Ukraine has stepped up its drone attacks against a wide spectrum of Russian military infrastructure targets.
That’s way beyond the Kerch Strait Bridge. Back to the first video.
Reporting from Ukraine is usually pretty solid and seems to have sources inside Ukraine’s defense ministry.
Here’s a video from Samir Puri and the Imperial War Museum that echoes something Nicholas Moran said ten months ago, namely that the tank is not obsolete on the modern battlefield, it’s just that the Russians are using them wrong.
Takeaways:
Though Russia’s forces have shown some small signs of increasing technical competence in various areas, the fact that they lost so much armor attacking Vuhledar shows that they still have a long way to go when it comes to staging competent combined arms operations.
Given that the original video generated doubts as to its veracity, I thought I would post this followup that goes into more detail about Ukraine’s low-cost suicide drone/loitering munition.
I’ve previously covered suicide drones and drones dropping RPGs. Now Ukraine is evidently cutting out the middleman and passing the savings on to Ivan by just strapping RPGs to light drones and guiding them in.
Here’s a screen-grab of this masterpiece of redneck engineering:
The is a great application of one of Murphy’s Military Laws: “If it’s stupid but it works, it ain’t stupid.” For the Russians, it must be quite embarrassing to get yeeted into the afterlife by Doogie Howser’s science fair project.
I’m somewhat surprised that drones that small can carry the RPG rounds effectively, but presumably they’re replacing camera gear or something close to the same weight.
An RPG-7 costs about $2,500 each, while a BMP-3 costs about $800,000 each. Even if you double the price for the quadcopter ($2,500 is a bit pricey, but not out-of-line for some pro rigs), you still get a hugely useful loitering munition for less than 1/100th the cost of the target you’re taking out…
Since August, Russian forces (including a large contingent of Wagner Group mercenaries) has been assaulting the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in the Dunba with almost monomaniacal focus, despite very little to show for their efforts. Despite small successes for Russia (a few streets here, an industrial area there, even capturing a garbage dump on the edge of town was listed as a major Russian achievement a few weeks ago) almost all of Bakhmut has remained stubbornly in Ukrainian hands.
However, over the last day or two, tentative reports having come in that not only have Russian attacks slacked off, but that Ukrainian forces have recaptured not only just about all the hard-won territory Russia had gained in the city itself, but that some outlying areas were liberated after months of control. At the same time, there are numerous, persistent reports that Russia is running low on artillery shells in the region. (To be fair, repeated predictions that Russia must be running low on dumb ammunition of various types have failed to pan out heretofore.)
Here Suchomimus reports that Russia has been pushed out of the industrial areas of Bakhmut in the east, and that Ukraine has recaptured most of the town of Opytne to the immediate southeast.
This follows the Institute for the Study of War analysis from a couple of days ago that the Russian pace of attack has slowed.
Russian forces’ rate of advance in the Bakhmut area has likely slowed in recent days, although it is too early to assess whether the Russian offensive to capture Bakhmut has culminated. Russian milbloggers acknowledged that Ukrainian forces in the Bakhmut area have managed to slightly slow down the pace of the Russian advance around Bakhmut and its surrounding settlements, with one claiming that Ukrainian forces pushed back elements of the Wagner Group to positions they held days ago. Ukrainian social media sources previously claimed that Ukrainian forces completely pushed Russian forces out of the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut around December 21. ISW has also assessed that Russian forces made slightly fewer overall advances in the Bakhmut area in November and December combined as compared to the month of October.
Russian forces will likely struggle to maintain the pace of their offensive operations in the Bakhmut area and may seek to initiate a tactical or operational pause. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) reported on December 24 that Russian forces currently lack the necessary stockpile of artillery munitions to support large-scale offensive operations and that sustaining defensive operations along the lengthy frontline in Ukraine requires the Russian military to expend a significant number of shells and rockets daily. The Ukrainian Joint Forces Task Force released an interview on December 24 with a Ukrainian servicemember in the Bakhmut area detailing that Russian forces have been conducting an extremely high pace of assaults on Ukrainian positions in the area with little corresponding progress. The Wagner Group’s reported heavy losses in the Bakhmut area in recent weeks have also likely strained Russian forces’ current operational capabilities in the area.
The Russian military’s personnel and munitions constraints will likely prevent it from maintaining the current high pace of offensive operations in the Bakhmut area in the near-term. Russian forces previously allocated significant resources in a meat-grinder effort to seize Severodonesk and Lysychansk in spring–summer 2022. Russian forces culminated after capturing Lysychansk in early July and failed to capture neighboring Siversk to the east or Slovyansk to the northeast. The Russian military’s fixation with conducting a highly attritional campaign to achieve the tactical objectives of capturing Severdonetsk and Lysychansk ultimately undermined the Russian military’s ability to achieve its larger operational objective to envelop Ukrainian forces in a cauldron along the E40 highway and eventually drive to Donetsk Oblast’s western administrative borders. Russia’s relentless and costly push on Bakhmut may also degrade Russia’s ability to pursue long-term objectives in the Donbas theater.
