Here’s President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier this evening. Video below, English transcript after the jump (emphasis mine):
Ukrainians!
All our defenders!
I have been receiving reports all day long today from the city of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region. A rescue operation is underway there after a Russian strike at residential buildings. Two high-rise buildings were destroyed. Dozens of people are under the rubble. Six were saved. There are 15 names in the list of the dead and, unfortunately, this is not the final number.
It was a missile strike. And everyone who gives orders for such strikes, everyone who carries them out targeting our ordinary cities, residential areas, kills absolutely deliberately. After such strikes, the killers will not be able to say they did not know something or did not understand something… All those who carried out this shelling, other missile strikes, all those who hit our cities with rocket artillery, as is the case with the Kharkiv region, Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih, Siversk and Vuhledar in the Donetsk region – they will all be found.
You know, Nazi murderers are found and brought to justice even when they are 90 or 100 years old. They are caught all over the world. Of course, we don’t want to wait that long. But I give this example to show that punishment is inevitable for every Russian murderer. Absolutely everyone. Just as for the Nazis. And they should not expect that their state will protect them. Russia will be the first to abandon them when political circumstances change.
Since the beginning of this invasion, Ukrainian law enforcement officers have been doing everything necessary to record the crimes of the occupiers and to collect evidence. Our partners from many countries are involved in this work. Russian terror has long crossed the line beyond which it became obvious to many in the civilized world that it is a matter of global security to punish Russia, a terrorist state, for everything it has done against Ukraine and the international legal order.
My schedule for the coming weeks includes precisely such negotiations and appeals that will contribute to the restoration of justice, to the punishment of Russian war criminals. Moreover, this activity is aimed not only at Europe and other traditional regions for the work of Ukrainian diplomacy. We will do everything so that Latin America, Asia and Africa hear the truth about Russian terror on our land as well.
In the past week, many talked about the alleged “operational pause” in the actions of the occupiers in Donbas and other parts of Ukraine. 34 airstrikes by Russian aircraft over the past day is an answer to all those who came up with this “pause”. The Ukrainian army is holding on firmly, repelling attacks in various directions. But, of course, a lot still needs to be done so that Russian losses really cause such pause. Moreover, the pause not before new offensives of the occupiers, but before their retreat from our Ukrainian land. And I am grateful to all our fighters who are bringing this time closer.
It is inevitable, as is the punishment for the occupiers. But we have to hold on, we have to fight together on all fronts now – on the political, information and economic fronts, without showing weakness anywhere. We can withstand this war only together – absolutely everyone, every Ukrainian man, every Ukrainian woman.
Glory to all who protect our native state!
Glory to Ukraine!
There was no operational update posted today by Ukraine’s MOD.
Here is the British MOD’s assessment for today:
They did not post an updated map today.
Here is former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Commander Chuck Pfarrer’s assessment, including an annotated map, of the battle for Kherson:
CONTACT REPORT / KHERSON / 2040 UTC 10 JUL/ RU forces occupying Kherson have faced a continuous, and escalating, campaign by partisans and UKR Special Operations Forces (SOF). UKR SIGINT again locates RU targets: UKR missile strike takes out 2 Russian HQs. pic.twitter.com/xnresHp4XC
— Chuck Pfarrer (@ChuckPfarrer) July 10, 2022
I’ve seen a lot of chatter on social media about Russian claims that they’ve destroyed all or almost all of the HIMARS that the US has provided Ukraine so far. These all appear to track back to the same accounts and sources that were claiming that Russia had destroyed all 36 of Ukraine’s bayraktar drones back at the end of March. Which was NOT TRUE!!! Especially as Ukraine only had 12 bayraktars at that time. And we were getting steady reports of their being used. I’ll keep monitoring this, but until or unless a reliable, independent source of reporting confirms any of these claims, they’re somewhere between disinformation and agitprop.
There was some discussion in the comments last night about the effects of Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s ammo depots in the areas of eastern and southern Ukraine that Russia has been occupying since 2014. We now know that Ukraine has taken out fourteen of them in the past week!
Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesman of the #Odesa regional administration, reports that three #Russian ammunition bases in different regions have been destroyed yesterday.
Thus, #Ukraine has already destroyed more than 14 Russian ammunition bases within a week.
