War For Ukraine Day 159: Just the Basics Tonight

Since I did the Zawahiri post earlier, and its been a long, hot day, I’m going to just keep tonight’s update to the basics with two substantive items I think you should pay attention to.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier this evening. Video below, English transcript after the jump (emphasis mine):

Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!

The implementation of the Initiative on the export of Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products from our ports in the Black Sea began today. The first vessel carrying 26,000 tons of corn left the port of Odesa.

As of now, it is too early to draw any conclusions and predict further events. But the port started working, the export traffic started, and this can be called the first positive signal that there is a chance to stop the spread of the food crisis in the world.

Currently, everything depends on the implementation of the security parameters of the Initiative, which is the responsibility of the partners, primarily the United Nations and Turkey.

We cannot have the illusions that Russia will simply refrain from trying to disrupt Ukrainian exports. Russia consistently provoked famine in the countries of Africa and Asia, which traditionally imported large volumes of Ukrainian food. And now – in conditions of extreme heat, as this year in Europe, the threat of a price crisis and a certain food shortage is also possible for some European countries.

So, we’ll see how the agreements will work and whether there will really be security. 16 vessels are already waiting their turn for departure, and we are ready to make a proper contribution to the stabilization of the world food market.

For our state, this is also of great benefit – and this is not only about billions of dollars in foreign exchange revenue. About half a million Ukrainians are involved in the cultivation of agricultural export crops, and if we add related industries, then this is plus a million jobs. That is why there is the appropriate state attention to the implementation of the export Initiative. Our people really need it.

Today I spoke with President of France Emmanuel Macron, in particular about the restoration of our agricultural exports by sea. In general, the negotiations lasted one and a half hours and were very meaningful: relations in the defense sphere, first of all. A wide range of security issues – thank you for the assistance already given to Ukraine, which effectively protects us on the battlefield.

We also discussed macro-financial support for our state – I asked Mr. President to help us unblock macro-financial aid, which has stalled in Europe. I want to remind all the leaders that it is 9 billion euros. These are not trifles for us, but important social things – these are our pensions, these are our salaries, support for IDPs, and therefore we expect appropriate decisions from specific government officials.

Mr. President of France informed me about the results of his African tour – we are now strengthening this direction of our foreign policy. I invited President Macron to participate in the online summit of the Crimea Platform, which will take place shortly.

Last year, we created the Crimea Platform and are developing this format – despite all the threats and tangible diplomatic opposition from Russia.

During the years of occupation, Russia turned Crimea into a large military prison camp – and tens of thousands of people became its victims. Crimea became a bridgehead for attacks on the free territory of our country… The weak and insufficiently principled reaction to the occupation of Crimea in 2014 and in the following years became one of the prerequisites for the fact that Russian aggression managed to grow to such a scale. We will gradually restore justice regarding our Crimea.

The situation on the battlefield has not undergone significant changes over the past day. Fierce battles continue in Donbas, in the Kharkiv region, the struggle for the south of our country continues…

Ukrainian artillery and intelligence have already done a lot to reduce the fire potential of the occupiers – and it is tangible. Today I want to thank all our warriors who destroy Russian logistics, who destroy the occupiers’ ammunition and who do not leave the occupiers a single safe place on our land.

And I also want to thank our partners now – everyone who supplies Ukraine with modern and effective artillery and MLRS. The power of the democratic world is well felt on the battlefield in Ukraine these weeks.

And today, another conversation took place in the format Ukraine – United States – three on three – Andriy Yermak and Jacob Sullivan, Dmytro Kuleba and Antony Blinken, Valerii Zaluzhny and Mark Milley. This is our continuous format, which has already allowed us to make a fundamental contribution to the protection of the entire free world. We’ve coordinated next steps in support of Ukraine.

Eternal glory to everyone who fights for freedom!

Glory to Ukraine!

Here is the Ukrainian MOD’s operational update for today:

The operational update regarding the russian invasion on 06.00, on August 1, 2022

Glory to Ukraine! The one hundred fifty nineth (159) day of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to a russian military invasion continues.

In the Volyn and Polissya e directions, in the border areas with our state, the additional deployment of radio-electronic warfare complexes by the armed forces of the republic of belarus is noted.

In the Siver region, the enemy continues to hold separate units of the armed forces of the russian federation in the border areas of the Bryansk and Kursk regions. Conducted artillery fire near Pavlivka, Sumy oblast.

