Soviet concepts present in the Russo-Ukrainian War?

[Gooner1]

ISW assessment 5th June https://www.understandingwar.org/backgr ... ent-june-5

"Ukrainian forces continued to conduct limited and localized but successful counterattacks against Russian positions throughout Ukraine on June 5, including retaking large areas of Severodonetsk—the city in Luhansk Oblast the Kremlin has concentrated the majority of its forces on capturing. A Russian Telegram channel claimed that Ukrainian troops launched a counterattack north of Kharkiv City, indicating that Ukrainian forces continue to pressure Russian defensive lines near the Russian border. Ukrainian forces are likely seeking to leverage the continued Russian focus on Severodonetsk to conduct counterattacks on other axes of advance. Even as Russian forces continue to pour equipment and troops into the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area, Ukrainian forces have conducted a successful counterattack in Severodonetsk in the last 48 hours and pushed Russian troops back to the eastern outskirts of the city and out of southern settlements. Ukrainian counteroffensive pressure will likely continue to draw the attention of Russian forces to Luhansk Oblast and therefore leave vulnerabilities in Russian defensive efforts in Kharkiv Oblast and along the Southern Axis. The ability of Ukrainian forces to successfully counterattack in Severodonetsk, the Kremlin’s current priority area of operations, further indicates the declining combat power of Russian forces in Ukraine."

Manpower wise, the Russians seem to be scraping the barrel already:

[Cult Icon]

The 2nd Army Corps (LPR) and units of the National Guard (Chechen) have been fighting in the city. This is consistent with the Russian army doctrine- use proxy forces as infantry to supplement the heavy weapons of the Russian army units. I wouldn't be surprised if they brought in PMC Wagner/elements but this is currently in the Popasna area.

2nd Army Corps LPR includes:

Prizak Brigade
Cossak Battalions
202, 204, 208, 254 rifle regiments.
4th LPR Tank Brigade

Russian Army units attacking the city:

2nd MRD
127th MRD
90th TD

Will edit this later.

[Cult Icon]

Severodonetsk under artillery fire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVB-Hy_sSK0

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgr ... ent-june-6

"Russian forces escalated their pace of fire against Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, and the surrounding settlements of Metolkine, Borivske, Ustynivka, Toshkivka, Privillya, Zolote, Vrubivka, Hirkske, and Orikhove.[14] The Russian escalation in artillery fire in and around Severodonetsk is likely intended to support Russian operations within the city itself and interdict Ukrainian forces from effectively deploying reserves and conducting resupply efforts in areas under heavy fire."

[Cult Icon]

ISW assessment 5th June https://www.understandingwar.org/backgr ... ent-june-5

They corrected their assessment on June 6th- they were mislead by Ukrainian propaganda.

Keep in mind that ISW is super Ukrainian biased and a form of propaganda itself- facts mixed with fabrications/invented analysis. Scroll to the end and they use predominately Ukrainian General Staff statements. I read it everyday as a summary of Ukrainian sources and with a critical eye. Ukraine has run the most propagandized war I've ever seen.

Russian forces likely retain control over most of Severodonetsk as of June 6, despite Head of the Luhansk Regional State Administration Serhiy Haidai’s June 5 claims that Ukrainian counterattacks retook considerable ground and drove Russian troops to the eastern outskirts of the city.[9] Haidai issued another statement on June 6 expanding on his previous statement and said that the situation had “deteriorated” and that Ukrainian troops are fighting in the industrial zone of the Azot plant.[10] Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov additionally reported on June 5 that claims of Ukrainian counterattacks were untrue and that Ukrainian forces only hold the Azot plant and surrounding neighborhoods.[11] The reason for the conflicting reports on June 5 is unclear and ISW cannot independently confirm if Ukrainian forces did indeed retake large parts of Severodonetsk at the time of Haidai’s statement and subsequently lost the terrain by June 6, or if Ukrainian forces did not make these counterattacks at all. The information environment in Severodonetsk remains dynamic and control of terrain is likely changing hands frequently as Ukrainian and Russian troops are locked in close-quarters urban combat.[12] Haidai cited intercepted information that Russian forces have been tasked with completing the capture of Severodonetsk by June 10, though no other sources have reported this deadline and ISW cannot confirm it at this time.[13]

haha the Russian MOD had to announce it :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAe595UmItc

[VanillaNuns]

Ukraine has run the most propagandized war I've ever seen.

This will be their undoing. I've never seen a leader so rude, belligerent, argumentative and downright hostile to their allies.

And the lies they tell. Goebbels would blush...

