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Россия invades Україна | UPDATE (20 Apr 2024) - US House passes military aid bill for Ukraine

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Commissar SFLUFAN

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ISW analysis for 09 October 2022:

 

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 9 | Institute for the Study of War

WWW.UNDERSTANDINGWAR.ORG
This campaign assessment special edition focuses on Russian domestic responses to the Kerch Strait Bridge explosion on October 9 and changes within the Russian chain of command. Ukrainian forces continued to make advances towards Svatove-Kreminna highway

 

 

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Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

 

This campaign assessment special edition focuses on Russian domestic responses to the Kerch Strait Bridge explosion on October 9 and changes within the Russian chain of command. Ukrainian forces continued to make advances towards Svatove-Kreminna highway on October 9. Those developments are summarized briefly and will be covered in more detail tomorrow.

 

The attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge, coupled with recent Russian military failures and partial mobilization, is generating direct criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin from the Russian pro-war nationalist community. Some milbloggers, who represent and speak to that community on Telegram, criticized Putin’s and the Kremlin’s failure to address major events forthrightly, noting that it is challenging to rally behind Putin when his government relies on secrecy.[1] Others noted that Putin has consistently failed to address incidents such as the sinking of the cruiser Moskva or the prisoner exchange of Azovstal fighters whom the Kremlin had consistently demonized since the Battle of Mariupol.[2] Some milbloggers said that Putin must retaliate for the explosion on the Kerch Strait Bridge lest his silence be perceived as ”weakness.”[3] Milbloggers who did not criticize Putin instead criticized Russian Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev’s silence following the explosion after he had made several public claims that an attack on the Crimean Bridge was a Russian “red line.”[4] Direct criticism of Putin from this community is almost unprecedented. Milbloggers and other nationalist figures continue to express overwhelming support for Putin’s goals in Ukraine and have hitherto blamed failures and setbacks on the Russian military command or the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).

 

These critiques from the pro-war camp may indicate rising doubts about Putin’s ability to deliver on his promised goal of “denazifying” Ukraine and may undermine Putin’s appeal within his core constituency. Putin’s stated objectives for the invasion he launched on February 24 deeply resonated with the nationalist community, which firmly subscribes to the ideology of Russia’s historic and cultural superiority and right to control over the territories of the former Soviet Union and the Russian Empire. Recent military failures have caused some milbloggers to become concerned about Putin’s commitment to that ideology, however, with some milbloggers even accusing him of failing to uphold the ideology even prior to the full-scale invasion in February 2022. One milblogger noted on October 7 his disgust with the Russian political elite, including Putin, for consistently failing to seize Ukraine after the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014 and for conducting an “ugly special military operation” that only further united Ukrainians and the West against Russia.[5]

 

Milbloggers’ dissatisfaction with Putin’s inability to enforce his own “red lines” is rooted in his failure to properly establish information conditions prior to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Putin had defined red lines as NATO expansion and the delivery of strategic weapons systems including nuclear-capable systems to Ukraine prior to the invasion but he has not publicly adjusted these “red lines” since the invasion began.[6] Milbloggers have thus latched onto Medvedev’s declared “red lines,” which Putin has not publicly affirmed let alone enforced--facts that have only further disappointed them. The Kremlin has left room for confusion regarding its own vision for the war from the outset, a fact that may threaten its continuing support among people for whom the most extreme and grandiose objectives resonate.

 

Other Russian nationalists, propagandists, and proxy officials are blaming security services and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), a phenomenon that can undermine Putin’s regime in the long term. Komsomolkaya Pravda journalist and Russian reserve Colonel Viktor Baranets put responsibility for the explosion on the Kerch Strait Bridge on Russian security services, whom he called “traitors.”[7] Baranets’ statements prompted a wave of criticism from milbloggers, with some even accusing him of advocating for censorship among milbloggers and being affiliated with foreign agents.[8] Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov openly accused the Russian MoD of only releasing useless statements instead of actually regaining the initiative on the battlefield.[9] The Kremlin may be doubling down on the known milblogger distaste for the Russian MoD to use its military leadership as a scapegoat for its military failures.

