Ukraine: The media are beginning to recognize the reality
March 16, 2023
by
Moon of Alabama
The truth about the real state of the Ukrainian army is finally beginning to appear in the mainstream media. The situation is as serious as we have it
described many times
times, although it has not yet been fully revealed.
As the
The Washington Post . "
LUkraine runs out of trained troops and ammunition as casualties and pessimism mount ».
I will leave aside the elements of propaganda to focus on the facts. The quotes are long but necessary to capture the depth of the horrible situation.
The first paragraph:
«
The quality of Ukrainian military strength, once considered a substantial advantage over Russia, was degraded by a year of casualties that kept many of the most experienced fighters off the battlefield, leading some Ukrainian officials to question kyiv's readiness for the long-awaited spring offensive. »
This spring offensive has as much chance of happening as the announced relief campaign to unblock Bakhmout. The latter got stuck in the mud, which will only get worse over the next few weeks.
The spring campaign will be made up of young recruits who will be asked to use a wild mix of weapons they are unfamiliar with. Short of a Western surprise, I don't see how it could overwhelm well-prepared Russian defense lines.
Back to the article:
«
The influx of inexperienced recruits, brought in to make up for casualties, has changed the profile of Ukrainian forces, which also suffer from a shortage of ammunition, including artillery shells and mortar bombs, according to military personnel on field.
“The most valuable thing in wartime is combat experience,” said a battalion commander from the 46th Air Assault Brigade, who is identified only by his call sign, Kupol, in accordance with the Ukrainian military protocol. “A soldier who has survived six months of combat and a soldier who leaves the firing range are two different soldiers. It's day and night ". "And there are only a few soldiers who have combat experience," Kupol added. "Unfortunately, they are all already dead or injured."
These grim assessments have spread a palpable, if mostly unacknowledged, pessimism from the front lines to the corridors of power in the capital, Kyiv. »
Ukrainian losses, estimated closer to 200 than 000 dead and even more wounded, are particularly felt at the lower command level. You cannot kidnap a vendor or a teacher from the street and put him in a subordinate command position.
«
Kupol said he was speaking in hopes of getting better training for Ukrainian forces from Washington and that he hoped Ukrainian troops held back for an upcoming counteroffensive would be more successful than the Ukrainian troops. inexperienced soldiers who are currently on the front lines under his command.
"We always believe in miracles," he said. “Either it will be a massacre and corpses, or it will be a professional counter-offensive. There are two options. But there will be a counter-offensive in both cases”. »
It will indeed take a miracle for the counter-offensive to be anything other than a massacre.
«
A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for the sake of candor, described the number of tanks promised by the West as “symbolic”. Others privately expressed pessimism that promised supplies would reach the battlefield in time.
"If you have more resources, you attack more actively," the senior official said. “If you have fewer resources, you defend yourself more. We will defend ourselves. Therefore, if you ask me for my personal opinion, I don't believe in a major counter-offensive on our part. I would like to believe it, but I look at the resources and I wonder: “With what? ". Perhaps we will have localized advances”. "We have neither the men nor the weapons," added the senior official. “And you know the ratio: When you're on the offensive, you lose two or three times as many people. We cannot afford to lose so many people.” »
The United States is not going to wonder if "
Ukraine can afford these losses ». They will push for a full-scale attack that is unlikely to go beyond its preparation phase.
«
Kupol, who agreed to be photographed and said he understood he could face personal retaliation if he gave a candid assessment, described what it was like to go into battle with soldiers recruits who had never thrown a grenade, who easily gave up their positions under fire and who lacked confidence in the handling of firearms.
His unit withdrew from Soledar in eastern Ukraine over the winter after being surrounded by Russian forces who then seized the town. Kupol recalls that hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers from the units fighting alongside his battalion simply abandoned their positions, even as the fighters of the Russian mercenary group Wagner continued to advance.
After a year of war, Lieutenant Colonel Kupol said his battalion was unrecognizable. Out of about 500 soldiers, around 400 were killed in action and another XNUMX were wounded, which led to a complete turnover of personnel. Lt. Col. Kupol said he was the battalion's only military professional and described the difficulty of leading a unit made up entirely of inexperienced soldiers.
“I get 100 new soldiers,” he explains. “They don't give me time to prepare them. They tell me: “Take them to battle”. They drop everything and run. That's all. Do you understand why? Because the soldier does not shoot. I ask him why and he replies: "I'm afraid of the sound of the gunshot." And for some reason he never threw a grenade. … We need NATO instructors in all our training centers, and our instructors must be sent there, in the trenches. Because they failed in their task”.
He described severe ammunition shortages, including a lack of single mortar bombs and grenades for US-made MK 19s. (…)
"You are on the front line," said Kupol. “They come towards you and there is nothing to shoot. »
Kupol said kyiv should focus on systematically better preparing new troops. "It's like all we're doing is giving interviews and telling people that we've already won, just pull back a bit more, in two weeks, and we'll win," he said. he declared. »
Yes, kyiv, helped by the media”
westerners speaks of a victory that will probably never happen. On the ground, the point of view is quite different:
«
Dmytro, a Ukrainian soldier whom The Post identifies only by first name for security reasons, described many of the same conditions. Some of the less experienced soldiers serving in his post with the 36th Marine Brigade in the Donetsk region "are afraid to leave the trenches", he said. The bombings are sometimes so intense that a soldier has a panic attack, then “others catch him”.
The first time he saw his comrades in arms very shaken, Dmytro tried to make them understand the reality of the risks. The next time, he said, they "just ran out of position." "I don't blame them," he said. "They were so confused." »
Yes, the shock of the shell is real. Being under artillery fire is terrifying. Especially when you're a novice, sitting in a ditch with no armor and no way to answer it.
Russian artillery supremacy explains why Ukrainian losses are a
multiple from those on the Russian side. But even if infantrymen are available and well trained, nothing can compensate
the loss of the backbone of an army:
«
Ukraine has lost many of its junior officers who had received American training over the past nine years, eroding a leadership corps that helped distinguish Ukrainians from their Russian enemies at the start of the invasion, said said the Ukrainian official. Today, these forces must be replaced. “Many of them were killed,” the official said. »
Replaced by what? It takes years to train a master sergeant or a captain. These positions require field experience. No civilian training can replace this experience. Three-week courses, taught by officers "
westerners without real experience of war, will not be able to compensate for this:
«
Even with new equipment and training, U.S. military officials consider Ukrainian forces insufficient to attack all along the giant front, where Russia has erected significant defenses, so troops are trained to seek out the weak points that will allow them to break through with tanks and armored vehicles. »
There will be no weak points. Or maybe there will be, intentionally left open by the Russians, to attract the "
counter attack Ukrainian girl and trap her in a large cauldron.
It's over for Ukraine. Russian forces wrap Ukrainian units in several small cauldrons. Bakhmout is just one of them. To the south of it is the agglomeration of New York which will become another. Avdiivka, further south, is also in big trouble and may even be the first of the three towns to fall.
Even the
New York Times begins to
to notice :
«
From Kupiansk in the north to Avdiivka in the south, through Bakhmut, Lyman and dozens of towns in between, Russian forces are attacking in a 160-mile arc across eastern Ukraine, in an ever-increasing struggle intense to gain a tactical advantage before possible spring offensives. Heavy fighting was reported Monday in and around Avdiivka, a town that has been on the front lines for most of the past year and in recent days has again become a focal point of fighting. (…)
In Bakhmut, where the private military company Wagner has taken control of the eastern part of the city, brutal fighting is taking place in the streets, on the destroyed remains of buildings and in the depths of mines, according to Russian military bloggers. (…)
In Kupiansk and surrounding villages, Russia intensified shelling and ground assaults, and Ukraine ordered civilians to leave. Russian shelling also intensified in Lyman and other towns. According to the Ukrainian army, Russian forces attempt more than 100 times a day to break through their lines.
With few people and buildings intact, the most contested places have little to offer except control of the roads and railroads that the Kremlin sees as important to its goal of seizing of the entire eastern region known as "Donbass". Assaults can also provide better positioning for the next attack, gain intelligence on the other side's positions, and have propaganda value. »
Le
NYT does not mention it, but the most important thing is that the Russian forces, in all these attacks, are destroying the Ukrainian army.
In a few weeks, after the collapse of these three cauldrons, the Ukrainian army will be on the run. It will then be summer and the mud will have dried. Russian forces will then become more mobile, which could even allow them to make greater movements.
The only way for the Ukrainian army to counter these movements will be to use the forces it is currently preparing for a "
counteroffensive as defense formations. But even that will only give him about three more months before the inevitable collapse.
• MQ-9 Reaper drone... 
