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Ukraine Invasion Day 279: eastern combat continues [1]
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Date: 2022-11-28
The Russian-claimed capture of several small villages around Bakhmut on November 27 and 28 does not portend an imminent Russian encirclement. Kherson remains an artillery target.
Meanwhile in Russia: the host and his guest concur that Ukraine should be erased off the map and even the memory that it existed should be destroyed. The host says that Russia will always be an empire and being in a state of war is only natural for any empire of Russia's size. pic.twitter.com/NaMqQRPp2n
x ⚡️ WAR IN UKRAINE, NOV 28
Troops & tanks above 7-day average
TODAY'S REPORTED LOSSES:
x2 daily changes over 7-day average
x1 7-day average increase
📈
https://t.co/EhONaTwD9e pic.twitter.com/da0RmowOwT — Ragnar Gudmundsson 🇮🇸🇺🇦@
[email protected] (@ragnarbjartur) November 28, 2022
x 🇷🇺ENGELS AIR BASE
0.5M📸 from Nov 28 morning. Looks like the TU-95s and TU-160s are getting their fair share of bombs loaded up. Adhere to the air raid sirens tonight.@IntercityFC @Jenjustjen20 @TheLimpCrane @FouthTimeLucky @tillykium pic.twitter.com/qZ06Pen7ac — MT Anderson (@MT_Anderson) November 28, 2022
x Multiple Russian channels report that Russia has prepared up to 20 strategic bombers from the Caspian Sea to strike. For this, additional Tu-95s were transferred from the Dyagilevo airfield to Engels.
Previously, no more than 11 aircraft were used to strike at the same time.
https://t.co/ypqAM9eQCr — NOËL 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) November 28, 2022
x Map of the "SMO" of Russia on the territory of Ukraine.
• Gas pipeline - green
• Ammonium pipeline - black
• Wagner line - purple
• Old frontline - blue
• New frontline (After the withdrawal of troops from Sumy, Kiev, Chernihiv, Kherson and Kharkiv "catastrophe") - red pic.twitter.com/F6twAPLNDx — 301 Military (@301military) November 28, 2022
The results have been near catastrophic. The city, once with a population of around 70,000, has slowly been chewed apart. And now, according to residents and Ukrainian soldiers, the bombardment in and around Bakhmut is at an intensity never before seen. Buildings that had been shelled before have been shelled again. The front line, on the city’s outskirts, looks like a muddy moonscape, or a scene from World War I. At night, residents can hear the grumble of Russian jets prowling the skies. In recent days, Ukraine has sent floods of reinforcements into Bakhmut, including Special Forces and lesser trained territorial defense fighters, according to soldiers, local residents and a U.S. defense official. The Russians have continued to throw formations from Wagner Group, an infamous paramilitary organization with direct ties to the Kremlin, at Ukrainian trenches. But they are now supported by a new tranche of Russian rank-and-file forces redeployed from the Kherson front, according to the U.S. defense official and Ukrainian soldiers.
The intensity of Russia’s attempts to seize the city has baffled military analysts. Elsewhere along their 600-mile front line, the Russians are mostly digging in for winter to entrench and conserve resources. In summer, after Russian forces captured the neighboring province of Luhansk, seizing Bakhmut might have looked like a natural progression in Russia’s campaign to conquer the east — a step toward two more important cities, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. But now, analysts said, given the degradation of Russian forces and their ammunition shortages after a series of setbacks, that goal seems improbable, especially after the loss of their foothold in the northeast. “The Russian military is still dealing with unrealistic political demands to show progress,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va. “But given poor quality of available forces and decreasing stocks of artillery ammunition, they are unlikely to be successful, because once again the Russian military appears to be feeding units piecemeal without adequate support.” www.nytimes.com/...
Recent claims of Russian gains around Bakhmut on November 27 and 28 do not portend an imminent Russian encirclement of Bakhmut. Geolocated imagery shows that Russian forces likely captured Ozarianivka (a village about 15km southwest of Bakhmut) around November 27 and 28.[1] Multiple Russian sources claimed that Russian forces also captured Kurdiumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut), Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut), Zelenopillia (13km south of Bakhmut), Pidhorodne (5km northeast of Bakhmut) and Spirne (30km northeast of Bakhmut) with the intention of encircling Bakhmut from the south and east.[2] There is no open-source evidence supporting these claims at this time. Russian sources have notably propagated spurious claims regarding gains around Bakhmut as part of a continued information operation since October, and recent unsubstantiated territorial claims may be part of this continued information operation.[3] However, even if Russian forces have indeed succeeded in taking control of settlements south of Bakhmut, these gains do not threaten the critical T0513 (Bakhmut-Siversk) and T0504 (Bakhmut-Kostyantynivka) routes that serve as major Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) into Bakhmut. There is also a network of smaller village roads that connect to Bakhmut via the city’s northwest. The claimed Russian positions closest to Bakhmut in Klishchiivka and Pidhorodne lead directly into prepared Ukrainian defenses in Bakhmut and its western and northern satellite villages. Russian forces in Klishchiivka, in order to advance any further, would have to cross three kilometers of fields with little cover and concealment. Russian troops, in their current degraded state, are likely unable to be able to accomplish this task quickly. Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin himself observed in October that Wagner forces operating in the Bakhmut area advance only 100–200 meters a day.[4] Russian claimed advances around Bakhmut over the course of November 27 and 28 are thus unlikely to generate operational-level effects and certainly not quickly.
