The bloody and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Putin continues. Neither side has been
able to achieve a decisive breakthrough on the battlefield for months since Ukraine’s
counteroffensive in Kherson. The Ukrainian army has been trying to advance on the Zaporizhia
front and the Bakhmut section, while Russia appears increasingly threatening on the North
Luhansk front. But in general, the situation on the battlefield remained rather stable in
the first half of August, except for several notable developments, which we are going to talk
about in this video. Welcome to another update of Kings and Generals on the war in Ukraine.
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On the Zaporizhia front, Ukraine continued making gains, but their pace of advance remains slow
as the obstacles in the form of solid defensive fortifications and dense minefields persist.
According to Ukrainian sources, it takes 8 hours for Ukrainian sappers to demine 1 kilometer of
passage. In some areas, there are eight lines of mines, which is roughly 1000 mines per kilometer.
According to the spokesperson of the Tavriisk grouping of the Ukrainian Army, Serhii Kuzmin, the
Russian army has 150k manpower in the Zaporizhia, Kherson and Crimea area, as the Russian command
has reportedly been moving reserves there to deal with a shortage of soldiers. Elements of the 5th,
35th, 36th and 58th Combined Arms Army are currently deployed in this theatre of war,
and if the reported number of soldiers is true, then the lack of manpower on the Zaporizhia front
is no longer a problem for the Russian army. The Ukrainian command claims that Russians
are losing 2-3 companies every day, but there is no way to prove this at this point. We will
see in the future if the deployment of more units would harm the defensive and offensive
operations of the Russian army in Donbas and Luhansk, but so far, we have not witnessed it.
According to the Ukrainian defense ministry, the AFU has managed to break through the first
Surovikin line in an unspecified area, but most probably that is southeast of Robotyne,
where the Ukrainian army continued to advance. Most of the fighting on this front continues in
the Velyka Novosilka axis and the Orikhiv axis. On August 9, Ukrainians made gains near Pryyutne,
while the 38th Marine Brigade reportedly entered Urozhaine. 3 days later, Russian sources reported
heavy fighting inside this town, and by August 16, Urozhaine was liberated. There are also reports of
Ukrainian advance southeast of Robotyne. The AFU has also reportedly entered Robotyne on
August 11. By the 15th, the Ukrainians were in the center of the village. Russian bloggers have
claimed that elements of the Akhmat Battalion and other units have been deployed to Robotyne
to stop the Ukrainian liberation of this village. Ukraine also continues to target key supply lines
into South Ukraine. On August 6, Storm Shadows damaged the Chonhar road bridge once again,
while on August 13, Ukraine launched several S-200 missiles and 20 Mugin-5 drones on the
Kerch Bridge, which according to Russian sources, were all shot down. As of August 13,
the amount of damage to the Kerch Bridge, if any, is unclear, but there was smoke over the bridge
after strikes, which Russian sources attribute to smokescreens employed by the Russian air defense.
But perhaps the most notable development in South Ukraine in the first half of August,
was the Ukrainian operation on the left bank of Dnipro near Kozachi Laheri. Sources differ on the
nature of this operation, with some claiming that it was merely another raid, while others believe
that Ukrainians managed to create a bridgehead near this village. On August 9, Ukrainian special
forces crossed Dnipro in 7 motorboats, pushed out the 1822nd battalion of the Russian army
from its positions, took several prisoners and advanced for up to 800 meters. Russian sources
reported that the Ukrainian group was defeated and pushed back, but other sources have insisted that
the AFU has actually expanded a bridgehead near Kozachi Laheri. This development is significant,
if the Ukrainian army is not merely raiding to draw more Russian reserves to the Dnipro area,
but has actually created a bridgehead on the right bank of Dnipro. Kozachi Laheri is beyond
Dnipro’s tributary Konka and near the T2206 highway, which gives the AFU a choice to open
the second front in the South by moving towards Crimea or the Zaporizhia oblast.
This may stretch Russian lines in the South thinner, risking a Ukrainian breakthrough. A
working bridgehead over Dnipro would be a game changer for the Ukrainian counteroffensive,
but we are still at a stage where we are not even sure if there is a bridgehead at all,
let alone a bridgehead that is suitable for a constant deployment of troops and equipment.
In the Bakhmut section, the situation remained relatively stable despite very heavy fighting.
Fighting still rages in the South in Klischiivka, Kurdyumivka and Andriivka and in the North near
Berkhivka, Khromove and Dubovo-Vasylivka. Despite controlling dominant heights near Klischiivka,
Russians are still resisting inside the city. According to Ukrainian sources, by August 4,
the AFU was in control of half of Klischiivka, while having fire control over the rest of the
town. On August 9, Russia reportedly pushed out Ukrainian forces from Berkhivka in the north.
