Ukraine: military situation update with maps, Nov 30, 2022
(’Orc’ is associated with the various hoards of 13th century Mongol invaders, as well as LOTR evil villains)
War in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP2QApi8G2TKc8NZmeDWSUg/videos
Artillery (key to success in this war), Fuller explanation of Orc military structure, Other Bonus articles - see previous postings in “Attack on Europe” (FR title search).
(Numbered printed material below - Some of the items below may be out of date, and not updated yet)
••Denotes Transcribed Dialogue. The entirety of the analysis is from a Ukrainian guy named War in Ukraine’s daily video - I only transcribe it. Extras are just that - from other sites, or my comments marked (Edit: .... )
-—> Current to date and past MAPS: <——
https://militaryland.net/
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Extra:
-—> Ukraine Situation Report: Another Body Count Controversy <——
A misstatement during a speech calling for an investigation into Russian war crimes highlighted sensitivity over battlefield body counts.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-another-body-count-controversy
Excerpts:
Russian forces continued to struggle with outdated equipment and domestic personnel shortages amid official actions indicative of a probable second wave of mobilization ...
An independent investigation found that Russia may have transported thousands of Ukrainian prisoners from penal colonies in occupied Ukraine to Russia following the withdrawal from the west bank of Kherson Oblast ...
And more than 350 miles northwest of Bahkmut, a fire broke out at an oil refinery in the Bryansk region of Russia. The pro-Kremlin news agency Izvestia surmised that the fire could have been sparked by a drone attack. The tank with a capacity of five thousand tons was full at the time of the incident. Then another two tanks of the same capacity caught fire.
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Summary:
no major changes.
Key areas:
- Oskil river area: no changes.
- North Donbass area: no changes.
- Central Donbass (Donetsk West): no changes.
- Zaporizhya: no changes.
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••Russia:
The Russian military expenses are going up - their budget is a new budget reallocating a significant amount to increase military expenses, specifically on weapons; the the news is that the focus is going to be on artillery, and another focus is going to be nuclear weapons.
This is probably based on the experience on the battlefield where its clearly war of artillery. What this really means is Russia will try to increase a number of precision artillery pieces: first of all, they probably will continue working on the precision shells - by that I mean shells that are guided using GPS, maybe have aerodynamic tiny wings that allow to have extremely high precision at low cost.
That’s going to be the focus and also long range 52 caliber barrels, that’s probably what the Russian military industrial complex will start producing in larger numbers. They want to close the gap between Ukrainian side and Russian side, where Ukrainian side is dominating this segment of long-range high precision artillery pieces, and Russia has pretty much nothing to respond with.
The only saving grace for Russia right now is the absence of equivalent Orlan-10 on the Ukrainian side. What you see is what we have after nine months of the war and Ukrainian government, Ukrainian top leadership is so inept and corrupt that they can still prevent the country from developing effective equivalent of the Orlan-10. That’s just reality on the battlefield.
••Russian and Chinese military Cooperation
Cooperation between Russian and Chinese military is becoming tighter and tighter, with Russian fighters patrolling together with Chinese fighters the same airspace; Russian airplanes landed on a Chinese air base, and Chinese in landed on Russian air base; both sides are developing close corporation between between their air forces at the pilot level, at individual level. That’s really another drop in the bucket of their future alliance, future working together with the rest of the world.
••Russian Economic Situation
There was a news that the demand for new apartments in Moscow fell by 56% - that’s a huge number, this continues indicating the economy in Russia for the regular Russian consumer is dead. Russian consumers stopped stop making payments on 7 million micro loans - when people buy a small house appliances - those are small, but popular loans in Russia, and the portfolio of micro-finance organizations, the percentage that is past due is 43%. Eventually they’re all going to be at this level; its just a question of time before they’re all gonna be bankrupt, having said that - everything is terrible in Russia.
••Germany:
Things are also terrible there: the root cause is their misguided energy policy that’s destroying Germany. First of all, I just want to reiterate the German export model is broken, and one of the reasons is the misguided energy policy, but another result of that policy is food inflation in Germany is up the 21% year-on-year. That’s a pretty terrible result and means social unrest is not far, away based on that.
There is also German a region, ?Nord Rhine Westfalen?, that declared a financial emergency due to the energy crisis: they’re running out of money, and cannot borrow because there are certain limits on borrowing. There is a unfolding scandal in Germany alleging the German government is hiding the true amount of governmental debt - understating it by at least two times. Clearly things are unraveling in Germany, and they probably will get worse, if there is no change to this misguided (EU) energy policy.
Natural gas in Europe is starting to go up - it reached US$1,500 per thousand cubic meters continuing to put pressure on European industry, preventing it from recovering .
••China:
Chinese economy is imploding, and as a result of that we see social unrest popping up through China, but its actually interesting to look at another indirect data point: South Korean export to China went down 28% for 20 days of of November.
The export of semiconductors fell by 29% - this is not tiny, this is a total crash of the Chinese imploding economy, and it will take the rest of the world, including South Korea, Japan - all of these models are broken, export oriented models are broken because the consumer is broken, and biggest consumer is the US consumer and they are broken for the world.
••US:
Head of US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell spoke explaining that interest rates are gonna go up, and will remain at that level for a while; that will create another level of pain in the US specifically, where housing prices will start to go down, unemployment will start rounds of layoffs .