 

The perception of the trajectory of the war and of Ukrainian capabilities is changing as well, and Russians are undergoing a rude awakening. Russian sources have recognized that the Ukrainian southern counter-offensive poses a significant threat to Russian forces across southern Ukraine.[10] This recognition is a significant deviation from the previous narrative presented by propagandists, milbloggers, and the Russian MoD for months that Ukrainian counter-offensives in Kherson Oblast were impossible or had failed.[11] Russian sources are shifting their alibis to claim that Ukrainians would not be successful without NATO’s direct involvement, advancing the narrative that Russia is fighting against the powerful Western bloc rather than lowly Ukraine.[12] It is unclear how such excuses are affecting domestic audiences from the information available in open source, but sudden departures from months-long declarations of Ukraine’s inability to advance in the south may prompt some concern among the Russian public that is already preoccupied with mobilization fears.

 

Russian voices within the information space demand that the Russian military retaliate for the Kerch Strait Bridge explosion by regaining the initiative on the battlefield and resuming the missile campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure. Solovyov cited Vladimir Lenin’s statement that “war must be waged for real or it must not be waged at all” and called for a massive campaign of strikes on Ukrainian critical infrastructure.[13] Milbloggers and proxy officials echoed Solovyov‘s statements, noting their fears of a repeated attack on the Crimean Bridge.[14]

 

It is becoming more evident that Russian voices in the information space are increasingly aware that the war is not going well, attacking the Kremlin’s strategy of silence and calling for Putin’s public involvement in the war. One milblogger even noted that this is the time for “radical, rapid, and urgent change” in Russia.[15] It is unclear if Putin will be able to fully satisfy these demands for change. Putin may attempt to address or deflect these critiques during his meeting with the Russian Security Council scheduled for October 10.[16] The framing within the information space of an urgent need for change within the Kremlin may pose threats to Putin when he is unable to make the changes necessary to alter the trajectory of the war in a meaningful way.

 

Putin is continuing to shuffle his senior military commanders, likely to deflect blame from himself and to regenerate enthusiasm in the extremist pro-war community. The Kremlin announced that Army General Sergei Surovikin has assumed command of the entire “special military operation,” as Putin refers to his ongoing invasion of Ukraine, on October 8.[17] The Russian pro-war, nationalist community cheered this announcement. A Telegram channel affiliated with the Wagner Group private military company controlled by Yevgeniy Prigozhin speculated that more changes would follow. The channel claimed that the Kremlin was also planning to replace Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Army General Valeriy Gerasimov in the coming week as a result of the Kerch Bridge incident.[18] It added, offering no evidence, that Tula Oblast Governor Alexei Dyumin would replace Shoigu and that Deputy Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Alexander Matovnikov would replace Gerasimov.

 

The Russian pro-war nationalist community greeted Surovikin’s appointment with irrational enthusiasm. Some milbloggers appeared to see Surovikin’s elevation as evidence that Putin was finally creating a unified headquarters to control the entire military operation and that Surovikin might have more power even than the Chief of the Russian General Staff.[19] These comments portray Surovikin’s appointment as a continuation of what they see as Putin’s loss of confidence in the Russian MoD and General Staff and turn toward the more total and brutal style of command and war they prefer. These reactions are odd considering that Surovikin is a conventional Russian general officer who has reportedly been commanding Russian operations in southern Ukraine since July.[20] He has hardly covered himself with glory in that role, as Russian forces there gained no meaningful ground and, in fact, suffered major losses in western Kherson under his command.

