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Ukraine Invasion Day 295: the winter months will increase the pace of operations [1]
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Date: 2022-12-14
x That is about 10km south of Bakhmut. pic.twitter.com/uCdvLr9P9N — Def Mon (@DefMon3) December 11, 2022
x From the information I have, the front line in Bakhmut is stabilizing. It is true, Ukraine rotated troops out. The new troops were unable (and likely not expected) to hold the positions held by the departing troops. As a result, the lines shifted, especially east and southeast. pic.twitter.com/2MkmmPByTC — Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 11, 2022
Located astride two major crossroads and home to a decades-old winery, Bakhmut has been all but emptied of its 70,000 residents, and the city's buildings and houses are -- or are steadily being reduced to -- rubble, as Ukrainian troops defend the city's northern, eastern, and southern approaches against Russian forces creeping across fields and gentle slopes dipping down to the Bakhmutovka River.
Many of the full-frontal assaults are being led by soldiers from Russia's notorious private mercenary company, Vagner Group, according to Ukrainian, Western, as well as Russian officials; some reports point to World War I-style "human wave" infantry attacks.
The question is: Why is Russia expending so much manpower and effort to capture this city at this stage in the war -- a city whose tactical significance is eclipsed by the sustained ferocity of the assault?
[...]
Located about 700 kilometers east of Kyiv and about 80 kilometers north of the regional capital, Donetsk, Bakhmut itself was one of the earliest sites of open conflict in early 2014, when Russia first stoked a covert armed insurrection to take control of part of the Donbas.
Then known as Artemivsk, the city was retaken from Russian-backed fighters in July 2014 by Ukrainian government forces. It was renamed Bakhmut in 2016 and had been largely rebuilt since then, serving as a key trading post and access point for people coming and going from parts of the Donbas that were controlled by Russian-backed militias.
The city had been indirectly threatened over the months, particularly as Russian forces in early July pushed Ukrainian troops out of the twin cities of Syevyerodonetsk and Lysychansk, 60 kilometers to the northeast. The highway that led from Bakhmut was a key supply route for Ukrainian troops.
In September, meanwhile, Ukrainian troops stunned Russia with a surprise counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region and retook the Donetsk region railway hub town of Lyman, about 60 kilometers north of Bakhmut.
www.rferl.org/...
x Russian President Vladimir Putin is skipping his annual news conference after a series of pivotal losses in his war against Ukraine.
https://t.co/HTuOUPTzBn — The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) December 13, 2022
It is true that Moscow still talks the language of victory. Vladimir Putin likens himself to Peter the Great, the tsar who won the Great Northern War after fighting Sweden for 21 years.But the reality is that Putin has already failed in Ukraine. His forces have been driven back from Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson. His partial mobilisation of civilians has caused thousands of Russian men to flee the country but failed to reverse the tide on the battlefield. About 100,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded — with more dying every week in brutal trench warfare.It is Putin’s inability to acknowledge the scale of the disaster that he has inflicted on his own country, as well as the war crimes that Russia has committed in Ukraine, that are now the major obstacles to peace.
But it is possible that a Russian decision to wind the war down could be dressed up as an adjustment in military tactics, rather than an acknowledgment of defeat. This was what happened when Russia withdrew from Kherson. Putin distanced himself from the decision, which was announced by military commanders and the defence minister.
www.ft.com/...
The Kremlin is even now waging a hybrid war against the United States. The Kremlin assesses that hybrid wars already dominate 21st century conflict and will continue to do so. The Kremlin believes it must adapt to win this struggle, profoundly shaping Russian military development and assessments of the future of war.
Russian hybrid wars include the use of significant conventional forces and conflict. The Russian military defines a “hybrid war” as a strategic-level effort to shape the governance and geostrategic orientation of a target state in which all actions, up to and including the use of conventional military forces in regional conflicts, are subordinate to an information campaign.
The Russians define hybrid war precisely and coherently as a type of war, rather than a set of means to conduct state policy. The U.S discussion of hybrid war overly focuses on the means short of conventional forces and conflict that the Russians have most famously used. The Russian soldiers without insignia (“little green men”) who helped seize Crimea in 2014, and the proxies Russia uses in eastern Ukraine, are most often the focus of Western assessments about how to respond to Russian hybrid war.
The Russian conception of hybrid war is much more expansive. It covers the entire “competition space,” including subversive, economic, information, and diplomatic means, as well as the use of military forces extending above the upper threshold of the “gray zone” concept that more accurately captures the Chinese approach to war.
The Kremlin considers conflicts including Belarus, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and Venezuela to be hybrid wars. The Russian Armed Forces openly discuss several ongoing conflicts as hybrid wars. The Kremlin is actively refining and utilizing its theory of hybrid war in Europe and around the world. It uses a blend of means and instruments, including conventional military forces. Russian Air Force aircraft in Syria constitute its most important means of influencing that conflict, although it has also deployed Russian Army Military Police and special forces (SPETSNAZ) troops as well. Russian hybrid war efforts in Belarus include sending three battalion tactical groups from Russian Airborne Forces divisions to exercise there, along with Tu-160 nuclear-capable bombers. Russia’s engagement in Libya, by contrast, has been primarily through its private military companies (PMCs), which are also operating in Syria. The Kremlin adjusts the kinds of forces it commits to hybrid conflicts according to its assessment of the conflict’s requirements. The Kremlin does not shy away from sending and using units from its conventional military forces just because it has defined the war as hybrid.
www.understandingwar.org/...
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