SITREP 7/24/24: General Syrsky Shocks With News of Russian Armour and Troop Surges – Simplicius
Thu 7:36 am +01:00, 25 Jul 2024
After a brief hiatus marking a period of attempted deflection, where Ukraine and its Western sponsors tried desperately to misdirect our gaze to Russia’s putative ‘high losses’, this week has seen a spate of new articles again proclaiming Ukraine’s dire frontline straits. The first comes from Kiev Independent which describes the grim conditions on the Toretsk front: There’s nothing noteworthy to quote—just the same old talk of high casualties, battered and beaten old soldiers hanging on by a thread—though it does give some insights into the ongoing Russian breakthroughs in that direction. A new piece from The Economist gives another very interesting tidbit. The article deals with Vadym Sukharevsky, Ukraine’s head of the Unmanned Systems Forces, i.e. the drone czar of all Ukraine. The article notes this is the first position of its kind in the entire world, which does show how ahead of the curve Ukraine is when it comes to drones; as I’ve always said, it’s a consequence of necessity for Ukraine. Russia can afford to be slightly more lax because they have a plethora of offensive options, whereas Ukraine has virtually nothing but drones to lean on. But if you think that means Russia is behind on drones, as the common narrative goes, think again: Ukraine’s drone czar puts the final, decisive stamp on this much-debated fine-point: So, according to the literal head of the entire Ukrainian drone program, Russia at worst is at qualitative parity with Ukraine, but is ahead of them quantitatively six to one. Pro-UA propagandists have no further ground to stand on on this issue. But what’s even more interesting is the following revelation. Read the snippet in its entirety, as it pertains to a lot of issues centrally covered here for the past few months: So firstly, the drone czar makes another huge revelation, which totally refutes claims that Ukraine can possibly be inflicting more casualties on Russia. He states clearly that drones have not superseded artillery on the battlefield—so how can Ukraine possibly be suffering less casualties when Russia has by far its largest advantage in artillery? A moot point anyway, we now know, since according to him Russia has the droneadvantage as well. But then he goes on to dismiss all the far-flung talks of AI drone swarms and the like, perhaps refuting all the highly ambitious DARPA and Eric Schmidt (“Project White Stork”) initiatives that were said to be on the cusp of turning the tide of the war against Russia. The article ends with this foreboding clincher from the drone czar:
Next we have the Guardian with this beauty: It starts off from the get-go with a bit of unintentional humor, exposing its journalists as not being much acquainted with the concept of OPSEC: But the next series of admissions is so shocking, you might need to take a seat for this—and no, I’m not being hyperbolic or clickbaity. Read the following, then read it again: There’s so much to unpack there, I have to do it in sequence. Firstly, to this day, I’m the only analyst in the world that has maintained the true total force numbers of the Russian invasion were below 100k, while everyone else had their head in the clouds with the CNN numbers of 250k and up. Here, for the first time, it appears the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces himself confirms Russia’s opening force was only 100k strong. Many will recall I estimated it at various times to have been 80-120k or less, versus a Ukrainian Army that was already 250k+ itself at the time, prior to emergency mobilizing hundreds of thousands more. Mark that as another feather in the ol’ cap. The next shocker: the Russian Army is on pace to hit nearly 700,000 troops by the end of 2024? How in the world is that possible? You’ve just been telling us they suffer something like 100k deaths per month and are being absolutely slaughtered by the mighty AFU. This simply doesn’t make sense. Could it be that, perhaps, I was right again, particularly about how MediaZona numbers were desperately covered up as they began to hit historic lows, and Ukraine began to overcompensate for its own ongoing collapse by drumming up fake Russian losses? The next one is related, which we just discussed at length in one of the last reports. Russian tanks not only outnumber Ukrainian ones by several orders of magnitude but have grown from 1700 to 3500? Artillery has tripled while Russian armored personnel carriers went from 4500 to 8900? Weren’t they just gaslighting us that Russia is running out of tanks and IFVs, producing only 50 barrels a year, etc.? What is this sudden revolutionary about-face? Interestingly, Syrsky acknowledges recent rumors of a new Russian Zaporozhye offensive, which went as follows:
Of course, Syrsky had to throw at least one obligatory bone to the company line somewhere, lest all hope seem lost, thus he trotted out the old losses canard, despite it totally contradicting earlier manpower figures:
Quite convenient though how Ukraine’s own losses, however, remain too “sensitive” for publication. In fact, Zelensky himself recently has been making odd hints at growing Ukrainian losses, coupled with calls for the war to end. As a final confirmation of my own analysis, Syrsky admits that Ukrainian F-16s would likely be relegated to playing air defense roles and says Russian air defenses and airpower is too great for F-16s to be allowed anywhere near the frontline. Syrsky also finishes the article by hinting at Ukraine’s own mobilization woes, and how troop numbers are difficult. He was likely not at great liberty to give a genuine accounting of the matter, but for that we have other adjacent sources, like Major General Riho Yukhtegi of the Estonian Armed Forces:
Note specifically what he says how many Ukrainian brigades claim to be staffed, when in actuality they’re not. Here’s another new confirmation of the fact from a real Ukrainian officer:
This was reportedly confirmed by Ukraine’s former Deputy Chief of General Staff:
In fact, there have been so many large-scale strikes on Ukrainian deployment points just this week alone, that it seems at least 500-1000 soldiers or more have perished in only 3-4 different Iskander attacks. I’ve nearly lost count of them all, but here’s a few reported ones just from the past several days:
This Iskander attack was said to have wiped out 50 mercenaries in the Kharkov region:
This one reportedly wiped out even many times more:
Today’s Iskander attack even wiped out a Ukrainian tank repair facility in the Kharkov region—check out the drone’s new AI detection capable of isolating every tank in the picture: And there was even an Iskander strike on the Ukrainian 61st Brigade for good measure:
Now a Ukrainian economist has reportedly claimed on video that internal budgetary figures confirm at least 400k casualties:
Rezident UA channel corroborated with the following slice:
It may say dead and wounded, but in reality we know Ukraine pays nearly nothing to actual wounded, so any budgetary constraints would likely stem from dead or severely wounded only. Here’s a recent video of a crippled AFU veteran who literally shows his government pay outs to his account on his phone—it comes out to $36 per month: If you’re thinking maybe 1,500 UAH is a lot, the average Ukrainian monthly salary, a cursory web search shows me, is nearly 25,000 UAH; so you decide how charitable that 1,500 from Zelensky really is. — Now the AFU continues collapsing on the front. Rob Lee reports:
Deepstate_UA reports:
Here’s one of the above-named retreats, where a whole conga-line of AFU was covered with artillery: In fact, Julian was hardly pleased with Ukraine’s recent disasters: Deepstate UA channel had even more to share about the collapsing AFU lines around Prohres/Progress. Note what they say about Ukrainian units of the 31st Brigade being surrounded in the kettle, with “company management absent because the commanders have been wounded or killed”: Last time we spoke about Progress falling, now Vovche just to its south has been fully captured:
Now Novoselika the First is close to falling: Which is just south of Progress and Vovcha: And might I mention that in that region a Ukrainian Abrams got stuck in a rut and was finished off by Russian Krasnopol shells:
What’s particularly interesting about that occurrence is this new chart showing how incapable the elephantine Abrams is of operating in such terrain due to its extreme weight liability:
But going on. North of Progress, the area to the flank of Niu York is being enveloped in a cauldron as well: Lastly, Russia launched what is claimed by Ukrainian sources as one of the largest armored assaults thus far, perhaps as prelude to the rumored Zaporozhye build up. The assault was reportedly in the Kurakhove direction, west of Marinka:
As per usual, a highly edited video was released showing totally de-contextualized explosions, with commentary claiming dozens of tanks lost, 40 infantry killed, etc. But in reality, no such thing is shown and the deliberately schizo editing is a testament to deceptive concealing of Russian advances: For all we know, half the randomly shown explosions in the video are Ukrainian units blowing up. Same goes for the destroyed tank husks littering the battlefield, most of which are from past battles, many of which likely belonging to the AFU. A longer graphic version does show a few soldiers dead, but hardly even a fraction of the 40 they claim. Either way, it demonstrates the scale of armored assaults Russia is still pouring out despite being close to “running out of tanks”. — I’ll leave you with this fascinating video of a captured Ukrainian ex-con with a long rap sheet, which includes murder. He explains how his commanders instructed his penal unit that upon liberating Volchansk, they would be ‘rewarded’ with freedom to invade Belgorod, where they’d be given carte blanche to “rob and rape” anyone as they saw fit: Your support is invaluable. If you enjoyed the read, I would greatly appreciate if you subscribed to a monthly/yearly pledge to support my work, so that I may continue providing you with detailed, incisive reports like this one. Alternatively, you can tip here: buymeacoffee.com/Simplicius |