 

The pro-war community is relying on a belief that Surovikin’s reputed “toughness” will suffice to change the trajectory of the war. One milblogger praised Surovikin as a leader who takes decisive action—"heads can fly off shoulders instantly” in his command, and he “does not stand on ceremony with stupid commanders.”[21] Other milbloggers also praised Surovikin’s toughness.[22] The notion that Surovikin is “tougher” than his predecessor, Army General Alexander Dvornikov, or any of the other senior Russian commanders is bizarre. Dvornikov, like Surovikin and all the other Russian military district commanders, served in senior roles in Syria where they fought with extreme brutality. Dvornikov became known as “the butcher of Syria” for the viciousness with which Russian forces under his command waged war.[23] Milbloggers had also celebrated Dvornikov’s reported appointment as the commander of Russian troops in Ukraine in a similar manner, a fact they appear to have forgotten.[24] Any restraints on the brutality with which Russian troops have fought in Ukraine have resulted either from Putin’s decisions or inherent limitations in Russian capabilities—not from any tenderness on the part of Russian generals previously in command.

 

The “toughness” the pro-war community so loves, moreover, is a Soviet-era personality trait resulting from the brutalization of Soviet citizens and especially military personnel. It engenders fear in subordinates of the sort that inhibits honest reporting of problems or failures, encourages lying and blame-deflection, and produces the kind of robotic approach to executing orders that has contributed to Russian failures in Ukraine thus far. If Surovikin is indeed an even more toxic leader than his predecessors, he will only make Russia’s military problems more acute.

 

Prigozhin gave interviews that appear to confirm Western and Russian insider reports of fragmentation of the Kremlin and potential purges. Prigozhin offered a paean to Surovikin in his response to the announcement.[25] He recalled that Surovikin had jumped in his tank and “rushed to save his country” during the August Coup in 1991. That coup occurred when a group of hardliners sought to seize power from Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and stop him from taking the next step in breaking up the Soviet Union. Protestors took to the streets in Moscow in support of Gorbachev and his policies, and Surovikin sought to suppress them. Units under his command at the time killed three civilians.[26] Prigozhin noted that Surovikin had been right in 1991 in his efforts to preserve the Soviet Union and that Prigozhin himself had been on the wrong side along with others deluded by the promises of the West. Prigozhin added that many who had also been deluded have failed to see the light as he has done, noting darkly that those who destroyed the Soviet Union are still alive and well in Russia today.

 

Putin cannot do the one thing his hardline constituency demands—win the war. Shuffling senior commanders will not fix the systemic problems that have hamstrung Russian operations, logistics, defense industry, and mobilization from the outset of the invasion. Scapegoats can deflect criticism from Putin only for a time, and the appearance of direct criticism of Putin’s leadership among his most devoted hardline constituency is likely a harbinger of future dissatisfaction in that quarter.

 

Escalation, either conventional or nuclear, cannot solve Putin’s problems. If Russian forces are able to expand their attacks against Ukrainian population centers or critical infrastructure, or if Putin is willing to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, he can only hope thereby to stop the Ukrainian counter-offensives for a time. Such attacks will not allow his forces to conquer Ukraine and achieve the objectives that extreme pro-war Russian nationalists demand. They may well trigger Western responses that Russian hardliners would see as validating their arguments—but at the cost of devastating Russia’s remaining military power and ability to achieve anything of real value. What could happen if Putin loses the support of the constituency most committed to his vision? It is hard to say.

 

Key inflection in ongoing military operations on October 9:

  • Ukrainian forces continued to advance east of the Oskil Rver in the direction of Luhansk Oblast and have entered Stel’makhivka (about 18km west of Svatove).[27] Russian forces launched unsuccessful assaults on Burdaka on the Kharkiv Oblast-Russian border, and Terny northeast of Lyman.[28]
  • Russian sources reported that Russian forces attempted to attack in the direction of Ternovi Pody (approximately 30km northwest of Kherson City)[29] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces continued to target newly liberated settlements in northern Kherson Oblast with artillery, MLRS, and aviation.[30]
  • Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces repelled over 30 attacks in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka areas.[31] Russian forces launched an unsuccessful assault southwest of Donetsk City.[32]
  • Russian forces targeted residential areas of Zaporizhzhia City with cruise missiles.[33]
  • A Russian milblogger accused North Ossetia and Vladikavkaz of failing to fulfill mobilization orders due to carelessness and the personal interests of regional officials.[34]
  • Ukrainian sources reported that Russian occupation authorities are moving their families from Kherson Oblast to Crimea, and from Starobilsk to Luhansk City.[35]

