deepstate
To give an idea how big that would be, if true, here’s the current un-updated map:
You can see Russian forces are not even at Yur’ivka, just south of Niu-York—now they are said to already be at Niu-York’s outskirts. We’ll see if it turns out to be accurate.
And that’s just one of nearly a dozen other advances, particularly in Chasov Yar, Kirov-Pivichne-Gorlovka, and elsewhere.
Remember, at the beginning ISW told us that these meaningless little advances will all be stopped as soon as some more NATO money is coughed up.
By the way, all talk of ATACMs have died away and there hasn’t been any ATACMs success at all in a while—I wonder what happened? Has the missile already been nullified?
Now there’s talk of 8 Israeli Patriots being transferred to Ukraine—remember, these are the same Patriots Israel decided to toss into the trash because they proved useless during Iranian attacks.
But among manic cheers, the one tiny wrinkle pro-UA commentators overlooked was Blinken’s comments yesterday in regard to this: he stated that the new Patriots would be used to protect U.S. economic interests, not Ukrainian cities or assets. Whoops.
“We are trying to attract private investment to Ukraine to make sure its economy can grow and prosper. But you need to make sure you have air defenses to try and protect the areas you're investing in.”
Let me get this straight: Blinken is bogarting defective Israeli Patriots to defend the new Black Rock economic extraction operation sites in Ukraine?
You can’t get much more on brand for Ukraine than that.
—
Now Economist reports that Ukraine has one month left before default:
Surely Russia is in similar straits?
Well, actually the World Bank today just officially upgraded Russia to a “High Income Economy”:
The threshold to high income status is around $13,800 GDP per capita, and Russia has now reached somewhere around $14,200+. That’s for the most sanctioned, embargoed, and economically terrorized country on earth; consider what it would be without the West’s titanic thumb tipping the scales.
The World Bank recognized Russia as a high-income country and recorded gross income for each Russian at $14,250.
▪️The bank classifies those countries where this indicator is at least $13,845 as high-income.
▪️ “This step on the part of the World Bank means recognition by an authoritative world institution of the successes of the economic policy of the Russian authorities over the last decade, despite the illegal trade and financial restrictions imposed against us,” Roman Marshavin, executive director for Russia at the bank, told TASS.
Economic activity in Russia was influenced by a large increase in military related activity in 2023, while growth was also boosted by a rebound in trade (+6.8%), the financial sector (+8.7%), and construction (+6.6%). These factors led to increases in both real (3.6%) and nominal (10.9%) GDP, and Russia’s Atlas GNI per capita grew by 11.2%.
—
Ukrainian citizen describes the 18-hour long blackouts in Kiev, already a daily occurrence:
In fairness, Ukraine totally switched off Belgorod yesterday with a strike on some transformers. But the difference is Russia restored service within a day, while Ukraine continues to plummet into eventual permanent blackout.
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Reports state that Ukrainian women are now dropping out of medical school en masse because the government is forcing them to register for the military for potential call-up as medics. This fine young lady explains that women should be drafted:
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NATO continues to saber-rattle yet reports like the following keep rolling out:
The above states that the Bundeswehr cannot even find enough automatic rifles for their army. Rough translation:
Another alarm among the troops: apparently the Bundeswehr has far too few assault rifles. They are "barely able to defend themselves in ground combat".
The Bundeswehr is running out of assault rifles. Not even every second soldier can still be equipped with the standard Heckler & Koch G36 rifle. According to WirtschaftsWoche, the troops only have 50,000 to 60,000 rifles left.
"Too few and too broken for almost 200,000 soldiers," is the opinion among military personnel. Many G36s are also in need of repair due to heavy wear and tear, says a high-ranking officer. The Bundeswehr is "barely able to defend itself in ground combat".
—
Now the NYT reports that Israel is low on munitions of all kinds:
Given the fact that reports now claim Israel has “chosen a date” for the second half of July for the big Lebanese operation, we can only surmise that soon all the world’s munitions will flow to their beloved golden child. Where will that leave Ukraine? Up a brown creek without a paddle.
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For those curious, one more programmatic video of Russian forces utilizing the new bike tactics for assault, here training:
Stormtroopers actively used motorcycles during the liberation of Staromayorsky Motorized transport was also useful in occupying large enemy outposts in the Ugledar direction. Motorcycles and ATVs allow assault teams to move quickly and take the enemy by surprise. In addition, such groups are used as a distraction.
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And last but not least, I leave you with this brilliant speech from a man I’ve never heard of before, Jan Oberg, about the fall of the American Empire due to its over-reliance on militarization rather than cooperation:
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