Early yesterday evening and quite unexpectedly, one of our own lamh’s sisters passed away. She asked if I would be so kind as to cross post her post about her sister. It is below: I am completely heartbroken to share the sad news that one of my sisters (Nicole) died suddenly yesterday, June 14, 2022 …
Adam L Silverman
War For Ukraine Day 111: Ukraine Holds On In the East
by Adam L Silverman| 29 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine
There’s no Ukrainian MOD operational update, no updated British map, and Chuck Pfarrer has not done an updated map and analysis of the battle for Sievierodonetsk (yet) today. So this should be quick… Here’s President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier this evening. Video below followed by English transcript after the jump: (emphasis mine)
War For Ukraine Day 111: Ukraine Holds On In the EastPost + Comments (29)
Ukrainians!
All our defenders!
Today, our air defense units managed to “cut the wings” of Russian missiles. Some of the missiles fired by the occupiers at our cities were shot down. And these are saved lives. This is a saved infrastructure.
But we managed to shoot down only part of them. Unfortunately, there are victims, there is destruction. Today, the Lviv and Ternopil regions were hit. And we keep telling our partners that Ukraine needs modern anti-missile weapons. Our country does not have it at a sufficient level yet, but it is our country in Europe that needs such weapons most right now. Delay with its provision cannot be justified. I will constantly emphasize this when talking to our partners.
We made the first requests for anti-missile systems long before the full-scale invasion. And this week there will be many different important talks – and not only with European politicians who are able to provide Ukraine with modern anti-missile systems. Even though Russia has fewer and fewer modern missiles with each passing day, Ukraine’s need for such systems remains. Because Russia still has enough Soviet types of missiles, which are even more dangerous. They are many times less precise, and therefore threaten civilian objects and ordinary residential buildings much more.
I spoke today with Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau. Of course, the number one topic was defense support. Canada is among the leaders in it. I expressed gratitude for the fact that Canada became the first country to transfer special assistance to the Ukrainian account at the IMF – about $ 800 million.
I also had a conversation with the President of Ecuador. I congratulated him on the election of Ecuador as a member of the UN Security Council. I informed him about the current situation on the battlefield and called for increasing pressure on Russia to end this war. Both this conversation with the President of Ecuador and yesterday’s conversation with the President of Guatemala are just the beginning of our new policy of restoring relations with Latin America.
Today I asked the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to be very attentive to reports in the media and on social networks that some of our fighters do not have enough personal protective equipment. The reports I receive are significantly different from what is discussed by society. And I expect inspections of logistics in the army – inspections of what is supplied and how personal protective equipment is distributed. Today, everyone in the areas of hostilities must have everything they need to protect themselves. The state provides such supplies.
Over the past day no drastic changes have taken place in the battle in Donbas. The fiercest fighting is in Severodonetsk and in all cities and communities nearby – as before. The losses, unfortunately, are painful. But we have to hold on. This is our state. It is vital to hold on there, in Donbas. The more losses the enemy suffers there, the less power they will have to continue the aggression. Therefore, the Donbas direction is key to determining who will dominate in the coming weeks.
We also have painful losses in the Kharkiv region, where the Russian army is trying to strengthen its position. The battles for this direction continue, and we still have to fight hard for complete security for Kharkiv and the region.
We continue to put pressure on the occupiers in the south. The key goal is the liberation of Kherson, and we will move towards this step by step.
I signed another decree on awarding those who excelled in battles. 63 servicemen were awarded for bravery and efficiency in defending the state.
The total number of awarded is already 18,453. And such a scale, such a number of feats fully demonstrate the level of confrontation and the brutality of hostilities.
I thank everyone who stood up for our state!
Eternal memory to everyone whose life was taken by the occupiers!
Glory to Ukraine!
As you can see, President Zelenskyy is continuing the strategic communication campaign regarding the need for specific types of weaponry for the Ukrainian military.
You may also notice that he’s ordered a logistics review of why he’s seeing appeals and/or reports of appeals on social media for body armor, helmets, and other equipment for individual soldiers because the Ukrainian military is, allegedly, unable to provide these items. I expect this is one of the things he’s responding to:
Great start so far everyone, with your help we've raised more than €57,000 for helmets and body armor to help protect the heroes defending Ukraine! Still a long way to go until we reach our goal so please continue sharing and if you haven't yet, consider donating as well. 🛡️✌️🇺🇦 https://t.co/tP4Puoai9t
— Ukraine Aid Operations 🇺🇦 (@UkraineAidOps) June 13, 2022
Here’s the British MOD’s assessment for today:
I want to go back to President Zelenskyy’s appeals for weaponry from the US, our EU and NATO allies, and our non-EU and non-NATO allies.
Mistermix emailed me earlier today with a question about this based on the Mykhail Podylyak’s list of what Ukraine needs that I posted last night.
My question: In a tweet from yesterday’s update, Ukraine wants
- 1000 howitzers caliber 155 mm;
- 300 MLRS; 500 tanks;
- 2000 armored vehicles;
- 1000 drones.
But if you read this thread by Mark Hertling, the US Army has 240 howitzers and 300 rocket systems in the entire active force.
Is the Ukraine asking for 1000 in hopes of getting another 100, do they really need that number of howitzers, etc., or is something else going on here?
Thanks!
So let’s start with LTG (ret) Hertling’s thread:
As I said in past threads, the "new phase" of the fight (which started in early April), brought change.
-RU focus is on massing artillery, attempts at breakthrough.
-UA focus is logistics, active defense & maintaining will.I've used this slide to describe the major shifts. 2/ pic.twitter.com/Da7yBmo8Qa
— Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) June 13, 2022
- @nytimesIn the last few days, the, @washingtonpost,@WSJ & others have reported Ukraine’s demand for more combat equipment. UA needs support, lots of it. It’s important to understand the scope of their “asks,” the art of the possible & the associated logistics requirements. 3/
- I’ll provide some of context for all that, from a soldier’s perspective & battlefield experience as a Division Commander. Some of what I say will be met with “they know more than you on what they need.” So please understand I’m just giving my perspective. 4/
- Many reports today said the west is “lagging” & “indecisive” in providing equipment. Those reports also say Ukraine needs nations to provide 1000 howitzers, 300 MLRS, 500 tanks, 2000 armored vehicles. I’d offer some context for those requests. 5/
- Let’s talk artillery. There are 10 active US Army Divisions. Depending on the “type” division (Armored, Infantry, Airborne, Air Assault, Light), each one is equipped differently. Each has a Division Artillery Brigade -called a “DIVARTY”- which normally has 3 Battalions. 6/
- During combat, each artillery battalion in DIVARTY isattached to the 3 combat brigades of the Division. Each of those arty battalions has between 16-24 howitzers (either self-propelled M109A7 or towed M777) & usually 9 different “types” of rocket artillery (MLRS or HIMARS). 7/
- To make it easy for math purposes, let’s round up and say each Division has 24 howitzers & 9 rocket systems. That’s a TOTAL of 240 howitzers & 90 rocket systems in all ten of the active US Army Divisions . That’s an indicator of the scope of the UA “asks.” 8/
- The US provided 108 M777 to UA a few weeks ago, the equivalent of almost 5 artillery battalions. Those came with 200,000 rounds of ammunition. The US also sent 4 HIMARS as a proof of principle. There will likely be more of those in the next tranche. 9/
- NATO countries are also sending cannons & ammunition, some w/ different chassis, fire control systems, training requirements. They wont match RU guns 1:1, as western militaries have other methods to counter the RU artillery threat. (That is hard to explain in a thread). 10/
- Part of the “ask” that is required but usually not discussed in the requirement for support for all this equipment. Parts, mechanics, maintenance, etc. That comes from elsewhere. Along with a “DIVARTY,” each US Division also has a Division Support Command, or “DISCOM.” 11/
- The DISCOM is a very large organization w/ mechanics, part suppliers & parts, truck drivers, fuelers, equipment handlers & all other things that are part of supply chain operations. That DISCOM “supports the supporters” that exists internally to each battalion/brigade. 12/
- What these soldiers do is ensure each piece of high-tech equipment continues to work, is supplied with ammo/fuel/spare parts/electronics. When delivering cannons…there’s requirements to deliver all the “stuff.” There’s more supporters than trigger pullers in a US Division.13/
- It’s relatively easy to train soldiers to operate cannons. But there’s also the need for EXTENSIVE training of mechanics, suppliers, & other supporters. And…you must ensure the supply chain (including the route for all this to take place) operates smoothly. 14/
- It’s an estimated 400 miles from Ukraine’s western border to Kyiv…another 200+ from Kyiv to the front lines. The military calls that a “line of communications” or LOC. Keeping LOCs secure & open in combat is tough work, but it’s required. 15/
- Add to this, the different kind of equipment Ukraine is requesting is coming from a variety of NATO and non-NATO nations. Not all of it is the same. That exacerbates parts & maintenance requirements. This compounds supply chain & LOC challenges. 16/
- In this thread, we’ve talked just artillery. Now multiply cannon issues to fielding new & technologically advanced tanks, infantry vehicles, aviation, etc. In effect, UA is wanting to field a new army, w/ western equipment, w/unfamiliar processes, while fighting a war. 17/
- As a division commander in combat, I fielded several weapons systems -some complicated, some not- during a 15-month deployment. The easy fieldings took weeks…hard ones took longer. Units are pulled off line & trained. Mechanics learn their stuff. Supplies are restocked. 18/
- And I had the advantage of a great DISCOM, practiced processes, secured supply lines, soldiers that knew what they were getting, the ability to pull folks offline and replace them with others while equipment was fielded. UA has none of that. 19/
- Make no mistake, UKR requires support from the US & NATO. The courage & tenacity UA has shown is exemplary & they are fighting for all of us. UA will win, but it will be a tough fight. And…supporters ought understand the dynamics of what they’re facing. 20/
- Sorry if this thread has pissed anyone off, but these are the challenges associated with transforming and modernizing an army…and it requires more than just people saying “give them everything they need.” 21/21
To answer mistermix’s question, LTG Hertling is not wrong. But there are two things that are getting missed here. The first is that LTG Hertling indicated that the numbers he was providing for the US are for the active Army. You can find that in tweet #10. He is not including the Reserves and the National Guard. So there is more than this in the US Army’s inventory in terms of overall force structure. How much more? I don’t know but it isn’t just a few dozen. The US Army, of all the Services, has the largest Reserves and National Guard to Active component ratio. The idea is to keep the standing Army that the Founders were so afraid of as small as possible unless we’re actually at war. Which is why we’ve seen a re-balancing of the Active component’s size in terms of reductions in relation to the Reserve and Guard over the past decade as operations in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down or got smaller or both. It also doesn’t account for US Marine Corps artillery assets. Not a gigantic amount, but not nothing either.
