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Ukraine Invasion Day 280: Russian forces made marginal gains around Bakhmut, still no encirclement [1]
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Date: 2022-11-29
Russia hopes for more static engagement given the lack of BTG organizational success, while Ukraine waits for an opening depending on the weather.
Ukraine is still facing a 30% power shortage even after repairs to damage from Russian missile strikes on its energy infrastructure, the country's prime minister says
https://t.co/AKVTjUCoCU pic.twitter.com/kXljxrpniv
Western officials say the Ukrainian reconstruction campaign needs to be considered a second front in the war. The American pledge that was made on Tuesday came from Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken at a meeting of Group of 7 nations and a few other partner countries, on the sidelines of a two-day conclave of NATO foreign ministers.
The aid commitment came as diplomats from more than 30 nations gathered in Bucharest, Romania, where the NATO secretary-general made clear that the alliance might one day expand to include Ukraine — a stance opposed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Over the past eight months, the United States and its allies have poured in billions in aid to help Ukraine fend off the Russian invasion, largely in the form of weaponry. Now, with millions of Ukrainians facing the prospect of a winter without heat, discussion is focusing as much on transformers, circuit breakers and surge arresters as on tanks, artillery and air-defense systems.
BUCHAREST, Romania — Officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Tuesday stressed their commitment to eventually allowing Ukraine to become a member of the military alliance. But they spent the first day of a two-day summit focused on a more immediate concern: helping the nation rebuild an electrical grid crippled by relentless Russian airstrikes.
The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported on November 29 that Russian forces have likely stopped deploying battalion tactical groups (BTGs) in the past three months.[4] The UK MoD stated that the BTGs‘ relatively low allocation of infantry, decentralized distribution of artillery, and the limited independence of BTG decision-making hindered their success in Ukraine.[5] ISW assessed starting in April that Russian BTGs were degraded in various failed or culminated Russian offensives, including the attacks on Kyiv, Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk, and later efforts to reconstitute these BTGs to restore their combat power have failed.[6] Russian forces have likely since thrown their remaining combat power and new personnel, including mobilized personnel, into poorly trained, equipped, and organized ad hoc structures with low morale and discipline.[7] The structure of BTGs and the way the Russian military formed them by breaking up doctrinal battalions, regiments, and brigades likely deprived the Russians of the ability to revert to doctrinal organizations, as ISW has previously assessed, so that the Russians must now rely on ad-hoc structures with mobilized personnel.[8]
Weather by @davidhelms570 The temperatures in the south will stay around or above 0 degrees C for the coming week.
https://t.co/ILGlw5IWON
Russian forces made marginal gains around Bakhmut on November 29, but Russian forces remain unlikely to have advanced at the tempo that Russian sources claimed. Geolocated footage shows that Russian forces made marginal advances southeast of Bakhmut but ISW remains unable to confirm most other claimed gains around Bakhmut made since November 27.[1] Some Russian milbloggers made unsubstantiated claims that Russian forces broke through the Ukrainian defensive line south of Bakhmut along the T0513 highway to advance towards Chasiv Yar, which would cut one of two remaining main Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Bakhmut, but such claims are likely part of a continuing Russian information operation and are premature, as ISW has previously assessed.[2] ISW continues to assess that the degraded Russian forces around Bakhmut are unlikely to place Bakhmut under threat of imminent encirclement rapidly.[3]
www.understandingwar.org/...
Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued to make limited gains around Bakhmut amid reports of heavy fighting in the area on November 29. Geolocated footage posted on November 29 shows that Russian forces advanced on the southeastern outskirts of Bakhmut.[22] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled attacks northeast of Bakhmut near Bakhmutske along the T1302 highway and near Soledar.[23] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) officials claimed that Russian forces captured Ozarianivka (15km southwest of Bakhmut) and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut) on November 29.[24] Russian milbloggers reiterated claims that Russian forces advanced southwest of Bakhmut, taking Andriivka, Ozarianivka, and Zelenopillia (13km south of Bakhmut), and that Wagner forces captured Kurdyumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut).[25] Various Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces established control over the Siverskyi-Donets-Donbas canal (13km southwest of Bakhmut), which directly impacts the water supply to Horlivka and Yasynuvata, on November 29.[26] Russian milbloggers also circulated unverified claims that Russian forces broke through the Ukrainian line at the T0513 highway to Chasiv Yar—part of the Ukrainian GLOC—which ISW assesses is unlikely.[27] A Russian milblogger also claimed that Russian forces made progress in Opytne (4km south of Bakhmut) and began a ground attack on Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) on November 29.[28] Ukrainian Donetsk Oblast Head Pavlo Kyrylenko reported that Russian forces struck near Chasiv Yar, Paraskoviivka, Yakovlivka, and the Maiorska station of the Svitlodarsk hromada through the night of November 28 and 29.[29] Russian milbloggers claimed that the Russian advances south of Bakhmut moved Russian forces closer to operationally encircling Bakhmut and a further offensive in the direction of Toretsk.[30] A Russian milblogger prematurely called this operational offensive around Bakhmut the first victory since the capture of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk; however, there is no evidence that Russian forces currently threaten key Ukrainian logistics lines into Bakhmut and ISW continues to assess that Bakhmut is currently not under threat of Russian encirclement.[31]
www.understandingwar.org/...