www.understandingwar.org/...
x #UkraineRussiaWar | Why is #Russia taking heavy losses at #Bakhmut where #Ukraine's army holds the line? #WagnerGroup's Yevgeny #Prigozhin is trying to prove that his mercenaries are more capable than Russia's army. Sky News analyst Michael Clarke on this deadly blunder. pic.twitter.com/xDj9TyGnyB — Michael Linder (@michaellinder) November 28, 2022
x Ukraine warns of more Russian attacks as fighting rages in Donetsk
https://t.co/EPc8oEmpmF - source/editor : Georgi Gotev — EUwatch (@EUwatchers) November 29, 2022
x ‘Russia wins by losing’: Timothy Snyder on raising funds for Ukrainian drone defence *
* It’s about time we hold a “We Are Ukraine” world concert to raise money with some good tunes.
https://t.co/oItTKQwEoV — 🇺🇸TrumpRussiaTies Mapping Project🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@TrumpRussiaTies) November 28, 2022
x “by this point, food had pretty much run out. It was so bad that at one point I went to where one of the cauldrons that the cooks use was & I just took a spoon & tried to scrap out all the burned stuff just to try to eat something” @cossackgundi #Mariupol
https://t.co/79dWxf6VKr — John Spencer (@SpencerGuard) November 28, 2022
x We were in the trenches with Ukrainian soldiers - and a kitten called Olenka. ‘If we win my children will live in freedom’ says Vadym. Then we came under fire… pic.twitter.com/Zz7wimU7VZ — Lindsey Hilsum (@lindseyhilsum) November 28, 2022
x The best path to peace is not talks with Putin, but helping Ukraine to win this war | Timothy Garton Ash | The Guardian
https://t.co/Yjciqbnfjn — Walter Derzko (@SmartEconomy) November 28, 2022
x The Ukrainian army’s newest howitzers also are among its oldest.
https://t.co/j9cg4wbWwa — Forbes (@Forbes) November 28, 2022
x Patriot? Leopard? ATACMS? Each attack from RF on critical infrastructure to leave millions of Ukrainians without light and water has to lift "taboo" on modern types of weapons supplies from allies. Impunity breeds arbitrariness. Aggressor must feel the price of each next step. — Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) November 28, 2022
x In the wake of the Ukrainian victory in western #Kherson, and in the midst of Russia’s ongoing terror bombing campaign against Ukrainian civil infrastructure, we should look at the man in charge of Russia's campaign. A thread on General #Surovikin. 1/25 🧵 pic.twitter.com/zbWPFSQUtE — Mick Ryan, AM (@WarintheFuture) November 28, 2022
2/ CAVEAT: This thread is NOT about admiring an enemy military commander who has previously demonstrated brutality towards Syrian civilians, his own soldiers, and now against the Ukrainians. It is designed to provide insights into how to defeat him. 'General Armageddon': Who Is The Brutal Russian Commander Charged With Winning The Ukraine War?
3/ Much of the reporting about the Russians in #Ukraine focusses on ‘the Russians’ as some amorphous mass. The reality is, even in barely adequate military institutions, there is organization, control, and command from the top. Military commanders matter. Much of the reporting about the Russians infocusses on ‘the Russians’ as some amorphous mass. The reality is, even in barely adequate military institutions, there is organization, control, and command from the top. Military commanders matter.
4/ In designing their future operations, Ukrainian military leaders and planners will not just be looking at Russian military capabilities and dispositions. They will be assessing how a different command philosophy from Surovikin might impact future Ukrainian operations. 5/ As such, we should understand the enemy commander. It is how we might understand his incentives and motivations, anticipate his strategy and plans. Defeat mechanisms can then be built to prevent Russian military successes in Ukraine. mca-marines.org/wp-content/upl…
6/ In the wake of Ukraine’s attack on the Kerch Bridge, Army General Sergey Surovikin was appointed as the overall Russian commander for the campaign in Ukraine. His appointment was welcomed by Russian nationalist groups, and praised by Yevgeniy Prigozhin. Institute for the Study of War
7/ Surovikin commands an army which is exhausted, has morale issues & has been constantly attritted in the past 9 months. Over winter, he will be defending ground, and do what he can preserve his force, reconstitute battered units & construct resilient logistics network.