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) July 10, 2022
During 8 years of occupation of the eastern #Ukraine, Russia heavily militarized this territory with ammo and weaponry depots placed everywhere (like it did in eastern Europe during the Cold War). Now, #Ukraine demilitarizes its occuied land with precise strikes by HIMARS. https://t.co/JNBm14bQbs
— Viktor Kovalenko (@MrKovalenko) July 10, 2022
I expect we’ll start to see the downstream effects of these Ukrainian operations in about ten days to two weeks. I also expect we’ll see more of them go kaboom.
The Kyiv Independent‘s Illia Ponomarenko report by Twitter thread about Ukraine’s attrition of Russian armor:
…T-80BVMs, or T-90Ms.
Ukraine says Russia has lost 1,641 (and counting) tanks, the U.S. says “over 1,000”. @Oryx has already confirmed 857. So this means Russia has lost between 25% (a very conservative estimate) and 50% (an optimistic estimate) in its springtime cringe-krieg…— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 10, 2022
- …and the battle of Donbas. The lower-bound estimate of the lost tanks is still the size of the tank corps of Britain, Germany, Italy, and France combined. Yep, that’s the world’s second military power definitely winning its 72-hour special military operation against…
- …a bunch of junkies and neo-Nazis, for sure. The day is 137. Next: how many more does it have in store? The answer is dark: probably over 17,000. Military Balance says Russia had 7,000 old T-72s, 3,000 old T-80s, and even 200 T-90s.
- But there’s even more: databases from several years ago say it has some 2,800 T-64As/Bs, 2,500 T-62s, and even 2,800 legacy T-55s. Yes, the Soviet Union manufactured unbelievable, ridiculous amounts of hardware to just keep its insane defense production system running.
- So we’re screwed and hopeless? In reality, a large share of those 17,000 tanks exist just on paper or have been collecting dust and rust for decades. Just google any of those endless cemeteries of hundreds of rusty tanks kept in the open.
- Poor maintenance (or the absence of it), negligence, and devil-may-care attitude is a common story. Even in the Soviet era, corruption in the military was widespread — POLs, components, and equipment were sold off in the black market under the counter.
- Newer tank types such as T-72s and T-80s were plundered especially hard, as their electronic components and other stuff are in demand. This is in many ways why we need we see Russians re-activating old T-62s and T-63Ms as older types were of less interest to embezzlement.
- Ask anyone who has served in a Soviet or post-Soviet military. Besides, there is this thing called “cannibalization” where you dismantle components for like three tanks to put the fourth tank in order.
- Russians are now demothballing tanks and other vehicles to set off their losses. They are preparing a new striking fist against Ukraine, and we must be ready. But Russia is very far from being the ultimate unwinnable death army they want to pretend to be.
- After all, it’s not tanks that do the fight — it’s the people organized, trained, supplied, and motivated as a military force.
Marine vet and current doctoral student Rob Lee, who has done yeoman’s work tracking everything pertaining to Russian and Ukrainian material, equipment, and operations in mega threads on his Twitter account, informs us that both the Russian military and the Russian private military company commonly referred to as the Wagner Group are recruiting military veterans who are currently serving sentences in Russian prisons.
Russian prisoners with combat experience are reportedly being taken out of prisons in Nizhny Novgorod and Mordovia to fight in Ukraine.https://t.co/OXgZBezHeE
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) July 8, 2022
Wagner is also reportedly recruiting prisoners. They are reportedly offered amnesty, 6 month contracts of 200k rubles a month, and 5 million ruble compensation to their families if they are killed. 3/https://t.co/FbToAvCVNr
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) July 8, 2022
That’s enough for tonight.
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Open thread!
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Yutsano
I’m starting to wonder if the Bayraktar song needs to be updated to include HIMARS now.
EDIT: MY SECOND FRIST TODAY???
CaseyL
Adam, many thanks for your continued, excellent reporting on the war. I think these posts should all be collected at some point and published!
14 ammo dumps blown up is great, but how many were there to start with?
A Good Woman
I don’f comment much, but I read everything Adam is posting on Ukraine. I know it’s a lot of work that is beyond my pay grade. I am glad we have a Juicer who knows where to look and who to trust.
Thanks Adam.
Alison Rose
Ponomarenko’s threads are always so helpful for me, especially as a way to throw cold water on all the russian PR BS. I watch Zelenskyy’s videos on FB and while the majority of comments are supporters, it’s disturbing to see the number of either russian trolls or people brainwashed by propaganda. (Obviously those two groups overlap.)
