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.
I have no meaningful thing to add related to the topic as I don’t know what’s happening.
But I hope we can remain critical of what’s happening and not resort to copium. Russia might lose serious ground if they don’t have a plan. Would be stupid to mock the copium from the libs only to then fall back in the same copium.
My approach thus far as been a cautious ‘they fucked up a bit, hopefully they turn it around quick’ and now ‘they fucked up a LOT, they need to turn it around before this becomes even worse’. Apparently they are trying their best to evacuate civilians from the area in anticipation of retaliatory purges by the Ukranians, but it’s still a disaster and they really should just fucking declare war already.
I assume the Russian army has some competent people in charge to figure things out. It’s just strange that they seemingly go out without a fight. But then again I have zero knowledge about warfare.
Same here, I’m not even good at ‘map games’ lol. The explanation that has been given is they withdrew to prevent losses of personnel, rather than defending positions ‘at all costs’. That’s fine and good, but it’s a lot of land that they will have to retake, slowly, inch by inch. They don’t have the numbers for this shit, even ardently jingoistic guys like intelslava are saying that they need to just declare war so they can mobilise, cause it’s untenable relying on a pure volunteer force against the largest army in Europe (I presume except for Russia’s army?) coordinated by NATO’s top brass.
saying that they need to just declare war so they can mobilise
Yes, I am sure mass mobilization will earn Putin popularity. And I am sure conscripts will be of great use over there. Just look at Ukranian conscripts.
hey don’t shoot the messenger, this is what they said, I honestly have no idea and no one should trust my strategic or tactical advice. I can’t even win a game of warhammer 40k :P
I’m Russian. The perspective of my fat ass getting dragged into that fucking quagmire to die for some oligarch’s profits is unappealing to say the least.
I would feel the same.
So does losing a whole oblast within a couple of days and without much fighting. If they can’t beat them with their volunteer army and they can’t mobilize, they can’t win this conflict.
Those who scream the loudest about mobilization ought to be drafted first. That should cool off the heads.
I’m proud of Russia for its victories and for standing up for itself and the Ukrainian people in the East. I can’t say that Russia should have done nothing even if something has to be paid in blood.
If they’re current “special military operation” accomplishes what should be done at the most minimal price to its own people then I don’t see why a war should be declared because Americans are impatient to see immediate results.
That’s what I’m seeing here. The Russians are winning overall. They lost a little ground in order to minimize their own loses and overextend their greedy adversaries. Instead of waiting to see how the events payout some people are declaring for an escalation from the Russian side. If it was wise to do so they would have done it.
Abandoning their initial position would be a sign of weakness and uncertainty. Yet that’s what people would call for. From my perspective Russian victory relies on the West exhausting itself at the walls of Russia. Ukraine offers the greatest advantage for Russia in a war of attrician. The point of a war is not to overextend yourself or exert yourself. Let the adversary exhaust themselves. Let the adversary rush in while you retreat.
What do you think should rather happen?
I assume the Russians have competent military generals. Appearances matter little. It would have been an absence of competence to hold at great cost rather than retreat for tangible gains.
The point here isn’t to cope. Its to understand what’s happening, why, and what it means forward. If things turn poorly then we should acknowledge that ahead. It shows far greater amaterialism to throw off everything we know thus far at the first surface level sign that things aren’t going how we’d like.
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In the end, there’s no version of this where Russia holds these regions forever. My chief concern is how many civillians the UKRs are going to kill and then blame it on the Russians. They’ve already announced that it’s open season on “collaborators”
It sounds like what happened was that Russia did not have enough forces to hold both Kherson and Kharkov regions, they chose to withdraw from Kharkov rather than lose troops and are now sending reinforcements there. The offensive drew a lot of Ukrainian troops from their fortifications into the open and while this is a big tactical success for Ukraine, it’s likely going to be a strategic failure in the long run. This is a pretty good overview of the situation in my opinion.
That’s obvious biblical scale fuckup that will cost many lives to the civilians (since we already have reports from comrades in the abandoned areas that neonazis are prepping some damn massacres) and might cost the collapse of the whole front. Might as well withdraw the entire army this way. Months with almost no movement - and nazis mount a counter offensive which reclaims in days more territory than it was captured in months.
