Tom Cooper sends....
Ukraine War, 26–29 May 2022
Good morning everybody!
STRATEGIC
Amid reports about USA preparing deliveries of M142 HIMARS to Ukraine, Putin is said to have declared delivery of such systems for ‘Red Line’. Unclear what kind of Red Line and what would be the consequences.
Deliveries of M777s are coming forward relatively slowly: 2 battalions with a total of 18 pieces are in operation, but the rest of deliveries seem not to be even in Ukraine as of yet. As of this week, there were still more of Estonian- and Italian-supplied FH70s around the battlefield.
After three months of patiently waiting for the German Chancellor Scholz and his government to do more than help Ukraine with money, I’m starting to join those insisting the same is dragging its feet in this regards. After all, all the promised deliveries of heavy arms — even those including Germany providing arms to countries like, say, Poland or Slovenia, so these can send their ‘Soviet designed’ tanks other stuff to Ukraine — have failed to materialise. Indeed, on 27 May, Scholz began babbling on Twitter about ‘shall violence be countered by violence’, ‘can there be peace without arms’… and similar nonsense. Please, somebody be so kind and slap him in the face: perhaps he’s going to wake up from that condition…
The overall commander of RFA units in the Donbass area is now said to be another officer from the Far East District, Colonel-General Gennady Zhidko. Is said to be another ‘veteran of Syria’, but I do not recall to have heard of him before: probably served there after 2017. BTW, I doubt this means that Dvornikov is now ‘out’: rather that he’s in overall command of the RFA in Ukraine, and Zhidko in control of the Donbass area, ‘only’: would say that this turned out to be necessary following the failure to coordinate the crossing of the Siversky Donets in the Bilohorivka area, with the breakthrough at Popasna (was a — very — costly failure).
The debate in the USA is now about how the Russians are learning from their experiences, and going to continue advancing in the short term, but can’t win in the long term…. Hm… I do not see the Russians learning anything at all. For the start, they have a massive problem with the necessity to keep Putin’s favourites in command. OK, now they seem to be trying to ‘avoid’ related issues by appointing generals from the Far East District: supposedly, these have least political aspirations and no contacts in Moscow, and thus do not represent a threat for Putin’s regime. However, there is no indication they are improving at operational- or tactical levels. The story with massive concentrations of artillery to achieve this or that — like at Lyman, the last few days, just for example — is nothing new: they were doing this during the Second World War, in Afghanistan, in Ethiopia and Angola (as advisors), in Ukraine of 2014–2015, and Syria of 2015–2018. Following up by Spetsnaz is nothing new at least since Afghanistan of the 1980s, either. At most, they have learned that the only way forward left is one of securing areas that have a good railway network (or are near such areas). They might have learned they have the advantage whenever the Ukrainian forces are ‘fixed’ in specific villages and/or towns. However, as soon as Ukrainians start to manoeuvre, the RFA artillery is behaving like an elephant in a china store, and simply finding no solution. They are poor in counter-battery-business, too — principally because Ukrainians are widely dispersing their artillery, and constantly moving it … with other words: the Russians are best compared to Kissinger (OK, OK: perhaps to Scholz and SPD, too).
Finally, there’s still a lots of talk about arrival of that train loaded with T-62s in Melitupol. Well, don’t forget that few days before there were reports about that convoy of 11km length full of much more modern MBTs arrived in the Popasna area, and the T-62-train in Melitupol was followed by a train loaded with T-80s. Thus, for the time being, I see no point in wasting even more time with guessing about where and how are T-62s going to be deployed.
Read writing from Tom Cooper on Medium. From Austria; specialised in analysis of contemporary warfare; working as author, illustrator, and book-series-editor for Helion & Co.
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