In the Kharkiv direction, the enemy shelled the areas of settlements Novomykolaivka, Prudyanka, Nove, Dementiivka, Pytomnyk, Borshcheva, Ruska Lozova, Ruski Tyshki, Petrivka, Bazaliivka, Korobochkine, Stara Hnylytsia, Ivanivka from tanks, barrel and rocket artillery. Made an air strike near Mospanove.

In the Slovyansk direction, the enemy carried out fire damage near Chepil, Protopopivka, Hrushuvaha, Husarivka, Dibrovne, Mazanivka, Krasnopilla, Dolyna and Barvinkove. With the forces of the reconnaissance group, he tried to clarify the location of the positions of our troops in the direction of Mazanivka, but was unsuccessful, the group withdrew.

The enemy was not active in the Kramatorsk direction. It carried out shelling from barrel, rocket artillery and tank weapons near Siversk, Serebryanka, Hryhorivka, Verkhnyokamyanskyi, Zvanivka, Ivano-Daryivka, and Spirne. Airstrikes near Hryhorivka and Spirny.

In the Bakhmut direction, shelling was recorded near Berestove, Soledar, Bakhmut, Kostyantynivka, Vesela Dolyna, Zaitseve, Vershyna, Kodema, Semyhirya and Travneve Made an air strike near Kodema.

Tried to carry out reconnaissance of the positions of our troops in the direction of Yakovlivka, the enemy’s reconnaissance group was neutralized. The enemy also tried to conduct assaults in the directions of Vershyna and Soledar, but was unsuccessful and retreated. Leads an offensive in the direction of Bakhmut, hostilities continue.

In the Avdiyivka direction, the occupiers shelled the areas of the settlements of Novokalynove, Novoselivka, Avdiivka, Netaylove, Pisky, and Krasnohorivka. Airstrikes near Vesele. It assaults in the direction of Pisky, was unsuccessful, withdrew.

On the Novopavlivske and Zaporizhzhia directions, it is shelling the areas of Maryinka, Novomykhailivka, Pavlivka, Shevchenko, Novosilka, Novopil, Malynivka, Charivne, Hulyaipilske, Orihiv and Kamianske settlements with barrel and rocket artillery. Carried out airstrikes near Maryinka, Novomykhailivka, Vuhledar, Shcherbaky, Mali Shcherbaky and Novoandriivka. Conducted combat reconnaissance in the direction of Maryinka, had no success, withdrew. Enemy troops are regrouping in the Zaporozhia direction.

In the South Buh region, the occupiers shelled the districts of Myrolyubivka, Novovoznesenske, Visokopilla, Mykolaiv and more than 25 settlements with barrel, rocket artillery and tanks. Conducted an airstrike near Olhyne. Air reconnaissance of the UAVs continues.

The strengthening of the enemy grouping of troops in the Kryvyi Rih direction is noted.

Active involvement of aviation by the enemy to control the surface and air situation in the northwestern part of the Black Sea area is recorded.

The threat of missile strikes on military facilities and critical infrastructure facilities on the territory of Ukraine remains. There are six Kalibr sea-based cruise missile carriers in the waters of the Black Sea.

We believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine! Together to victory!

Glory to Ukraine!

Here is the British MOD’s assessment for today:

And here is their updated map for today:

Here is former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s updated assessment and map of the battle in Kherson:

KHERSON / 1845 UTC 1 AUG / A major wildfire has been started south of Mykolaiv by a RU incendiary barrage targeting UKR wheat fields . South of the map coverage, UKR precision artillery hit two RU ammo storage depots at Skadovsk. pic.twitter.com/rMq7D5u0SA

— Chuck Pfarrer (@ChuckPfarrer) August 1, 2022

Today is the 78th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising against the NAZIs. This is not to be confused with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the NAZIs. Poles marked the anniversary today and drew parallels to Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s re-invasion. The AP has details:

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poles on Monday marked the 78th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a doomed 1944 revolt against Nazi German forces, with some including the president comparing the wartime Polish resistance to that of Ukrainians today fighting Russia’s invasion.

People in Warsaw observed a minute of silence as a siren wailed at 5 p.m. to honor those who fought and died in the 1944 struggle that lasted 63 days and ended tragically for the Poles. That was the hour when the uprising began on Aug. 1, 1944, after five years of brutal Nazi occupation.

In the yearly ritual, people across Warsaw paused in their tracks, some holding flags or torches. A far-right organization led a march through the city that passed peacefully.