Why are people downvoting this? The Ukronazis murder civilians in areas they retake. Remember Bucha? This is what they do. Civilians are going to die now cause of this.
Exactly. There’s no other way to rationalize this. Ukraine mounts the first real offensive maneuvers in 6 months and within a week or two one entire area of the front collapses - without much of a fight too.
And it’s not like this was some surprise move. People have been talking about a push in that region for weeks, every random ass commentator and youtube analyst saw this coming.
Also just where the hell is the Russian Army? Yes, they don’t have cellphones in the field etc etc, but it feels like all we ever see are PMC, volunteers (Chechens etc), DPR/LPR militias and Rosgvardia units. Are they still operating under the assumption that this ragtag expedition force will beat a 600k NATO supported army along a 1000km frontline? If yes…just wtf.
This isn’t the first Ukrainian offensive. They’ve mounted several offensives that ended in total disaster. Just before this one, they launched an offensive in Kherson and failed miserably. The Russians are retreating since they never really held much territory in the north. They didn’t even take Kharkov.
This offensive is mostly a propaganda campaign to secure more western funding. It’s just the initial push, once it’s over the Russians will regroup and retake their positions. Ukraine can’t sustain this for long.
Ukraine has attempted attacks before, yes. Relatively small scale actions on the tactical level. Those weren’t offensives. Kherson and Kharkov now are offensives - maneuvers on a very large scale on the strategical level. And this is the first they’ve put together since this war started and no matter the losses in Kherson, they still managed to collapse the Kharkov area because of it.
This is a massive win for them on the strategical level, not a simple PR win. No other way to frame it. There’s absolutely no indication that Russia can or will make the big moves and sacrifices to return these places, despite the massive effort over months to take them in the first place. Izyum was one of the primary objectives and wins in the first phase. It was lost in 2-3 days. I also don’t see any reason why the Ukrainians should be unable to sustain. They managed to sustain in these places initially much longer than the Russians now did. They’re sustaining all along the front and they’ve even gained offensive capabilities.
Well it is a PR stunt regardless of its success. Since it coincides with a new multi billion dollar aid package for Ukraine. It can be argued that without such an offensive, it would be hard to justify more aid, since up until now Ukraine has been systematically losing.
I still wouldn’t call it a massive success, because Kharkov was the area with least Russian presence. I’m not military expert, but I’ve been following “The New Atlas” as my source of information for this war. He still claims that this isn’t as big of a deal as the Western media is portraying. From what I know this was just a continuous big push into Russian territory. These troops will eventually be cut off from logistics and grinded down by the Russians.
It is a PR victory too, yes. But that’s mostly because the military victory here was so quick, so easy and so massive that it naturally makes for good PR. Winning all of Kharkov region in 3 days isn’t merely a PR stunt, but it sure as hell is good PR.
Also how are they supposed to be cut off? Russians retreated from the region almost entirely. They didn’t have the resources to mount a defence of territory they invested months to take, how are they supposed to retake it or cut Ukraine off from Kharkov region?
The “victory” was easy because Russia let them “win”. Russia has said from the beginning this is not about territorial conquest. Russia doesn’t cling to every inch of land like Ukraine at the cost of its soliders’ lives. The fact that it was so easy should clue you in that there is more going on than what it appears. For months Ukraine is unable to stop the Russians and now suddenly you think that they have magically become the best army in the world that rolled over the Russians in three days? Russia barely had any troops in this area at all, it was a token tripwire force. If you want to see what it looks like when Russia decides to actually defend territory look at what happened in Kherson. But in both cases it preserved its forces and lured Ukraine out of cities and fortified positions. You keep assuming that success in this war is measured by territorial conquest because that is what the western media tells you, but when has Russia ever said it is interested in territory? The point is the destruction of the Ukrainian army. Demilitarization. This will just speed that up.
Who has lost more troops and equipment in this whole operation? What did this really change in terms of the balance of forces? So some lines on a map moved, so what? I don’t get how you people can suddenly go into all out panic at the slightest whiff of Ukrainian “success”. Did Russia lose thousands of men and large numbers of irreplaceable equipment like the Ukrainians did? No. Has the West suddenly developed an industrial base back overnight that it can afford to have Ukraine take these sorts of losses in equipment that it took in Kherson and is taking in Kharkov now that Russia just stepped out of the way and allowed them to overextend and expose themselves? No.