Another sign Russia may be running out of shells in Bakhmut: A tweet from Wagner Group saying just that, while also calling the Chief of Russian General Staff a “faggot.”
Russian mercenaries from Wagner insult the Chief of Russian General Staff with obscene words and complain that they have no ammunition pic.twitter.com/7LYvN2MzHr
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) December 26, 2022
“We have no shells! The boys are dying for us!”
As usual with Ukraine news, all this is very tentative, and could be reversed to tomorrow. But right now it looks like Ukraine has the upper hand in Bakhmut.
It can be hard to determine the truth in any war zone, especially one like Ukraine where honest, English-speaking reporters seem to be thin on the ground. Sometimes people are trying to be accurate and get things wrong, and others fall for propaganda, like Snake Island and the “Ghost of Kiev.” (I use pro-Ukrainian examples here because most Russian propaganda has been unbelievable, clumsy, and poorly executed (and the last two apply to so many aspects of Russia’s illegal war of aggression)).
Example the first: A commenter mentioned that Stingers sent to Ukraine had shown up on “black markets all over the world.” Possible, but I hadn’t heard anything about it. I went searching, where I found this piece:
On September 17, 2022, a worrying claim circulated on social media: FIM-92 Stinger man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) were reportedly available for sale online in Germany.
According to the post, which was picked up by prominent figures in Russia, authorities were alerted by a student in Bremen and “local journalists” found that the systems originated in Ukraine and were “meant for the Kharkov counteroffensive”.
A short video was posted alongside the tweet, showing what appears to be a partially disassembled Stinger system with its Identification friend or foe (IFF) antenna missing. The feet of several people in paramilitary clothes can be seen in the footage, and a German voice can be heard in the background.
he posts received thousands of likes and shares, including from the Deputy Representative of Russia to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy, who suggested that delivering weapons to Ukraine was backfiring.
English language coverage has not been widespread, but Russian media published numerous articles with differing variations of the claim. Some add that this is not the first time that Stingers have appeared on the European black market.
However, many others state that weapons provided to Ukraine by NATO countries have been discovered on black markets across the world. All the articles claim that the case resulted in “a scandal” in Germany, attracting the interest of authorities, the media, and spurring discontent among its citizens.
But further down, we find this:
The articles and social media posts refer to German authorities having supposedly intercepted a deal and apprehending the culprits. However, no statement about such an operation has been posted by any of Germany’s law enforcement agencies.
The posts also mention that local German journalists investigated and determined that the weapons were meant for the Ukrainian offensive. However, there is no proof that this took place, and the story was not covered by any prominent German media outlet.
Responding to a Twitter post sharing the video, Lars Winkelsdorf, one of the leading German arms trafficking experts, dismissed the claim.
“At the moment, nothing like that has been found by the authorities, nor have I found anything like this through my own research,” Winkelsdorf said.
The original source of the report seems to be the Journalisten friekorps Telegram channel, which is billed as a “channel for honest journalism”.
“Our task is to help the German state and the German people. The people must be united, Germany must be free,” the channel’s description reads.
One of the Telegram posts state that the channel is created by the team behind Socialharmony.de, an initiative which lists discontinuing arms shipments to Ukraine and stopping support to Ukrainian refugees among its main goals.
Conclusion:
It can be stated, with a high degree of certainty, that the claim regarding FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS being shipped to Ukraine and found on the German black market, is false.
The claim states that the weapon dealers were apprehended by German authorities, yet the German police denies being involved.
The video, provided as evidence, contains a sound recording that was filmed in January 2022. The letters from Ukrainian authorities, provided as a confirmation of connection with Ukraine, also appear to be counterfeit.
Finally, claims that the case was highly prominent and even resulted in a scandal in Germany, do not appear to hold water. This was only covered by social media channels of dubious origin and several sensationalist websites.
So that one we can chalk up to propaganda followed by the social media game of telephone.
The next example is from two sources on the Russo-Ukrainian War that are usually pretty solid.
First up, Suchomimus (whose videos I’ve feature a lot here) has a report on an attack on a Russian headquarters barracks in Melitopol that may have killed some 200 officers:
I thought I’ll take a look at last night’s strike on a Russian barracks in Melitopol. I guess most of you have seen the news by now, as this was a pretty major incident reports are saying around 200 soldiers were killed in this strike.
Snip.