President Andrzej Duda visited an exhibition titled “Warsaw-Mariupol — cities of ruins, cities of struggle, cities of hope.” He recalled how the “Germans ruthlessly murdered civilians in the capital,” adding that “the Russian aggression against Ukraine is similarly ruthless today.”

The Warsaw Uprising was the largest act of resistance by any nation under the German occupation during World War II, and the heroism of the insurgents remains a defining element in Polish national identity.

As part of the commemorations, Wladimir Klitschko accepted an honorary citizenship on behalf of his brother, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

During that ceremony on Sunday, he met with a 95-year-old veteran of the Warsaw Uprising, Wanda Traczyk-Stawska, telling her “you are my idol.” Both Klitschko brothers are heavyweight boxing champions who have prominent roles in their country’s resistance against the Russian invasion.

Poles in 1944 also felt betrayed by the Soviets, whose troops had arrived on the outskirts on Warsaw in their westward push against Adolf Hitler’s forces. The Red Army remained on the Warsaw outskirts without helping the Poles — who were allegedly their allies.

The city-wide revolt took place more than a year after the April 19, 1943, start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a separate revolt by doomed Jews that also ended in tragedy. It remains as a symbol of courage and defiance for Israelis today.

More at the link!

I want to draw everyone’s attention to this detailed thread on Russian weapons systems:

There are two primary problems with Russian weapons: integration and cognitive load. To begin with integration, a few years ago some Mi-24s allocated to ISAF were undergoing maintenance. It was found that some of the bolts holding the tail rotor in place had cracks in them. 2/25

— Jack Watling (@Jack_Watling) July 31, 2022

• This set off a panic among some US officers who went about trying to ground all aircraft of that type fearing that poor quality control in the supply chain represented a flight safety risk across the force. For NATO aircraft this would be a massive problem. 3/25
• What the Mi-24 crews had to explain to their US colleagues was that this was normal. It was why the helicopter has 8 bolts in its tail rotor of which 4 would often crack. All 8 bolts are replaced after a specified number of flying hours irrespective of their condition. 4/25
• So, on the one hand quality control in Soviet manufacturing was poor. On the other hand the design team just accepted this and built in redundency to produce a very reliable and effective attack helicopter. Russian weapons involve lots of these kinds of workarounds. 5/25
• This becomes a problem when you want to integrate new things onto the platform. When the Mi-24 was built it was intended for gun runs using rockets and machine guns. As MANPADS proliferated however the Russians recognised stand-off ATGMs were needed. 6/25
• The Russians have built several very effective ATGMs some of which can be mounted from the Mi-35. They have impressive range and penetration. They are accurate weapons. However, the Mi-35 is built with the assumption that lots of its components will break while in use. 7/25
• This firstly means that there is a lot of vibration in the platform and secondly means that this vibration is not consistent between platforms or between flights, as various sub-components fail. The result is that the mounted optics on this aircraft are very hard to use. 8/25
• The last time I was in an Mi-35 we gave up searching for targets with the sensors in the nose and just used a big pair of field glasses out of the cockpit. The result was that while we had plenty of range with our ATGMs we couldn’t actually accurately engage at that range. 9/25
• You’ll have noted in Ukraine the Russians keep teaming Ka-52s and Mi-35s together because the former was built around its sensor suite and so it works much more effectively. The design team made trade-off decisions that ensured the sensors worked. 10/25
• So this is the first reason for a delta between capability and performance. Individually Russian weapons and platforms tend to do what they are designed for and do it reliably. When you start integrating things together however there are often problems deep in the design. 11/25
• Now for cognitive load. The Soviet military was a conscript military and the Russian military today has a similar structure. When you buy a Russian weapon system you usually get a nice cardboard flow chart showing you the buttons to press in what sequence to get a result. 12/25
• If you get in a Buk for example there are a lot of buttons and each one tends to do one thing. Furthermore, each operator does one task. It is actually quite easy to teach someone to use it to a basic standard because using the controls doesn’t understanding the system. 13/25
• However, to use the system to a high standard is really difficult because YOU are the integrator. The computer isn’t doing much for you. If something is out of the ordinary you need to find the workaround and get the crew to do all the right things in the right order. 14/25
• NATO systems tend to have far fewer controls and what the controls do is contextual. The system supports the user so they can focus on judgement. The result is a system with a much higher initial training burden but a much higher effectiveness for a newly trained crew. 15/25
• If you have expert crews then Russian weapons systems are highly effective and can be more effective in some cases than NATO counterparts. If you watch old Finnish or Ukrainian Buk operators who have been at it a while it is impressive. 16/25
• But if you have short term contract soldiers – and especially if you lost a lot of your more skilled personnel early – then the Russians are left with crews whose basic proficiency isn’t sufficient. You end up with less and less skilled people using the equipment. 17/25
• That is how you end up with Russian air defence systems getting hit by UAVs. It isn’t that a Buk can’t see or engage it. The Ukrainians Buks which are less capable platforms are detecting and engaging UAVs just fine. 18/25
• So what is going on with Long Range Precision Strike. There have been some impressive misses. What is interesting is how often the misses are in the right distribution to have struck the target but are all displaced from it. 19/25
• In a lot of misses with the newer Russian systems the problem is that the Russians are either getting the wrong coordinates of the target or the launcher has the wrong coordinates for itself. This is likely a problem with EW fratricide. 20/25
• In exercises the Russians had switched to digitised fire control. In Ukraine they’ve lost a lot of the operators who knew how to do that. They’re coordinating on voice. And jamming navigation all over the place. Sequencing strikes and deconfliction is hard. 21/25
• There are lots of other issues with the Russian targeting process. Often they are 48 hours late striking a target because of how inefficient their kill chains are. In Chernobyl it was noted that their soldiers were using maps from before the disaster… 22/25
• Well, some of the things they’ve struck that appear completely random or blatant misses make more sense when you look at the older maps. So in some cases their kill chain is 40 years out of date. 23/25
• There are also older systems that have relatively poor accuracy and some systems being used out of role (ACSMs for example) that are similarly less accurate. With the newer systems however it isn’t that the weapons don’t work or aren’t precise. 24/25
• In conclusion, the problem with Russian weapons isn’t usually that they don’t work but rather that when they are linked up and operated by under trained crews they become decidely less than the sum of their parts. 25/25