I am 110% in favor of hunting down each and every russian taking part in this invasion like 90-year-old Nazis.
Thank you as always, Adam.
Carlo Graziani
I LOVE Marvin The Martian! (“The Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator! That creature has stolen the Space Modulator!”…<Huffily> “Delays! Delays!”)
I didn’t expect this blast from the past, Adam. That was cool.
Yutsano
@Carlo Graziani: Instant Martians! Just add water!
Bill Arnold
So Wagner Group(/PMC Wagner) is offering amnesty to prisoners, somehow? If so, then they are undeniably an arm of the Russian state.
FWIW, the google translate of the zona.media piece does not mention amnesty. But even if they are not offering amnesty, and it’s just a variant of the prisoner labor used in the US, it’s still a very close association between Wagner Group and the Russian state.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I see, the Russians are following Imperial Japanese Army Airforce practices on claimed kills.
Carlo Graziani
So it’s interesting that HIMARS is not just a riposte to Russian artillery — we (or I at any rate) have been discussing its role as a pure counterbattery tool. But the Ukrainians are employing it in offensive missions, taking out (reportedly) Russian “headquarters elements” and a Rosguard base in Kherson according to Pfarrer, as well as multiple logistical nodes across the battlefield.
This speaks to a highly-advanced, well-coordinated real-time tactical intelligence operation, developing and validating targets and communicating them efficiently and securely to the firing officers in time to make good use of them, at a high production rate. Not a simple thing to improvise. No prizes for guessing whose field manuals and procedures are in use.
dmsilev
So, really desperate for volunteers then? I guess Russia, which is to say Putin, really really doesn’t want to declare a state of war and start openly sending conscripts to the front.
Adam L. Silverman
@CaseyL: @A Good Woman: You are both welcome.
Adam L. Silverman
@Carlo Graziani: You’re welcome.
I included it just for you. Had to do a thorough review of your dossier first.//
Steeplejack
@Bill Arnold:
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: The Ukrainian Army putting the HIMARS to good use! In fact, using them against rear area large fixed targets such as ammo dumps, service depots & brigade/army group HQs is the most impactful use of the system’s rage & accuracy (especially w/ their small numbers to date). Counter battery is better performed by the modern self-propelled howitzers that have been donated to Ukraine (many more of those needed, too.). The Excalibur smart howitzer rounds just announced would be very useful for this role, & taking out Russian field fortifications. One hopes that 1K rounds is just the 1st installment, though.
The Russian Army has the BM30 system, which actually outranges the std. GMLRS guided rockets for he HIMARS provided to Ukraine, but they are not nearly as accurate (though partially compensating for that by using cluster munitions) & thus more rounds are need to destroy a target.
For a lot time the US Army had let its artillery arm atrophy due to lack of peer competitor threat & the expensive failure of the Crusader program, instead doctrinally counting on the USAF to perform both close support & deep operation strike functions. HIMARS & associated modernized munitions that can also be used on the M270 system represent serious attempts by the US Army to attain independent operational strike capabilities, concered w/ the prospect that USAF/allied air dominance or eve superiority will not be assured in a ground war against Russian or Chinese militaries, or other regional powers armed w/ Russian/Chinese weapons. The invasion of Ukraine has punctured the apparent myth of the vaunted Russian integrated air defense systems, at least at tactical & operational levels (else the Bayraktars would not have enjoyed the successes that they had). The causes could be system design, doctrine, training or maintenance, or all of the above. We shall see how the Chinese systems & doctrines perform. (Or rather, none of us hope to see that scenario become reality.)
The Chinese military has invested huge sums for the past several decades into longe range guided multiple rocket launchers, producing munitions w/ ranges up to > 300 km, accuracy of CEP < 5 m (aided by the Beidou, China’s GPS), to address the challenge that for a long time the Chinese military has been disadvantaged in the air against every conceivable foe. The HIMARS & the new smart munitions may indeed have drawn inspiration from these Chinese efforts. Even now, the People’s Liberation Army Ground Forces will not rely entirely upon the People’s Liberation Army Air Force for fire support & operational strike, despite the latter’s growing capabilities. Inter-service rivalry is a factor too, even though there has been wholesale reform of doctrine & training over the past decade to promote “jointness” in operation.
Bill Arnold
@Steeplejack:
Yep. The prisoner recruitment just an additional line of evidence, and harder to dismiss/refute than some of the other evidence.