And sure there are downsides to this as there are to any strategy. You can call it cynical and callous toward the people living there, and that would be true. A lot of people are going to have to flee so Ukraine doesn’t exact reprisals on them. That is harsh but it is the reality of war. Russia is playing a bigger game than just Ukraine, it has broader geopolitical goals that it is following. The Ukraine conflict is a means to an end, Russia could decide to pull back to the Feb 24 lines and it still would be winning on the economic and geopolitical level because the West is now killing its own economy with these sanctions.
I think a lot of “pro-Russian” people need to take a step back and chill. You need to stop obsessing over the minutiae of every movement back and forth of the front line, every captured village or town. Go back to the fundamentals. What is the distribution of forces, who is losing irreplaceable trained men and material, who has the productive capabilities to keep churning out missiles and munitions, whose economy is thriving and whose is imploding?
And what is it that we as communists should really care about? Russia winning territory? No. That is of no concern to us. The west’s global hegemony crumbling before our eyes is what matters! More and more countries are siding with Russia and China precisely because these two do NOT behave like the US does. They have come around even on the Ukraine conflict to Russia’s side because Russia DID NOT and will not go to all out war and carpet bomb everything like the US would.
The measured and “by the book” way that Russia is waging this military operation is more important for the bigger geopolitical picture than the appearance of “success” as defined by Ukronazi and western propagandists.
I don’t get how you people can suddenly go into all out panic at the slightest whiff of Ukrainian “success”.
Because we’re too used to seeing something looking good suddenly collapse into the pit of USA domination. Antiimperialism need serious and spectacular victories to break the endless doomerism.
The point here is precisely not about Russia losing territory, the concern is about Russia’s inability and/or unwillingness to mount even a token defence of critical areas they invested months to capture and defend the people it’s claiming to liberate there. The worrying thing here isn’t lines on a map and if that’s your takeaway of most people’s criticism I think you missed their point.
Russia barely had any troops in this area at all, it was a token tripwire force.
I don’t see how this makes it any better, in fact this is precisely why people are so furious. Why is there only a token tripwire force there? Why are this tripwire force, the reserves and prepared defences so utterly insufficient they have to pack up and flee, leaving behind men, civilians and equipment despite the massive defenders advantage that’s been demonstrated over and over in this war? Because it can’t and/or isn’t willing to.
If that is the case however, it also can’t or doesn’t want to muster the forces necessary to ever recapture this territory, let alone destroy the entire Ukrainian army. They didn’t have enough men to secure this area over months, but they somehow have the manpower to recapture and then somehow hold it again even though that takes much more effort than holding it in the first place? Where is that force coming from?
Russia just stepped out of the way and allowed them to overextend and expose themselves
That is the point though, Ukraine neither overextended nor exposed itself in Kharkiv. Russia was exposed and overextended and Ukraine capitalized on that. Russia also isn’t attriting this force by basically packing up and leaving without much of a fight at all. And why would they be able to destroy them better now, sitting behind less prepared lines behind the Oskol river, than they were behind the Siversky Donets? As you said, the situation hasn’t changed fundamentally. They weren’t able to grind down the Ukrainians sufficiently with the old frontline - otherwise this offensive wouldn’t have happened - why should they be able to do that with the new frontline? How would they be able to free Donbass and beat the Ukrainian military at all if even that chunk of Kharkiv was too much for them to hold onto?
Who has lost more troops and equipment in this whole operation?
Sure, that’s Ukraine. That doesn’t really matter though if they are willing and capable of sacrificing these kind of numbers of men in particular and if Russia is incapable of capitalizing on these numbers. Their losses accomplished what they needed to accomplish - they brought Russia’s ragtag militia-volunteer-pmc expedition force to the limits of its capabilities and are now managing to exploit these limits. Despite 6 months of this supposedly crippling attrition. They obviously do not care about losing a couple thousand men for victories like this.
