07 Feb: Ukrainians Demolish Russians from the Hills - Reporting from Ukraine

[TexasTowelie]

Day 349: February 07

Today the Russians increased the intensity of their attacks around Siversk. Here, the Russians are trying to cut through the Ukrainian defense south of Siversk and take the Ukrainians in a pocket, but so far, the challenging terrain and synergistically structured Ukrainian defense have only led to a huge spike in Russian losses.

The main direction of the Russian advance is the southern part of the Siversk group. The reason why the Russians are trying to expand their control over the region here is that this is where the Ukrainians have their main supply road. If we look at the topographic map, we can see that this road is located behind the hill, so by establishing control over that hill, the Russians will be able to establish total fire control over the road. But even if the Russians are successful in this regard, there is still one more road behind the next hill, so supplying this group may become more time-consuming, but it would still be possible.

Nonetheless, the Russians are far from reaching this goal because, over the last two weeks, the fights have been taking place in the lowlands. The Ukrainian defense line here goes along the big villages that are conveniently located on the same line. As of now, the Russians established control over two small villages: Mykolaivka and Sakko i Vantsetti. Even though Russian sources are saying that the Ukrainian defense line has been breached, if we look closer, we can see that these villages consist of several houses that are also cut off by the river from the main Ukrainian positions. If we zoom out a little bit, we can see that the main Ukrainian positions are in big villages, such as Vasiukivka, Fedorivka, and Rozdolivka.

Advancing towards Fedorivka is difficult because of the natural obstacle in the form of the river. The same river also limits the Russians in their room for maneuvering when attacking Vasiukivka and Rozdolivka, however, the main hardship in attacking the latter lies in the fact that the Ukrainians are controlling the highlands around these villages. If we look at the topographic map, we case see that they have good fire control over all possible axes of the Russian advance. In order to maintain control over these positions, the Ukrainians have developed an extensive system of trenches on the fields that are extremely hard to cross. These systems of trenches are exactly what is holding the Russians off, as they already tried to expand westward of Soledar.

That is why the Russian lately started shifting their focus somewhere else, such as Bilohorivka and Spirne. When it comes to Spirne, at first glance, it is very surprising that the Ukrainians have been defending this tiny settlement for more than half a year in total, especially given the intensity of Russian attacks. The reason why Spirne is so tough to take lies in the fact that there are a lot of underground tunnels that allow to supply this group and also hold ammunition. If we combine this with the fact that the Ukrainians have also developed a system of trenches and that these trenches are located on the local heights, it becomes easy to understand why this area has been holding for such a long time. Right now, the setting is less favorable than in summer because now the Russians are in control of Berestove, however, so far, all Russian assaults have been fiercely rebuffed.