Every UK news story concerning the war now ends with the sentence "we are unable to independently verify these claims"

In the past few days, I'm sensing a shift in some Western governments' attitude. Why pour billions of resources into Ukraine when their own citizens are struggling with soaring inflation, energy and food costs? There will come a point when they have to look after their own people first, even if it means cutting off military aid to Zelensky.

I have sympathy for the ordinary Ukrainian people, but their President and government are rotten to the core. Today I see they've banned "War and Peace" and other books by Russian authors.

Zelensky has run a slick propaganda campaign, but he's close to running out of steam...

[Gooner1]

Zelensky has run a slick propaganda campaign, but he's close to running out of steam...

Yeah, I mean look at him, presentings medals in Lysychansk, embarrassing



Now here's a proper war leader

[Gooner1]

They corrected their assessment on June 6th- they were mislead by Ukrainian propaganda.

Keep in mind that ISW is super Ukrainian biased

Every decent human being is Ukraine biased.

And no, they did not correct their assessment.

"The fight for Severodonetsk is a Russian information operation in the form of a battle. One of its main purposes for Moscow is to create the impression that Russia has regained its strength and will now overwhelm Ukraine. That impression is false. The Russian military in Ukraine is increasingly a spent force that cannot achieve a decisive victory if Ukrainians hold on.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is therefore trying to turn his invasion of Ukraine into a brutal contest of wills. He’s betting his army on breaking Ukrainians’ collective will to fight on in their country. His own won’t likely break. Fortunately, Ukraine doesn’t need it to. If Ukrainians can weather the current Russian storm and then counterattack the exhausted Russian forces they still have every chance to free their people and all their land.

Putin amassed the wreckage of Russian combat forces into a lethal amalgam around the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk Oblast. That amalgam is crawling forward using massive artillery barrages to obliterate everything in its path allowing Russia’s demoralized and frightened soldiers to walk into the rubble."

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgr ... ot-sustain

[VanillaNuns]

They corrected their assessment on June 6th- they were mislead by Ukrainian propaganda.

Keep in mind that ISW is super Ukrainian biased

Every decent human being is Ukraine biased.

That comment is right up there alongside Hillary Clinton's "baskets of deplorable" gaffe...

[Cult Icon]

More movement recently. So it looks like the Russians are trying to encircle Lysychansk with a southern pincer. It is likely that they will launch the urban war from the South as only 1 (or 2?) bridges connecting the twin cities are left and under observation.

There is also another battle going on, a battle for the GLOC (lines of communication) feeding the Ukr pocket. The Russians are trying to sever them from the ground and the air.

[Cult Icon]

The daily losses admitted by the Ukrainian leadership just doubled.
So their minimum daily losses are approx. 1,000-500 KIA/MIA/WIA
Minimum monthly losses are 30,000-15,000 plus.
obviously they say this because they want more aid and weapons.
So when will their claimed losses double again??

https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/news-61752749

[Tom Peters]

Russian official reports are pure drivel. The dead alone just from the Moska are in the hundreds. Each T72 killed (see Oryx data) has a fair chance of a total crew (3) kill.

And what of the Russian news report of 9861 dead as of March 22 ? Quickly removed. Truth or propaganda ? With official Russian "official" news, hard to tell.

No one should take official UKR or RU reports on face value, but the UKR reports have a larger grain of truth.

Seek OSINT sources for more accurate reports. Collectively these point to RU forces showing very poor training, command and control, maintenance, logistics, and a severe lack of front line fighters.

Mad Dog

[Cult Icon]

OSINT sources have some useful things, I've seen a lot of them. But most of it is junk and made up.

The problem is that nearly all of these people are biased and don't understand how large scale warfare works. They come across as being psychologically and emotionally manipulated by Ukrainian psychological operations units, which were in preparing for many years and then executed information operations especially from Feb 24th onward. Ukrainian psych-ops are smarter than the attention seeking OSINT nerds and play them like a fiddle. Unlike OSINT nerds I believe that those of us who study large scale warfare in the WW2 or Soviet POV have certain advantages over these people even if we do not specialize in modern warfare.

for instance we know that tank battalions have low personnel losses compared to infantry units, with all or a portion of the crews escaping knocked out vehicles. Tank units typically have a surplus of crews- A tank battalion could have 100 percent vehicle casualties with the crews suffering only incremental losses. Or vehicles would be withdrawn for repair and used over and over again until it is a total loss. I don't think people who don't study large scale warfare know this. They also don't know that firepower, particularly artillery inflicts the lion's share of the casualties and the side which has vast superiority (Russians) will be the one who inflicts greater losses.

