The Ukrainian counterattack the world has been waiting for since start of Spring
has failed. Russia has defeated every Ukrainian effort to penetrate its lines,
and western Leopard 2s and Amerian Bradleys have been all completely destroyed.
At least that's according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, whom maintains the highest of ethical
standards and thus has no reason to lie. We would politely like to disagree with their
assessment of the ongoing counterattack in our first update of the ongoing fighting.
Shaping operations have been ongoing in preparation of the actual attack since
as of at least a month ago when Britain announced it had delivered Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine
just minutes after they started raining down on Russian heads. Shaping operations helped set the
stage for the attack, and by all accounts caught the Russians completely by surprise as they were
not expecting, nor prepared, for the delivery of Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles.
These missiles are low observable, sub-sonic weapons who fly very close to the ground to
evade Russian radar. This significantly limits the amount of warning time an air defense battery
receives of an incoming volley, and thus makes them more difficult
to intercept. While Russia had taken significant preparations to move its
supply depots and command and control nodes out of range of American HIMARs,
it took no such preparations to safeguard against attack by weapons such as Storm Shadow.
Russia has claimed to shoot down most if not all of the British-supplied Storm Shadows,
and yet for several weeks now Russian targets far in the rear areas have been spontaneously
exploding. In a recent attack using Storm Shadow missiles, Chechen senior military commander and
member of the Russiajn Parliament, Adam Delimkhanov, was rumored to have been
killed or at least injured. Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov however refuted the rumors,
despite previously posting on Telegram that he'd been unable to contact Delimkhanov after
the attack. Now, as of June 14th, Kadyrov claims that Delimkhanov is alive and well,
offering a photo of him and Delimkhanov together at some unknown point in the past as 'proof'. If
by alive and well Kadyrov means Delimkhanov is alive and well in Kadyrov's cherished memories,
then he's probably right- but the physical well being of Delimkhanov at the present
on this specific temporal timeline remains a mystery. Other Russian Parliamentary members
claim that Delimkhanov is also alive and well, yet to date nobody has offered any proof and
there's not a single shred of credibility left within the government of the Russian Federation.
The long range attacks seem to have now been focused on disrupting Russia's mobile reserves.
Russia has proven it's about as adept at fighting a war as the average toddler,
but even it recognizes that you can't concentrate all of your forces along a single line of defense.
If you were to do so, you would allow your opponent to simply overwhelm you with numbers at
one single point of penetration. Instead, modern militaries create a line of defense and behind it,
a force of mobile reserves. The defensive line is responsible for slowing an attacker down,
buying enough time for mobile reserves to move in and shore up the defense.
Now it appears Ukraine is seeking to disrupt Russia's ability to maneuver its mobile reserves.
HIMARs and Storm Shadow strikes have taken out bridges, roads, and railways, while continuing
to target Russian supply depots and command posts when discovered. Freezing or even just slowing
down Russia's mobile reserves will allow Ukraine to exploit a penetration and sweep into the flanks
of their defensive line, decimating them in a rear attack. For historical context, a lack of swift
dedication of their mobile reserves doomed the Nazis in World War II during the D-Day invasions,
as the allies penetrated the coastal defenses and exploited breakthroughs to create a beachhead.
While shaping operations are ongoing, Ukraine is now in the starting phases of the ground
action part of the counterattack- yet it's not the battle we've been expecting for nearly a
year now. Instead, Ukraine is engaging in a series of attacks known as reconnaissance-in-force. While
some western equipment has been sighted on the front lines, there is no sign as of June 14th of
the large concentrations of western tanks and IFVs that make up some of Ukraine's reserve battalions.
This means that Ukraine has yet to commit fully to the counterattack, with some estimates
placing half of Ukraine's battalions specially trained in the west still in a reserve state.
Instead, Ukraine has been launching a large scale probing of Russian
defenses. Attacking with smaller units and less heavy equipment,
these recon-in-force maneuvers are meant to map out Russian defense and press them
without becoming decisively engaged. The goal is to see where the Russian line is weakest,
so that it can be immediately exploited by a massed concentration of firepower kept in reserve.
Right now across eastern Ukraine, all the fighting
of the last week has been nothing but the thunder before the lightning storm.
Here we have to make a special note, because while western equipment has not
been dedicated to the fight en masse, there is still some western tanks and IFVs in the
current fighting. We have confirmed losses of American Bradley and German Leopard II tanks,
most famously with up to four Leopard 2s lost in an unfortunate ambush near the front lines
at the very start of the ground offensive. This was a tragic day for Ukraine as the small armored
column made its way to the front line and fell right into a Russian artillery ambush.
