“Kyiv and Moscow Are Fighting Two Different Wars”
“Over the course of the war in Ukraine, the strategies of Russia and Ukraine have increasingly diverged. At first, Russia sought to catch Ukraine by surprise using a modern army engaged in some fast-moving maneuvers that would yield a rapid and decisive victory. But over time, its army has been seriously degraded, and it has increasingly been relying on artillery barrages and mass infantry assaults to achieve battlefield breakthroughs while stepping up its attacks on Ukrainian cities. In the areas its forces are occupying, it is seeking to impose “Russification” and has dealt harshly with those suspected of spying and sabotage, or simple dissent.
Ukraine has been more innovative in its tactics and more disciplined in their execution. Aided by a growing supply of Western weapons and an agile command, it has managed to recover some of the areas occupied by Russian forces. But it has also been fighting on its own territory and unable to reach far into Russia. So while Ukraine has limited itself to targeting Russia’s military, Russia is targeting Ukraine as a whole: its armed forces, its infrastructure, and its people.
These contrasting approaches—the “classic warfare” pursued by Ukraine and the “total warfare” adopted by Russia—have deep roots in the wars of the twentieth century. As the war in Ukraine reaches its one-year mark, it has begun to offer significant insights into how these two forms of warfare can cope in contemporary conflicts—and how they are likely to shape the contest between Kyiv and Moscow in the coming months.”
Ukraine: military situation update with maps, Feb 19, 2023
(’Orc’ is associated with the various hoards of 13th century Mongol invaders, as well as LOTR evil villains)
War in Ukraine Explained/Reporting from Ukraine:
https://www.youtube.com/@RFU
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(Numbered printed material below - Some of the items below may be out of date, and not updated yet)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 Reporting from Ukraine’s daily video - I only transcribe it. Extras are just that - from other sites, or my comments marked (Edit: .... ) or { } or [ ].
-—> Current to date and past MAPS: <——
https://militaryland.net/
-—> The True State of Russian Army <——
posted 2 months ago, 21.13 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KiII_2qabk
———————————————————————————————————————
••Day 361.
The biggest news today is coming from the Vuheldar area.
Here, the Ukrainians have completely retaken the initiative and conducted a massive counterattack, pushing the Russians so far behind that they essentially lost the whole month of progress.
The Russians tried to return these territories back, but as exclusive footage revealed, the demoralized soldiers made so many mistakes that almost everyone ended up dead.
Last time I told you that the Russians slowly lost the initiative. After a series of absolutely suicidal assaults, the Russians could no longer keep up the same intensity of their attacks, which quickly led to the loss of their tactical bridgehead to the east and west of Vuhledar. Russian command decided to take a pause and switched to artillery fire.
Simultaneously a lot of reports started coming in from the Russian side, where Russian commanders basically said that Vuhledar must be leveled with the ground or the town will not be taken.
In order to achieve this goal, they started using not only regular artillery and aviation but also thermobaric artillery.
This turned out to be not a very good solution for the Ukrainians because just sitting under artillery fire would mean slowly incurring losses and letting the Russians destroy their defenses.
That is why the Ukrainians developed a new plan. First of all, the Ukrainians relocated an additional artillery brigade towards Vuhledar in order to boost their counterbattery efforts.
This very quickly brought results, as footage appeared of a destroyed Russian thermobaric artillery system TOS-1A.
TOS-1A is extremely vulnerable to counterbattery fire because its range is only around 4 km. This means that they need to get really close to Vuhledar and expose themselves.
The second part of the Ukrainian plan was to develop their counterattack further and, preferably, chase the Russians from the northern bank of the river.
This helps the Ukrainians to achieve two things: firstly, they are pushing Russian thermobaric artillery away from Vuhledar itself, and secondly, they are forcing the Russians to disperse their artillery fire by holding many more positions in the region where they threaten Russian forces.
In order to carry out this counterattack, the Ukrainians reinforced Vuhledar with multiple assault units from some of the most capable brigades in Ukraine and gave them several tanks.
[Early indications that the UA is working on mobile combined arms assaults. Hint of things to come.]
As a result, Russian forces got completely decimated and lost not only the approaches to the eastern hamlet but also the whole residential area and the hills between Vuhledar and Mykilske, and this is how it happened.
The Ukrainians took advantage of the increased density of Ukrainian artillery in the region and conducted an extensive but very concentrated artillery preparation.
Then they launched into the battle several tanks that broke through the enemy defense and cleared the way for the assault units behind and pushed the Russians all the way back to the residential area near the river.
After that, the process was repeated, and the Russians had to retreat to the eastern part of this residential area.
The next day, the Russians attempted to conduct a counterattack, but judging by the released footage of this battle, the Ukrainians were waiting for it.
The Russians tried to use the same tactic and assaulted the Ukrainians with tanks, but due to concentrated artillery fire, they were quickly destroyed, and everything went sideways.
Some assault units stepped back while others continued to carry out the mission. Those who continued the mission found themselves in an extremely difficult situation because they acted with no cover from the other groups and also without artillery support.
The Russians sustained very high losses in killed and wounded, and these losses increased even more when they tried to save their wounded. Very often, for each wounded, they had 2-3 people trying to save him, and all of them ended up dead. Many Russian analysts once again shared a devastating critique of the Russian command after witnessing what happened.
If the lack of cover from the second group can be explained by the fact that some units retreated after the tanks got immediately destroyed and showed very poor morale of Russian soldiers, then the lack of artillery cover only shows a lack of competence and organization.
Overall, the Ukrainians conducted a massively successful counterattack and secured the northern bank of the river. This achievement renders all Russian efforts useless and resets their progress to zero.
By controlling this territory, the Ukrainians are not only preventing the Russians from moving anywhere near Vuhledar, but they also pushed Russian thermobaric artillery away from the main defenses in Vuhledar and coal mines, and they are also dispersing Russian artillery fire, which judging by the footage is not working properly anyways.
==
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPpYQuLW8T0
Denys says:
••Bakhmut changes:
PMC is using up its last bit of ammo to advance. East of the River, only small groups of UA troops remain to fight, while most of the UA forces are in the west side.
Earlier there was an announcement that the west would deliver 130 tanks to Ukraine by April, that number has now been lowered to 50. Too few to make any difference. Some countries that had promised Leopard 2 tanks are now going to send obsolete Leopard 1 tanks, [for which parts and, especially ammo are scarce].
[That together with their UK’s announcement it will not be sending Typhoons to Ukraine, looks bad as far as helping with major needed components; almost like some one got to them, somehow, someway. Just putting the fix in for eventually restoring all of the lost Soviet Union territories?]
French IMX 10 RC “tanks” will be delivered to the UA next weekend.
New Moldavian government wants to solve the Transnistria issue by taking it over. Great time, because Russia can’t send reinforcements, [they have about 1500 troops and an enormous ammo cache there], nor can they send air assets.