The 'giant Russian deaths' propaganda began sometime in the first week of the war, sometime afterward the Ukr General staff produced fake numbers where they had a 10 to 1 kill ratio and 90 percent of Russian casualties were KIA (lol). Per the website thing you cannot discount the possibility that a hacker did that. Another tactic the Ukr general staff and psychological operations does is to use their intelligence on the names of field and general officers and claim that they killed the person when they have no proof that they did. This is combined with a lot of creepy behavior like monitoring funerals in order to "prove" that they killed at least some of these officers on a later date and then flooding social media with this material. Another thing that the Ukr General staff constantly does is claiming that Russian units are 'destroyed' or 'combat ineffective' yet for the past 100 plus days the lion's share are the same Russian units that are continuing to fight and attack. I read every single ISW report since day 1 of the war.

Ultimately the serial falsehoods generated by the Ukrainian military is aimed at raising combat morale as high as possible, so it has an instrumental purpose. It also is worth at least 60 billion dollars in aid. Surely the Russians would have taken many more prisoners than they have if many Ukrainian troops didn't have blind faith in their propaganda.

Ukraine's combat performance is less than the Russian. They perform poorly in the attack. From an operational perspective I personally see their combat performance as similar to Germany's in 1945. A major factor is the Russian small army, and the extent where that plays a role in their combat power. They have to launch attacks to seize terrain but at the same time they have to consolidate and hold it. Connected to this is how it is not impressive that the Russians do not have a large tactical superiority over defending Ukrainian units when they assault and must use their fire superiority to wear them down resulting in snail like advances. As a consequence Ukraine's personnel losses are far in excess of the Russian but the Russian probably has more vehicle losses (if the biased Orxy blog is correct, who is probably an agent of Ukrainian psych-ops- his blog appeared in the first days of the war with tons of photographs. I would not rely on some stranger on the internet for accurate data. )

[Cult Icon]

In the past few days, I'm sensing a shift in some Western governments' attitude. Why pour billions of resources into Ukraine when their own citizens are struggling with soaring inflation, energy and food costs? There will come a point when they have to look after their own people first, even if it means cutting off military aid to Zelensky.

I have sympathy for the ordinary Ukrainian people, but their President and government are rotten to the core. Today I see they've banned "War and Peace" and other books by Russian authors.

Overall, this war is a miserable situation, where everyone is a loser except arms manufacturers. It is sad that a peaceful deal was not made. That is all I will say about it (I do not want to get political).

[Cult Icon]

the MOD briefing concerning combat 6/9 . They usually claim a similar figure everyday however today is somewhat higher. The Russians eg. claim 350 casualties from Missiles/Artillery and 150 casualties from airpower. Overall this is within the "minimum 1200 (applying Zelensky's ratio)-500" Ukrainian daily losses. The Russians are also fighting their own "Hurtgen forest" offensive east of the Izyum salient. Once they breakout of the forests they will be poised to attack the twin cities of Slovyansk-Kramatorsk.

Many in the West have been expecting the Russians to perform psych-ops and flood the english-language internet with propaganda and Russian trolls. It turns out that their propaganda is comparably minimal compared to, Ukraine's Russian/Soviet style military which dominates this field with their own troll army.

Briefing by Russian Defence Ministry

Engineering units of the Russian Armed Forces continue to clear roads and forest areas of Svyatye Gory National Park near the liberated settlements of Svyatogorsk, Yarovaya, Studenok and Sosnovoe.

To date, Russian servicemen have cleared more than 5 square kilometres of territory in Yarovaya and Studenok and have found and destroyed 224 explosive devices, including 66 anti-tank mines.

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation in Ukraine.

High-precision air-based missiles at Dnepr military airfield have destroyed Ukrainian air force equipment. Production facilities of an interprise for rebuilding AFU weapons and military equipment have been destroyed near Kharkov.

In addition, high-precision air-based missiles have hit 2 command posts, 27 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration, 5 Ukrainian artillery positions, including 2 multiple rocket launcher batteries near Soledar and Praskovievka in Donetsk People's Republic, as well as 5 missile-artillery weapons and ammunition depots near Bakhmut, Berestovoe in Donetsk People's Republic and Loskutovka in Lugansk People's Republic.

Operational-tactical and army aviation have hit 46 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration.

The attacks have resulted in the elimination of more than 150 nationalists, 6 tanks, 4 field artillery mounts and 2 Grad multiple rocket launchers.

Russian air defence means have shot down 2 airplanes of the Ukrainian air force during the day among them: 1 Su-25 near Dolgenkoe, Kharkov Region, and 1 MiG-29 near Ingulets, Dnepropetrovsk Region.