This incident is believed to have been the result of poor leadership
on the ground implementing bad doctrine. Perhaps the commander of the assault unit
felt that his forces were safely enough in the rear, but whatever his reasoning,
he failed to implement proper spacing between vehicles. Thus, when spotted by a Russian drone,
the artillery ambush destroyed many of the tightly-packed vehicles, who couldn't maneuver
to safety fast enough. It was a senseless and catastrophic loss of life- and of very scarce
western main battle tanks and IFVs. It was also a propaganda victory for Russia, who immediately
shared footage of the ambush across social media. Even more cleverly though, Russia used different
angles of the same footage to make it seem as if it had destroyed dozens of western tanks and IFVs,
in an attempt to boost its own morale and lower the morale of western supporters who
might see the losses as a sign that providing equipment to Ukraine is a waste of resources.
In fact, media has been largely dominated by footage from Russian sources of Ukrainian losses,
which is creating a false narrative that supports the Russian Ministry of Defense's claims that the
counteroffensive is a failure. What's actually going on is that Ukraine is still operating
under a strict veil of secrecy, with a social media blackout on most of the fighting. This
information vacuum is critical for Ukraine to maintain operational security and surprise
Russian defenders when it chooses to fully commit its reserves in a breakthrough attack-
however it does cede the propaganda initiative to Moscow, who is exploiting it for maximum effect.
What we do know is that losses in equipment are expected in any fighting,
but especially in offensive operations. The fall offensive that swept away so much of Russia's
military was one of the most stunning military operations since the US defeat of Iraq's regular
forces in the second Iraq war. However, it also resulted in the loss of hundreds
of tanks and armored vehicles for Ukraine- though to be fair, Russia was kind enough
to abandon nearly just as many in its panicked retreat, thus replenishing Ukraine's stockpile.
We also know that Ukraine is achieving a limited success in its ongoing assaults, regaining ground
on the flanks of Bakhmut and across the entire eastern front. The Ukrainian government has
officially confirmed the liberation of dozens of smaller villages, but there is yet to be a
massive breakthrough across any part of the front. This is actually bad news for Russia, because it
means that even now it is steadily losing ground despite Ukraine not fully committing its reserves.
These probing attacks are likely part of a strategy to not just probe Russia's defense
for weak points, but to confuse its mobile reserves. Attacking across a wide front,
Russia must maintain its reserves in centralized locations from which they
can quickly respond to any breakthrough- but like Britain in the later part of World War I,
Ukraine is launching small attacks simultaneously across the entire front,
confusing Russian predictions on where the main attack will come.
To make things worse, Ukraine continues to launch attacks on Russia's mobile reserves
and transport infrastructure with long-range precision weapons. Right now it's generally
agreed that Ukraine is feeling for an opening, and by all accounts is ready
to very quickly exploit it while slowing down Russia's ability to commit reserves.
However, it's not all peaches and cream for Ukraine either. Ukraine lacks the ability
to challenge Russia in the air, and has lacked precision long-range weapons until
only recently. This means it's been able to do little to disrupt Russia's six-months long
buildup of defensive fortifications. Now Ukraine faces some of the most formidable
defenses seen in Europe since the second world war, with multiple lines of defense
all protected by vast mine fields, infantry trenches, bunkers, and tank obstacles.
For the US, this would present little challenge as its air supremacy and
long-range strike ability allows it to fix and hammer defenders into oblivion while
engineering vehicles cleared a path. Anyone stupid enough to duck their head out to take
a shot at a mine clearing vehicle would likely find a precision artillery shell landing right
on top of their heads. But Ukraine lacks any form of air supremacy, or really any
air support at all over the front, and due to western hesitation at providing weapons,
is severely limited in its ability to deliver overwhelming amounts of precision fire.
The US and allies have provided Ukraine with the required engineering vehicles, but it will
be a slow and hard fight against a well-entrenched enemy. This is why it will be extremely critical
for Ukraine to achieve a breakthrough and exploit it quickly, getting into the Russian
rear areas and behind the lines of defense. And in small scale, it's achieving exactly that.
The Ukrainians have taken lessons from the US playbook- specifically America's 2003 Thunder
Runs into Baghdad that completely disrupted the Iraqi defense and turned what could have been
a months-long siege, into a relatively easy battle for the American military.
In April 2003, Colonel Eric Schwartz had an idea. He assembled an assault force of 29 Abrams tanks,
14 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and a handful of M-113 armored personnel carriers.
This small force rolled straight into the heart of Baghdad and through Iraqi defensive lines,
moving at a leisurely pace of only 8 miles an hour (15 km). The assault completely disrupted
Iraq's defenders, who were surprised at the brazenness of the assault.