The second issue is that the US has a lot of its long and medium range fires capacity tied up not in artillery, but in aviation. Fixed and rotary wing attack fighters. Short, medium, and long range fighter bombers. Land, sea, and amphibious based. So while Russia and China have the vast, vast majority of their fires capacity in land based artillery, we have it in aviation.
There is an effort underway to rebalance this and to bring much longer range ground based fires on line under the Army’s multi-domain combat concept of operations. Under this the Army would have artillery capable of hitting up to 2,000 km away from the guns. Something that would normally be done by aviation assets.
There is a very good article explaining this at Business Insider.
Third, and finally, as to what Ukraine is asking for, I think the answer lies in the second issue. Ukraine had limited ground/land based fires capability to begin with. And it was old, Soviet legacy stuff. They also have a very limited, though quite capable, Air Force. Within the air component, even limited in number of platforms overall, the vast majority are the MiG 23 attack fighters, not the SU-25 close attack fighters, as well as Mi24 rotary attack craft more popularly known as the Hind. As a result, if we’re not going to facilitate them getting old MiGs and SUs from the former Soviet states now in NATO, and we’re not going to get them US and other western platforms – F-18s, F-16s, F-15s, A-10s, Apache and Kiowa rotary wing attack choppers, British Typhoons, etc – then they need ground based fires platforms because they don’t have the aviation equivalents.
Mistermix then had a follow on question:
I don’t know if you want to comment on this, but one thing I saw today somewhere on Twitter was that the artillery supplied by the US/NATO that is now being used by the Ukranians is higher quality than the Russian stuff they were using. So, shell-for-shell, tube-for-tube or however you guys assess this, the Ukranians will have more impact with what they got from US/NATO countries. I don’t know how that figures into the calculation.
This is correct. The legacy Soviet stuff is old. It was designed for 30 years ago at the latest. The stuff we and our allies have been sending that is new and NATO standard – and our non NATO allies try to use NATO standard for interoperability – is of much more modern design. This is part of why our Defense budget is so expensive. We constantly have R&D and manufacturing for either running upgrade changes to our existing equipment or material and have constant development of new, next gen equipment and material to replace it. All to ensure that we always have strategic over match. Unfortunately, we also know that strategic over match doesn’t get you very far in the wars we’ve spent the past 20 years fighting. Except for what the SOF bubbas are doing.
CNN is reporting that the US is expecting new weapons requests from Ukraine at tomorrow’s meeting in Brussels.
The US expects more announcements of weapons and equipment packages to be sent to Ukraine to help in its fight against Russia at a meeting of nearly 50 countries in Brussels on Wednesday, according to a senior US defense official.
Ukrainian officials have warned that Russia is gaining ground in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, specifically in the city of Severodonetsk, which has seen some of the heaviest fighting recently. Without an influx of more weapons, some Ukrainian officials have said it will be increasingly difficult to halt Russia’s incremental progress or reclaim occupied ground in the region.
“We hear what they’re saying, we absolutely hear what they’re saying,” said the senior defense official, who spoke of the “urgency” of the Ukraine Contact Group meeting Thursday in Brussels.
The official would not detail what countries would be announcing new security packages or what those shipments would include but noted that the US works “very closely” with allies to figure out what Ukraine’s armed forces need and then find those systems to send over.
The official would also not say whether the US would make a new announcement but said the Biden administration is already working on the next weapons package.
“It’s a constant drumbeat because it’s a constant battle” with “constantly evolving urgent requirements,” the official told a group of reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The US has taken on “some risk” to its own military readiness in sending weapons and equipment to Ukraine, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said earlier this month, but it was “not an unacceptable level of risk at all.”
The senior defense official said the US and it allies have a significant amount of equipment still available to send to Ukraine.
“We have far from exhausted the resource and the multi-country security assistance for this battle on Ukrainian territory,” the official said.
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky vowed in an evening speech on Monday that Ukraine would liberate all of the territories occupied by Russia, even the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed shortly after its takeover in 2014. But that could only happen, he said, if more weapons are sent to Ukraine.
“It only takes enough weapons to make it happen. The partners have it. In sufficient quantities. And we work every day for the political will to give us these weapons to appear,” Zelensky said.
Ukrainian officials have said 100 to 200 soldiers a day are dying in the fighting, a number that raises some doubts about the ability of the Ukrainian armed forces to sustain such losses. The US official said they don’t doubt the casualty figures.
“The numbers are not out of line with what you would expect for this kind of artillery battle,” the official said. “It’s not surprising that the numbers the Ukrainians are reporting are that serious.”
But the official said the US has not seen a flagging of Ukrainian morale to remain in the fight, even as the conflict becomes a grinding, brutal battle of artillery that may favor the firepower and manpower of Russia’s military. The official sounded a more optimistic note about the state of the war, even as Russia appears to be gaining momentum in the Donbas region.
More at the link!
I think that’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron:
Пес-сапер Патрон відтепер на варті й в Ужгороді.
🔹Створила його поруч із двома іншими патріотичними стріт-артами на стіні стадіону "Авангард" ужгородська художниця Катерина Туз. pic.twitter.com/FjKU1HbUoM
— МВС України (@MVS_UA) June 14, 2022
The tweet says:
Dog sapper Patron is now on guard in Uzhgorod. It was created next to two other patriotic street art artists on the wall of Avangard Stadium by Uzhhorod artist Kateryna Tuz.
And new Patron video on his official TikTok page!!!!
@patron__dsns Зможете повторити мій бугі-вугі? Найкращі дуети запощу в своєму Іn$tаграм 😏 #песпатрон #патрон #славаукраїні
Open thread!
War For Ukraine Day 110: Russia Steps Up Its Attempt To Conquer Sievierodonetsk
by Adam L Silverman| 37 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine
Here’s President Zelenskyy’s address to Ukraine from earlier this evening. Video below with English transcript after the jump: (emphasis mine)
War For Ukraine Day 110: Russia Steps Up Its Attempt To Conquer SievierodonetskPost + Comments (37)
Strong people of an unbreakable country!
Today is the 110th day of our defense. And when you say that – the 110th day – you realize what a great path we have covered. The enemy was driven out of the Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions. A large part of the Kharkiv region was liberated. In total, more than a thousand settlements have been liberated.
The invasion of the occupiers in the south of Ukraine was stopped. Yes, they still want to destroy Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, and the cities of the Dnipropetrovsk region. They still have enough strength to shoot from the artillery at Zelenodolsk and Hulyaipole. Odesa remains a target for the Russian fleet…
But dozens of the attacking attempts of the Russian army have already been thwarted right there in the south. And thanks to the counteroffensive, some communities in the Kherson region have already been liberated.
In the battles in Donbas – and they will surely go down in military history as one of the most brutal battles in Europe and for Europe – the Ukrainian army and our intelligence tactically still beat the Russian military. And this is despite the significant advantage of the Russians in the amount of equipment, and especially – artillery systems.
The price of this battle for us is very high. It’s just scary. And we draw the attention of our partners on a daily basis to the fact that only a sufficient number of modern artillery for Ukraine will ensure our advantage and finally the end of Russian torture of the Ukrainian Donbas.
Today it became known about the death of another child caused by the Russian shelling – right there, right in Donbas, in the Luhansk region. The boy was born in 2016. He lived in Lysychansk, in an ordinary house on Moskovska Street. This is it: a six-year-old boy on Moskovska Street is also, as it turned out, a dangerous enemy for the Russian Federation…
We are dealing with absolute evil. And we have no choice but to move on. Free our entire territory. Drive the occupiers out of all our regions. And although now the width of our front is already more than 2.5 thousand kilometers, it is felt that the strategic initiative is still ours.
We will come to all our cities, to all our villages, which do not yet have our flag on the administrative buildings. Although there are a lot of Ukrainian flags there, in people’s houses, I’m sure of it. And we have already seen them when people protested against the occupiers. And we will see them again – everywhere, when we return.
We will come to Kherson. And ordinary Kherson residents will meet our army on the streets of the city. The failure of the occupiers, who tried to celebrate the so-called Russia Day, only proves that Kherson is a Ukrainian city. And Kherson residents will celebrate only Ukrainian holidays.
We will come to Melitopol. And we will return to all Melitopol residents the opportunity to live without fear. And, by the way, all the collaborators who are now threatening to take away land from farmers in Melitopol and other districts of Zaporizhzhia will most likely end up in this land themselves.
We will come to Mariupol. And we will liberate the city for the third time. It was liberated from the Nazis in 1943 by a brilliant operation. In 2014, on this day, June 13, thanks to the courage of our “Azov” and other units, Mariupol was liberated for the second time. Liberated from the militants, who at that time were not yet fully aware of what the Russian state was sending them to. And now they see it all. They see burned Mariupol. They see why the Russians came there. But we will not allow them to make this city dead. We will return it. Definitely.
It only takes enough weapons to make it happen. The partners have it. In sufficient quantities. And we work every day for the political will to give us these weapons to appear.
We will come to Enerhodar. And I want to repeat to everyone in the city who took to the streets against the Russian military, who refuses to cooperate with the occupiers and who is waiting for us today. I want to repeat that we have not forgotten about our Enerhodar for a day.
We must understand that the occupiers are keeping the occupied territory not just in an information blockade. I would call it a civilizational blockade.
They are trying to make people not just know nothing about Ukraine and how we are trying to liberate our territory. They are trying to make them stop even thinking about returning to normal life, forcing them to reconcile. In some areas, the occupiers are deliberately preventing the restoration of electricity supply. In many communities, they simply blocked communication. Our television is being turned off. They closed the exit from the occupation and simply do not even allow humanitarian corridors so that we can bring people at least basic goods and medicines.
And I ask everyone who has such an opportunity to communicate with people in the occupied south, in Donbas, in the Kharkiv region. Tell them about Ukraine. Tell them the truth. Say that there will be liberation. Say it to Kyrylivka, Henichesk, Berdyansk, Manhush. Say it to Horlivka, Donetsk, Luhansk. Say it to everyone in the Kharkiv region who is still forced to see the Russian flag on our Ukrainian land. Tell them that the Ukrainian army will definitely come.
Of course, we will liberate our Crimea as well. The flag of Ukraine will fly again over Yalta and Sudak, over Dzhankoi and Yevpatoriya. And let every Russian official who has seized precious land in Crimea remember: this is not the land where they will have peace.
There is no one today who will say exactly how long our path to victory will take. But the vast majority of people today are already aware – this is our path. This is how this war will end.
We will rebuild everything that was destroyed by the occupiers. From Volnovakha to Chortkiv. Because this is Ukraine. And it is our destiny to return and strengthen it.
I am proud of all our defenders! Eternal glory to you!
Eternal memory to everyone whose life was taken by the occupiers!
Glory to Ukraine!
