|
Ukraine – Russian Military Explains Its Withdrawal From The Izium Region
Since September 4, when the Ukrainian operation north of Izium started, the Russia Defense Ministry had said nothing about the issue.
Today it finally published a statement (machine translation):
Statement by the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense
In order to achieve the stated goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbass, a decision was made to regroup the Russian troops stationed in the Balakleya and Izyum regions to build up efforts in the Donetsk direction.
To this end, within three days, an operation was carried out to curtail and organize the transfer of the Izyum-Balakley group of troops to the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic.
During this operation, a number of distraction and demonstration activities were carried out with the designation of the real actions of the troops.
In order to prevent damage to Russian troops, a powerful fire defeat was inflicted on the enemy using aviation, missile troops and artillery.
Over three days, more than two thousand Ukrainian and foreign fighters were destroyed, as well as over a hundred units of armored vehicles and artillery.
(Department of Information and Mass Communications of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation)
Has that been the plan all along?
In retrospect that seems likely. The Russian military must have know that the Ukrainian attack was coming. There was only light resistance against the Ukrainian attack. Major Russian units had already been moved out of the area. The region did not have any public priority in Russian planing. A larger fight would have cost many Russian soldier and civilian lives.
So there were no cunning plans to surround the Ukrainian forces and no real disaster or success on either side.
Well, that is at least what the Russian military says. It also fits to the known facts.
There may be another reason why the Russian military did not want to fight for Izium. In May 1942, during the Second Battle of Kharkov, a Soviet counterattack on Nazi held Kharkov was defeated by two preplanned Nazi attacks south and north of Izium.
bigger
The names on the map will look familiar to those who have followed the current battle over the past days.
The Soviet counterattack ended in a bloody defeat:
On 17 May, the German 3rd Panzer Corps and XXXXIV Army Corps under the command of Fedor von Bock, supported by aircraft, arrived, enabling the Germans to launch Operation Fridericus, pushing back the Soviet Barvenkovo bridgehead to the south. On 18 May, [Marshal Semyon] Timoshenko requested permission to fall back, but Stalin rejected the request. On 19 May, Paulus launched a general offensive to the north as Bock's troops advanced in the south, thus attempting to surround the Soviets in the Izium salient. Realizing the risk of having entire armies surrounded, Stalin authorized the withdraw, but by that time the Soviet forces were already started to be closed in. On 20 May, the nearly surrounded Soviet forces mounted counteroffensives, but none of the attempts were successful in breaking through the German lines. The Soviets achieved some small victories on 21 and 22 May, but by 24 May, they were surrounded near Kharkov.
…
The Second Battle of Kharkov resulted in an extremely costly loss to the Soviets, which saw 207,000 men killed, wounded, or captured; some estimates put the number as high as 240,000. Over 1,000 Soviet tanks were destroyed during this battle, as well as the loss of 57,000 horses. German losses were much smaller than the Soviets, with over 20,000 killed, wounded, or captured. Soviet General Georgy Zhukov later blamed this major defeat on Stalin, who underestimated German strength in the region and failed to prepare an adequate reserve force to counter the arrival of the German reinforcement that turned the tide.
So it's on towards Donbas.
If this is the “plan”, it is not clear how this is expected to achieve a positive outcome.
Right now Lysichansk is under direct threat as a result of this “tactical retreat”
And how exactly is it supposed to be reversed? Large numbers of troops will be sent to do exercises even farther away from the front?
Reposting what I wrote in the previous thread shortly before the new one started:
Look, the facts so far are the following:
1. War starts, advances from all sides, except, and very suspiciously in retrospect, none west of the northeastern corner of Zhytomyr oblast (in order to stop Western support, the western border had to be cut off and that was never even attempted).
2. We see rapid advances, bypassing cities or seizing a fair few without fighting, large territorial gains are made. But there are no second and third echelons coming to consolidate control because it turns out the 150,000 troops that were reported to have been amassed at the border are all that there is, so there is nothing else coming. Supply lines get overextended and then pinched off by the Ukrainians, multiple cities that apparently were expected to voluntarily surrender in fact resist, offensive slows down.