Ukraine is still looking to take the T0513 highway, both north and south of Bakhmut,
to cut supply lines from these directions into the city, along with having Bakhmut
under the fire control of the Ukrainian artillery. On the North Luhansk front, Ukraine’s situation
continued to deteriorate. On August 5, heavy fighting was reported in Novoselivske. Within
the next few days, Russia managed to completely push out the Ukrainian defenders from this town.
The Russian advance on this front has prompted the Ukrainian government to declare evacuation
of 53 settlements of the Kharkiv oblast. The Russian army also advanced south of Lyman Pershyi,
reached the town of Synkivka and made gains around Kyslivka and Kotlyarivka. Sources reported that
Ukrainian reinforcements were being sent to this front in order to stabilize the situation. So,
if the situation does not change on the North Luhansk front in favour of Ukraine
in the foreseeable future, it may be possible to argue that the Russian command has reached
at least some of the goals of its offensive here, by pushing closer to the river Oskil and forcing
the Ukrainian army to send reinforcements. In the first half of August, sides continued
exchanging aerial attacks. On August 1, Ukrainian drones were launched on
downtown Moscow. On August 2, Russia once again attacked the port infrastructure in Odesa oblast,
destroying 40k tons of grain. On August 4, Ukrainian special forces heavily damaged the
SIG oil tanker near the Kerch Bridge using naval drones. SIG was one of the most modern
and powerful oil tankers that Russia had. But SIG was not the only target of Ukrainian naval
drones on this day, as they also damaged the Olenogorsky Gornyak landing ship. On August 5,
a Ukrainian drone was shot down near the Vnukovo airport, forcing them to stop all flights for
some time. On August 9, Ukraine destroyed the Zagorsk Optics Manufacturing Plant in Sergiev
Posad. The Ukrainian government claims that its air defences have shot down 3500 aerial targets
since the start of the Russian invasion. The one recent trend which we can notice here is
the increased number of strikes in the Black Sea and its shore since the Russian exit from
the grain dail. According to Reuters, Ukrainian attacks on Russian vessels in the Black Sea are
already starting to cause problems for Russia. Following these attacks, the insurance cost of
transportation vessels has increased. In general, the war continues to significantly damage the
economies of both countries. Although the drone attacks on Moscow do not cause massive damage,
they tend to stop the Moscow airports functioning, delaying the flights for hours at a time,
which creates both financial and psychological problems for Russia. On the other hand,
according to Ukrainian prime minister Shmyhal, the war costs almost 2 trillion hryvnia every year,
some 54 billion USD, which is partly covered by the financial aid of Kyiv’s allies. In the same
period, the Russian ruble continued to devalue. As of August 13, 100 rubles equals 1 USD.
Despite its economic struggles, the Ukrainian government continues conducting measures to
ramp up its internal military production. In our previous videos, we reported about the
manufacturing of Ukrainian-made drones, and now Kyiv is producing more ammunition. According to
the Ukrainian minister of strategic industries Kamyshin, Ukraine will start producing 155-mm
shells of NATO standards by the end of the year. He also added that in July alone, Ukraine produced
twice as many mortar and artillery shells as they did in the whole previous year. The Zelensky
government has also cracked down on oft-criticized and corrupt chiefs of conscription offices. On
August 11, Zelensky dismissed all of them, responding to the increased dissatisfaction of
the Ukrainian public with the work of conscription offices. This move is an indication that Zelensky
intends to fight corruption in Ukraine and is not going to wait until the end of the war to do that.
Ukraine’s allies continued to provide military aid to Kyiv in the first half of August. The Financial
Times reported that the United States has agreed with Bulgaria and South Korea on the supply of
their 155-mm shells to Ukraine. Similar talks are ongoing with Japan. On August 3, the ORYX
blog reported that Poland supplied all 200 pledged Rosomak armored personnel carriers. On August 6,
Czechia gave Ukraine a simulator to train pilots on F-16. Also on that day the German MP from the
ruling party stated that Germany is going to give Ukraine Taurus long-range missiles after all,
which the Ukrainian MP Cherniev echoed. Taurus has up to 500 km of range depending
on the modification and will bolster Ukraine’s capability of long-range precision strikes adding
to its arsenal of Storm Shadows and SCALP-EG. On August 8, the Pentagon representative Singh
confirmed that the Biden administration had given the green light for the training of Ukrainian
pilots on F-16s. We are edging ever closer to an announcement of the delivery of F-16 jets,
but the timeline of supply and the number of planes to be provided is still unclear. Also,
on August 8, the German Rheinmetall Corporation purchased 50 Leopard 1 tanks to donate to the
Ukrainian Army. On the following day, Germany pledged two more Patriot launchers, 10 Bandvagn
206 all-terrain vehicles, more 155-mm smoke ammo, 5 border protection vehicles, 4 VECTOR drones,
100 MG5 machine guns and 40k first aid kits. On August 10, the Associated Press reported about
the intention of the United States to send more military aid to Ukraine, including munition for
HIMARS, Patriot, unspecified howitzers and tanks, more Javelin, mine-clearing equipment, demolition
munition and so on worth 200 million dollars, but this has not been announced officially yet. The
Biden administration has also requested 13.1 billion dollars from Congress for additional
military aid and 8.5 billion USD for economic and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Also, on August 10,
Azerbaijan pledged more demining vehicles to Ukraine and offered training to Ukrainian sappers.