This first thunder run as it would come to be known, moved slowly and
under strict discipline. The vehicles were not to stop for anything save for helping rescue a
damaged or disabled vehicle. Each vehicle had an assigned field of fire, and would
leverage American advantages in accuracy and precision while on the move for maximum effect.
The attack resulted in a stunning victory, with estimated hundreds of casualties on the Iraqi
side and only a single American KIA. A second thunder run with a much larger force two days
later resulted in greater casualties for the US, but was met with similar stunning success
and completely disrupted Iraqi defenses, allowing follow on forces to overwhelm Baghdad's defenders.
Now Ukraine is employing its own thunder runs, albeit at a smaller scale.
The Ukrainian 35th Marine Brigade has become a significant headache to the Russian military,
as it continues a week-long thunder run operation along the Mokri Yaly River,
and penetrating as deep as the now liberated Makarivka, southwest of Donetsk.
The 35th is only made up of about 2,000 soldiers and equipped with a few dozen British Mastiff
and Turkish Kirpi armored trucks, along with an estimated 10 T-80 tanks. Despite being so lightly
armed, the Ukrainian 35th has found great success by exploiting its own version of shock and awe.
With a T-80 tank in the lead, a formation mostly made up of armored trucks blasts its way along and
through Russian lines, only stopping to destroy bunkers or clear the immediate area. The swift,
ongoing attack moves too quickly for Russian defenders to coordinate and defend against,
and exploits Russia's lack of command and control and initiative amongst its military members. With
a heavy top-down command structure, few NCOs, and zero emphasis on individual initiative,
Ukraine's thunder runs are moving too quickly for Russian defenses to adjust.
The 35th however is attacking along one of Russia's less fortified lines, while battles
in better protected areas aren't going as well for the Ukrainians. The 33rd Mechanized and 47th
Assault Brigade have suffered heavy losses in an attack south of Mala Tokmachka. Five
of the combined force's engineering vehicles and three of its six Leopard 2s have been confirmed
destroyed. To blame are extremely dense mine fields and the Russian air force, which for once
was actually doing its job properly and hammering the Ukrainian assault. Without air cover and few
long-range frontline air defense, the Ukrainian attack was thwarted, putting even more emphasis
on the need for Ukraine to receive western jets if it's to truly win this war of aggression.
The key takeaway from what we know of the limited information space is that while counteroffensive
operations have begun, Ukraine has yet to commit decisively to any part of the front.
Thus while losses of men and western equipment can be demoralizing to supporters of Ukraine,
it's important to remember that the nation still maintains a sizable force held in
reserve. It's also important to remember that losses are expected during assault operations,
and the effort to support Ukraine was never about a one-time, war-winning
donation of Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks, but about a commitment to continue supplying
the country with a steady stream of western main battle tanks and other heavy equipment.
But defeats like Mala Tokmachka highlight Ukraine's single and glaring vulnerability:
its inability to provide air defense for frontline units. This is why Ukraine desperately needs F-16s
from the west, and the lifting of the prohibition by President Biden is a good sign of things to
come. Australia recently is also rumored to donate as many as 40 F-18s as it transitions to F-35s,
a significant donation that would have a very real impact in the ongoing war.
While these aircraft will not be operating over Ukraine for a few months, one last thing
to remember about the ongoing counteroffensive is that no matter how it shapes up- brilliant
success or disastrous failure- it’s not the end of the war. Both Russia and Ukraine have
the manpower to continue fighting this war for years even if they suffer catastrophic losses in
the current fighting. This is why the best chance for a swift end to the war is one truly combined
arms assault integrating ground and air power with western equipment, shaping it into a plated fist
that smashes deep into occupied territory and delivers demoralizing losses to the Russians.
Ukrainian will to fight is high, yet as we've seen from the growing number of surrenders in
just this first week of ground operations, Russia's own will to fight is tenuous at
best. Russia knows this too, which is why it has once more instituted the use of blocking
forces to shoot any retreating Russian soldiers. A video from Ukraine is alleging to show just such
a series of executions, as Russian soldiers shoot their fleeing comrades- though there is
some speculation that this may have been staged as a psychological attack on Russian morale.
The use of blocking forces themselves though is very real, and when you have to force your army
to fight by pointing a gun at it's back, it's not the best sign of great successes to come.
The Soviets got away with it in World War II because Hitler was dumb and went against
his commander's best military advice. Ukraine has proven to not be dumb, and is being advised daily
by senior military commanders from the most powerful military alliance in human history.
Now counterattack boredom and go check out Ukraine's plan to
move the war inside Russia, or click this other video instead!