Given what the Ukrainians are facing along that 2.5 thousand kilometer line of contact and engagement, given the foot dragging of EU and NATO member states like German in ensuring Ukraine is properly supplied in a timely manner, and given that there are three EU states – France, Germany, and Hungary – that are expected to vote tomorrow against the EU Commission’s recommendation that Ukraine be given EU candidate status, President Zelenskyy’s remarks this evening were both defiant and grimly positive.
Ukraine’s MOD has posted an operational update!!!! (emphasis mine)
The operational update regarding the russian invasion on 06.00 on June 13, 2022
The one hundred tenth (110) day of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to a russian military invasion continues.
In the Volyn, Polissya and Siversky directions there are without significant changes. In the Siversky direction, russian occupiers fired artillery and mortars at the positions of the Defense Forces in the area of Hrinivka, Chernihiv oblast.
In the Kharkiv direction, russian enemy units continue to focus their main efforts on conducting positional defense and preventing the further advance of our troops to the State Border of Ukraine. russian enemy carried out assault operations in the direction of Ternov – Izbytske, had partial success, established itself on its northern outskirts. He remotely mined possible routes of deployment of our units in the area of the settlement of Petrivka, 20 km east of Stary Saltiv. Conducted air reconnaissance of UAVs in the Shestakovo area.
In the Slovyansk direction, enemy units focused their efforts on storming the settlements of Dolyna and Bohorodychne, but were unsuccessful. The enemy, as part of the logistics of troops, replaced more than 100 units of damaged armored vehicles.
In the Donetsk direction, the occupying forces are focusing on offensive operations to encircle our troops in the areas of Siverodonetsk and Lysychansk, and to block logistics routes from Bakhmut. Continues measures to replenish losses. It moved more than 80 weapons and military equipment, including heavy armored vehicles and artillery systems, to the settlements of Kreminna and Starobilsk.
In the Lyman direction, the enemy did not conduct active hostilities, continued shelling the positions of our troops in the areas of the settlements of Mayaky, 10 km north of Slovyansk, and Serebryanka, 5 km northeast of Siversk.
In the Siverodonetsk direction, the enemy, with the support of artillery, carried out assault operations in the city of Siverodonetsk, had partial success, pushed our units away from the city center, and hostilities continue. It fired artillery at the positions of the Defense Forces in the areas of the settlements of Lysychansk, Siverodonetsk, and Toshkivka.
In the Bakhmut direction, our soldiers successfully repulsed the assault operations in the directions of Viktorivka – Vrubivka and Komyshuvakha – Vrubivka. The enemy resumed offensive operations near the village of Zolote. It is fixed on the border of the Roty – Myronivka. To improve the tactical position and capture the dominant heights unsuccessfully conducted assault operations in the directions Dolomitne – Kodema, Dolomitne – Novoluhansk. Conducted air reconnaissance of UAVs in the Pokrovsk area.
In the Kurakhiv direction, russian enemy launched an air strike on the positions of our troops in the Krasnohorivka area, 15 km east of Kurakhove.
In the Avdiivka, Novopavlivska and Zaporizhzhia directions, the enemy fired along the line of contact in order to prevent the transfer of reserves to other directions.
In the South Buh direction, the enemy is conducting a positional defense. The main efforts are directed at the maintenance of previously occupied territories. He carried out engineering equipment of positions in the areas of Shilova Balka and Prydniprovske settlements. In order to clarify the position of our troops, he conducted air reconnaissance of UAVs in the area of Davydiv Brid.
russian aggressor is blocking civilian shipping in the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Six Caliber naval-based cruise missile carriers are ready to use missile weapons in the Black Sea.
We believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine! Together to victory!
Glory to Ukraine!
Luhansk Oblast Governor Serhiy Hayday has local updates regarding the battle of Sievierodonetsk:
Two bridges on the approach to #Severodonetsk have been destroyed by russian forces. The third bridge was under constant fire today.
It is old and in a critical state, trucks can’t use it due to the high risk of collapse. If this route is destroyed, Severodonetsk will be cut off pic.twitter.com/FilR13VVO0— Serhiy Hayday (@serhey_hayday) June 12, 2022
The Azot plant in #Severodonetsk is constantly shelled by the Russians. About 500 civilians, including 40 children, are sheltering there. We're trying to arrange an evacuation #UkraineRussiaWar pic.twitter.com/2KOIuJVLZY
— Serhiy Hayday (@serhey_hayday) June 13, 2022
If the Russian bombardment of the Azot facility sounds familiar, it should. This is the exact same thing they did with the Azovstal facility in Mariupol.
Here’s former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent analysis and updated map of the battle of Sievierodonetsk:
SIEVERDONTESK / 2245 UTC 13 JUN / Urban fight static. RU committed to urban fight. UKR Gen’l Staff states that lines of supply are being maintained, but confirms that road bridges into the Sieverodonetsk have been blown– possibly in preparation for a tactical withdrawal. pic.twitter.com/SnDup14v83
— Chuck Pfarrer (@ChuckPfarrer) June 13, 2022
Here’s today’s updated assessment from Britain’s MOD.
There was no updated British mapping today.
There was no DOD backgrounder today, but Secretary of Defense Austin did a press conference at the Shangri La Dialogue earlier today and he did touch on Ukraine. Here are the relevant parts:
As you know, we’ll be flying tomorrow to Brussels for an important NATO defense ministerial to help pave the way for the Madrid Leaders Summit.
But my first order of business will be convening the Ukraine Defense Contact Group for the third time. That’s going to be an important opportunity to gather our growing group of partners from around the world to ensure that we’re providing Ukraine what Ukraine needs right now and to the — to — in order to defend against Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked assault, and to look ahead to ensure that we’re helping Ukraine to build and sustain robust defenses so that Ukraine will be able to defend itself in the coming months and years. We’ll hear directly from Ukrainian leaders led by my good friend and counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov, and we’ll work to intensify our shared efforts to meet Ukraine’s priority requirements to defend itself if Russia renews its dangerous assault in the Donbas.
So thanks again for coming along with us for this important trip. And with that, I’ll take your questions.
STAFF: Anton from The Economist?
Q: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.
I wanted to pick up a point that you made in Singapore, which is that the Indo-Pacific is at the heart of your grand strategy. Now you’re going to NATO. How does the U.S. balance the demands of the two regions? In other words, how do you walk and chew gum? How do you sustain that effort over time?
SEC. AUSTIN: Well, I think one of the things — one of the things that should have been apparent to — to everyone was the fact that we are walking and chewing gum at the same time. As you listen to the — the number of significant operations and — and — and training events that we were conducting with allies and partners over the past year, that’s — that’s impressive in and of itself. But by the same time, we’ve been to — we’ve been able to — not only to help to unify NATO; we’ve — we’ve also led the effort to rapidly rush much-needed security assistance to — to Ukraine with the help of allies and partners, and this has been very — very important to our president, President Biden, and because of the steps that he’s taken, number one, we’re able to unify NATO in a very meaningful way. And what I mean by that is it was the president’s decision to — to share intelligence with our allies and partners, which created transparency and that built that — helped to build trust and — and has helped to keep the alliance together in a meaningful way.
It’s — it’s more united than I’ve seen it since I’ve been associated with NATO, and I take you back to 1975 when, you know, Lieutenant Austin first started down the — down the road there. I’ve been — I’ve been working with NATO for a long time.
So we are walking and chewing gum, and we’re able to do that because the strong network of alliances — alliances and partnerships that we have around the globe. And again, NATO plays a significant part in — in our work in — in Europe there, so — next question.
STAFF: Jack, Foreign Policy?
Q: Thanks, sir.
Ukraine appears to be increasingly outgunned and outmanned in the Donbas. With the U.S., is the objective still to help Ukraine win militarily and to weaken Russia militarily?
And then head of the contact group, Ukraine’s asked for a thousand more howitzers, 300 MLRS. What’s the U.S. willing to provide at this point militarily?
SEC. AUSTIN: Well, first of all, the U.S. is willing to provide everything and — and to help Ukraine be successful, mindful of the fact that we have our own readiness to — to keep in mind, and — and — but not only that; we have partners from around the globe that are willing to help Ukraine in meaningful ways. We’ve seen — you know, we — we’ve contributed a substantial number of howitzers and a significant amount of 155 ammunition already, along with so many other things. But other nations have contributed 155 howitzers, as well.
And so we’ll continue to work to get as much as we can there as fast as we can in order to — to help them be successful. And our focus is on making sure that we — we help them — or we — we give them what’s needed to protect their sovereign territory, which is where we started and where we still are, so next question.
STAFF: We’ve got time for another one. Moshe from NBC?
Q: Okay, thank you so much for joining us.
Recently, French President Macron made remarks saying not to humiliate Putin for the sake of diplomacy. I was just wondering what your response to that was. Do you agree with that? And to what extent is that part of the U.S. objective? And then lastly, are you concerned at all with divisions with allies and partners in the West with how to continue supporting Ukraine going forward?
SEC. AUSTIN: Well, I — I certainly don’t want to comment on President Macron’s statement, so I’ll leave that to President Macron to either clarify or amplify whatever statements he’s made in the past.
What we’re focused on, as you know, is — is what we’ve said all along, and that is helping Ukraine defend its sovereign territory, and it — as you watch this fight evolve, you know, I think the world has been inspired by the — by the tenacity, you know, the — the will of the Ukrainian people to — to resist and to a much greater power, a much more capable power, and — and to be effective in what they were doing. They’ve been effective because, number one, they had the training that we and the U.K. and Canada has been providing them since 2014, plus the security assistance that we poured into — into Ukraine early on.
And so we’ll stay focused on — on doing, you know, what — what we believe we need to do to help Ukraine get what it needs to defend its — its sovereignty. And again, you know, in terms of what things look like in the future and the — and — and how things evolve and how things are settled, I think the — the — the lead voice in that — in that effort will be President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people, not the United States of America, so — Okay.
Before we move on, a few of you (some of you?) know that I’m involved with something called The War, Peace, and Justice Symposium. Several of my good friends and former colleagues are organizing it. The one who came up with the idea for the symposium, a former teammate (Seminar 12 represent!), asked if I’d run a section on culture, religion, war, peace, and justice. One of the other participants, Professor Eli McCarthy, PhD who teaches at Georgetown, was involved in a faith leader visit to Ukraine on 24 May. Tomorrow he and another participant in that visit will be doing a Zoom presentation about what they observed. Here’s the description of the event:
Topic: Ukraine Briefing
Description: The Franciscan Action Network (FAN) participated in a delegation of leaders who traveled to Kyiv in late May to express solidarity with the people of Ukraine and to pray for a just peace.
The Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in Washington DC will host a special hybrid event in person at the Monastery and online via this Zoom link to hear a first-hand account of the trip from two members of the delegation. Michele Dunne, FAN executive director, and Eli McCarthy, professor at Georgetown University, will discuss what they experienced and how people of faith can make a difference for peace.
