Will Putin Invade Ukraine?

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Also in Belogorod (things are busy there!) the FSB buidling was rocked by explosions

Meanwhile, in nearby Bryansk region (sandwiched between Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, an unenviable position) a military optics factory mysteriously caught fire

Optics are especially important in this war because tanks are basically useless without good optics.  And in this conflict, Russia frequently equips its tanks with inferior optics.  A big part of that is probably that optics are continually worn out with use and need constant replenishment.  While Russia is heir to a huge stockpile of soviet-era tanks, it does not have a similarly large stockpile of optics.  Russia's industrial output, such as it is, simply can't come close to keeping up with the sudden, skyrocketing demand.  Thus, inferior optics.  And obviously, taking out whatever factories are producing optics further constrains Russia's war-making ability.

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With the apparent capture of Bakhmut, let's look at Russian territorial gains over the past 5 months:



You gotta really zoom in, but yeah, they've taken an insignificant amount of territory - after being driven out of Kharkiv and Kherson.

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Putin claims that Ukraine never existed and whips out his handy 17th century French map (you know, the kind that all of us have in our desk drawers) to prove it

So here it is:



Whoops, that's the Mongolian Empire.



Maybe this one?  Hmmm...don't see Moscow there.  Oh, that's right, because it was founded in 1147.  When was Kyiv founded?  482.  That's quite a difference!

One last attempt...



Will you look at that, found it!

[Unbeliever]

Maybe that's where Waldo is! 🤣

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ISW:  Bakhmut Pyrrhic Victory

The seizure of Bakhmut was originally intended to facilitate Russian offensives to encircle large Ukrainian forces in the east and specifically to take the large and fortified city of Slovyansk from multiple directions.

Taking Bakmut was originally intended to support further offensives, but by the end of it, Russian forces are too exhausted to capitalize on any of it - rendering the whole thing pointless.

Bakhmut fit into the planned Russian winter offensive as one of several lines of advance that were supposed to end by securing the Luhansk and Donetsk oblast boundaries, but all the other attempted advances failed, once more depriving the battle for Bakhmut of hypothetical operational significance by March-April 2023. Moscow stubbornly clung to its efforts to seize Bakhmut regardless of the operational context and ultimately took the destroyed city at a hideous cost in manpower and materiel, then ceding the initiative in the Bakhmut area to Ukraine.

The original need to take Bakhmut vanished, but Moscow stubbornly clung to plan - sunk cost fallacy anyone - and paid a hideous cost for a destroyed city, then gave the Ukrainians the initiative.  5d chess move right there.

ISW assessed at the time that Russian forces were unlikely to complete this wide encirclement as Russian forces would be unable to advance far enough or quickly enough to accomplish it, an assessment that proved accurate

Russian offensive operations in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk proved extremely costly and slow, consuming a high proportion of Russian offensive capabilities in Donbas. This forced the Russian military command to deprioritize the wide encirclement in Donetsk Oblast in order to complete the seizure of those two cities.

Russia reprioritized the Battle for Bakhmut in July-August 2022, following the culmination of Russian attacks on the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk line.

Heavy losses -> increasingly less ambitious goals -> Funneling troops into a narrow killzone -> even heavier losses

The Wagner Group also began to expand its forces by recruiting convicts, likely after Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin promised Putin to maintain offensive operations during the period when Russian regular forces were unable to pursue further offensive operations across the theater.

Deal with the devil, though not sure which is which.

ISW assessed on September 11 that the loss of Izyum doomed the initial Russian campaign plan to attack Slovyansk from multiple directions and that even the seizure of Bakhmut would "no longer support any larger effort to accomplish the original objectives of this phase of the campaign since it would not be supported by an advance from Izyum in the north." ISW also assessed that Russian offensive operations against Bakhmut and around Donetsk City have "lost any real operational significance for Moscow and merely waste some of [Russia's] extremely limited effective combat power."

An extremely tactful way to say that the plan was extremely dumb and wasteful of extremely limited resources.

Wagner mercenaries shifted their approach to seizing Bakhmut to a focus on encircling and trapping Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut City by expending a high proportion of their estimated 40,000 prisoner recruits in deadly human wave attacks. At least 22,000 prisoners disappeared from Russian prisons between October and November 2022 alone - likely as a result of Wagner's prisoner recruitment efforts. A Russian opposition outlet concluded that 55 percent of the total reported Wagner fatalities in October occurred just on October 24 and October 27 – when Ukrainian forces resisted Wagner assaults on the eastern outskirts of the city. The outlet concluded that the number of social media reports commemorating Wagner servicemen increased by more than 2.5 times as they were committed to suicidal drives on Bakhmut's immediate outskirts.[23]

Geolocated footage showed 43 buses full of well-dressed and high-spirited Wagner personnel moving from Crimea to an unspecified location via Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast on February 18...Prigozhin, who was likely aware that he was running out of uncommitted personnel, likely hoped to scare Ukrainian forces into withdrawing from Bakhmut and used additional forces to threaten envelopment or encirclement.

