TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 72 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
✈️ In the Murmansk region of Russia, an airplane was accidentally fired upon, mistaking it for a UAV, — Russian media
REPORTING FROM UKRAINE:
Russian forces are carrying out relentless "meat wave" assaults near Vuhledar, sending large numbers of infantry directly toward Ukrainian positions. Under heavy mortar and artillery fire, the soldiers are advancing with little regard for casualties, often forced to walk over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Ukrainian defenders maintain their positions, repelling the assaults with devastating firepower.
https://t.me/EveryUkraineWarVideo Subscribe
VUHLEDAR: RUSSIANS LAUNCH MEATWAVE ATTACK
In the last report on Vuhledar I said how the Russians were coming at the town from twin axis approach, pushing well to the south and north in a large pincer movement.
In order to accelerate the northern part of the operation they launched an attack towards the village of Vodiane to ensure the cutting of an important highway supply road further. That then lets them advance to the key fortified site of the South Donbas Coal Mine, with its slag heap that has commanding views over Vuhledar.
There had already been a MadMax run at the village by a group of motorcycle infantry that dashed across the fields only to be cut down before they got half way.
This was immediately followed by a mass infantry attack - with several hundred Russian infantry spread over about a kilometre, under heavy mortar and artillery attack in a scene that could have come straight out of the First World War. At times they literally had to climb over their dead to move forward.
Eventually those who make it through to the target tree line are required to prepare again, a figure that equals about 3% of the manpower committed. They then prepare to make a further move forward.
All the time this is happening more troops are being fed into the line to cross the death zone so that those surviving it can back up the first survivors and so on.
Eventually they reach the target village and enter homes and basements waiting for more troops to get through. The cost of doing so however has been shocking - yet they seem not to care at command level, although you can imagine the morale of those who underwent the ordeal.
The scale of losses has been staggering and there’s no way, even having reached the village they can repeat that so quickly, to capture the coal mine which is just a couple of kilometres away and visible in the distance - over open terrain and on higher ground.
The loss of manpower has been making itself felt across the frontlines where attacks towards Pokrovsk have failed completely to make further gains despite intense efforts. The Russians don’t have the reserves they did to sustain the attacks they make.
The Russians may not be willing to admit it to Putin just yet, but they are reaching the point they need to stop the offensive and consolidate. Their fear is if they stop then some kind of Ukrainian counter offensive will take place before they can fortify what they’ve taken.
Overall the Russians had established a pace of operations that they had managed surprisingly well, stabilising the loss rate to their ability to replace it both in men and machines. However the machine loss rate has risen significantly above their aim and ability to sustain it as the battles intensified, and time pressure forced them to increase use beyond the sustainable.
Manpower has become an issue because without the machinery they have to resort to old tactics and those are hugely costly.
Now they are way beyond the point of sustainable manpower operations there’s only one way for the offensive to go - culminating sooner than expected and before reaching their main targets.
The level of slaughter the Russian dictatorship is willing to sacrifice is seemingly limitless for the slightest of goals. Any normal country would be asking questions of its military and its leadership over how any of this was even vaguely justifiable. Russian though is not normal. It has never been what we regard as normal - not once in its entire history has it ever been a grown up socially and politically developed country. Feudalism, religion be it Russian orthodoxy or the orthodoxy of communism, has always been the way of government. Putin is just a modern version of Czarist elitism ruling over a modern feudal system. There is nobody but the boyars - the men who control the day to day who can affect any change. And they don’t see Putin as weak enough to make it.
‘The Analyst’ MilStratOnX
Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦!
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 72 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
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