After you register, you will get a Zoom link emailed to you to join the event.
Time Jun 14, 2022 07:00 PM EDT
If you’re interested in watching/hearing more, here is the registration link.
Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s Minister of Defense, did an interview with The Economist. Here’s some of it:
THE DEFENCE minister of a country under invasion doesn’t have much time for reading, but Oleksii Reznikov makes a point of studying the front pages. He is concerned by what he sees. “Either the world doesn’t quite understand what is happening,” he says, “or it does understand, is tired, and is content with a few Ukrainians dying.” When Russia attacked his country on February 24th, few expected Ukraine to survive. Heroic resistance transformed fatalism into hope, and led to promises of military support. But cracks in the Western alliance are appearing just as the war enters a bloody new phase. Ukrainian losses are now running at an average of 100-200 men a day. “We need assistance, quickly,” says the minister, “because the cost of any delay is measured in Ukrainian blood.”
When Russian tanks crossed Ukraine’s borders in the north, south and east, the 55-year-old former lawyer had been in charge of his department for less than four months. A civilian appointment to a position usually taken by former military men, Mr Reznikov had expected largely to busy himself with bureaucratic reforms. Instead he found himself reorganising defence affairs as missiles rained down on Kyiv.
His war began with a 4am phone call from Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, and a laconic message: “It’s started. Strikes on air defences and radars. Invasion.” That was the signal for Mr Reznikov to kiss his wife goodbye and leave for the office. The next three weeks were spent with a core team of advisers, all armed with automatic rifles. The group moved around secret locations in the capital. “One of the most uncomfortable things was waking up each morning in a new bed.”
Those tactics were part of a set of protocols developed during top-secret planning before the invasion. Publicly, the president and his defence minister played down the war threat. Privately, they prepared for the worst. Only now is Mr Reznikov able to disclose some of the details. The main trick was to declare “routine” military exercises to mirror Russian and Belarusian drills in the first weeks of February. “This was the excuse that allowed us to secretly move our military units out from their permanent bases. When the strikes came in, our guys were not all together in one place, but were ready with weapons, munitions, and scattered around the country.”
The Ukrainians had other surprises up their sleeves. They hid air-defence systems and attack aircraft, replacing them with mock-ups. They enacted a new law on territorial defence to arm around 100,000 civilians in three days. Society also organised itself in ways the Russians didn’t expect. But the key moment was Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to stay in Kyiv. “Everyone expected the president to run and form a government in exile. But Mr Zelensky had his own script.”
Western governments came to recognise the abilities of Ukraine’s leader. And with every tactical victory on the battlefield, they began to believe that his country had a chance of winning. Opposition to sending weapons began to dissipate. A conference convened by America at its Ramstein air base in Germany on April 26th appeared to endorse the principle of arming Ukraine to victory. “The West started to believe David was beating Goliath,” says Mr Reznikov.
But vicious battles in eastern Ukraine show that assessment to be premature. Under a new commander Russian forces are exploiting Ukraine’s inferiority in artillery, multiple-launch rocket systems and aviation. Russia is squeezing Ukraine’s elite troops from a salient around the industrial town of Severodonetsk. Fighting is also hotting up on the nearby approach to Sloviansk.
If the news appears grim for both sides, it is worse for Ukraine. Returning soldiers talk of chaotic command and depleted ammunition. Inexperienced, young soldiers from volunteer units are sent to the front lines to replace fallen comrades. The minister says this is an inevitable consequence of Russia’s invasion. “How else can it be? Young guys end up on the front lines, where no one wants them to be, and they die… the world needs to know about it.”
Ukraine now needs Western help to stop the onslaught, and it is not coming fast enough. In some areas Russian forces have ten times the Ukrainians’ firepower. Multiple-launch rocket systems are in the pipeline, due to arrive “soon… perhaps in a week, perhaps two.” But Ukraine needs them in large numbers, and whether or not its allies agree to send them may depend on how Russia reacts to their deployment.
Western military chiefs have also expressed concerns that Ukraine may not be able to absorb the new hardware as fast as it would like. Mr Reznikov dismisses this: his soldiers mastered Western artillery in just two weeks, he says. The country stands ready to switch its weaponry to NATO standards within a month, he claims, rather implausibly. “As comrade Churchill said, give us the tools and we’ll finish the job.”
Mr Reznikov strains to be polite about cracks in the Western alliance. Fatigue is “a natural psychological reaction to stress”; politicians have “domestic issues” to worry about; leaders have the “obligation to think through consequences”. But occasionally frustration shines through. If war has taught him one thing, he says, it is that Ukraine’s allies speak more about human rights and freedom than defending them. “The West’s bureaucracy and pragmatism turned out to be much stronger than its values,” he says. For France and Germany, Ukraine is an irritating obstacle standing in the way of a comfortable life. Does he keep his emotions in check during difficult calls with counterparts in Paris and Berlin? “I’m professionally conditioned as a lawyer, so yes. But afterwards, informally, I can let out some fairly choice words.”
Much more at the link!
The Wall Street Journal has also published detailed reporting on what Ukraine is facing in the Donbas campaign:
The war in Ukraine has turned into a grinding artillery contest where Russia is steadily gaining ground thanks to its overwhelming advantage in firepower. As the U.S. and allies gather Wednesday to discuss fresh military aid to Kyiv, Ukraine’s fate will largely depend on how fast and in what quantities these heavy weapons arrive.
Without a broad and rapid increase in military assistance, Ukraine faces a defeat in the eastern Donbas region, Ukrainian officials warn. That would pave the way for Russia to pursue its offensive to Odessa and Kharkiv after regrouping in coming months, they say, and potentially all the way back to the capital, Kyiv, after that.
Western officials and analysts question whether Russia has the wherewithal to achieve this, even if it makes further gains in the Donbas area. They say Russia’s military has been severely battered in the war, and might lack the manpower and equipment to advance beyond the Donbas region soon.
Yet Russia still enjoys a significant superiority over Ukraine in artillery and armor. Ukrainian forces estimate that they have one artillery piece per 10 to 20 Russian ones on the front lines, with each of these guns allotted only a fraction of the ammunition at the Russian gunners’ disposal. As a result, every day that Western heavy-weapons supplies are delayed is measured in hundreds of Ukrainian casualties, they say.
While Kyiv was initially cagey about its losses, unwilling to dent the population’s morale, Ukraine’s government now acknowledges that the country’s military is losing between 100 and 200 soldiers killed in action each day, with about five times that number injured daily.
“In this war, the victory will be with the side that has more and better weapons. And, if Ukraine doesn’t obtain enough weapons in time, it will bleed out,” said Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak published a wish list of weapons Monday that he said would help Ukraine end the war, including 1,000 howitzers, 300 multiple-launch rocket systems and 500 tanks.
“We are waiting for a decision,” he wrote on Twitter.
Despite such setbacks, Moscow retains a huge advantage in armor, artillery, aircraft and missiles over Ukraine, said John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv now with the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.
“The terrain in the east favors those Russian advantages. It’s open. There is no question that the Russians have made incremental gains in the last few weeks,” he said.
Ukraine, unlike Russia, doesn’t have the capacity to manufacture ammunition for Soviet-legacy heavy weapons that make up the bulk of its forces, and is running out of stocks, Ukrainian officials say. While artillery shells and mortars can be procured in Eastern Europe, the shortage is particularly acute for multiple-launch rocket systems such as Uragan and Smerch.
At the current rate of advance, absent a sizable increase in Western weapons deliveries, it would likely take the Russians until August or September to take all of the Donbas region, Ukrainian officials estimate. While economic sanctions have made life more difficult for Moscow, especially when it comes to securing Western technology, high oil prices mean that Mr. Putin can afford to continue the war.
Russia’s current-account surplus rose to $110.3 billion in the first four months of the year from $32.1 billion in the same period last year, according to the central bank. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that Russia’s economy will shrink this year by 8.5%, while Ukraine’s will shrivel by 35%. Russian missile strikes have systematically targeted Ukraine’s industrial facilities, oil refineries and transport infrastructure, while a Russian naval blockade has prevented most exports of Ukrainian wheat
If Russia secures the Donbas region, Mr. Putin might pause the offensive to regroup and rearm, Ukrainian officials estimate. A cease-fire that some European politicians are proposing, and that would maintain Russian control over southern Ukraine, could last several months or even years.
But that pause would be just a prelude to a fiercer assault, they say, as Mr. Putin’s strategic goal—seizing Kyiv and eliminating Ukraine as a sovereign state—remains unchanged.
“They will keep going until someone stops them,” said Ukraine’s former defense minister, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, who advises President Zelensky’s government. “Some people still think that the Russians can be stopped with talks, with concessions. No, they can only be stopped with weapons—of which we are not receiving enough. This is the crux of the problem.”
After initially refraining from supplying Ukraine with Western heavy weapons out of fears about Moscow’s reaction, the U.S. and allies in late April began to ship NATO-standard 155 mm artillery systems and 155 mm ammunition, with more than 100 of these guns already reaching the battlefield. Poland has also shipped hundreds of Soviet-designed T-72 tanks, while the U.S. and the U.K. are preparing the transfer of some long-range multiple-launch rocket-system, or MLRS, platforms.
Yet, amid the most intensive military conflict that Europe has witnessed since World War II, those supplies haven’t been anywhere near sufficient to offset the thousands of weapons systems that Russia has poured into the Donbas front.
Ukrainian officials have been asking the U.S. and allies for Western-made MLRS platforms since the war began, but it was only this month that the Biden administration decided to send four high-mobility artillery rocket-system, or Himars, platforms and guided multiple-launch rocket-system rockets with a range exceeding 40 miles. The U.K. has agreed to supply three M270 MLRS systems with a 50-mile range.
While Washington has indicated that the four pledged Himars are just an initial tranche, the U.S. hasn’t specified the time frame and scope of future deliveries. “They are giving us four pieces, but what is needed is a couple of hundred. We don’t know how many more will come, when they will come, and so we cannot plan ahead—which is a problem,” said Mr. Zagorodnyuk.
Much, much more at the link!
Here’s Mykhailo Podylyk’s wishlist:
Being straightforward – to end the war we need heavy weapons parity:
1000 howitzers caliber 155 mm;
300 MLRS;
500 tanks;
2000 armored vehicles;
1000 drones.Contact Group of Defense Ministers meeting is held in #Brussels on June 15. We are waiting for a decision.
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) June 13, 2022
And here’s the most recent appeal by Ukraine’s Foreign Minister:
Ukraine has proven it can punch well above its weight and win important battles against all odds: Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv. Imagine what Ukraine can do with sufficient tools. I urge partners to set a clear goal of Ukrainian victory and speed up deliveries of heavy weapons.