Let’s take a look at the site itself this graphic was put together by a Twitter user TheIntelCrab. Now, a few sources online have said that the strike was of a Melitopol Christian Church. That is not exactly accurate. It was near there, but instead, it hit the area circle to the left, which was being used by the barracks.
Here’s a screen cap:
So it didn’t hit the church itself. Now, this is quite interesting. These photos here of some of the rooms at this place. This was a luxury resort. A few people say it was a spa.
Suchomimus goes on to explain why such luxurious accommodations were probably used by officers. “If this was indeed officer’s accommodation, then this is a even more important strike than realized, especially for numbers of 200 gone are accurate.”
The Guardian reports on the story, using much the same pic:
But here’s Ukraine News TV (“Josey here”) with his daily update, including reporting various strikes in Russian occupied territory:
At 1:38 in, he notes “explosions as well at the airport at Simferopol, so a little bit into the the middle of the peninsula.” Part of this screen cap should look familiar:
That fire behind that distinctive gate looks awfully familiar, doesn’t it?
CNN is also reporting the blast in Simferopol, so presumably that actually happened as well. Later in the video (starting about 7 minutes in), Josey reports on the Melitopol strikes, noting a wide range of estimates for casualties, stating “possibly 200-300.” So that’s mostly in accord.
The most likely explanation is that Josey simply grabbed the wrong image for the Simferopol image. These things happen.
But it’s a reminder that war news reporting (including my blogging) is an aggregation of already aggregated sources one or more steps removed from the actual front lines. Everything you see or hear about it deserves at least a basic level of judicious skepticism.
Ukraine has been so successful at hitting Russian infrastructure with HIMARS that it’s no longer news when they hit something 100 kilometers behind Russia’s lines.
But when they hit something 600 kilometers away, that’s news.
Several people have been killed in explosions at two Russian military airfields, according to reports.
A fuel tanker exploded killing three and injuring six in an airfield near the city Ryazan, south-east of Moscow, Russian state media is reporting.
Another two people are reported to have been hurt in an explosion at an airfield in the Saratov region.
It is not known what caused the blasts. Both areas are hundreds of kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
Long-range Russian strategic bombers are believed to be based at the Engels airbase in the Saratov region.
Here’s a Suchomimus video on the Engels Airbase attack:
Reportedly two Tu-95 bombers were hit.
He suggests that the attack may have been carried out by a new Ukrainian drone with a reported range of 1,000 kilometers. Whatever it was presumably cost a whole lot less than a strategic bomber.
Ukraine’s ever-increasing range puts a whole lot of Russian infrastructure (military and otherwise) under potential threat. Perhaps Putin should take that into consideration before ordering the next round of attacks on Ukrainian power plants…
Right after Kherson city was liberated and spans on the Antonivsky and Nova Kakhkovka bridges blown, a whole lot of commenters went “Well, Ukraine obviously isn’t going to try to cross the Dnipro there, it’s too wide.”
Looks like that assumption might have been in error, as there are already reports that Ukraine has landed on the other side.
The Kinburn Spit is a narrow finger of sand and scrub, barely three miles long, that juts from the wider Kinburn Peninsula into the Black Sea at the mouth of the Dnipro River south of Kherson. It and the adjacent peninsula also are the last parts of Ukraine’s Mykolaiv Oblast that remain under Russian occupation.
Don’t expect that to last. The Kremlin on Wednesday ordered its battered forces on the right bank of the Dnipro to retreat to the river’s opposite bank.
The order came six months after Ukrainian brigades, re-armed with European howitzers and American rocket-launchers, began bombarding Russian supply lines in the south—and two months after those same brigades launched a counteroffensive aimed at liberating Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts.
The Ukrainians have the Kinburn Spit in their sights. They’ve got the troops, the equipment … and a plan.
Russian troops seized the Kinburn Spit in mid-June as Russian advances in the south—having already overwhelmed Kherson city—ran into stiff resistance a few miles south of Mykolaiv city. Capturing the spit would turn out to be one of the Russian army’s last victories in the south. The four-month Ukrainian counterlogistics campaign that preceded Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive already was underway.
Kinburn matters. Russian control of the sandy strip “will allow them to exert further control of the Black Sea coast,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. explained in June. For the Ukrainians, Kinburn is a back door—a way to get forces onto the left bank of the Dnipro without crossing the river, likely while under fire.
As far back as April, U.K. intelligence agents were advising their government to support Ukrainian forces in any future attempt to “conduct beach reconnaissance” on the Kinburn Spit. The recon could “Identify good landing locations for a larger assault force for a future counterattack,” the agents explained in a presentation that later leaked to the press.