 

DraftUkraineCoTOctober09,2022.png

 

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

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ISW analysis for 10 October 2022:

 

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 10 | Institute for the Study of War

WWW.UNDERSTANDINGWAR.ORG
Russian forces conducted a massive missile strike attack against over 20 cities, including Kyiv, on October 10. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched over 84 cruise missiles and 24 drone attacks, 13 of which were carried out

 

 

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Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

 

Russian forces conducted a massive missile strike attack against over 20 cities, including Kyiv, on October 10. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched over 84 cruise missiles and 24 drone attacks, 13 of which were carried out with Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones.[1] Ukrainian air defense shot down 43 cruise missiles, 10 Shahed-136 drones, and 3 unspecified drones. Russian forces launched missiles from 10 strategic bombers operating in the Caspian Sea and from Nizhny Novgorod, Iskander short-range ballistic missile systems, and 6 missile carriers in the Black Sea.[2] Russian forces launched the Shahed-136 drones from Crimea and Belarus.[3] Ukrainian media reported that Russian missile strikes hit 70 targets, including 29 critical infrastructure facilities, 4 high-rise buildings, 35 residential buildings, and a school.[4]

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have ordered the missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure in retaliation for a “terrorist act” at the Kerch Strait Bridge, likely in part to curry favor with the Russian pro-war nationalist camp that has been demanding such retaliation.[5] Putin accused Ukraine during his meeting with the Russian Security Council of conducting terrorist acts against Russian civilian and critical infrastructure, namely against the Kerch Strait Bridge, the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), and segments of the Turkish Stream gas transmission system.[6] Ukrainian officials have not formally taken responsibility for the explosion at the Kerch Strait Bridge.[7] The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) also reported that Putin has been planning this attack prior to the Kerch Strait Bridge explosion, and if true, could indicate that Putin planned this attack for the deflection of the Kharkiv-Izyum-Lyman failures.[8]

 

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu also attended the meeting despite speculations that Putin would force him to resign, which may suggest that Putin settled on responding to only one of the pro-war community’s demands at this time.

 

Putin emphasized that he would conduct proportional escalation in any future retaliatory actions. He stated that if Ukraine continues to carry out “terrorist attacks against [Russian] territory, then Russian responses will be harsh, and their scale will correspond to the level of the threat to the Russian Federation.” This declaration of proportionality suggests that Putin intends to continue climbing the escalation ladder rung by rung and cautiously rather than jumping to more dramatic measures such as the use of nuclear weapons. Putin may also mean to message the Russian pro-war camp that they should manage their expectations of an ongoing daily bombardment of Ukraine similar to the one conducted today.[9] Russian milbloggers, for their part, have overwhelmingly welcomed the strikes and amplified Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev’s statement that more attacks against Ukraine will follow soon.[10] Ukrainian and Western intelligence have previously reported that Russia has spent a significant portion of its high-precision missiles, and Putin likely knows better than Medvedev or the milbloggers that he cannot sustain attacks of this intensity for very long.[11]

 

The October 10 Russian attacks wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces successfully completed the mission of striking Ukrainian military command centers, signal infrastructure, and energy systems in Ukraine.[12] Social media shows that Russians instead hit a children’s playground, a park, a German consulate, and a business center among other non-military targets.[13] Ukrainian air defenses also shot down half of the Russian drones and cruise missiles. Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy grid will not likely break Ukraine’s will to fight, but Russia’s use of its limited supply of precision weapons in this role may deprive Putin of options to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives in Kherson and Luhansk Oblasts.

 

Russian and Belarusian forces remain unlikely to attack Ukraine from the north despite Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's October 10 announcement that Belarus and Russia agreed to deploy the Union State’s Regional Grouping of Forces (RGV) —a strategic formation of Russian and Belarusian units tasked with defending the Union State. Lukashenko stated that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on October 7 on an unspecified “deployment” of the Russian-Belarusian RGV in “connection with the escalation on the western borders of the Union State” but did not clearly define the deployment’s parameters.[14] Lukashenko stated that over a thousand Russian personnel will deploy to Belarus and that a Russian-Belarusian group began forming on October 8.[15] The Russian component of any RGV formations in Belarus will likely be comprised of low-readiness mobilized men or conscripts who likely will not pose a significant conventional military threat to Ukraine.