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) June 13, 2022
War On the Rocks has done a new episode of their podcast with Michael Korfman, who is the Research Program Director in the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA). Here’s the link. And here’s the description:
This is not an optimistic episode. Michael Kofman speculates that the war might be in its most dangerous phase. Why is that? Ukraine’s casualties and shortages in munitions are beginning to show as Russia is gaining some operational advantages in the Donbass. Further, Russia’s efforts to fill its manpower gaps have been partially successful without relying primarily on conscripts and conducting a large mobilization. Ryan and Mike speculate that, in the end, this war will be decided by the country that can endure the longest, in terms of their economies, logistics, materiel, and political will. And Ukraine’s endurance is tied up closely with the will of the West to continue backing Ukraine with arms and other supplies in a war that could continue to drag on for months, if not years.
The Center for Naval Analysis is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC). The most well known is RAND. We have a regular commenter who works at one of the other FFRDCs should he wish to provide further details on what they are and what they do. Absent that, here’s a master list of them.
I think that’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron!
We have the winning entries of the draw Patron competition!
Ukraine's State Emergency Service announced the winners of children's competition of works with the famous dog-pyrotechnic Patron
The authors of these drawings were promised soft toys in the form of a famous dog https://t.co/YTj5PcO07U pic.twitter.com/ofrlLNsJ5E
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) June 14, 2022
All five winning entries can be seen at this article at Ukrainska Pravda.
The State Emergency Service summed up the results of the competition of children’s works with the image of the famous dog-pyrotechnic Patron. Rescuers announced a drawing contest on Children’s Day on June 1. Works could be submitted until June 8, and voting for the best drawings began on June 9. The winners were promised a soft toy in the form of a famous dog. “We have received an incredible number of bright and wonderful works depicting our four-legged mascot Patron,” the SES said.
The organizers chose 5 winners of the competition and noted that not all participants followed the rules, so the winners were determined without taking into account the “rigged” votes.
Alright, which one of you voted multiple times????
From Patron’s TikTok, here’s some images of him as a puppy!
@patron__dsns
Open thread!
War For Ukraine Day 108: The Donbas Campaign Continues On Its Slow Course
by Adam L Silverman| 36 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine
For whatever reason there was not a lot of news or new reporting today. There’s still no Ukraine MOD operational update, nor a DOD backgrounder. So we’ll jump right in and start with President Zelenksyy’s address to Ukraine from earlier this evening. You all know the drill by now: video with subtitles below followed by …
War For Ukraine Day 108: The Donbas Campaign Continues On Its Slow CoursePost + Comments (36)
Ukrainians!
All our defenders!
After the missile strike at the Ternopil region, ten people are still in hospitals. There was no tactical or strategic sense in this strike, as in the vast majority of other Russian strikes. This is terror, just terror.
Among the victims is a 12-year-old girl from Kharkiv. She went to the Ternopil region to flee from the Russian army. And such facts will now determine perception of Russia in the world. Not Peter I or Lev Tolstoy, but children wounded and killed by Russian strikes.
Today is the 109th day of a full-scale war, but it is not the 109th day as we tell our partners a simple thing: Ukraine needs modern missile defense systems. The supply of such systems was possible this year, last year and even earlier. Did we get them? No. Do we need them? Yes. There have already been 2606 affirmative answers to this question in the form of various Russian cruise missiles that have hit Ukrainian cities. Our cities, our villages for the period from February 24. These are lives that could have been saved, these are tragedies that could have been prevented if Ukraine had been listened to.
The key tactical goal of the occupiers has not changed. They are pressing in Severodonetsk, where very fierce fighting is going on – literally for every meter. And they are also pressing in the direction of Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Slovyansk and so on.
The Russian army is trying to deploy reserve forces in Donbas. But what reserves can they have now? It seems that they will try to throw into battle poorly trained conscripts and those who were gathered by covert mobilization. Russian generals see their people simply as the cannon fodder they need to gain an advantage in numbers — in manpower, in military equipment. And this means only one thing: Russia can cross the line of 40,000 of its lost troops already in June. In no other war in many decades have they lost so much.
I prepared an address to the American Jewish Committee. A global forum organized by the committee began in New York today. This is one of the most influential structures that helps promote decisions for our protection.
I called on them to redouble their efforts so that we could get more modern weapons, more financial support for our state, so that we could end this war sooner.
This week I will continue to address the parliaments of the partner countries, in particular the parliament of the Czech Republic.
Many talks of various levels with European politicians are also planned.
We work every day with the European Union on the candidate status for Ukraine, and our state has done everything for a positive response. The only question is the determination of some European leaders.
We will continue to work to facilitate access of Ukrainian goods to all important markets around the world. Customs duties on trade with the European Union have already been abolished. The United States already applies a duty-free regime for Ukrainian steel. Canada has abolished customs duties. The same regime will work in the near future with Britain. We expect trade liberalization from Australia.
The Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization has started today. Before it began, representatives of 57 countries gathered for a special event of solidarity with Ukraine, and I am grateful to them – to each and everyone – for that. And as a result of this intergovernmental conference, we will learn, in particular, the timing of the decision on trade liberalization for Ukraine from Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland.
So the week will be significant. And I believe that there will be good news for Ukraine.
I am grateful to all who defend our state!
Eternal memory to all who gave their lives for Ukraine!
Glory to Ukraine!
As you can see, President Zelenskyy continues to press for more weaponry. And for that already announced to be sent faster. Last night in the comments Carlo Graziani wrote:
Well, here’s what looks kind of interesting to me.
In Sieverodonetsk there’s a slugfest (not a “stalemate” according to Mark Hertling), probably intended to deliberately grind down Russian manpower resources on terms more favorable to UA than what they could obtaining open countryside.
To the southwest, a new offensive is annoying lower-quality Russian troops guarding the far reaches of the “land bridge” surrounding Kherson.
Somehow, 200 tanks donated by Poland to Ukraine, the only truly “offensive” weapons on the public lists of donations, have not, so far as I am aware, made an appearance on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, this week there have been a number of “poor us, we’re fucked in the Donbas!” news stories peddled in a very consistent manner to Western media, notably the NYT. And more requests for purely reactive, defensive weapons, more artillery to counteract Rusdian artillery.
I smell a rat. I don’t believe the UA have any intention of continuing to be passive playthings in the hands of the Russian army. I think they are husbanding a reserve, and intend to take the initiative, and are play-acting for the sake of misdirection.
There’s a highway between Zaporizhzhia and Melitopol that would make a very nice drive for a strong column of tanks, APCs, dismounted infantry, helicopters, and sundry supplies. If they completed that jaunt, they would really put the cat among the pigeons. The Russians around Kherson, and in Crimea, would be basically fucked — they might as well slit their own throats. And the Russians in the Donbas are basically out of everything.
Just a toy scenario.
This is an interesting argument. It is logically and internally coherent.
However, I am here to smash Carlo’s toy!!!!
The Ukrainian military is fighting the way it is fighting in the Donbas campaign because it has no choice. It is not designed nor equipped to conduct combined arms maneuver warfare at scale. What made the Ukrainian military successful in the defense of Kyiv – small teams/units, small unit tactics, hybrid warfare combining conventional and unconventional warfare elements, and fighting in dense forests, as well as urban areas – is what the Ukrainian military is set up to do. Ukrainian forces have a lot of experience fighting this way. That experience was dearly learned and earned over the past eight years. Additionally, this is not a knock on Ukraine’s tankers or artillerists or its pilots, its just that there aren’t enough of those men and women. And there isn’t enough material and equipment for them.
There are two completely unrelated bits of good news here though.
The first is that while the Russian military is supposed to be capable of conducting combined arms maneuver warfare at scale and in the open, what we’ve learned over the past 108 days is that they can’t actually do it. Their material and equipment is either poorly maintained or really old. Their personnel just aren’t capable of doing what they’re supposed to have been able to do. Unfortunately the Russians have more artillery and air assets, as well as longer range ones, which they’re using to just bombard everything they can reach in Ukraine into dust. They also have more personnel, even if a lot of those personnel aren’t properly trained and don’t really want to fight.
The second is that the Ukrainians are very smart. They’re also determined. And they’re defending their homes. If they lose they don’t just lose and then pack their stuff up and go home. If they lose they lose their home. Which is why President Zelenskyy and everyone else involved in leading Ukraine’s military and diplomatic efforts, as well as a very large amount of Ukrainians in general, are constantly delineating what they need and that they needed it back in November!
The Kyiv Independent‘s defense/military correspondent, Illia Ponomarkenko, provides support for this:
Sorry, had to delete the tweet’s previous version, as it was saying “2,000 MLRSs” which is of course not realistic :)) Just my honest mistake.
This is what experts inside the Ukrainian defense and security sector say regarding an optimal amount of weapons we should get.— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) June 12, 2022
As does Rolling Stone‘s Mac William Bishop in his latest reporting from Ukraine.
NEAR LYMAN, Ukraine — Crossing the final checkpoint into a battle zone feels like a consecration.
The Ukrainian soldiers manning the last friendly post have a singular focus and intensity that’s lacking behind the lines. They wave us through solemnly, without smiles or chatter. We coast through the invisible barrier separating the “front” from the “rear,” then floor the gas and accelerate forward.
I’m in eastern Ukraine in late May, in a region called Donbas, where the war has become a whirlwind of carnage that is claiming the lives of as many as 100 Ukrainian soldiers a day. The casualties on the Russian side are almost certainly even higher, according to Ukrainian defense officials. I’ve heard conflicting reports about what is happening here, about whether the Ukrainian military is collapsing or the Russians are succeeding in breaking through the defender’s lines, cutting off thousands of soldiers. But it’s clear that Russia is inching forward, each day bringing it closer to its goal of annexing the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk and cementing the region under Moscow’s rule.
Ukraine won’t stop fighting. But it is sacrificing thousands of its finest soldiers and still losing ground. It cannot win the war without game-changing foreign-military assistance: American heavy artillery, Danish anti-ship missiles, German air-defense systems — these are slowly making their way to the battlefield. But can the Ukrainian military hold out long enough for any of it to make a difference?
To truly understand what is going on — to get a sense of morale and see how the soldiers are holding up under Russian assault, I must descend into the inferno, and I need a guide. A Ukrainian paratrooper will lead the way.
I’ve called in favors with the commander of a reconnaissance company in an air-assault brigade, and he links me up with an officer whose elite scout unit is operating near intense fighting outside a town called Lyman, a senior lieutenant who goes by the nom de guerre “Mace.”
Mace is soft-spoken and cordial, lean and fit as an endurance athlete. His face is that of a young man, but the salt-and-pepper hair hidden beneath his field hat and his calm self-possession amid chaos reveal he is a seasoned veteran who saw his share of combat before the current invasion. He takes me to the front in a Škoda station wagon, roaring down country back roads at 100-plus miles an hour, blasting techno as the foliage whips past in a blur.
