Due to my recent health issues I could not report on Ukraine for quite a while. This is my first attempt to catch up with the issue.
Given the huge size of Ukraine the changes in the front line between April 1 and August 1 seem minuscule.
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But the small moves on the map disguise a rather large progress for the Russian forces.
In May some 30,000 Russian troops crossed the northern border from Russia towards Kharkiv. They quickly reached a depth of some 15 kilometer but then stopped to make fast progress. According the Russian president Vladimir Putin the forces were tasked to prevent further Ukrainian artillery attacks on Belgorod. They have mostly achieved that purpose.
But the Ukrainian side interpreted the move as an attack on Kharkiv with the purported aim to take Ukraine's second largest city. It panicked.
Troops that had been pulled back because of losses were redirected to Kharkiv. Brigades that were fighting in the Donetsk region in the east were moved north to block the Russian forces. In total some 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers were pulled from elsewhere and pushed into the Kharkiv region. They were tasked with counterattacking the Russian forces.
This fitted the Russian plans very well. The whole attack near Kharkiv had been planned as a diversion from other fronts. The troops deployed in the north went into defense and concentrated on eliminating counterattacking Ukrainian forces.
While this was ongoing the Russian forces on the Donetsk front found that the man- and fighting power of their local opponents had sharply decreased. They attacked and soon made significant progress.
Months ago it took weeks to take a small town or to jump to the next treeline. Now the Russian forces make jumps of several kilometer per day and take new towns on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.
The maps of the eastern front show rather large progress in several directions.
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In the south the Russian forces east of Vuhledar moved north and cut one of the supply roads to the city.
To the north west of Donetsk city Russian forces made huge progress towards Pokrovsk city, one of the main road and rail crossings in the region. Pokrovsk is already in normal artillery range and the Ukrainian forces defending its approaches seem to be utterly worn out.
North east of the Pokrovsk front Russian forces are in the process of taking the New York agglomeration of several cities from the north as well as from the south.
A bit further north moves from Kurdiumivka and from Chasiv Yar are aiming at taking Konstantinovka, another major city controlling various crossroads.
All the above moves were possible because Ukraine had moved whatever was available towards the Kharkiv front. The defense units left behind in the Donetsk region were simply not enough to hold the line against the still growing Russian forces.
A new push for mobilization has helped Ukraine to bring fresh troops to the front. They are however not increasing the forces but simply replace the large losses Ukrainian brigades have had. A recent New York Times piece mentioned this in an aside note (archived):
Ukraine Is Conscripting Thousands More Troops. But Are They Ready?
Large numbers of recruits will arrive at the front in the coming weeks, soldiers and military analysts said, but some are poorly trained or out of shape.The Ukrainian authorities have declined to share conscription figures, arguing that the information is confidential. Three military experts with knowledge of the figures said that Kyiv had been drafting up to 30,000 people a month since May, when a new conscription law took effect. That is two to three times more than during the last winter months, they said, and about the same number that the Russian Army is recruiting each month. That figure could not be independently confirmed.
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Gen. Yurii Sodol, a former commander of the Ukrainian forces, told Parliament in April that in certain sections of the front, Russians outnumbered Ukrainians by more than seven to one.
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In addition to the conscripts, Ukraine has released some 3,800 prisoners to serve in exchange for the possibility of parole at the end of their fighting duties, according to Denys Maliuska, the justice minister.A medic fighting near the eastern Ukrainian town of Toretsk, one of the hottest points on the front line, said that her brigade had received 2,000 conscripts and prisoners in the past two months. The medic spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid giving information to Russian forces.
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Mr. Voytenkov, the press officer for the 33rd, said his brigade gave one week of additional training to conscripts to show them the weapons and armored vehicles that they would be using. After just the basic training, he said, “they are not ready to fight, honestly.”
Toretsk is part of the New York agglomeration. A Ukraine brigade has a nominal strength of some 3,000 to 4,000 men. If it has needed 2,000 replacements in two months, as the medic claims, it must have taken enormous losses.
The new recruits are mostly untrained and not fit for war. The units they are sent to lack the junior leaders needed to train them. The new men will thereby become cannon fodder with little chance to survive Russian attacks or bombing.
The new mobilization was partly intended to create new reserves. But when active troops need replacements of this size the numbers left for new forces will be too small to make a difference.
In a recent interview with the Guardian the Ukrainian commander in chief General Syrsky made some optimistic noise about 'winning'. But the numbers he cited all point to an overwhelming Russian forces that will easily smash whatever is left in Ukraine to oppose them:
Syrskyi is Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief. His unenviable task is to defeat a bigger Russian army. Two and half years into Vladimir Putin’s full-scale onslaught, he acknowledges the Russians are much better resourced. They have more of everything: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, soldiers. Their original 100,000-strong invasion force has grown to 520,000, he said, with a goal by the end of 2024 of 690,000 men. The figures for Ukraine have not been made public.
“When it comes to equipment, there is a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 in their favour,” he said. Since 2022 the number of Russian tanks has “doubled” – from 1,700 to 3,500. Artillery systems have tripled, and armoured personnel carriers gone up from 4,500 to 8,900. “The enemy has a significant advantage in force and resources,” Syrskyi said. “Therefore, for us, the issue of supply, the issue of quality, is really at the forefront.”
There are little if any new supplies coming for the Ukrainian forces. The 'West' has given Ukraine everything it could spare and anything that comes on top of that will have to be newly produced. The capacities to do that in the required numbers are no longer existing.
Aside from the immediate military problems the civilian side of Ukraine is on an ever accelerating down-path. Russian attacks have destroyed nearly all conventional power generation capacities in Ukraine. There are daily blackouts. Food is perishing in the shops and many industries had to stop working.
The Ukrainian government needs money. It needs to introduce new taxes against the resistance of its population. It has already defaulted on foreign debt and new credit lines will be difficult to come by.
The real pressure though will come this winter. Large parts of Ukraine's cities depend on the now dysfunctional power generating capacities to heat their Soviet style housing blocks. With electricity and heat lacking more and more people will think of moving abroad.
It is unlikely that Poland and other neighboring countries of Ukraine will generously welcome even more refugees from Ukraine.