YY_Sima Qian
@Bill Arnold: I am getting the early WW II Nazi Germany vibes w/ some of these actions. Not because Nazi Germany was scraping the bottom of the barrel for manpower at the time, but that Hitler refused to operate the economy at war footing, constraining Germany’s output for military equipment & munitions (placing Germany at further disadvantage against the combined industrial might of US+USSR+UK), for fear of burdening the German population w/ hardships.
Putin’s invasions has already caused tremendous economic pain to Russians, due to the sanctions, but he has refrained from mobilizing Russia’s manpower advantage for fear of further upsetting the ethnic Russians & inviting blowback.
Kent
I expect the Ukrainians have exceptionally good intelligence. It’s not like they are waging war on foreign terrain like Afghanistan or Iraq. They are waging war in their own back yard.
Imagine, for example, if Ohio had been overrun by foreign armies. How much information do you think the US military would have about terrain and targets? First, the would probably have every square inch of terrain mapped and every strategic target identified. And there would also be hundreds if not thousands of agents and infiltrators combing the area for actionable intelligence. And thousands of Ohioans with satellite and cell phone coms would be reporting back in real time. Especially as is the case with the Russians when you have relatively small numbers of occupying forces. This is not the 10 million man Soviet Army that rolled across eastern Europe during the later stages of WW2 where the could put troops on every street corner.
That is also why neo-con notions such as the US invading Iran are beyond insane.
Wapiti
Pulling prisoners out to fight… that can only end badly.
That reminds me: no shit, there I was in Panama. The invasion is happening. They empty the guardhouse, issuing rifles and live ammunition to the prisoners and putting them on security around the logistics base. One of the prisoners was, iirc, convicted by court martial of rape of another soldier and was awaiting transportation to Fort Leavenworth to start his sentence. (They gave him a weapon? Hard to believe, but yes.) He shot himself.
Omnes Omnibus
Footage of Russian tanks trying to breach a minefield. For the uninitiated, this is a technique, but not the preferred method.
Carlo Graziani
@dmsilev: The striking thing about it, though, is how petty and desperate it is. 50 prisoners from Petersburg? That’s the scale of their “covert mobilization”? If they repeat that in 28 cities, they can get enough men for 1 BTG, although certainly not the combined-arms skill mix. Why is this even considered newsworthy?
More generally, the Russian recruiting drive has a little-noticed issue built into it: they only realized that they had a manpower problem in June, panicked and started looking for fresh meat. Trouble is, the meat walking into a recruiting station in July cannot be employed in any usable military capacity until it’s trained, a minimum of 3 months (and that’s really treating the meat as disposable cannon fodder, more training required to invest in better soldiers). So, no new Chechen or Dagestani infantry riflemen until October at the earliest. And that’s without even addressing their ability to meet their recruiting quotas.
That’s the thing with ad-hoc force design: it can only accomplish very limited, incremental changes to pre-existing infrastructure. There is a reason that European Great Powers of the 20th Century had existing functional national war mobilization plans in place during peacetime before, between, and after the World Wars. Those plans were the blueprints of national survival, national resistance, or national revanche — as the case may be — and without one, those nations were destined to be simply prey.
The Russians didn’t get the limited war that they planned for. They seem to think that by indulging in a little in-flight aircraft repair, they can adjust their force to match their war needs. I think they’re on crack. They’d have a better chance visiting antique shops and rubbing oil lamps until they found a wish-granting genie.
They generated the combat power to take Donetsk by concentrating their entire 4-theatre invasion force there. They left themselves completely unable to develop any operation anywhere else — no action in the “land bridge” other than their pathetic siege of the Mariupol steelworks, a retreat even in the Donetsk-supporting theater of Kharkiv. They literally have nothing of real combat value outside the Donetsk hamburger grinder. No matter how many hat-infesting rabbits they yank out in their desperation to produce more soldiers , I am very skeptical that they can obtain anything close to their requirements to prosecute the war that they would like to have.
debbie
Always my first stop when I have an entire day to catch up here. Thanks aslways, Adam.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Unoriginal and uninspired, like those mines they set across that bridge, where escaping Ukrainians could cross without harm by driving their cars on diagonals (and helping direct each other).
Carlo Graziani
@Carlo Graziani: [It’s late here. I should have written “If they repeat that in 14 cities…” not “28 cities”, based on a BTG personnel strength of about 700.]