The Russians are ceaselessly hunting Ukrainian heavy weapons, and their rockets, artillery, and missiles can strike anywhere here, at any time. The fields beside us are pockmarked with blast impacts, and the tails of dozens of dud rockets stick out of the earth as if planted by some mad farmer.
“This is hell on Earth,” Mace says quietly. We are watching as BM-21 Grad rockets rain down on Ukrainian positions near a village called Sviatohirsk. It’s impossible to see their individual effects amid the smoke and haze covering the densely forested hills. Standing in an observation post on high ground amid feathery grass and wild garlic, I give up on trying to count individual impacts and instead just count the salvos, timing each barrage. I witness as many as 480 rockets fired on a single position in less than a minute, followed by artillery.
Between my service in the U.S. Marines and over more than a decade as a foreign correspondent, I’ve been engaged in the professional study of organized human violence for 25 years. But I’ve never seen anything even close to this volume of artillery being unleashed.
Mace has chosen our ground well, as you’d expect from an officer in an elite reconnaissance unit. We’re in a fold of earth on a hill that gives us a clear view of the battle raging around Sviatohirsk — a quiet little village nestled among chalk hills, overlooked by a nearly 400-year-old monastery on the opposite side of the river. It lies to our left. We can also see the fighting around Lyman — a key railway junction — to our right.
What these two places have in common is they are on the Russian-occupied side of the winding Seversky Donets River, the main natural barrier to the enemy’s advance. There are tens of thousands of Russian soldiers with hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles attacking here, assaulting in a vast crescent surrounding Severodonetsk, one of the largest cities in Donbas that remained in Ukrainian hands before the invasion began in February.
“Things usually start to really kick off around 3 p.m.,” Mace says. He describes what has become routine for his brigade of paratroopers: Russian scouts move forward to probe Ukrainian positions, then call in large-scale artillery strikes when they make contact. The artillery is followed by masses of armor supported by infantry. It’s classic “combined arms” warfare, and would have been as familiar to a soldier in World War II as it is to Mace.
“The biggest problem is the artillery,” Mace says. “The Russians just have so much.”
What about the long-range artillery being provided by the United States and others?
“It’s just starting to show up on the battlefield,” Mace says. But for now, “there’s just too much artillery. Too many tanks. We are fighting too hard.”
Much, much more at the link! As well as in this Twitter thread by Bishop, which includes pictures.
If we can get the Ukrainians the weapons they need as soon as possible, then they’ll be able to do what needs to be done with them. Every day of delay, whether its because Olaf Scholz is Olaf Scholz or because of any other reason, is day that is good for Russia and bad for Ukraine.
Here’s today’s updated assessment from the British MOD:
You’ll notice that the Brits are highlighting that the Russians have the ability to bring more forces and more artillery to bear in and around Sievierodonetsk and that they are doing so. What they don’t have is the ability to do this at scale and take advantage of the open, flat spaces in the Donbas.
They also have an updated map too!
As you can see, the overall picture still looks stable as the Donbas campaign is a battle for small amounts of territory at a time.
Here’s former NAVDEVGRU squadron leader Chuck Pfarrer’s updated map and analysis of the battle for Sievierodonetsk:
SIEVERODONTETSK/ 1440 UTC 12 JUN/ RU forces attempt to widen urban combat. UKR, fighting from advantageous defensive positions, continue to punish invaders. Airport recaptured. 2 Donets bridges reported cut by UKR Gen’l Staff. Urban Forward Edge of Battle Area (FEBA) stable. pic.twitter.com/nLev1OeTcL
— Chuck Pfarrer (@ChuckPfarrer) June 12, 2022
Russia, using its proxies in Luhansk, have tried, convicted and sentenced to death three non-Ukrainians who were in the Ukrainian military that the Russians captured in Mariupol. Politico has the details:
Top human rights experts are slamming the death sentences handed down by a Russian-backed court in eastern Ukraine this week against two Britons and a Moroccan who were fighting with the Ukrainian army against Russian troops and their separatist allies.
The sentence, announced Thursday after a show trial in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) — an area only recognized as independent by Russia — found that British citizensAIDEN ASLIN and SHAUN PINNER, and Moroccan national BRAHIM SAADOUNE be shot.
It was just the latest in a long line of show trials put on by Russian-backed separatist courts dating to the Russian invasion in 2014, in which lawful Ukrainian combatants have regularly been convicted and sentenced to death in ad hoc “courts.” In the often gruesome spectacles, audiences vote on whether to execute the soldiers. Those proceedings have regularly violated the Geneva Convention.
“There’s no legal basis for the trial” in the DPR this week, according to MICHAEL NEWTON, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, adding that the Kremlin is ultimately responsible for what happens to the men.
“The Russians have the obligation to accord prisoner of war status to all persons who come into their custody or the custody of their proxies,” under the Geneva Convention’s Article Five, Newton said. Once the separatist or Russian troops capture combatants on the battlefield, they are “entitled to all protections equivalent to Russian soldiers,” added Newton, who served as the senior adviser to the ambassador-at-large for War Crimes Issues in the State Department.
International criminal courts and tribunals “use a standard we call overall control, so if you can show that Russia was funding and or organizing in some way, then this is directly imputable to Russia,” said LEILA SADAT, professor of International Criminal Law at Washington University who has also served as the International Criminal Court’s special adviser on crimes against humanity.
“It’s not illegal to serve in the army,” Sadat said, adding that the Geneva Convention’s Article Three “requires that prisoners be tried by an independent, impartial and regularly constituted court … but nothing about this sounds like it fulfills the requirements of an independent, impartial and regularly constituted court.”
VADYM DENYSENKO, a Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser, said on national television Friday that Russia is holding the men “hostage” and their death sentence “raises the stakes in the Russian Federation’s negotiation process. They are using them as hostages to put pressure on the world over the negotiation process.”
U.K. Foreign Secretary LIZ TRUSS said Thursday, “I utterly condemn the sentencing of Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner held by Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine. They are prisoners of war. This is a sham judgment with absolutely no legitimacy.”
In any trial of captured troops, “what should happen is an administrative process under Article Five of the Third Geneva Convention that says ‘here’s the evidence of who these people are, what they did,’ etc. but [the court] didn’t do any of that, they just put them on trial” for fighting off the Russian invasion.
Much, much more at the link!
While Aiden Aslin, aka Cossak Gundi, and Shuan Pinner have gotten a lot of coverage, less has been written about Brahim Sadooune. This Twitter thread has the details:
Brahim was a figure on the underground nightclub scene and had many friends in the city before signing up to join the Ukrainian marines in November 2021. Those friends are deeply concerned about his fate and have launched the social media campaign #SaveBrahim pic.twitter.com/vkXfgV5oyG
— Catherine Norris Trent (@cntrentF24) June 12, 2022
Brahim, like Britons Aiden Aslin and Sean Pinner, whom he knew well, intends to appeal his death sentence. But his friends are concerned that as a Moroccan national, his case will receive less international attention. They’re calling for him to receive Ukrainian citizenship 4/ pic.twitter.com/ggi8N7pwNH
— Catherine Norris Trent (@cntrentF24) June 12, 2022
That’s enough for tonight.
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The story of #Patron and his human 💛💙 #PatronDoge pic.twitter.com/aA6QqFfADP
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Open thread!
War For Ukraine Day 107: Ukraine Counterattacks In Kherson
by Adam L Silverman| 25 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine
Before we get to President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier this evening, let’s start with the news that the Ukrainian forces began a counterattack in Kherson this morning. In Kherson Oblast, Ukrainian forces are conducting a counteroffensive in the directions of Kyselivka, Soldatske, and Oleksandrivka. The village of Tavrijske is completely controlled by Ukrainian Armed Forces, …
War For Ukraine Day 107: Ukraine Counterattacks In KhersonPost + Comments (25)
I wish health to all Ukrainians and all our friends!
The final phase of the big diplomatic marathon, which is to end in a week and a half, has started today. And in this marathon we are actually together with the European Union – in one team, and this team has to win. I am sure that we will soon receive an answer on the candidate status for Ukraine. I am convinced that this decision can strengthen not only our state, but also the entire European Union.
What else needs to happen in Europe to make it clear to skeptics that the very fact of keeping Ukraine outside the European Union works against Europe? For example, everything is already obvious to the Russian occupiers. They say so when they torment our people that it is allegedly for the fact that Ukraine has gone to Europe. And why does Europe have skeptics then?
We will continue to work even harder at all levels to get the right decision. It is very important for us.
Very fruitful talks with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen were held in Kyiv today. I am pleased to note her sincerity. It is the European Commission that will prepare a conclusion regarding our application. Ukraine provided all the necessary answers in a very short time, and it was done well.
There will be many more equally important and, I hope, fruitful talks with European leaders next week.
I talked to the participants of a very representative security forum in Asia, in Singapore. High level. The event was attended by defense ministers and other high-ranking officials from dozens of countries of the region. We really need this region. And I felt that today my address was heard there, arguments were heard and perceived.
News about the distribution of Russian passports in Kherson and the distribution of passports in Melitopol were actively spread in the occupied territories and in Russia. And I looked at who in this news was shown as Kherson and Melitopol residents who allegedly want Russian passports. A few collaborators and people from their entourage… Well, it looked like not a queue to get a passport, but an attempt to get a ticket to flee. Very demonstrative.
The Ukrainian troops are gradually liberating the territory of the Kherson region. Today the village of Tavriis’ke has been added to the list of returned settlements of our state. There is certain success in the Zaporizhzhia region as well.
Fierce street battles continue in Severodonetsk. I am proud of all our defenders who managed to stop the advance of these hostile people, these occupiers for many weeks already and keep our defense strong.
Do you remember how Russia hoped to capture the entire Donbas in early May? It is already the 108th day of the war, it is already June. Donbas is holding on. The losses suffered by the occupiers, including in this area, are extremely significant. In total, the Russian army today has about 32,000 dead souls. For what? What did it give you, Russia?
No one can say now how long this burning of souls by Russia will last. But we must do everything to make the occupiers regret that they have done all this, and to hold them accountable for every murder and every strike at our beautiful state.
Eternal glory to all who defend Ukraine!
Eternal memory to all who died for Ukraine!
Glory to Ukraine!
There was no operational update again today from Ukraine’s MOD, though there were some other updates on the English version of the site. So hopefully whatever is going on with their public affairs is getting sorted out. There was also not a DOD backgrounder today.
Here is today’s assessment from Britain’s MOD:
They did not update their maps today.
You’ll notice that the British assessment is that Russian forces are still not able to make much progress in Sievierodonetsk even as it is still holding a majority of the city.
