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Ukraine SitRep: Niu-York Cauldron – Sumi Diversion – Supplying Crimea
A current look at the map in the east of Ukraine:
April 03, 2024
biggerMay 03, 2024
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The above maps are of the eastern front in Ukraine on April 3 and May 3. Opening them side by side one can see two significant moves by Russian forces. In the north the forces are moving west towards Chasiv Yar which is a high ground controlling anything further west of it.
On the southern part of the map, north of Avdiivka, the Russian forces have taken Ocheretyne and Keramik.
Both movements together let one anticipate a larger two pronged plan:
- From Chasiv Yar a move west roughly along the H32 road towards Konstantynivka.
- From Keramik a move north roughly along the H-20 road.
This would form a pincer which would envelope the large mining conglomerate around Niu-York, west of Horlivka. The area has been on the frontline since 2014. It is thus heavily fortified. Surrounding it is much more convenient and less bloody than storming it outright.
The Economist had a talk (archived) with Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence.
He seems to have already given up on Chasiv Yar:
Ukraine’s immediate concern is its high-ground stronghold in the town of Chasiv Yar, which holds the keys to an onward Russian advance to the last large cities in the Donetsk region (see map). It is probably a matter of time before that city falls in a similar way to Avdiivka, bombed to oblivion by the Russians in February, says the general. “Not today or tomorrow, of course, but all depending on our reserves and supplies.”
Russia has already won a tactical success in the south-west in the village of Ocheretyne, where a recent Ukrainian troop rotation was bungled. Russian forces succeeded in breaking through a first line of defence and have created a salient 25 square kilometres in size. Ukraine is some way from stabilising the situation, while Russia is throwing “everything” it has to achieve a bigger gain. The Russian army is not the hubristic organisation it was in 2022, says the general, and is now operating as a “single body, with a clear plan, and under a single command”.
Mr. Skibitsky is in a generally gloomy mood:
General Skibitsky says he does not see a way for Ukraine to win the war on the battlefield alone. Even if it were able to push Russian forces back to the borders—an increasingly distant prospect—it wouldn’t end the war. Such wars can only end with treaties, he says.
It is good to finally see some realism reaching Kiev.
Some Russian forces are ready to (again) enter Ukraine from the north to threaten the cities of Sumy and Kharkiv. I see this as a diversion attempt, not as a serious operation to take those cities. It is binding Ukrainian forces in the north while the eastern frontlines are too thinly occupied to hold off further attacks.
One fixation of the Ukrainian side has been the Kerch bridge which connects the larger Russia with Crimea. It was hoped that any destruction of the bridge would hamper the Russian logistics. But a map of the new railway tracks Russia has build on the northern side of the Sea of Asov shows that there are now several redundant ways to supply Crimea. A destruction of the Kerch bridge now would be a just-for-show moment without any significant consequences for the Russian positions.
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Milites 300:
Before the Lefties celebrate too loudly or quickly, both China and Russia will have to eventually face the same turbulent dichotomies, generated by the 21st Century, but are currently enjoying the interval created by delayed industrialisation.
May I suggest that they are going to leapfrog over the West in this regard? When I first visited the Philippines in 1990, just getting a traditional phone line was a huge hassle; the official waiting list was years. You had to grease palms to get service installed. But in just ten years, no one wanted a land line anymore; everyone had moved to text. And installing cell capacity was significantly easier than trying to run new wire. The new tech means you don’t have to wait anymore.
The political institutions of the West are based on the technology of the 1700s; the British term ‘riding’ refers to the area that a member of Parliament could cover in a day’s ride on horseback. Representative democracy was required because the peasants were too uneducated to have an opinion on many things; they needed someone educated to digest and summarize matters in a way they could understand. I understand that some would contend things have not changed much in this regard; that’s a different issue.
Today, with virtual full access to the world’s information via our WISPs (Wireless Internet Smart Phone), one might think we are on the verge of a citizen’s revolution where banker wars would replaced by mutual cooperation and peace. Alas, the WISP is more foe than friend; far too many have fallen victim to its ADHD lifestyle, aided and abetted by AI and algorithms designed to distract our minds, dissipate our energy, and divert our attention. Even more sinister is the fact the WISP is a resonate medium.
Each little tribe on the net, from our humble barflies to huge FB groups, resonates. Each of us both adds energy to, and takes energy from, the system, and the system ‘vibrates’ on a consistent ‘frequency’ – here, more or less support for the SMO, and disgust at the actions in Gaza by Bibi and friends. Many people rely on their WISPs for all their news. Because we can choose from so many different feeds, we actually *curate* our own reality from many thousands available.
We are all aware, for example, how easy it is to build and maintain a world view that Putin is evil, global warming is real, Biden won 81 million votes, and Trump is the most dangerous man alive. Just get your feeds from WaPo/NYT/CNN/MSNBC and etc. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard coined the term “hyperreality” to define such states, where a great many people believe and support a world view that is apparently at odds with what most of us here would call reality.
In the US, we have seen the introduction of many dangerous and subversive hyperrealities over the last two decades. The AGW scam, the trans sex scam, now the migrant scam – the goal is to fracture the US populace between warring hyperrealities, so that they can be more easily controlled by the robber-barons.
Russia is in a different situation. There, Putin has the support of his people because, among other things, his government is not teaching kids to question their sex at age 7, he is not allowing his borders to be overrun by invaders, and he supports the Orthodox Church and its values – at least nominally. I don’t see evidence that Russia is torn apart by competing hyperrealities as the West is. I don’t see it in China either.
One might not agree with Russia’s or China’s values. I’m fairly certain I don’t agree with all of them. But their people believe their leaders have done great things. The Chinese remember the crushing poverty after Mao’s failures; the Russians remember the chaos after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They see their countries now, and are proud of the strides they have made in the last 30 years. Because of that, both countries have more unified peoples than the west. This is why I have no hope that the West will win any direct confrontation with either.
What might change this would be a miscalculation by China or Russia. A Chinese move on Taiwan, or a Russian tactical nuke, would be exactly the catalyst required to shock and re-orient all those Western hyperrealities, and generate the type of resonating energy we saw during WWII, for example. Even then, Western force may be so dissipated by drugs, depravity, and ‘diversity’ that it will be unable to prevail.
Posted by: FrankDrakman | May 8 2024 3:42 utc | 319
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