8/ But, what kind of considerations might shape his forward planning, based on what we have seen of him so far?
9/ First, he will seek better alignment between Putin’s political objectives & the military capacity of Russia’s armed forces. These 2 things have been poorly aligned since the beginning of the war; this misalignment has played a big role in the poor performance of the Russians. 10/ Putin’s political objectives in February this year were far larger than the small, overly disaggregated Russian ground and air forces were capable of achieving. The concentration of combat power in the Donbas mid-2022 was a demonstration the Russians understood this.
11/ But we are seeing a kind of ‘meeting in the middle’ between politics and the military. Politically, Russia is mobilising people and industry to provide a greater military capacity for Ukrainian military operations.
12/ Militarily, Surovikin has tailored operations in the short term, including the Kherson withdrawal, to account for his current force size and weaknesses. However, moving forward, he will be expected to conduct offensive operations with his 'enhanced' military capability.
13/ A second consideration of Surovikin’s moving forward is the identification and development of asymmetries he can leverage against the Ukrainians. With his ongoing missile and drone attacks on Ukraine, Surovikin has developed an asymmetric advantage over #Ukraine. A second consideration of Surovikin’s moving forward is the identification and development of asymmetries he can leverage against the Ukrainians. With his ongoing missile and drone attacks on Ukraine, Surovikin has developed an asymmetric advantage over
14/ Lawrence Freedman has noted that “the Ukrainians cannot do the same against the Russians in terms of targeting infrastructure. The Ukrainians are winning on the battlefield, but they cannot hit back against the Russians on that strategic level.” Putin's massive mistake: Lawrence Freedman on Ukraine and the lessons of history
15/ Where else might Surovikin look for asymmetries? One area is air operations. This is an understudied part of the war that is covered in this excellent @RUSI_org report. static.rusi.org/SR-Russian-Air… Where else might Surovikin look for asymmetries? One area is air operations. This is an understudied part of the war that is covered in this excellentreport.
16/ It notes: “thanks to its failure to destroy Ukraine’s mobile SAM systems, Russia remains unable to effectively employ potentially heavy & efficient aerial firepower of its fixed-wing bomber & multi-role fighters to bombard Ukrainian strategic targets & frontline positions.” 17/ And: “if Ukrainian SAMs are not resupplied with ammunition, and ultimately augmented and replaced with Western equivalents over time, the VKS will regain the ability to pose a major threat.” The development of air superiority may be an area of focus for Surovikin.
18/ Third, he may use a large, mobilised force to generate concentrations of troops for tactical or operational breakthroughs in 2023. This won't be easy. Individual training is poor; it is a bad foundation for the more difficult unit collective training. Rusted guns, no food, and filthy beds: Russian soldiers paint a bleak picture of the world's second-greatest military power
19/ With an extensive, meshed sensor network, the Ukrainians have the ability to detect and attack such concentrations at long range. Therefore, the importance of developing a decisive advantage in the air, to degrade Ukrainian long-range strike, is brought to the fore. 20/ But, with the possibility of more mobilisations and incentives for increased industrial output from the Russians, a shift from the Russian piecemeal attacks we have seen so far may be an option that Surovikin considers - but not in the short term.
21/ A final area of change for Surovikin may be command and control (C2). He will want to improve the integration of combined arms on the ground, as well as air-land integration. These have been weaknesses for the Russians. But will not be easy to fix.
22/ The reason for this is another key part of C2: . Russia has lost many leaders, from junior to quite senior in this war. Surovikin is sure to be aware of this. He will want to ensure his senior leaders are capable of leading effectively for the campaigns of 2023. The reason for this is another key part of C2: #leadership . Russia has lost many leaders, from junior to quite senior in this war. Surovikin is sure to be aware of this. He will want to ensure his senior leaders are capable of leading effectively for the campaigns of 2023.
23/ We may see more senior Russian military leaders replaced. At the same time, Surovikin is sure to be placing demands on the Russian force generation system for junior leaders. This will be hard given the challenges facing their training system. Unroll available on Thread Reader We may see more senior Russian military leaders replaced. At the same time, Surovikin is sure to be placing demands on the Russian force generation system for junior leaders. This will be hard given the challenges facing their training system.
24/ Despite Surovikin’s brutal background, it is prudent that we understand him better & not underestimate the impact his leadership might have on Russia’s operations. Ukrainian success in 2023 will be partially determined by their ability to out-think the Russian commander. End.
25/ Thank you to those who images, and work, were used in this thread: @CNN @RFERL @japantimes @RUSI_org @Forbes @UAWeapons @MassDara @DefenceU @SamBendett @LawDavF Thank you to those who images, and work, were used in this thread:
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