Here’s former NAVDEVGRU squad leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent map update and analysis regarding the battle of Sievierodonetsk:
SEVERODONETSK / 1630 UTC 11 JUN/ Conflicting information. UKR forces reported by reliable sources to be in control of airport, and may have advanced NE to the important T-13-06 HWY. Heavy combat and shelling continues. pic.twitter.com/88jKAWRx1c
— Chuck Pfarrer (@ChuckPfarrer) June 11, 2022
Horomadske International is reporting that Russia maintains control of 2/3 of Sievierodonetsk:
As of June 11, Ukrainian forces control one-third of Sievierodonetsk in Luhansk Oblast. Intense fighting continues in the city, which is accompanied by constant bombing. Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to push the Russian troops back, said Head of Sievierodonetsk Civil-Military Administration Oleksandr Striuk to BBC Russian Service.
Striuk also said that the territory of Sievierodonetsk Azot chemical plant was “attacked both from the air and from heavy artillery” on June 10. “Yesterday, an ammonia processing plant exploded and a warehouse with chemical waste, which has been burning for 24 hours,” he said.
Striuk added that Sievierodonetsk has been living without a water supply for about two months now because the city is disconnected from the electricity.
“High-voltage lines are damaged, and 70% of substations in the city were destroyed by shelling. There are casualties — mostly from Russian artillery because residential neighborhoods are being constantly shelled. The streets on the city outskirts are completely destroyed,” said Oleksandr Striuk.
On May 25, Serhiy Haidai, Head of Luhansk Regional Military Administration, said that the Russian forces occupied 95% of Luhansk Oblast. There are now more than 40,000 people living in the territory of the region controlled by Ukraine; 99% of this population do not want to leave.
As of the morning of June 10, the Lysychansk-Bakhmut highway remains under Ukrainian control, despite being under constant Russian shelling.
Evacuation from Sievierodonetsk is now impossible. But the Ukrainian authorities manage to “quietly” evacuate people from Lysychansk and Hirske communities and deliver humanitarian aid to those areas. According to Haidai, as soon as Russian troops learn about the evacuation, a humanitarian center, or a working hospital, these points will be immediately shelled.
More at the link!
President Biden made a major strategic communication error at a fundraiser in Los Angeles last night. The Washington Post has the details:
President Biden said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S. intelligence officials raised warnings of a looming Russian attack before the Feb. 24 invasion.
Biden, who along with Congress has deepened U.S. involvement in the global effort to reject the Russian invasion by recently finalizing more than $40 billion in new military and humanitarian assistance, spoke at a Democratic fundraising event in Los Angeles on Friday night, according to the Associated Press and Bloomberg News. The president spoke about the American commitment to supporting Ukraine four months into the invasion, saying, “Nothing like this has happened since World War II.”
During his talk, Biden also mentioned that his administration had warned Zelensky and the Ukrainian government, based on U.S. intelligence, before the invasion began.
“I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating,” the president said, according to the AP.
Biden said he “knew we had data to sustain” that Russian President Vladimir Putin “was going to go in, off the border.”
“There was no doubt, and Zelensky didn’t want to hear it, nor did a lot of people,” Biden said, according to Bloomberg. “I understand why they didn’t want to hear it, but [Putin] went in.”
Ukrainian officials, however, rejected Biden’s account.
Serhiy Nykyforov, a spokesman for Zelensky, told Ukrainian news website LIGA.net that Zelensky had three or four telephone conversations with Biden in the period before the invasion, in which the two leaders discussed the situation. He added that Ukraine had called for preventive sanctions to de-escalate the situation.
“Therefore, the phrase ‘did not want to hear’ probably needs clarification,” Nykyforov said.
Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak echoed Nykyforov, telling LIGA.net that Ukraine knew Russia was planning an invasion but that questions had remained over the scale of any attack.
“It is absurd to accuse a country of resisting the aggressor for more than 100 days, which prevails if key countries have failed to stop Russia as a precaution,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Saturday.
Much, much more at the link!
I don’t care if this is true. I don’t care if President Biden thinks it’s true based on what he’s been briefed by his national security team. I don’t care if his national security team thinks it’s true. YOU DO NOT NEED TO TELL THIS TO ANYONE!!!! ESPECIALLY A CROWD OF PEOPLE WHERE IT IS MOST DEFINITELY GOING TO GET TO THE NEWS MEDIA!!!!!
This is a major strategic communication failure. Completely unnecessary strategic own goal.
That’s enough for tonight.
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Patron the bomb sniffing dog in Lviv pic.twitter.com/VvVOOA4KQO
— Philip Ittner (@PhilipIttner) June 8, 2022
A Ukrainian store on Etsy is selling these in addition to a variety of other stuffed toys – javelins, bayraktars, the Antonov Mriya, etc – and other crafts.
Here’s some more video of Patron sleeping through a press conference:
@patron__dsns
Open thread!
War For Ukraine Day 106: The Battle for Sievierodonetsk Is Being Fought Inch By Inch
by Adam L Silverman| 24 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine
Sorry I’m a bit late with tonight’s update. I’ve been doing a lot of research reading for a project I’m working on, turned off the TV, and was just reading away when I realized that it was 10:30 PM EDT and I hadn’t eaten. Nor had I done the update. Let’s start with President Zelenskyy’s …
Ukrainians!
All our defenders!
A brief report on the passing day. By the way, it is the 107th day of our defense already.
Very fierce fighting continues in Donbas. I repeat these names every day: Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Slovyansk, many, many others. I repeat them at meetings with the military, with diplomats, talking to representatives of partner countries.
Russia wants to destroy every city in Donbas, “every” is not an exaggeration. Like Volnovakha, like Mariupol. All these ruins in once happy cities, black traces of fires, craters from explosions – this is all that Russia can give to its neighbors, Europe and the world.
This is probably the fastest example of the complete degradation of any state – the path that the Russian state has covered in 107 days.
The Ukrainian troops are doing everything to stop the offensive of the occupiers. As much as possible. As much as the heavy weapons, modern artillery – all that we have asked and continue to ask our partners for – allow them to.
I met in Kyiv with Secretary of State for Defence of the United Kingdom Ben Wallace. We talked exactly about this – how to stop Russian aggression, how to deprive it of offensive potential, what other supplies are needed for our army. The Britons demonstrate true leadership in defense matters.
I also addressed the British university community today and talked to students. I work at all levels so that the world can hear us and know what we need.
There were many questions from students about what our life would be like after this war. About reconstruction, attracting leading experts, about the education system.
Of course, we are preparing for a large-scale restoration of our state. Of course, we have already started reconstruction in the liberated territory. Of course, we will change a lot in our lives after this war. And it is good that the world is interested in details, they want to join, they are thinking how to find opportunities to work for Ukraine after our victory.
But the battles are still going on. And right now, in these very difficult battles, it is being decided when this “after” will come. It is being decided at which frontiers we will finally break the plans of the occupiers. And everyone should remind societies in other countries of this. Of the battles that are going on now. Of the support that is needed now. It depends not only on politicians and diplomats. But also on journalists, activists, entrepreneurs, our displaced persons who are abroad.
Now is the time that all Ukrainians must be one – a nation that is fighting and does not allow the world to divert its attention away from what is happening on the battlefield in Ukraine.
I also addressed the participants of the Copenhagen Democracy Summit today. I spoke, in particular, about the response of the European Union, which we expect for our application for candidacy. I will emphasize again and again: this will be the EU’s response not only to Ukraine, but also to its own future – the future of the European project.
I am grateful to the British Government, the World Bank and the Government of Canada for new steps in financial support for Ukraine. The day before, our country received 1.5 billion US dollars: one billion is the World Bank, another 500 million is Britain. Direct budget support. We will use it to pay salaries in the public sector.
Canada, for its part, became the first country to send 1 billion Canadian dollars to our administrative account in the IMF.
The Government of Ukraine has already started implementing the decisions discussed at this week’s meetings.
A bill has been approved that will allow customs clearance of cars through the state service in “Diia”. The whole process of customs clearance will be fully transparent, convenient and immediately remove all the shadow schemes that were possible in previous years in this area.
I hope that the people’s deputies of Ukraine will quickly vote for such a step.
Also today, the government has already presented specific details of new state programs that should provide new jobs and support for business in this very difficult time for all of us. This applies in particular to non-repayable grants for micro-businesses and other special financial support for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Despite all the pressure from Russia, despite all the Russian strikes, we will do everything to revive Ukraine’s economy, economic activity.
In the evening I signed two decrees awarding our heroes. In total, 242 combatants were awarded, eight of them posthumously.
Eternal memory to all whose lives were taken by the occupiers!
Eternal glory to everyone who fights for Ukraine!
Glory to Ukraine!
There’s still no operational update from Ukraine’s MOD posted. At least not in English. There was also not a DOD backgrounder on Ukraine today.
Here’s today’s British MOD assessment:
There are two things to note here. The first is the Brit’s description of the battle for Sievierodonetsk. They’re assessing that Russia has retaken control of most of the city. The second is that they are also assessing a potential cholera epidemic in Marioupol, as well as public health and issues with delivering basic goods and services in Russian occupied territories. Some of this is because Russia doesn’t really care to do these things. Some of it is that they can’t. The manner in which Russia is fighting it’s re-invasion of Ukraine has deliberately destroyed so much infrastructure – hospitals, schools, water treatment facilities, roads, bridges, railways, food storage facilities, government buildings – has made it almost impossible for Russia to properly administer the territory it is illegally occupying even if it wanted to and had the capability to do so. It definitely doesn’t have the capability and I expect it also doesn’t really want to do it either.
There was no updated British map posted today.
The reality is, however, that in theater strategic level terms (macro level), there’s almost no movement being shown. All of the movement is happening at the tactical level (micro level), where there’s small amounts of movement by the Ukrainians and the Russians each day.
Here’s former NAVDEVGRU Chuck Pfarrer’s update map and analysis of the battle for Sievierodonetsk:
SEVERODONETS / 2020 UTC 10 JUN/ Non-UKR sources indicate significant RU advances south of the urban area. Severodonetsk airport reported captured. Urban FEBA stable in heavy fighting. Further RU advances west of airport unlikely. pic.twitter.com/sgd0sYd0iL
— Chuck Pfarrer (@ChuckPfarrer) June 10, 2022
Here’s The Kyiv Independent‘s defense/military correspondent’s take on what is going on based on his sources:
The situation is dangerous, but the Ukrainian command is still pretty confident. https://t.co/bSbbvFWt0f
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) June 10, 2022
The Deputy Director of Ukrainian Military Intelligence, Vadym Skibitsky, gave an interview to The Guardian, which was published this morning. He explains how the Ukrainians understand the Donbas campaign. (emphasis mine)
Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence has said Ukraine is losing against Russia on the frontlines and is now reliant almost solely on weapons from the west to keep Russia at bay.