On August 11, the Netherlands sent 6 mobile medical complexes to the Ukrainian border guard.
There are different opinions about Western military aid to Ukraine. Undoubtedly,
Western military support is keeping Ukraine in the fight, but is it enough to achieve an advantage
on the battlefield? The Polish President Duda certainly thinks it is not. According to him,
Ukraine does not have enough weapons to change the balance of the war. But the US official Kirby
believes that the USA has given everything that Ukraine has asked for its counteroffensive. On
August 6, the Washington Post provided detailed information about American support to Ukraine.
According to them, the US government has already sent 66.2 billion dollars worth of aid to Ukraine,
43.1 billion of which was for military needs. These are big numbers, but the criticism of the US
with regard to its slowness and indecisiveness is not entirely misplaced. It took months of requests
by Kyiv for the US to send HIMARS. Then it took months for Ukraine’s allies to send them tanks,
but the US has still not sent promised Abrams tanks. After months of procrastination,
Ukraine has got its long-range missiles, and it is not entirely clear why the United States has
not made a similar pledge regarding ATACMS. Would the situation on the battlefield be different had
the United States and its allies agreed to send weapons faster? Would the initial Russian advance
be halted faster had the AFU received HIMARS earlier? Would the Ukrainian counteroffensive
be more successful, had the West sent tanks earlier, preventing the Russian army from
digging in on the Zaporizhia front? We cannot know for sure, but one can certainly argue so.
The most notable diplomatic activity in this period was the conference on the war
in Ukraine organized by Saudi Arabia on August 5-6. Despite maintaining relations with Russia,
Saudi Arabia did not invite the Kremlin to this conference. Diplomats from 42 countries travelled
to Jeddah, Ukraine proposed its 10-point peace plan, China proposed its 12-point peace plan,
and talks were held, but as expected, no breakthrough was achieved. The Ukrainian
officials are already voicing their concerns about the autumn. The foreign minister Kuleba
said on August 12 that he expects a tough Autumn, a very difficult political season due to more and
more voices pushing Kyiv to negotiate with Russia. This concern is valid. It looks like Ukraine has
to achieve tangible progress on the battlefield to continue hoping for more Western aid, particularly
with the US presidential elections coming up in a year where, undoubtedly, various groups against
supporting Ukraine will galvanize for the change of the American course on the war in Ukraine.
In the meantime, we got more reports about Russian losses. Based on images from Google Earth,
the Moscow Times has calculated the number of old Soviet tanks and armored vehicles that the Russian
government has sent into Ukraine from the biggest known storage in Vagzhanovo. In September 2021,
there were up to 3840 vehicles in Vagzhanovo. In November 2022, only up to 2600 vehicles were
remaining, the number which dropped to 2270 by May 2023. While this is just one known storage of old
tanks and armored vehicles, the open source data demonstrate that more than 1500 vehicles have been
sent to Ukraine, with the bulk of them probably already been destroyed, as demonstrated by the
Oryx blog, which calculates the number of visually confirmed losses by both sides. As of August 13,
the visually confirmed losses suffered by Russia are 2218 tanks, 4494 vehicles, 246 command posts
and communication stations, 870 artillery systems and vehicles, 255 multiple rocket launchers,
84 aircraft, 101 helicopters, and 281 drones. For Ukraine, these are 607 tanks, 1869 vehicles,
16 command posts and communication stations, 365 artillery systems and vehicles, 50 multiple rocket
launchers, 69 aircraft, 32 helicopters, and 162 drones. In terms of manpower losses, the only
notable report was the speech of the commander of Russian airborne forces - VDV, Teplinsky. In this
speech, he claimed that the number of wounded VDV personnel, who then returned to the war,
was 8500 people. Assuming that some could not return to the war, it is possible to deduce the
number of wounded VDV soldiers at 10k. Since the usual ratio of KIA to WIA is ⅓, at least,
according to Russian sources, the number of VDV who died in Ukraine is close to 3k. There has
been no other information about manpower losses for either side. According to New York Times,
American intelligence reports that 120k Russian soldiers have died since the start of the war,
while up to 180k were wounded, while the Ukrainians have lost 70k dead and 120k wounded.
The murmurings in the Russian blogosphere suggest that Putin is once again considering mobilization,
which lends credence to the NYT report. Our series on the Russian invasion of
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