Bluff.

ISW assessed that the Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut was a strategically sound decision as Ukrainians would benefit from exhausting Wagner forces if they were able to retain control over the two GLOCs west of Bakhmut. ISW also argued that while Bakhmut is not intrinsically significant operationally or strategically for Ukrainian forces to maintain, the defense of Bakhmut became more strategically significant as Russian forces decided to commit Wagner elements

Ukrainian forces said the same and that was their reasoning for continuing to defend as the US recommended withdrawal.

Prigozhin's announced intention to withdraw his forces from the frontlines and give them two months to reconstitute likely indicates that Prigozhin assesses that his forces have been exhausted in combat, his denials notwithstanding...the Russian military will struggle to maintain any subsequent offensive operations for some months.

Interesting to note that Wagner forces will likely be on the sidelines when Ukraine's major counteroffensive finally takes place.

The Battle of Bakhmut exposed several key flaws in the Russian planning and conduct of operational maneuver. The Russian military command continued to pursue a relentless assault on Bakhmut after the city lost its original operational significance and failed to adjust its military objectives appropriately. The Kremlin, evidently, chased after any potential victory to generate informational effects and allowed Prigozhin to expend a large amount of Russian ammunition and thousands of prisoner recruits and then more professional forces to maintain a battle of no operational significance in Bakhmut. Prigozhin also continued this battle to gain desired political standing in Russia – likely without the intent to pursue the original goal of conducting a wider encirclement of Donbas. The Kremlin's fixation with Bakhmut indicates that Russia has not learned lessons from the first phases of the war. The Russian military command continues to overestimate Russian military capabilities and has not mastered time and space relationships in this war at its current level of effectiveness. The Russian military command also continues to pursue ill-informed political objectives at the expense of Russian personnel and resources.

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Ukraine shifts how it does procurement to be more similar to NATO

I'm not sure how they were doing it before, but now everything goes through the Defence Procurement Agency - "a single national agency would be responsible for centralised procurement of supplies, works and services to implement state programmes related to national security and defence."

This agency hopes to make procurement more efficient and timely as well as operating in a transparent way to prevent corruption.

It is also yet another way Ukraine is changing to be more in line with NATO standards.

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In a prisoner exchange, 106 soldiers return to Ukraine

They were all captured near Bakhmut.

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A Russian ship - the Ivan Khurs - was recently under attack by sea drones and Moscow released dramatic footage of the Russian ship blowing up the drone (giving the impression that the attack was a failure)

However...as shocking as this might sound, Russian authorities aren't exactly trustworthy, rarely telling the truth and never telling the whole truth.

Further footage shows a sea drone ramming into the Russian ship before the feed was lost (presumably the feed was lost because the drone exploded)

So the truth is that the attack was successful in at least damaging the Russian ship, if not sinking it.  We don't know the extent of the damages, but it is extremely likely that damages exist.

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Moscow also spread rumors that Ukrainian Commander-In-Chief Zaluzhnyi was badly wounded

(Ukraine's governmental structure is different from the US in that the President is NOT the Commander-In-Chief)

Zaluzhnyi went on video and assured people that he is fine (Russian commentators noted the beige walls were clearly hospital walls - because no other buildings have beige walls - and a stray cord in the background just had to be connected to a pulse-monitoring device LOL

Of course, Moscow intentionally spread false rumors to try to instill worry in Ukrainians and more generally, anyone backing Ukraine.  It was all fake news in service to a genocidal dictator.  Forshame.  And anyone who takes Moscow at its word for anything anymore is either a complete idiot or worse, a dictator's servant.

[Mike Cl]

Moscow also spread rumors that Ukrainian Commander-In-Chief Zaluzhnyi was badly wounded

(Ukraine's governmental structure is different from the US in that the President is NOT the Commander-In-Chief)

Zaluzhnyi went on video and assured people that he is fine (Russian commentators noted the beige walls were clearly hospital walls - because no other buildings have beige walls - and a stray cord in the background just had to be connected to a pulse-monitoring device LOL

Of course, Moscow intentionally spread false rumors to try to instill worry in Ukrainians and more generally, anyone backing Ukraine.  It was all fake news in service to a genocidal dictator.  Forshame.  And anyone who takes Moscow at its word for anything anymore is either a complete idiot or worse, a dictator's servant.

Change 'Russia' to Trump (any of them, but especially the orange one) and it is even more accurate.

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From Wagner Head's recent interview:

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The Finding Out phase of the war: Russian territory - Rostov and Krasnodar - allegedly attacked

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Ukraine to receive "enhanced partnership" at NATO

Currently, Ukraine is only invited to partake in discussions.  Partnership status would allow Ukraine to request meetings, give it more ability to shape discussions, and pave the way for more cooperation in the future.