My mate spent yesterday at the Nordic "People and Defence" conference. Today he was in Brussels on "European" talks. But he had this to say this morning.
"I am sitting thinking in the deep of the night since I got up to get my morning meeting about the situation in two spots in Ukraine.
These two spots tell a history about the war in its current state.
Officially the war is deadlocked due to the lower rate of arms supplies after the US withdrew, and EUs problems with Hungary (about to be solved).
But, is it really deadlocked from a "being even" perspective.
As it turns out Ukraine is still having the advantage, but Russia are the ones on the offensive.
As you all know it has been a very costly offensive, and it has yielded very little, so little that Russia has only gained 10 square kilometres in all these months of death and destruction in Avdivka.
One of those two spots was a first in wartime history, so let us start there.
Novomykhailivka
The Ukrainian offensive here was a stunning success, but for one reason or another it is not written about that much.
Remember that Russia has taken 10km2 in Avdivka at the cost of 50K dead, now let us do the figures for Novomykhailivka.
As Ukraine attacked here across a distance of 6km they within 24 hours took 12km2.
And Russia really knew that Ukraine was gonna attack here, it is of high strategic and tactical importance for the war.
If Ukraine can gain the heights (they did), they have the Donetsk to Mariupol mainroad under fire control.
It also give them a downhill path to take back The Ramparts.
So, Russia had reinforced here as best they could with their thinly stretched resources, and they had dug down as well as they could.
What they could not really do was to mine the fields anew, probably due to a general lack of mines.
After that Russia attempted to extrend even further by taking the small town itself.
This failed though, and after a few attempts Russia gave up on it, at least for now.
This was the moment that Tarnovskyy had decided to perform his counterattack to improve his positions, and to get back an easy approach to The Ramparts.
I knew he would make an attempt since Tank Girl has been breathing fire down his **** for two weeks about it.
I did expect him to do his usual heavy handed (but very effective) counterpunch first using precission artillery and then steamrolling with tanks.
He is after all extremely good at this, something he proved numerous times in Vuhledar and Avdivka.
Instead the b***r went and became creative.
Now imagine that you are a Russian soldier from somewhere where the sun doesn't shine in let us say Bratsk.
A water toilet is high tech in your life.
You are sitting in your trench, life is miserable, but you are not aware that life is miserable, because miserable is all you know.
As night comes you hear weird whiring noises in the dark, and you poke your head out from your shelter to look, and your head explodes as it is hit by a drone.
Tarnovskyy used about 1 000 drones in a single night of various types.
Some went into the trenches to hunt, some took out equipment, and some dropped bombs, while a few carried machine guns (Baba Yaga Ds).
Not a single soldier operated during the attack, only relentless drone attacks.
As morning came no Russians remained in the trenches and in the fields, a few had escaped, but most of them was injured or killed.
Later that day two companies worth of infantry strolled in and took the injured captured and inspected the ex-Russian trenches with their content of fricasséd Russians.
It is to date the offensive with the least amount of injured and killed Ukrainian soldiers.
No Ukrainian died, and a single soldier ended up on the injured list with a badly sprained ankle after falling into a Russian "bunker" with a very weak roof...
Personally I find it funny that it was Tarnovskyy that became the first one to win a sizeable battle by drone usage.
He after all attaches toilet paper to a tank barrel to whipe his ass...
If it can't be done by a tank it is sort of not worth doing, there are rumours about his kids having been conceived with a tank, or at least inside one.
Kupyansk
Russia seems to be about to give up on Avdivka and try for greener pastures.
And in the Russian mindset a greener pasture means something at least as fortified and well defended.
Russia has already attacked for Kupyansk for over half a year and gotten nowhere.
Kupyansk, or more precisely Synk'ivka, is yet another of these huge locks of the frontline that is very important to Ukraine, if Russia can break through here they will be able to roll up the frontline all the way to the Oskil River, or at least so they think.
This is where Zyrskyi rules supreme, and he is having none of the Russian stupidity, and he really love to fortify things and to remove Russian nipples.
Synk'ivka is today a fortress, and from it sprouts a system of defence lines that pales the Surovikin-lines in comparison.
Surovikin went for 3 layers, Zyrskyi did 5...
And inside and behind is a sizeable chunk of the Ukrainian army, to date Russia has achieved taking ZERO meters here.
Now and then they make a nipple, but that is rapidly stomped out.
By now only Bakhmut and Avdivka have a higher deathcount, Vuhledar is behind.
So, in their wisdom, Russia has decided that this is a wonderful spot to go on an even larger offensive.
Currently there's between 40 and 50K Russians, and these are well equipped by Russian standards, and well trained (once again by Russian standards).
The prospect of mulching that many Russians have Zyrskyi positively salivating, and to make things even worse for Russia, behind him Tank Girl has parked most of the 1st CAA.
She is technically not there to attack the Russians near Kupyansk in any way sort of form, but if anything would sneak past Zyrskyi she is there to take care of it.
If Avdivka was going nowhere fast, this one has the potential to go backwards fast if the Russian generals are not careful.
A normal general that had planned an offensive against an equal opponent, and then having an army twice his own size heave to, would have scrapped the offensive, started to dig down like crazy, while begging for reinforcements.
Russian generals are though made of sterner stuff, he is instead asking for more offensive units... and he is about to get those.
So, expect 3 months of Russians being made into confetti."
He then went on to write about the new Admiral of the Black Sea Fleet .... a woman. And one with a good track record at that. A radical move for the Russian command.
www.thesun.co.uk