 

The Russian component of the RGV is comprised of elements of the 1st Guard Tank Army, 20th Combined Arms Army, and airborne units– formations that have all sustained heavy combat losses in Ukraine and have a severely reduced combat capacity.[16] A Kyiv Post reporter claimed that Russian soldiers are deploying to Belarus en masse via cattle railcars without mechanized equipment on October 10—a characterization consistent with ISW's assessment.[17] ISW has previously assessed that Ukrainian reports from late September of Belarus preparing to accept 20,000 mobilized Russian men indicate that Russia hopes to use Belarusian military facilities and infrastructure to hold and potentially train newly mobilized Russian forces, but that it remains exceedingly unlikely that these are leading indicators of imminent Belarusian involvement in Ukraine on Russia’s behalf.[18] The Kremlin may seek to use additional Russian forces in Belarus to fix Ukrainian forces near Kyiv and prevent their redeployment elsewhere to participate in counter-offensives. ISW has previously assessed that Lukashenko cannot afford the domestic ramifications of Belarusian involvement in Ukraine.[19] ISW also assesses that Russia does not have the ability to form a ground strike force from scratch or from existing units in Belarus quickly. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that it has not observed indicators of Russian forces forming offensive groups in Belarus and explicitly stated “there is no threat of an attack from the territory of the Republic of Belarus as of October 10.”[20]

 

Key Takeaways

  • Russian forces conducted massive, coordinated missile strikes on over 20 Ukrainian cities.
  • President Vladimir Putin claimed that the coordinated missile strikes were in retaliation for the explosion on the Kerch Strait Bridge, likely in part to curry favor with “pro-war” factions.
  • Russian and Belarusian ground forces remain unlikely to attack Ukraine from Belarusian territory to the north.
  • Ukrainian forces have likely liberated over 200 square kilometers of territory in western Luhansk Oblast as of October 10.
  • Russian forces continued unsuccessful attempts to regain recently lost territory in northwest Kherson Oblast while reinforcing nearby positions with damaged and hastily mobilized units.
  • Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast.
  • Russian and occupation administration officials are setting conditions to move up to 40,000 residents out of Kherson Oblast to Russian-occupied Crimea and the Russian Federation.
  • Russian forces cannot supply mobilized forces, likely due to years of supply theft by contract soldiers and commanders.

 

 

DraftUkraineCoTOctober10,2022.png

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

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5 minutes ago, CayceG said:

I'm now more on the side of the theory that Musk is turning off Starlink receivers in Ukraine rather than it being jamming. 

 

This is from a post on ResetERA from someone who closely follows posts by UAF personnel:

 

Quote

 

This isn't news, and people need to stop giving Musk attention.

 

UAF soldiers debunked the "sabotage" accusations. When they advance too fast and satellite operators lose track, they find themselves in areas without coverage. Once their request is communicated, coverage catches up.

 

 

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CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

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There are videos of the Russian assault(s) on Bakhmut in the east that are pretty horrible. Ukraine still holds it, but it's the one area where Russia is still advancing slowly. How are they doing that? Throwing thousands of men in waves against the entrenched Ukrainian positions. There are aerial shots of fields dotted with Russian bodies, they are literally running across fields at Ukrainian emplacements. Wagner is behind this assault, and now appears to be throwing human waves of prisoners and conscripts at the town.