“This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”.
“Everything now depends on what [the west] gives us,” said Skibitsky. “Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces. Our western partners have given us about 10% of what they have.”
Ukraine is using 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, according to Skibitsky. “We have almost used up all of our [artillery] ammunition and are now using 155-calibre Nato standard shells,” he said of the ammunition that is fired from artillery pieces.
“Europe is also delivering lower-calibre shells but as Europe runs out, the amount is getting smaller.”
Zelenskiy said last week that between 60 and 100 Ukrainian soldiers were dying each day and a further 500 were being injured. Ukraine has kept the total number of its military losses secret.
Soldiers speaking to the Guardian from Ukraine’s frontlines this week painted a similar picture.
Skibitsky emphasised the need for the west to supply Ukraine with long-range rocket systems to destroy the Russian artillery pieces from afar. This week the Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told the Guardian that Ukraine needed 60 multiple-rocket launchers – many more than the handful promised so far by the UK and US – to have a chance of defeating Russia.
Ukraine is set to ask the west for a list of weapons and defensive equipment at the contact group meeting with Nato in Brussels on 15 June.
Skibitsky thinks the conflict will remain predominantly an artillery war in the near future and the number of rocket attacks – which can be launched from Russia and have hit civilians – will remain at their current rate.
“We have noticed that Russia is carrying out far fewer rocket attacks and it has used H-22 rockets; they are old 1970s Soviet rockets,” said Skibitsky. “This shows that Russia is running low on rockets.”
Skibitsky said Russia was unable to produce rockets quickly because of the sanctions and that it had used around 60% of its supplies.
Much, much more at the link!
Yesterday there was reporting alleging that Putin’s FSO security detail collects all his bodily waste when he travels and sends it all back to Moscow for processing. While that was something of a news dump, today we got some clarification from Farida Rustomova, who previously reported for BBC Russia and Meduza.
Russian Federal Guard Service (FSO) agents accompanying Vladimir Putin abroad collect the president’s urine and fecal matter in bags and deliver them to Moscow in a special suitcase, according to Paris Match. Putin’s personal guards are probably doing this to conceal information about the President’s possible illnesses.
But perhaps this peculiar system of conspiracy is arranged somewhat differently, and all secret substances are destroyed immediately on the spot. And it was first reported to the world by a rather unexpected source.
In February 2020, the famous American comedy actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus was a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She was promoting the newly released Downhill movie starring her. While talking about filming it in Austria, the actress recalled a tour of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna arranged for the film crew. During this tour the museum staff told Louis-Dreyfus that prior to their visit Russian President Putin had come there. They revealed they had to set up a special private bathroom outside the museum for him to use when he needed to.
And Putin uses the same “porta-potty” as Louis-Dreyfus called it while traveling and on board his plane, museum staff said. “Like we’re all that interested in his sh*t!” Louis-Dreyfus joked about this, comparing Putin to Dr Evil. She also added that all the fresh flowers had been removed from the museum’s halls for Putin’s sake.
An acquaintance of Putin’s who has worked with him in the past noted in an old conversation with Faridaily that the practice of taking his toilet to foreign trips has been around for years, and the Russian leader has been doing this since the beginning of his rule. While traveling around Russia, his guards have the option of clearing Putin’s used facilities if needed; it is not convenient to do so abroad. At the 2019 Normandy summit in Paris, BBC correspondent Jonah Fisher counted six security guards accompanying Putin to the toilet.
Much, much more at the link! Now everybody go wash your hands!
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First up for you gamers out there:
Patron the landmine finder! You can buy STL or painted model on https://t.co/lajKTfewBb and help to support Ukrainian people#scalemodel #warmongers #paintingminiatures #3dprintedmodels #3dprint #SupportUkraine #StayWithUkraine #patrondog #PATRON #Патрон pic.twitter.com/TFVJkPcfeB
— ZealSight | Flying Dreadnought (@ZealSight) June 9, 2022
And a short video from Patron’s TikTok:
@patron__dsns Доброго вечора, ми з України🇺🇦#патрон #песпатрон #славаукраїні #патрондснс
Open thread!
War For Ukraine Day 105: The Battle For Sievierodonetsk Grinds On
by Adam L Silverman| 28 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine
(Image found here, originally posted here) I’m sure everyone’s focus is on the 6 January Select Committee’s first televised hearing, so I’m going to try to keep this pretty short tonight. That said I do want to start with Putin’s remarks at a conference for young Russian entrepreneurs today. Here is the video I am …
War For Ukraine Day 105: The Battle For Sievierodonetsk Grinds OnPost + Comments (28)
Ukrainians!
All our defenders!
I have recently finished a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron. We talked primarily about defense support. Of course, this is a key topic. I informed Emmanuel about the situation on the frontline, about the possible development of confrontation in the coming days and weeks, about the intentions of the Russian occupiers and about our resistance.
Of course, we talked in detail about Ukraine’s European perspective. We are preparing for a response to our application for candidacy.
The issues of security guarantees for Ukraine and for the whole of Europe were also touched upon. I am grateful that we discussed this topic with the President of France. We continue our work.
I also spoke today with the Prime Minister of Montenegro about the path of our countries to the European Union. In fact, we exchanged experience.
We continue very active work in all the countries of the European Union on a daily basis, so that the situation regarding the candidacy for our country is equally perceived there – in the west, in the east, in the north and in the south of the European Union.
Most Europeans support Ukraine’s integration. And if Europeans support it, politicians who are still skeptical in some countries should not oppose themselves to the people, society and the very course of European history.
I addressed the participants of the ministerial meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It is one of the most influential international organizations in the world. They severed ties with Russia. But substantial decisions are also needed – we need concrete pressure on Russia for what it is doing, including the crisis it has provoked in the world food market.
I held a very important meeting with government officials today. Economy, business, jobs. We discussed actions at three levels – what needs to be done right now, what we can do in the near future, no matter how difficult it is, and what we will definitely do after the war.
The first is a program of special grants to support small and medium-sized businesses. What can already provide new jobs and a new tax base.
The second is the development of our security sector in all its aspects. Both now and in the future. It is also a question of jobs, a question of professionalism and technologies. The security sector in Ukraine must become completely different from what it has been all these 30 years. From the state border to every street, to every school, to every infrastructure object – security must be 100% ensured.
And the third aspect is industrial recovery and attracting investment to the state. Localization, industrial parks, support of the state order, attraction of modern technologies to Ukraine. Relevant state programs are being prepared.
There are many discussions in Ukraine today about what the economic policy of the state should be both during the war and when we restore peace. I want to emphasize one detail. And this detail is fundamental. We have to get used to the fact that there can be only two parts of society – those who defend our independence and those who work in a way to ensure that defense. And this is not a question of one or another economic doctrine, not a question of one or another political position. We simply cannot afford to leave the shadow part of economic life in the country.
Of course, I understand that in some of our regions now, any economic activity – official or nonofficial – is a matter of mere survival. But if we talk about the normal, stable and strong life of society, the work of the state, our defense, we must understand: there are those who serve, and there are those who provide with their work those who serve.
So, this is official employment. This is the payment of taxes. This is the maximum expansion of economic opportunities in our country on legal grounds. And this is a complete modernization of state institutions.
Everyone who works in Ukrainian politics, who influences the public debate, should realize that there will be no more shadow in the country.
I am grateful to our communication workers, who today resumed television broadcasting in Kharkiv after the morning shelling literally within a day. Striking at TV centers, destroying communication channels, leaving people in isolation – these are the tactics of the occupiers, which they really cannot do without. Because openness and honesty are also weapons against everything that the Russian state brings.
The frontline situation today is without significant changes. Severodonetsk, Lysychansk and other cities in Donbas, which the occupiers now consider key targets, are holding on. We have a certain positive in the Zaporizhzhia region, where we manage to thwart the plans of the occupiers. We are gradually moving forward in the Kharkiv region, liberating our land. We are keeping defense in the Mykolaiv direction.
I am grateful to all our defenders who made this possible. Thanks to which we have endured 106 days of full-scale war already.
Eternal glory to all who stood up for our state!
Eternal memory to all who died for Ukraine!
Glory to Ukraine!
There is still no new/updated operational update posted at the Ukrainian MOD’s site. Nor was there a DOD backgrounder today.
Here’s the British MOD’s assessment for today:
And here’s their updated map for today:
Again, its a battle of attrition and inches right now.
Here is former NAVDEVGRU Chuck Pfarrer’s updated map and analysis on the battle of Sievierodonetsk:
SVERODONTESK/ 2145 UTC 09 JUN/ Urban lines of contact remain stable. RU continues heavy shelling. Topographic map shows Russian forces are unlikely to undertake flanking operation north of the urban area. /NOTE: New Map projection/ pic.twitter.com/SlhE8aGBjQ
— Chuck Pfarrer (@ChuckPfarrer) June 9, 2022
And here’s an operational update on what is going on in the battle for Sievierodonetsk by Serhei Haday, who is the administrator of the Luhansk regional administration:
russians control most of #Severodonetsk. The industrial zone is under the #Ukrainian army. Fighting continues in the streets. #Lysychansk is under Ukrainian control. Over 90% of the region is temporarily under russian occupation #UkraineRussiaWar video @AFP pic.twitter.com/tByz3X33QM
— Serhiy Hayday (@serhey_hayday) June 9, 2022
At this link you’ll find an interesting thread focusing on why the Donbas campaign is a battle of inches and attrition and not one of more open maneuver. The author has too many quote tweets and links for me to post the first tweet and then copy and paste the rest into a quote box. The bottom line is that neither the Ukrainian nor the Russian forces have the capabilities – in personnel or equipment – to open up the conflict and take advantage of the open, flat terrain.
I’m not looking to go back and revisit my analysis from last Saturday – for obvious reasons – but I think it is important to pay attention to the fact that the Russians are counting on what I forecast as one possible domestic American political outcome in order for them to achieve their strategic objectives:
This compilation of clips explains why the Russians think they're winning and don't need to negotiate. Spoiler: they're waiting for the GOP to prevail in midterms and abandon Ukraine. They're also encouraged by our media coverage—especially Tucker Carlson.https://t.co/h05qK1g2fs pic.twitter.com/XBw1G3VTHY
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) June 9, 2022
I think that’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron:
🇺🇦🦮You can't have too much of our #Patron , the rescue dog!
Amazing artwork by the participants of a children's contest launched on June 1st, on occasion of Children Protection Day@SESU_UA #StandWithUkraine #UkrainianArmy #StopRussia pic.twitter.com/LLtkTs2t4p— U24 (@u24_news) June 10, 2022
Here’s video of Patron playing with a stick:
@patron__dsns Дивитись до кінця!!😂 #песпатрон #патрон #патрондснс
Open thread!
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