3. End of March we see a large-scale “tactical retreat” from everything north of Kharkov. It’s forgotten, but that included even not at all insignificant cities such as Konotop (population ~85K, home to a large airbase, etc.) which were taken over without much fighting and then voluntarily abandoned. This is presented as a genius strategic “feint”, “refocusing of the effort”, an act of “goodwill”, etc. When the reality is that all it did was to refocus the Ukrainian defense because they now didn’t have to worry about their northern border, but more on that below. The implicit promise is that there will be a return there when the time comes. We then get reprisals and atrocities against pro-Russian civilians such as in Bucha, as a reward for the “goodwill” gesture
4. War stalls even further and transitions into a series of grinding urban warfare battles — Volnovakha, Mariupol, Izyum, Lyman, Rubezhne, Popasnaya, Severodonetsk, Lysichansk. But still, progress is made, so the narrative that slow and steady will bring victory (eventually) takes hold. But there are no serious reinforcement brought despite the fact that is is clear that the allocated force is barely enough to hold the gains.
5. Meanwhile the West starts pumping weapons, training, and, as it is now clear, manpower too, into Ukraine. Practically nothing is done to stop that.
6. After Lysichansk, which was around July 1st, progress stops completely (and even that wasn’t played properly — Ukrainians were allowed to escape with much of their equipment because there wasn’t a sufficient force to seal the cauldron). We move to weeks-long battles, street-by-street over tiny villages west of Donetsk. Six months into it Donetsk is still shelled daily and the line of contact hasn’t moved appreciable at all.
7. Western weaponry starts to have an effect and we begin to see more and more daring attacks on not just Russian-held territory, but on Russia itself. The ZNPP, Crimea attacks, regular attacks on Kursk and Belgorod, etc. Zero reaction even though the blowing up of the airfield in Crimea alone should have crossed all imaginable red lines.
8. As predicted, a counteroffensive in launched in Kherson, but is repelled.
9. The one in Kharkov, however, reversed 6 months of gains in mere 4-5 days. Another major “tactical retreat” without much fighting is organized. Reprisals against civilians begin again.
10. There is now apparently a counteroffensive prepared towards the Azov coastline. Is even Mariupol safe at this point?
11. No measures are taken to secure the Russian-controlled territories. The LNR referendum should have been held immediately after Lysichansk was liberated, in order to make that territory irretrievably Russian, backed by the full power of the nuclear arsenal. Kherson, Melitopol and the liberated parts of the DNR should have been similarly secured. Also for the very important reason to make sure that the local population buys into Russian control, because without that commitment they know they might be abandoned at any moment.
As we are seeing now in Balakleya, Kupyansk, and Izyum, and probably soon in Volchansk and Lyman and God knows where else too.
12. Meanwhile there are still no serious reinforcements being brought it. There was the talk about the 3rd Army Corps, videos of them being moved to somewhere, where are they? There was a lot of talk about a massive airforce being gathered in Belgorod and Kursk. Where is it when it’s needed? Why is Volchansk, which is a stone’s throw away from the Russian border being evacuated? Why is the northern front not reactivated in order to spread Ukrainian defense? What happened instead was the genius move of a frontal assault against the Donbass fortifications, allowing Ukrainians to concentrated defense, with no real effort made to encircle them. The excuse about how entrenched fortifications were was constantly paraded, but it does not pass the smell test — the Vasylovka-Orekhov-Gulyapole-Velika Novoselka-Vugledar line wasn’t fortified, and a proper push to the north would have encircled the whole Donbass. There were no trenches and fortifications beyond the Donbass in Kharkov either so a push could have been made from there too. It is forgotten in fact that this is exactly what all the pro-Russian online experts expected to happen early on. It was never tried.
Given that trajectory, do we seriously believe that what has been lost now will be eventually regained? When has that happened so far? The ceded parts of Chernigov, Sumy and Kiev oblasts certainly haven’t been.
Etc.
Sure, there might be some grad master genius plan here, but it is not apparent from the facts so far.
Again, we all hope things will turn around soon, but the available evidence does not suggest it. If the conflict is frozen now through some backroom deal, that is a gigantic defeat for Russia, as another war will be fought soon but against an even more prepared enemy.
The worst part about this is that we do know that the Russians have the army, the manpower, and the weaponry to fight this seriously, and win it. But it is largely sitting idle, which is very very fishy.
What we get instead is 50,000 soldiers doing meaningless exercises in Vladivostok (or whatever part of the Far East it was in), while there is nobody to man the front line, and Putin with a smile on his face launching fireworks and dedicating ferris wheels in amusement parks, or whatever it was that he has been doing the last two days.
Posted by: Tbx | Sep 10 2022 16:00 utc | 10
|