Like come on, we don’t need to be doomers and proclaim that everything’s lost here, but especially as Marxists we also musn’t delude ourselves to the now incredibly obvious faults and shortcomings of this whole operation if we are to asses things correctly going forward.
And fact of the matter is that this operation, while accomplishing incredible things for its size, is terribly inadquate for the task at hand. We saw this in March; we saw it when DPR fighters left Mariupol for Donetsk, dragging the fighting out for much longer than it needed to; we saw it when allies were unable to fully close the cauldron around Severodonetsk; we’ve seen it in the failure to stop daily shelling of Donetsk even after 6 months and we’re seeing it more obvious than ever today. They are fighting a ‘special operation’ with a patchwork volunteer army against a NATO supplied fanatical enemy outnumbering them 4 to 1.
If they can’t commit the resources needed via mobilization and can’t destroy the targets they need to to disrupt the Ukrainian military (infrastructure, etc) due to larger PR struggles, but that leads them to blunders like this and massive PR blows like Bucha and the loss of goodwill among their own population and the Russians in Ukraine - it just can’t finish what it started.
And we also have to confront the seeming lack of a coherent overarching strategy or goal for this whole thing that is reflected in the Kiev retreat, the Kharkiv retreat, the inadequate force committed, the gloves-on approach, the absolute non-reactions to redlines like repeated Belgorod and Crimea attacks and the abandonment of their supposed compatriots (again).
In short they need to get their shit together, because right now the contradicitions within Russia and their leadership are creating the conditions for much worse than the loss of some part of Kharkov.
Watch my new post. The video explains everything in better detail than I could.
I know the channel and the video, I generally think his reports are pretty damn good, but I simply disagree in this case and reckon it’s mostly cope.
Here’s a video on the topic by The New Atlas, if anyone’s interested
From Masno’s TG:
[Forwarded from Masno] From a Ukrainian soldier:
What can you say about the current situation? This is what we have been waiting for so long - a successful and clear offensive. In fact, there is no miracle here, everything is done according to the basics of military science - hidden concentration + choosing the right direction for a strike + more than threefold superiority + suddenness = Success. Although there is still an element of a miracle here - the epic pohuizm of the enemy command. So epic that it was hard to believe that this was not some hidden agenda. Looks like no. However, I will express my concerns. Calling what is happening a victory is wrong. Now success, victory will be only when the last enemy soldier leaves our land. Therefore, I will not stop spoiling the super-possible mood of many. So here are the concerns. Compare the battle for Izyum and Liman, when we defended them. And compare with what was now. And this is what happened: we defended these cities to bloody snot, although it was clear that we could not hold them. And then the Command declared them not so important at all. The Russians, at the first threat of destruction of their forces, quickly sacrifice the captured city. Thus, although we are advancing, we do not physically destroy the enemy, and at the same time we suffer losses from his bombs and artillery. And this means that the enemy is ALIVE. And he did not lose his strength. And the further we get closer to the state border, the more difficult it will be. And at one point we will have to fight actually on the threshold of his house, from where he will receive waves of reinforcements. And also, if the enemy does not run through the fields-gardens, namely, he evacuates in advance, then he follows this plan. Therefore, at the next occupation of the city without a fight - before celebrating, recount with what enemy forces the battle was postponed to tomorrow. Relax early - the war continues!
TL;DR Ukrainian operational success gave the Russians a choice of risky fights or withdrawal. The Russians chose withdrawal.
I’ve heard this. Not sure how true it is
it cannot be explained as a military failure, because since the very beginning certain circles in kremlin were vocal about why Kharkov region is not worthy of efforts. even the civil-military administration in that region was called temporary civil-military administration - in contrast to Kherson and other regions without any “temporary” prefix.
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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.
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No point in speculating. This war is interesting, but cannot be a source of predictions or conjecture. If Russia loses territory in Ukraine, does it really matter outside of the Donetsk or Lughansk oblasts? I say, no.
Are you near the front line, are you an expert? No? Kick back, observe, feel those feelings. Then, stop arguing. What is there to win?
Just a reminder that this is still a young war. There will be some push. There will be some pull. We neither need to resort to doom and gloom nor to copium. A lot can happen in a short time.