Finally, this article from Italy’s Corriere Della Sera lays out what I’ve been worried about in regard to the economics and sanctions regime. Specifically one of its major potential failure points. This is a machine translation.

Twenty countries through which Russia manages to circumvent the sanctions imposed by democratic governments since the beginning of the war. These include Turkey, China and the United Arab Emirates, as well as various former Soviet republics that have been at the center of suspicions since the beginning: the list includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and even Georgia, where Russia launched a military aggression in 2008 and, at the beginning of the conflict in February, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in support of Ukraine.

This is a reality that many Italian companies probably already know: a look at trade flows reveals clear indications that, within a few months, especially Turkey has progressively become a platform through which numerous exporters of “made in Italy” continue to supply Russia on a very large scale, even when the practice would be illegal.

But let’s go in order. There would be hundreds of international cases of circumvention of sanctions through those twenty countries. They will be at the center of an outgoing relationship soon by the panel led by former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul and Andriy Yermak, the head of the political bureau of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Informed observers predict that the Yermak-McFaul group will suggest Western governments close the loopholes, threatening “secondary” sanctions on countries that help Russia through a network of trade triangulations.

It won’t be easy, given the systemic size of some of the nations involved. Certainly a cross-examination of trade data from Italy to Turkey and Turkey to Russia suggests that massive triangulations are taking place on this route aimed at circumventing sanctions. It is difficult to explain otherwise the flashy oddities of recent months. Firstly, Turkey is the country to which last June Italy recorded by far the largest increase in exports: plus 87% on an annual basis, up to 1.4 billion euros in sales in a single month; this is an increase of 500 million per month compared to February and a single case in over ten years of sales to Turkey always remained well below one billion per month (according to the Istat statistical office). All the more surprising is this boom because in the last year the Turkish lira has almost halved its value over the euro, making importing from Italy much more expensive for local businesses.

More at the link!

As long as Russia can get third party states to tranship the materials they need from the west to them, then Putin will be able to keep going.

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

Apparently Patron got into the edibles again…

Maybe the world is on the brink of World War 3 because of giant turtles shaking the ocean, and then everything affects the atmosphere, and sick people's heads become even worse? What do you think? pic.twitter.com/82NbAzWo19

— Patron (@PatronDsns) August 1, 2022

Deep thoughts with Patron!

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@patron__dsns

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♬ original sound – 444.songss

The caption translates as:

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