x Historian here. The comparison is being made because Bakhmut has become a force-directed, decisive defense in an artillery war. Casualties are comparable w/Eastern Front battles 1915-1917. Ukraine deserves high praise for casualty evac, stubborn defense — Polemology Positions (@polemologyfix) November 30, 2022
Eastern Ukraine: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast)
Russian forces continued efforts to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations northwest of Svatove on November 29. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued standard defensive operations in the Kupyansk, Kharkiv Oblast, direction.[9] Kharkiv Oblast Head Oleh Synehybov amplified reports that Russian forces are conducting constant artillery attacks on Ukrainian positions in Kupyansk but stated that Ukrainian forces are holding the line and repelling Russian forces.[10] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack in Ivanivka (22km southeast of Kupyansk) and that Russian forces struck Ukrainian control points in Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk) and Berestove (26km southeast of Kupyansk).[11]
Ukraine continued counteroffensive operations in the direction of Svatove and Kreminna on November 29. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian concentration area in Svatove, Luhansk Oblast, which Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai claimed was a deployment point and ammunition depot.[12] Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Ambassador to Russia Rodion Miroshnik claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted a massive shelling of Svatove and unsuccessfully attempted to break through Russian defensive lines to the Svatove-Kreminna highway.[13] Miroshnik additionally claimed that Ukrainian forces attempted to probe Russian defenses in Kuzemivka, 13km northwest of Svatove.[14] Russian sources continued to claim that Russian forces are repelling Ukrainian attacks in this area.[15] A Russian source claimed that Ukraine is accumulating forces in Kharkiv Oblast to possibly resume an offensive against Svatove and Starobilsk.[16] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Novoselivske (14km northwest of Svatove), while Russian sources claimed that Russian forces seized Novoselivske.[17] A Russian source stated that Russian forces began offensive operations on the Svatove-Kreminna line and conjectured that operations will intensify in the coming days as the weather improves.[18] Ukrainian troops additionally continue to target Russian rear areas in Luhansk Oblast along critical ground lines of communication (GLOCs) and hit a concentration area in Luhutyne, just southwest of Luhansk City along the H21.[19]
www.understandingwar.org/...
x Meanwhile in Russia: top propagandists and their friends in high places are getting worried about the possibility of losing the war to Ukraine and being tried at the Hague. pic.twitter.com/SfgB1GexQv — Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) November 29, 2022
x Russia fired 100 missiles at Ukraine today, hitting a residential building in Kyiv and leaving whole cities without electricity. These young men and women were inputting the missile flight paths, again. pic.twitter.com/bVHV97fdGG — Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) November 15, 2022
x Look at these smiling faces: this is how those who help point russian missile attacks of civilian objects in Ukraine look like. Every morning they get up, get some coffee, probably, and come to their office in St. Petersburg to help kill Ukrainians.
📸 via Speka media pic.twitter.com/8DUnSMu74L — Margo Gontar 🇺🇦 (@MargoGontar) November 29, 2022
x War in Ukraine - Atlantic Council
https://t.co/spNcfxaJR2 — Jonathan Knight (@jondknight) November 30, 2022
x Ukraine's digital resilience: A conversation with Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov - Atlantic Council
https://t.co/iX54Ly8nLl — Jonathan Knight (@jondknight) November 30, 2022
x #Ukraine: A Russian MT-LB armored personnel carrier with a ZU-23-2 23mm autocannon was destroyed by the Ukrainian 109th Battalion of the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade in the vicinity of Soledar, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/wBWRpH9GGa — 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 29, 2022
x #Ukraine finally starts own production of 152 and 122 mm artillery shells.
https://t.co/g07l4ctT7x — Mïkko Laaksonen (@MikkoLaaksonen1) November 29, 2022
x On aid to Ukraine, the Republicans are jammed || By Noah Berlatsky
https://t.co/SiaykMzrSL — SafetyPin-Daily (@SafetyPinDaily) November 29, 2022
x “The US is pushing its European allies to take a harder stance towards Beijing as it tries to leverage its position on Ukraine to gain more support from NATO countries for its efforts to counter China in the Indo-Pacific.”
https://t.co/AA3XyKYDm6 — David Soiza (@SoizaDavid) November 30, 2022
x ‘I can’t take up a weapon, so I create’: how Ukraine’s artists are taking on Putin’s Russia | Ukraine | The Guardian
https://t.co/we8I08u1Pe — Jonathan Knight (@jondknight) November 30, 2022
Where to begin a story of war? Every war teems with stories: stories of survival and violence, of resistance and compliance, of struggle and terror. They go together: many of the oldest stories that survive (the Iliad, the Odyssey) are stories of war and its aftermath. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a war full of stories but also a war about a story, about the accepted facts, about the prevailing narrative. Vladimir Putin’s “special operation”, as he calls it, seems to have been intended to provide a spectacle, a kind of war movie, for domestic consumption, drawing the Russians together against what he hopes to frame as a common enemy – described variously as Nazis, terrorists or even, bizarrely, as the forces of Satan. At the same time, the war’s false justification has its own disturbing narrative, its own warped internal logic. Underlying Putin’s military aggression, as his speeches and essays have for years made clear, is his assertion that Ukraine has no distinct existence – that it can be seen only as an adjunct to Russia. In such a war on a nation’s culture, identity and history, it is artists and cultural figures who find themselves the crack troops of the resistance. The war is on one level about borders, and it is being fought with shells, Himars rocket launchers and Shahed-136 drones. But it is, on a deeper level, about culture. And, desperately holding the line, fighting on the cultural front, weaponising their work, are Ukraine’s artists.
www.theguardian.com/...
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