Unrolled Twitter thread: Time for an update on the Battle for Donbas by Dr. Mike Martin
As expected, the Russians have sort of fizzled.
They pulled all of these mauled units out of Kyiv, and then tried to reconstitute them for combat in the East.
This is pretty hard and these new units would have been bruised and damaged from the Battle for Kyiv.
The Russians really had one chance - to build these units up - to build up a reserve, and then try to do some bold maneuver - and surround the Ukrainians in the East.
The reason that was their one chance is they didn’t have anywhere near the 3:1 attackers to defenders ratio that you need, and so clever manoeuvring was the only option they had.
The Russians needed to clout not dribble.
Unfortunately they dribbled.
They dribbled by feeding these reconstituted units piecemeal into the front line - trying to fight a kind of attritional battle against the Ukrainians.
The Russian ‘plan’ was grind the Ukr down with artillery and then waves of infantry.
Kind WW2 stuff. The only problem is that style of warfare need loads of troops. Which the Russians don’t have.
Cut your cloth to suit etc.
So the Russians are squandering / have squandered their one chance.
The Ukrainians have done the right thing here.
They are dug in, and so artillery effects them less. And then they are withdrawing in good order, so that they can inflict maximum damage to the Russians.
They are trading space for enemy troops.
Exactly the right tactics.
(The Russians are also so poorly trained and with such poor morale that they are STILL sticking to main roads which makes it pretty easy to ambush them, or find them with drones (which you use to then direct artillery on them)).
So we will see the Battle for Donbas culminate in maybe the next 2-4 weeks.
Basically the Russians are gonna run out of troops, and the Ukrainians are going to counterattack.
More widely, there has been a major strategic shift in the war.
UK Foreign Sec Liz Truss has stated that the UK strategic aim is to evict Russian forces from Ukraine (including Crimea, so back to pre-2014 borders). She also said it would take ten years but she’s wrong about that: Russian forces will collapse before that, and we’ll see a coup)
This is a clear statement of intent by the UK, and would only have been made if it was felt that other NATO allies could and would sign up to it.
It’s very welcome after some wishy-washy thinking about strategic aims (although the activities were good).
The US at the same time has announced $33 BILLION of funding for Ukraine (or rather Biden has asked for from Congress).
That is an extremely clear signal of intent.
Also means that NATO and the US have decided that Putin is bluffing about using Nukes if NATO up the ante.
Other issues:
Mariupol - Ru has basically stated they can’t take the steelworks.
Trans - looks like the Ukrs might be hitting targets there too, as with in Russia previously.
Kherson - Russians are trying to org a referendum, but the pop is non-compliant so this might be diff.
Strategic outlook:
Give it four weeks; we’ll see Donbas go in the other direction, then Crimea will start to come into play.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1519944083233517571.html
Dr. Mike Martin is a visiting fellow at The Department of War Studies at King's College London.
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The next 2-3 weeks will be telling. And now we've been informed that Putin himself is taking over the day-to-day military operations. Another tell that the war is not going well, let alone as planned.
I was reading an article last night that drew parallels to what Putin in doing in Ukraine compared to Syria and Chechenia. The similarities are eye-opening and should give Ukraine and NATO a heads up on strategy (or lack there of) particularly when it comes to any so-called negotiations which are usually an excuse to stall and regroup.
Very dicey time. For everyone bc no one can predict exactly how far Putin is willing to go, whether the threats of nuclear strikes are a bluff or a real option if Putin is faced with military failure. That failure would not be a existential threat to Russia but most certainly would be an existential threat to Putin and his regime.
Hard to believe we've returned to the good ole days of MAD.