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

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ISW analysis for 11 October 2022:

 

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 11 | Institute for the Study of War

WWW.UNDERSTANDINGWAR.ORG
Russian forces conducted massive missile strikes across Ukraine for the second day in a row on October 11. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces fired nearly 30 Kh-101 and Kh-55 cruise missiles from Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers and

 

 

Quote

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

 

Russian forces conducted massive missile strikes across Ukraine for the second day in a row on October 11. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces fired nearly 30 Kh-101 and Kh-55 cruise missiles from Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers and damaged critical infrastructure in Lviv, Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhia oblasts.[1] Ukrainian air defense reportedly destroyed 21 cruise missiles and 11 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).[2] Social media footage shows the aftermath of strikes throughout Ukraine.[3] Russian forces additionally continued to launch attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure with Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones.[4] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian air defense destroyed eight Shahed-136 drones in Mykolaiv Oblast on the night of October 10 and 11.[5]

 

Army General Sergey Surovikin’s previous experience as commander of Russian Armed Forces in Syria likely does not explain the massive wave of missile strikes across Ukraine over the past few days, nor does it signal a change in the trajectory of Russian capabilities or strategy in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) representative, Andriy Yusov, linked the recent strikes to Surovikin’s appointment as theatre commander and stated on October 11 that “throwing rockets at civilian infrastructure objects” is consistent with Surovikin’s tactics in Syria.[6] However, Surovikin has been serving in Ukraine (as the Commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces and then reportedly of the southern grouping of Russian forces) since the beginning of the war, as have many senior Russian commanders similarly associated with Russian operations in Syria.[7] Army General Aleksandr Dvornikov, who was appointed in April to the role that Surovikin now holds, similarly commanded Russian forces in Syria between 2015-2016 and became known for deliberately and brutally targeting civilians.[8] Colonel General Aleksandr Chayko, the former commander of the Eastern Military District who took an active part in the first stages of the war in Ukraine, also served as Chief of Staff of Russian forces in Syria from 2015 and into 2016.[9] As ISW noted in April, all Russian military district, aerospace, and airborne commanders served at least one tour in Syria as either chief of staff or commander of Russian forces, and Russian forces deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure including hospitals and breadlines throughout the period of Russia’s active engagement in that war.[10] Disregard for international law and an enthusiasm for brutalizing civilian populations was standard operating procedure for Russian forces in Syria before, during, and after Surovikin’s tenure.  It has become part of the Russian way of war.

 

Surovikin’s appointment will not lead to further “Syrianization” of Russian operations in Ukraine because the battlespace in Ukraine is fundamentally different from the battlespace in Syria, and direct comparisons to Surovikin’s Syrian “playbook” obfuscate the fact that Russia faces very different challenges in Ukraine. Russia cannot further “Syrianize” the war largely because of its failure to gain air superiority, which precludes its ability to launch the kind of massive carpet-bombing campaigns across Ukraine that it could, and did, conduct in Syria. ISW has previously assessed that Russian air operations would have been markedly different if conducted in contested airspace or a more challenging air-defense environment, as is the case in Ukraine.[11] It is therefore highly unlikely that Surovikin’s role as theatre commander will cause a fundamental change in Russian air and missile operations in Ukraine as long as Ukraine’s Western backers continue to supply Kyiv with the air defenses needed to prevent Russia from gaining air superiority.

 

Russian military officials may instead have coordinated Surovikin’s appointment and the October 10 cruise missile strikes on Ukrainian critical infrastructure to rehabilitate the perception of the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD). Whoever was appointed as theatre commander would have overseen the October 10 cruise missile strikes, which Ukrainian intelligence reported had been planned as early as October 2 (and which Surovikin certainly did not plan, prepare for, and conduct on the day of his appointment).[12] Russian milbloggers have recently lauded both the massive wave of strikes on October 10 and Surovikin’s appointment and correlated the two as positive developments for Russian operations in Ukraine. This narrative may be aligned with ongoing Russian information operations to rehabilitate the reputation of Central Military District Command Colonel General Aleksandr Lapin following Russian failures around Lyman as part of a wider campaign to bolster public opinion of the Russian military establishment. The Russian MoD is evidently invested in repairing its public image, and the informational effects of the October 10 missile strikes and the appointment of Surovikin, a hero in the extremist nationalist Russian information space, are likely intended to cater to the most vocal voices in that space.