Omnes Omnibus
@YY_Sima Qian:
For about 20 years, the US was primarily involved in COIN operations. These tend not to be artillery heavy operations. This means that you did not see a lot of artillery deployed in its traditional role. That does not mean that folks at Ft. Sill were doing nothing.
Adam L. Silverman
@Kent:
https://mwi.usma.edu/irans-human-geography-wicked-problem-people-places-things-complicates-us-strategy/
terry chay
Vid about artillery in Ukraine: https://youtu.be/EMEpxX7rS5I
YY_Sima Qian
@Omnes Omnibus: The US Army is still making do w/ the M109s w/ 155 mm L/39 caliber for tube artillery, while the rest of the world (friend & for alike) had moved on to 155 mm L/45 or L/52 caliber decades ago. Until HIMARS, the US Army was limited to the very heavy M270 multiple rocket launching system w/ M26 munitions that only have inertial guidance & 45 km max range. The US Army also did not make significant investment into smart munitions development for its artillery until the past decade (which is why the US is sending 1K Excalibur 155 mm shells, rather than 10K). That is fine if the USAF can achieve air dominance quickly, & where it can bring substantial firepower (precision or otherwise) almost on demand (as in COIN), but not if it cannot.
The tube artillery systems that Germany, France & Sweden developed put anything the US has fielded to shame. (The M777 ultralight weight howitzer has great strategic mobility, but poor tactical mobility, & still limited by its L/39 caliber.) Russia & China has developed a plethora of unguided & precision munitions for tube & rocket artillery w/ a range of calibers, & a variety of warheads for different situations, offering a flexibility that US artillery does not have. These technical advances have percolated to Iran & North Korea, as well.
The Russia smart artillery munitions have not made themselves felt on the Ukrainian battlefield, because of poor C4ISR at tactical & operational levels, and/or lack of funds to actually procure these munitions in quantity (or maintain them).
Jesse
@Adam L. Silverman: thanks! Sure is great, bookiarking it now.
NobodySpecial
@Carlo Graziani: I am reminded of how 80s Warsaw Pact military operations were predicated on not throwing their superior numbers of reserves across a broad front but instead pouring them into a singular axis that had had the best results in initial contact.
Gvg
@dmsilev: Russia is losing population. I wonder how that impacts thinking when looking at a meat grinder war? Also what is the point of conquering a people you have propagandized your own into thinking aren’t really Russian when it will cost you some of your limited real Russians and you will end up with more untrustworthy non Russians to guard, but the original reason to conquer was that they were Russian, and your conquest was so brutal that they now hate you more than ever including the ones related to you that spoke your language.
The USSR had the eastern block of conquered satellites which seemed like mostly Allie’s but turned out to really really hate them (duh, Russia gave them reason) and in fact most of non Moscow hated them too. They haven’t learned. They don’t understand why so many countries stayed allied with the west either. China gets this better though still inconsistent I think. Russia is actually destroying itself again. Slowly though. Making enemies by massive numbers.
Geminid
@Gvg: Russia’s had a long history of insular xenophobia once it became a nation state. The 250 years from the mid-18th century to this one may prove to be an abberation from this norm.
I am interested in seeing how Russia’s involvement with its few remaining outright allies plays out in the short and medium term. In this hemisphere Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuala seem stable for now, but this could change. Now that Turkey and Israel are patching up relations, Russia’s Syrian military bases may be at risk in the next decade. Russia has drawn down its forces there anyway, to fight in Ukraine.
Iran carries a question mark also. The regime there has been more or less successful in holding down the lid on dissent. Iran’s population is young, though, and the younger people seem to have less allegience to the mullahs who run their country. Plus, there is at least anedotal evidence of discontent with the country’s foreign ventures in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. The recent arrest of a senior security official, and the acknowledgement by another official that Israeli intelligence had penetrated higher levels of the security forces, may indicate cracks in the Iranian regime itself. I don’t think that I would make a 50-50 bet that this regime will be in power 5 years from now.
Uncle Cosmo
@Carlo Graziani: Marvin pointing a blaster with bad intent was the pic on my old bookplates. Caption:
Haroldo
Again, as always: Thanks, Adam.
The Pale Scot
I’ve read that next years RU of 18 yr olds is half that of this year’s, and that it doesn’t get better going foward. The same applies to UKR