Also, 5 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles have been shot down near Lozovaya, Glubokoe in Kharkov Region, Borozenskoe in Kherson Region, Nevskoe in Donetsk People's Republic, and Popasnaya in Lugansk People's Republic.

In addition, 4 Tochka-U tactical missiles have been intercepted near Popasnaya, Lugansk People's Republic, Ledovka, and Kalinovo, Kharkov Region and 3 rockets of Uragan MLRS near Malaya Kamyshevakha, Nizhnee Kup'e, Kharkov Region and Yakovlevka, Donetsk People's Republic.

Missile troops and artillery have hit 62 command posts, 138 firing positions of artillery, as well as 303 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration.

The attacks have resulted in the destruction of more than 350 nationalists, 7 armoured vehicles, 2 Grad multiple rocket launchers, 5 field artillery mounts and mortars, 16 special vehicles, and 11 storage facilities for missile and artillery weapons, ammunition and fuel.

In total, 195 Ukrainian airplanes and 130 helicopters, 1,168 unmanned aerial vehicles, 336 anti-aircraft missile systems, 3,484 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 499 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,843 field artillery and mortars, as well as 3,528 units of special military vehicles were destroyed during the operation.

#MoD #Russia #Ukraine #Briefing
@mod_russia_en

[Tom Peters]

Completely disagree to much of what you wrote. Lets take a few cases:

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Unlike OSINT nerds I believe that those of us who study large scale warfare in the WW2 or Soviet POV have certain advantages over these people even if we do not specialize in modern warfare.
----

Unless you happen to have professional G-2/S-2 experience, you are kidding yourself. Being an amateur historian by itself only gives us a veneer of understanding to much of what is going on. The Russian army of today in no way compares to the Russian army of 1945. THe current performance is very poor.


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for instance we know that tank battalions have low personnel losses compared to infantry units, with all or a portion of the crews escaping knocked out vehicles.
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Unless the crew is from a T-series tank, where they have a high chance of being turned into charcoal. Notice how many T-series tanks look like they have orange paint on them ? Thats from a catastrophic burn out where the steel loses its temper from high heat. Modern ATGM are absolute murder on T-series tanks.

You are also using far too much assumption in terms of staffing. For example what makes you think RU units have spare tank crews ? Endemic corruption in the RU army has left many units with empty slots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4&t=2s




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The 'giant Russian deaths' propaganda began sometime in the first week of the war, sometime afterward the Ukr General staff produced fake numbers where they had a 10 to 1 kill ratio and 90 percent of Russian casualties were KIA (lol).
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...which is why I dont use the UKR official figures. 30K dead RU implies 120K wounded (150K total), which would be a total of 75% of the starting RTU forces. That doesnt compute. 10K ? Sounds reasonable, without trying to determine P/P ratios and casualty rates.

http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/blog/2022 ... ed-part-1/

I dont use the UKR figure, so dont you use the RU sources.


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Ukraine's combat performance is less than the Russian.
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You must be joking. UKR was a second rate local power, and its punching way over its weight against RU. See any RU units near Kiev ? No ? How is the conquest of Kharkov going ? Not so good ? How is the Moskva doing at the bottom of the Black Sea ? When the RU "big" offensive started last month, did they take Severodonetsk ? No ? Been a month going on, even playing to RU strengths, and still no victory.

Dont get me wrong, I think the RU will take the city, but I bet they are paying a price in ghastly casualties for it.

Here is an interview from an American (one of the more famous ones) who fought in UKR (part 1 of 4):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNXkc07ihiY&t=1s


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Connected to this is how it is not impressive that the Russians do not have a large tactical superiority over defending Ukrainian units when they assault and must use their fire superiority to wear them down resulting in snail like advances.
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Impressive ? How can it be impressive that a supposedly better trained force (your words), with far more equipment, with a huge advantage in position, naval and air power, finds itself dying in UKR. The RU forces in UKR are paying a price in casualties. We know this because:

Putin was asking for Syrians to come and fight
Putin is using the Wagner group
RU just raised the age limit to infinity (no age limit) for military service
Kanamat Botashev (63 year old retired air force general) was killed while flying a Su-25 in service
Large numbers of Colonels and Generals are dead, at a rate far higher than conventional combat rates would dictate

These are all confirmed by RU sources.

RU needs manpower bad.


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if the biased Orxy blog is correct, who is probably an agent of Ukrainian psych-ops- his blog appeared in the first days of the war with tons of photographs.
---

Look at the UKR loss claims from Oryx (pro-UKR) and lostarmour (pro RU). Both are doing the same activity. Tell me what you find.


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I would not rely on some stranger on the internet for accurate data
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Then why do you peddle internet data from RU internet sources ?

Mad Dog