VOVCHANSK UPDATE

As you know the Ukrainians have been successfully pushing the Russians out to the north or the town, and in an effort to reverse their failing position, they launched a counter offensive, largely aimed at regaining the aggregate plant.
Having been ousted from the plant and forced back several streets the Russians have started to dig tunnels to hide their movements.
In order to get their forces into a position they could not refuse to advance, they brought in Chechen Akhmat forces to act as barrier troops and ‘motivation’ to attack.
The fact they have taken to using these Chechens says a lot about the condition of the Russian forces. Depleted, low morale and bordering on mutinous, the  Chechens are never happier than when executing troops who won’t comply and bullying the others into submission by setting ‘examples’. Actual fighting is beneath them.
The attack involved some 18 MTLB vehicles of the 82nd Motorised Infantry with Russians piled on top, racing up the roads between the rubble towards the aggregate plant.
Ukrainian drone operators of the 52nd Infantry saw them coming and they were wiped out. How did they ever think it would be so easy?
125 Russians were killed and injured with 17 of the 18 vehicles destroyed.
It seems it was around this point that the Russians decided to revenge themselves on the aggregate plant, still the most fortified and difficult obstacle in the town. If they couldn’t have it nor could the Ukrainians- hence the use of the massive OAB-900 Thermobaric bomb.
The huge explosion and the way that these detonations work must have been terrifying for the Ukrainians but they still hold the site and the Russians are too exhausted and poorly manned to retake it.
Yet again unimaginable dumb Russian officers are resorting to meatwave tactics when nothing else works.
This hasn’t helped the Russian position in Vovchansk in any way, if anything it’s made it worse.
The inconsistency in Russian officer skills is clearly visible in the way that is starkly different to what’s happened in Vuhledar.
There, Ukraine and allied generals agree, the Russian success has been innovative new tactics and a good strategy, designed to exploit the Ukrainian weakness - the inability to find more men and equipment to change the situation on the ground.
In Vovchansk it’s the same old throw men at it, then use a hammer to crack a nut and it still not work.
Meanwhile elsewhere, Russians still make slow but continuing progress, inching their way towards Pokrovsk.
Putin’s statement that he is not interested in peace talks and that he will continue the war until reaching his objectives - the four annexed Oblasts - in full, has now been reaffirmed.
He thinks he is winning - and he is, by any metric at the most important measure - he is taking land and has the frontline initiative.
That is the only metric Putin uses to gauge success. Until Ukraine can turn that around Putin won’t stop.
A professor giving evidence to congress the other day, I forget his name, said that he saw the whole thing as a mathematical equation ‘x-1’. X is what we should be doing to help Ukraine, -1 is that we are always one step behind and too late doing what needs to be done. Until that becomes x+1 things will only get worse.

‘The Analyst’ MilStratOnX
Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦!