Apparently they withdrew from Izyum behind the Oskol river during the night. Unconfirmed reports are UAF crosses the Siversky Donets river largerly uncontested and are either fighting in or have already pushed the Russians out of Lyman.
All of this in the span of a few days without much resistance in crucial areas that took the allies months to take. No idea what to even say to this tbh.
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Talk around the 'grad is that Russia purposely fell back because they have something planned. Hypothesis is that they are letting Ukraine advance, while only losing ground (which can be reconquered) so they can encircle them – which would destroy a lot of Ukrainian equipment and presonnel (apparently they’ve pulled out the big guns for this one). Winter is also approaching and maybe Russia is biding their time, not needing to hurry up.
We shall see.
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They’re not necessarily putting themselves in danger, or at least you wouldn’t be able to know from just looking at the map. If they have sufficient firepower on the outskirts of the spearhead (the part that looks like they’re gonna be encircled) to defend the attack, they can protect them. The spearhead’s purpose would be to reach an objective that has strategic value and not just push back the other party – they will retreat anyway if the spearhead succeeds because it will become dangerous for them.
Imagine warfare as a generalised duel – and instead of a 1 on 1 fight, it’s a 1000 on 1000 fight. You’re waiting for an opening that will let you win the duel, an enemy slip-up or a turnaround somewhere. In this case the duel is the offensive (and subsequent defence from Russia). And sometimes you want to avoid the duel so you can attack somewhere else.
The problem I have with maps like these is they don’t really show anything. We’re way past the point in modern warfare where just conquering land is enough. You need to occupy important strategic points to win war in the modern age – most of this land is utterly useless in a combat setting if it’s just empty fields for miles and miles. We’re talking about a time in history where you can fire missiles from 100km and you can do that from an empty field or from barracks in a city either way. So you’re looking to take cities, resources, main roads, defensible positions, etc.
The problem with that explanation is that there is no pincer, there are no flanks.
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I’m getting some Legends of the Galactic Heroes flashbacks.