The end?

Not that we should for one minute, but putting aside the disgusting effect on civilians and the risk of a nuclear catastrophe, from a military perspective this will allow Russia to relocate a number of defensive forces elsewhere along their stretched frontline I expect. At the same time diverting Ukrainian resources. Ukrainian forces already on the south/east bank of the Dnipro are going to be in difficulty I imagine.
 
Just reading that this appears to have been a typically incompetent bungled affair by Russia, who have completely underestimated the scale of the breach. so quite a lot of their own troops caught out too.
 
More thoughts and a fair bit of conjecture/guessing/pondering.

Crimea Water.jpg

"While the guys in Brussels and in various capitals around the western world ponder about what the hell to do with the ZPP, I am instead gonna concentrate on drinking water, at least until things clear.
All I can say is that the grownups (The West) will spend the next few days spanking the recalcitrant child as much as possible, while planning how to solve things.

I will write about the front, but first a bit about Crimea's water situation.
As you can see the bulk of the water for the northern and eastern parts come via a channel fed by the Kakhovka Dam.
This channel is now running backwards, and there will be no further water supply coming from this way.
This system is also connected to pipes running under the Khersh Bridge, but it is at this point not known if those pipes are operational after the damage the bridge sustained during the attack.
Either way, as soon as Ukraine take out the bridge there will be no water.
The southern parts have water supplies, but not enough to feed all of Crimea by a longshot.
Basically, they will be able to drink and cook, but not to shower or run the sewer systems.
Also, there will be no water for agricultural use.
So, stinky and hungry Russians.

Wagner
The military commander of the Free Russia Legion put out a video stating that they are in talks with Prigozhin about future cooperation to achieve their goals.
If even remotely true, it means that someone has okay'd paying PMC Wagner for their services.
Prigozhin in turn talked about the FRL commander in very polite tones, and stated that he is willing and ready to protect the citizens of Bilhorod since the Russian Army Command could no do that.
Note here, nowhere Prigozhing said a single word about WHO he would protect them against...

This may mean 2 things I think.
The first option is that Prigozhin openly goes in and clear out the Russian Army, after all they are the ones killing all of those civilians.
The second option is that he waltzes in and the FRL goes back to Ukraine, Wagner stays at the place, do not spread out, leaving FRL to attack somewhere else, rinse repeat.
The second option would be done peacefully, with a phone call prior to going to chase the FRL out.
This would make the Russian Army look even more incompetent.
I find this development incredibly interesting.

Bilhorod
Russia is now preparing to evacuate Bilhorod City completely.
The towns and villages will seemingly have to fend for themselves and evacuate as well as they can.

Russia is using untrained troops that are mainly conscripts to hold Bilhorod Oblast.
This in combination with heavy Ukrainian support shelling has led to extreme losses in lives and wounded on the Russian side.
In a single day Russia sent 120 wounded just to St Petersburg, corresponding numbers seem to be true for all Cities in Russia west of the Urals, this was officially confirmed by Russian MOD.
So more than 1000 wounded per day.
This is simply astounding that roughly 500 FRL and Polish paratroopers is causing that much damage.
The reason is that they are mostly just scouting for the Ukrainian artillery that does the bulk of the fighting from a distance through precission strikes.

Bakhmut
Now that Wagner is totally out of Bakhmut Ukraine has gained a lot of ground.
To the North they have taken the heights and have free firing range into the Russian positions in Bakhmut.
They are also pushing from several directions towards the more important town of Soledar.
Basically the old Russian northern pincer is now dismantled.
Here Ukraine pushed forward 1.6km in 24 hours.

On the southern side Klichi'ivka has been taken into a pocket.
Ukraine offered the troops there to go away, or they would be demolished by artillery.
They refused and Ukraine opened up fire for an hour, and then offered them to go again.
After a second refusal Ukraine resumed artillery and Russia started to move out under shelling.
This means that the southern Russian pincer is now also almost gone.

In the next few days Ukraine is expected to invert the pincers and starting to take Bakhmut into an operational pocket.

The Offensive
This is of now not a full blown offensive.
Yes, Ukraine are using 5 brigades in total, 2 assault brigades and 1 heavy mech, plus 1 artillery brigade and 1 support brigade.
But, they are using a single battalion from each of them, and those battalions are rotated out every 24 hours.
They also just use heavy equipment to punch a hole, and then infantry clears out the trenches and hold what has been taken while the heavy equipment leave the area.
This is due to saving as much equipment as possible for later, this is due to Russian artillery being powerful here.

The breach is now spanning 15km from Novodarivka via Neskuchne to Novodonet'ske.
Novodonet'ske is 12 km west of Vuhledar.
At Novodonet'ske Ukraine has forded the river and are now secure on the other side (significant).

The slow progress (relatively) and the strategy deployed is pointing towards this being done to concentrate the meagre Russian forces in the region, more than it being the big push.
And the Russians are playing ball here and are concentrating everything to hold (and are still being pushed backwards).

Vuhledar
Rapid and heavy shelling of the surrounding frontlines here and the continued use of missiles against Mariupol and Berdyansk leads me to believe that either this will be the main attack vector in a few days, or at least one of two attack vectors.

Note that it is units from the Army Corps responsible for Vuhledar that is fighting at the Breach, and that they can easily swing back the bulk of those forces to Vuhledar to meat up with the other 5 heavy brigades there.

Zhaporizhzhia
It may be that Ukraine will have to adapt rapidly and performed a unified assault near the eastern end of the Kakhovka dam.
They are advancing now in this area, and there are a lot of confusion about how far, and exactly where, so I will leave that a bit hanging in the air until we know more.

The reason for it probably being upgraded is that Ukraine and possibly allies will have to secore ZPP as fast as is humanly possible to avoid a nuclear disaster.

Thankfully Ukraine has prepared the ground here by longterm steady artillery shelling, and in the last days with heavy line shelling.

Is the offensive necessary?
This is something I have been pondering in the last few days.
Currently Russia's internal problems are increasing at an exponential rate, and it is now likely that something in Russia will completely break within a few months.

The urgency to break Russia through a decisive military victory might not be there any longer.
The usual Ukrainian Offensing through Defence would probably save lives, make a fall offensive more effective due to more equipment and more degrading of Russian forces.
But, at the same time a few well timed "hits" would probably speed Russia's crash.

If it was up to me I would by now shelve the offensive plans, or more to the point, scale them down, concentrate on taking and securing the ZPP, and wait and see what happens while relentlessly pound the Russians all over the line and take advantage of the instances where they break and run.

I would prefer if they sort of did a much larger scale Kherson offensive, but with the obvious need to solve the ZPP situation through an offensive.
I would also immediately dump the Khersh Bridge into the water to increase Russia's logistical pain.

Come August I would then do a large offensive from Vuhledar down to Mariupol, and at the same time go for encircling Donetsk City.
By then Russia would be hurt so badly that it would break."
 
We have a guest contributor today.

"Since the Improvement of Prigozhin is temporarily halted for "reasons", and he is all of a sudden speaking the truth, and only the truth...
Obviously from his perspective, and with the backdrop of him being a psychotic asshole, so it is angled to his advantage.

But, as far as I know everything is factual.
And yes, when he goes into the nuke part that is according to page 13 in the handbook of the Nuclear Doctrine of the Soviet Union 1981 Edition (the last produced).

Hint, Artyomovsk is the Russian name for Bakhmut.

Anyway, it is a very interesting view into his viewpoints.
And it is a tad disconcerting how seriously he seems to take the risk of Russia nuking Russia, my take is that the entire video is an attempt to stop it, and that is why he put it out because he knows that the West will not give a single **** about it being inside Russia, instead they will end the war, one way or another.

So, here is todays guest-muser, Prigozhin:"

Part 1
https://twitter.com/x/status/1666202247464902656

Part 2
https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1666281190482132992
 
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