As you can see, there is no safe place in this world: both alliances are gonna suffer mightily economically, as a result of the bad policies: for example, in the US, it was clear that Jerome Powell was very correct by pointing out that they can only address demand side of the equation, but supply side is on the executive branch and legislative branch.
If you look around the world governments are all attempting to destroy the supply, that’s the biggest reason why this whole inflation, why this whole misery will persist because there is clearly a war on increasing supply of various commodities, products of everything, and this forces the hand of US Federal Reserve.
Then they need to cut demand to match with the dwindling supply, and that’s the reason why there will be a lot of pain, but a lot people will be incorrectly putting the blame on Federal Reserve, versus the blame that should be put on the governments, or on the executive and legislative branches of the government that create this policies by passing laws that restrict, and passing executive orders that restricts supply. That’s the root cause of all of these problems we are seeing.
••Ukraine:
The power grid remains in a difficult the situation with a little bit of improvement, but its still in the agony phase and in the process of slowly dying from the wounds it received. There is big expectation in Ukraine that Russia will have another round of attacks, but that hasn’t materialized.
••Military Situation:
••Casualty Numbers:
There’s discussion about the losses by both sides because I think the head of the European Commission said that Ukrainian side lost a 100,000 soldiers. At first he said it was very clear, but it was like implying that is definitely not correct number, there’s definitely not 100,000.
Ukrainian government, in typical backwards fashion, said they’re not gonna disclose the losses. They’re just going to continue hiding, and the reason for that is its the direct personal responsibility of Zelinski and Ukrainian top for all of the losses. They are hiding because, as I mentioned before, they were doing everything they could to disarm the country, since Zelinski took power in 2019. All of the big loses are his personal responsibility for which, hopefully, he will pay sooner than later.
Let’s just do a rough estimate: what’s a realistic ballpark number of soldiers that died on both sides?
Our estimate is about high 30s, low 40s: let’s say 38-40,000 - probably in that ballpark on both sides. When I say both both sides, on the Russian side it means also those conscripts from DNR and LNR. If you really look at just Russian troops, then let’s say low 30s - it could be even like just 30s or high 20s - let’s say 28-30,000, and the rest is DNR and LNR soldiers. That’s a number, but for both sides what this also implies that about 40,000 both for sides, meaning about up to 40,000 of soldiers on both sides were heavily wounded, not be able to return to the battlefield.
How many people are gone from both sides? Its about 80,000 that will not be able to continue the fight, half of it is is severely wounded, or wounded to the level that they will not be able to come back to the to the front line.
This its still a very significant number, especially for Ukraine which is 3.5 times smaller than Russia, and simply in this war of attrition, Ukraine cannot win - a very simple conclusion, and the problem for Ukraine is that its wasting precious resources in those suicidal attacks, and not changing into a world where you want skills, and by using quality as opposed to quantity. Ukraine cannot win fighting this war as a Soviet Union, like smaller Soviet Union, versus largest Soviet Union - this war is there to force change on Ukrainian society to stop being Soviet Union - so its sink or swim for Ukraine & for Ukrainian society at large.
••North Donbas:
Things here are somewhat stable, quieter. Russian side is actively consolidating its gain, so there were some attacks in the Northern section, but the situation south at Bakhmut is stable. Russian side is consolidating its gain, digging in, preparing defensive positions to protect its gains. Ukrainian troops did not try any counter-attacks, and you may even say that’s a right strategy, because the way its done by Ukraine’s side are suicidal attacks that don’t lead to anything; there’s only loss of human lives.
US considers dramatically expanding training of Ukrainian forces (https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/30/politics/us-military-expanding-training-ukraine/index.html )
(USA) “is considering a dramatic expansion in the training the US military provides to Ukrainian forces, including instructing as many as 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers a month at a US base in Germany, according to multiple US officials.
If adopted, the proposal would mark a significant increase not just in the number of Ukrainians the US trains but also in the type of training they receive...
Under the new program, the US would begin training much larger groups of Ukrainian soldiers in more sophisticated battlefield tactics, including how to coordinate infantry maneuvers with artillery (and Air) support – “much more intense and comprehensive” training than Ukraine has been receiving in Poland or the UK”...
...”If approved, the new training regimen would take place at a US Army base in Grafenwoehr, Germany, where the US conducts its own combined arms training. The base is also home to the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine.”...
...”German and US officials have been successfully cooperating on training Ukrainians in Germany for months, and during that time the US has been building up its capacity for long-term training. Once the White House makes the decision to proceed, training of Ukrainian forces could begin quickly.”...
...”The 7th Army Training Command at Grafenwoehr carries out live and virtual training for all of the Army’s forces in Europe and Africa, resources that can instead focus on Ukrainian forces.
The US is not alone in its effort to conduct large-scale training of Ukrainian forces. In July, the United Kingdom began a major program to train 10,000 Ukrainian troops within a matter of months.
“The UK’s program focused on providing basic training to new soldiers with little to no combat experience. The US program would provide a far more advanced degree of training to Ukrainian soldiers in how to operate as a cohesive military formation.”
My comment: At Graf, Ukrainian crews and Staff officers could train on advanced simulators against and alongside of professional American and Allied Opposing Force (OPFOR) players. World class training. Very productive per day or dollar.
