SITREP 8/6/24: Shaky Start of Zelensky’s Risky Gambit to Deflect Disaster – Simplicius
Wed 10:17 am +01:00, 7 Aug 2024 Events have accelerated today in Ukraine and elsewhere. Today, Zelensky decided to launch what some Russian commentators are calling the single largest land assault into Russian territory of the entire SMO thus far. What stood it apart from the previous mid-level raids on Belgorod region and such, is that this time it wasn’t the ‘Russian Legion’ paramilitary group—made up of disgruntled traitor Russians—but rather the full force of the AFU itself, by way of the 22nd Mechanized Bridge, from what I’ve seen so far. Details are still coming in, but it’s said to have been around 3 battalions or 1 brigade in size, though some report several hundred troops for now. The attack was decently well-coordinated and utilized the full breadth of combined arms warfare, with Ukrainian forces leading with a mass FPV drone attack, and pulling up mobile air defenses to cover the advancement. One of them, a Buk-M1, was hit by Russian cluster munitions—likely from the Tornado-S GMLRS: It was initially reported to be 2 Buks, but in reality it appears the video shows the same one being hit twice then finished off. Iskanders were in play, hitting entire columns of Ukrainian light armor: While Lancets and other munitions were finishing them off, with potentially a couple dozen or more AFU vehicles destroyed, which included a few tanks, Strykers, and other light MRAPS:
One tally allegedly counted dozens of destroyed vehicles: One of the geolocated vehicle graveyards: Nasa FIRMS heatmaps: As can be seen, it’s about a good 6km from the border that the raid pushed into.
Russian Su-25s also swooped down in response over Kursk region highways lined with vehicles wrecked by Ukrainian drones: However, it was not without losses for the Russian side, as a Ka-52 was hit by the air defense, as well as another—as of yet undetermined—helicopter, possibly an Mi-8. Furthermore, two Russian T-62M tanks being transported on HETS were taken out by the advanced-deployed FPVs. Also, several Russian border conscripts were captured. These losses caused some on the pro-Russian side to go into a meltdown, claiming Russia was unprepared, heaping blame on the MOD. In reality, as far as I can tell, Russia knew very well in advance of this assault. Not only were there cross-border clashes recently but a large amount of Ukrainian troops were noted to have been building up in Sumy by observers, such as the pro-RU commentator “Masno” who lives in the Sumy region and noted the buildup as recently as a week ago. Furthermore, for those who’ve read my latest paywalled article from last night, you’ll note I referenced a rumor that Zelensky could launch a northern misdirection attack prior to the real vector in the south, toward Energodar—although this rumor had stated Kharkov, rather than Sumy specifically. From yesterday’s article: Of course, this wasn’t expected until possibly another 2 months or so, but the current breach could just be a test or precursor of some kind. Rezident UA channel seems to support this theory:
And Russian sources are indicating that what we’ve seen so far today may just be the appetizer, as Ukrainian forces are pulling up more reserves and are said to redouble the attack tomorrow. One corroborating report:
Where are they getting these forces, if Ukraine is supposed to be so short on men? It’s hard to say because we don’t know all the details yet, but a few hundred to a thousand men is really not that great of an amount to spare for a desperate side operation. Plus, some like Apti Alaudinov are saying that this is Ukraine’s last hurrah, and after this they’ll be spent. I don’t think that’s the case, but we’ll see. Also, a new article in German Tagesspiegel magazine appears to have the answer: According to them, Ukraine merely sends all new recruits to newly constructed brigades rather than replenishing brigades on the front, which are drastically losing manpower. Summary:
This was supported by a new statement from Ukrainian Rada secretary Roman Kostenko:
This leads to the next natural question though: why did Zelensky launch this now of all times? The most likely reason—or at least only one that seems obvious at the moment—is that Ukraine’s Donbass collapse is picking up such speed right now, that Zelensky needed a desperate PR victory to deflect from Russia’s crushing successes. Alexander Khodakovsky summarized it best:
There’s also the consideration that so much has been going on in the headlines recently, what with Israeli-Iran escalation and now the huge financial crash, Zelensky likely felt Ukraine slowly slipping from the headlines, and needed to give it a jolt, lest it be totally swept out of the news cycle. At the same time as Ukrainian forces were heading into Kursk region, Russian forces not only announced the capture of New York, but that capture even stitched up a whole cauldron from which a major contingent of AFU were forced to retreat out of. It’s unknown yet exactly how far Russian forces went, as initially the map looked like this, earlier in the day: But as AFU units in the cauldron to the right began to flee, there were claims it was being cinched up: With this set to be soon: Thus, we can only assume that the ongoing collapse was beginning to be such a major drain on Zelensky’s ability to keep up appearances for his peanut gallery that he was forced to try and create some symbolic token victory stunt. Some believe the true orientation of this offensive is to strike northeast and “capture” Russia’s Kursk nuclear power plant, which is about 55km from the Ukrainian border. While that would appear logical in theory, it seems too irrationally impractical given the forces Ukraine has left, as that would entail a massive rupture of Russia’s defenses. More realistically, however, would be perhaps simply to get close enough to put the power plant under the knife—i.e. artillery and drone range. Supporting this basis, is the fact that during the ongoing breach, Ukrainian drones actually began hittingKurchatov, right next to the plant, about 2km away. Circled in red is Kurchatov, in yellow is the nuke plant. It’s clear Ukraine wants to rattle Russia and hold it at the end of a gun in the most sensitive way possible, particularly prior to any perceived-to-be-forced negotiations in the near to medium-term future.
As the above states, Ukrainian forces have reportedly not been pushed out of the first settlement over the border where they’ve entrenched themselves. They went further first, then got pushed back, but as of the last reports, there are some still entrenched in Sverdlikovo: So, it still potentially represents an interesting gain for the AFU. If this is said to be the largest incursion into Russian territory of the entire SMO, then that means by default, it is the largest land invasion of actual Russian land since Operation Barbarossa of WWII. Silly as that might sound, it nonetheless represents a kind of triggering ancestral memory to Russians, particularly in the Kursk region. This is doubled by the fact that Ukrainian forces have now wantonly and indiscriminately been attacking civilians in the region during the hostilities. Yesterday they killed an old woman in her apartment with a drone, in a clear case of deliberate civilian murder: Today more drones hit a car with children, as well as an ambulance near the Kursk region, killing a medic and another man. This is obviously all by choice and design, the secondary objective clearly being to sow discontent amongst the populace in order to destabilize Putin’s authority. Many prominent analysts on the pro-Ukrainian side however are greatly irritated by what they consider another in a long series of senseless attacks that will ultimately lead to futile losses:
It seems they’re some of the last remaining ones with some sense left. The biggest of all was Forbes’ infamous David Axe, raging in bewilderment at the seeming Ukrainian blunder: And the Ukrainian reserve officer, Tatarigami, also refuted assertions that the Ukrainian attack on Kursk was a fixing operation in the same vein that Russia carried out on Volchansk, to bleed AFU reserves from Pokrovsk. Instead, he states that Russia has long had plenty of reserves in the Kursk region and will not need to pull additional ones from any other front: This is true, in fact I believe I covered some of his previous reports on this specifically, wherein him and his team used satellite and other HUMINT info to investigate the buildup of Russian reserves in the general Belgorod-Kursk region. There also happens to be a gas pipeline which runs right through this region: — A Ukrainian soldier named ‘Alex’ from the 53rd Brigade writes a fascinating description of Russian assault tactics from the New York direction: A better translation of the above:
What he’s saying here is, the new Russian advancement tactic is such small scale combat teams, that Ukrainian FPVs literally can’t even find any targets to hit. Russia has eschewed major armor pushes in some areas, and just advances with 4-7 infantry at a time, which quickly lodge themselves into the forest tracts and hedgerows, disappearing from view. He complains that the Russians accumulate a larger pool of men via this slow trickle of fire teams, then once they’ve accumulated, they jump into the trenches and dole out 200 and 300s to the AFU defenders, taking no losses themselves—a naked admission of Russia’s low casualties during many assaults. In short, they’re frustrated that these tactics prevent Ukrainian troops from being able to stop the gradual, boa constrictor like advances. He goes on:
Here he’s saying that Russian Orlans and Zalas are ubiquitous overhead and as soon as Ukrainian artillery tries to work on these small platoons, Russian counterbattery spots them; thus they fret that it’s very difficult to use either arty or drones at all. This is the only way to combat the current FPV overmatch of the battlefield: disperse your forces into such small groups that you effectively thin out the FPVs’ ability to attack your accumulations of manpower. — By the way, the Ukrainian incursion came with a bag of tricks, which included a deep fake of Russia’s Kursk region governor Alexey Smirnov recruiting men to “join an armed militia”—which is meant to spread fear and cause panic among the population. Clever stuff. Check the two videos, fake, and original, side by side:
A final word from Russian analyst Starshe Eddy:
— In other breaking news, in a much talked-about visit, Shoigu touched down in Iran, where headlines spun all sorts of speculation. NY Times in particular claimed insider “sources” that Iran asked for radars and air defense, and Russia has been providing them, as per our recent reports showing heavy lift flights to Tehran:
Recall that Putin recently promised to the U.S. that Russia will arm U.S.’ enemies in tit-for-tat fashion. In fact, on this account, it was quite a striking juxtaposition to see the Russian ex-Defense Minister with his Iranian counterparts at the same exact time that American general staff was meeting with its Israeli counterpart earlier today—the proxy conflict in full effect: Also, this interesting thread about the visit pointed out some unseen details. Specifically that the meetings seemed heavily weighted toward weapons exchange negotiations, by implication, given that the Iranian guy in charge of UAV exports to Russia, and the Russian military technical cooperation head were both present:
One report claims Iran’s awaited attack may be more serious than last time:
Putin also seemed to give tacit approval for Iran to strike when he merely urged Iran to “avoid civilian casualties”, which basically translates to: “Give them hell, but aim for legal targets.” — From his later stop in Azerbaijan, Shoigu gave a brief update, which included the astounding claim that Ukraine has lost 120,000 men in the past 2 months alone: Gerasimov also visited the frontline to hand out awards:
And here’s Apti’s address about the AFU incursion mentioned earlier: A couple last disparate items: Some will recall from the last report I also outlined the vast amount of Ukrainian men fleeing over the borders each day. Now there’s a new incident as proof, as over 40 young Ukrainian men were detained by border guards trying to flee to Transnistria:
What’s interesting is that reports claim the SBU is setting up such traps intentionally. They use online groups to entice men who want to flee into joining a large batch in a truck, so they can catch them all in large number at once. Thus, men wanting to flee are advised to keep it to caravans with 3-4 people at a time or less. — Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov finally cleared up the big mystery about the so-called ‘emergency phone call’ that took place between Russian DefMin Belousov and U.S.’ Lloyd Austin. In short, he states that Ukraine was planning on striking the Russian Navy Day flotilla parade in St. Petersburg last week, the same one that Putin and Belousov were giving honors at, which can only be read as a potential assassination attempt on the two: Full story:
As can be seen, even the U.S. was not suicidal enough to allow Ukraine to go through with such a brazen plot, and immediately put the kibosh to it. This is a timely reminder that Russian intel services and the CIA reached agreements prior to the start of the war on many ‘red lines’, in order to carry out a gentlemanly conflict of sorts: — A few last bonus contrasting videos: For the first time, Ukraine shows how its Su-24s launch the Storm Shadow missiles—with old cut-in strike footage at the end for mere effect: Meanwhile, Russia showed how its own Su-24s launch chute-retarded bombs over the Black Sea to strike Ukrainian naval drones: Interesting to see the same plane utilized on both sides at the same time. Lastly, Russia also released rare footage of the release of its newest UMPB D-30SN glide-bombs, a sleaker, more advanced version of the primitive-looking UMPKs we’ve been used to seeing: 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 |