 

The Russian Federation is likely extracting ammunition and other materiel from Belarusian storage bases—activity that is incompatible with setting conditions for a large-scale Russian or Belarusian ground attack against Ukraine from Belarus. The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on October 11 that a train with 492 tons of ammunition from the Belarusian 43rd Missile and Ammunition Storage Arsenal in Gomel arrived at the Kirovskaya Railway Station in Crimea on an unspecified recent past date.[13] The GUR reported that Belarusian officials plan to send an additional 13 trains with weapons, equipment, ammunition, and other unspecified materiel from five different Belarusian bases to the Kamenska (Kamensk-Shakhtinsky) and Marchevo (Taganrog) railway stations in Rostov Oblast on an unspecified future date. Open-source social media footage supports this report. Geolocated footage showed at least two Belarusian trains transporting Belarusian T-72 tanks and Ural military trucks in Minsk and Tor-M2 surface-to-air missile launchers in Orsha (Vitebsk Oblast) on October 11.[14] Belarusian equipment movements into Russia indicate that Russian and Belarusian forces likely are not establishing assembly areas in Belarus. Belarusian equipment and supply movements to Crimea and Rostov Oblast indicate that Russian forces are less confident about the security of Russian ground lines of communication running through northern and western Luhansk Oblast given the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive there. Ukraine’s General Staff reiterated that it monitors Belarus and has not observed indicators of the formation of offensive groups in Belarus on October 11.[15] Russian and or Belarusian forces remain unlikely to attack Ukraine from Belarus, as ISW has previously assessed.[16]

 

Belarus remains a co-belligerent in Russia’s war against Ukraine, nonetheless. Belarus materially supports Russian offensives in Ukraine and provides Russian forces with havens from which to attack Ukraine with precision munitions. Russian forces struck Kyiv with Shahed-136 drones launched from Belarusian territory on October 10.[17] The GUR additionally reported that Russia deployed 32 Shahed-136 drones to Belarus as of October 10 and that Russia will deploy eight more to Belarus by October 14.[18]

 

Key Takeaways

  • Russian forces conducted massive missile strikes across Ukraine for the second day in a row.
  • Army General Sergey Surovikin’s previous experience as commander of Russian Armed Forces in Syria is likely unrelated to the massive wave of missile strikes across Ukraine over the past few days, nor does it signal a change in the trajectory of Russian capabilities or strategy in Ukraine.
  • The Russian Federation is likely extracting ammunition and other materiel from Belarusian storage bases, which is incompatible with the notion that Russian forces are setting conditions for a ground attack against Ukraine from Belarus.
  • Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct counteroffensives east of the Oskil River and in the direction of Kreminna-Svatove.
  • Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops continued ground attacks in northern and western Kherson Oblast.
  • Ukrainian forces are continuing an interdiction campaign to target Russian military, technical, and logistics assets and concentration areas in Kherson Oblast.
  • Russian forces continued to conduct ground assaults in Donetsk Oblast.
  • Russian reporting of explosions in Dzhankoy, Crimea, indicated panic over losing further logistics capabilities in Crimea following the Kerch Strait Bridge explosion.
  • Russian federal subjects are announcing new extensions and phases of mobilization in select regions, which may indicate that they have not met their mobilization quotas.
  • Russian and occupation administration officials continue to conduct filtration activities in Russian-occupied territories.

 

DraftUkraineCoTOctober11,2022.png

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CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

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Russia is making WWII-era straight line trenches across the front. Others have pointed out that this is a horrible idea since modern artillery and mortars will be able to rip through these types of defensive positions, especially if they don't have regular curves to prevent shrapnel from taking out entire lines of soldiers:

 

 

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LazyPiranha

LazyPiranha

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6 hours ago, mclumber1 said:

A whole medium sized town worth of Russian men have been expended by the Russian government...In a little over 6 months of fighting.  I'm not sure any modern western military has experienced losses of this scale so quickly since World War 2.  

 

 


I really can’t understand it.  That’s close to the same amount of troops the US lost in Vietnam, Korea, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan COMBINED.  Over half a century of war casualties lost in half a year.  

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