It’s possible Ukrainian special operations forces riding in rigid-hull inflatable boats began reconnoitering the spit as early as September. In October, video circulated online reportedly depicting the Ukrainian navy’s last remaining big ship, the 240-foot amphibious vessel Yuri Olefirenko, apparently firing rockets at Russian forces on or near the spit.
The Ukrainian military’s southern command on Saturday announced its intention to liberate Kinburn. Within a day, there were videos online possibly depicting Ukrainian commandos riding toward the spit in their small boats.
Here’s a video of Ukrainian forces doing just that:
Looks more like a commando raid or a reconnaissance in force. And here’s a video analyzing Russia defensive position on the Spit:
There are unconfirmed reports of other river crossing zones. I’d take those with several grains of salt. But it seems possible. Indeed, there are reports confirming that Russia has indeed bugged out from towns in Kherson south of the Dnipro, like this video of apparently abandoned posts in Oleshky, directly south of the Antonovsky Bridge:
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has evidently confirmed Russia’s pullout from the banks of the Dnipro as well:
Russia is preparing defensive positions in Crimea:
Three areas they’ve prepared defensive lines are on the isthmus just south of Perekop, just south of the Chongar Strait, and even on the Arabat Spit, that tiny bit we talked about having a tiny dirt road here. Says Suchomimus: “It’s a bit of preparedness and foresight we haven’t seen from them so far.”
Peter Zeihan thinks that Crimea is so hard to supply that Russia would be better off abandoning it:
I suspect Putin would rather die that give up Crimea voluntarily.
if all that weren’t enough. there’s the tiny little matter that a Russian missile reportedly strayed into Poland, killing two people.
Pooty Poot certainly knows how to make friends and influence people…
Update: Current thinking seems to be that the Polish missile strike was a Ukrainian ground to air missile that went astray trying to intercept a Russian missile.
Yesterday’s post about Russians starting to bug of Kherson Oblast north/west of the Dnipro Rover is already obsolete, as Russia appears to have completed its retreat.
Russia’s military said on Friday it had completed its withdrawal from Kherson, a lightning-fast retreat of tens of thousands of troops across the Dnipro river in the south of Ukraine.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, one of President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, on Wednesday ordered troops to leave Kherson in a pullout that allows Ukrainian forces to move closer to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Russia’s defence ministry said all Russian forces and equipment had been transferred to the eastern bank of the Dnipro. It said the withdrawal was completed by 5 a.m. Moscow time (0200 GMT) on Friday.
“The transfer of Russian troop units to the left bank of the Dnipro river has been completed,” the defence ministry said in a statement.
“Not a single unit of military equipment or weapons have been left on the right (western) bank. All Russian servicemen crossed to the left bank,” it added. Russia, it said, had not suffered any loss of personnel or equipment during the withdrawal.
I’m betting that last paragraph is a huge exaggeration, as we already have reports of wounded Russian soldiers being abandoned in the retreat. And there are already videos of captured equipment:
Lots of trophies today. The trophy Russian TOS-A1 "Solntsepek" pulls the trophy tank. The Russian army, as usual, leaves its heavy equipment in working condition. pic.twitter.com/cXBuZ3ehgN
— NOËL 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) November 6, 2022
Whether it will measure up to Peter Zeihan’s prediction of more equipment captured than in Izyum remains to be seen.
Livemap shows pretty much all of Kherson Oblast liberated, and reports Ukrainian troops entering Kherson City.
Center of Kherson awaiting the arrival of Ukrainian soldiers pic.twitter.com/SsyBRlhKiE
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) November 11, 2022
🍉🇺🇦 Kherson city liberated!
Glory to Ukraine! pic.twitter.com/BnZmGuCfnT— SportBoxingUA (@sports_ua) November 11, 2022
#Kherson City is liberated! 🇺🇦
11th November 2022🇺🇦
Decisive Ukrainian Victory!🇺🇦
Congratulations and Слава Україні! 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/txgUaudWRY
— Kristina Jakhua (@86kristi) November 11, 2022
#BREAKING: Ukrainian forces hang a flag at the General Directorate of the National Police Building in Kherson City.
Ukrainian forces have liberated Kherson!
📍46.633523,32.620375 pic.twitter.com/1RP1hOygOX
— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) November 11, 2022
And Russia blew a span out of the Antonovsky Bridge.
It appears that the Nova Kakhkovka Bridge has also been blown:
NOVA KAKHOVKA DAM+LOCK 🧵
/16
It looks like several spans of the bridge along the dam were blown up by Russians during the retreat pic.twitter.com/hmaK13SKNG— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) November 11, 2022
Right now the Kherson retreat looks like considerably less of a debacle than the rout in Kharkiv. We’ll see how many troops were captured and how much equipment captured after the dust settles.