Credible Defense Megathread 7/14/23 + Feedback Thread

Michael Kofman and co. performed a fact-finding mission to Zaporizhia over the past couple of weeks. They have released a podcast about the experience which viewers might appreciate. Featuring Dmitri Alperovitch, Rob Lee, and Michael Kofman.

https://geopolitics-decanted.simplecast.com/episodes/trip-report-what-i-learned-in-kyiv-and-conversation-with-mike-kofman-and-rob-lee-about-counteroffensive-and-wagner

Frustrated by Biden, China Courts ‘Old Friends’ Like Kissinger

The red carpet welcome in Beijing for Henry A. Kissinger, the 100-year-old former secretary of state, included China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, telling him that “the Chinese people will always remember you.” It featured praise from China’s top diplomat for his wisdom. And it involved a meeting with the Chinese defense minister, who has rebuffed multiple requests to engage with his American counterpart.

China’s enthusiastic reception for Mr. Kissinger this week is the latest example of how Beijing is reaching outside official diplomatic channels to broaden the reach of its message and try to influence Washington’s thinking. Beijing has turned to those it deems more aligned with its position as it has become more skeptical toward, and at times openly frustrated with, the Biden administration.

With the visit by Mr. Kissinger, whom Mr. Xi and other officials called an “old friend,” Beijing has sought to emphasize cooperation and mutual respect between the powers. With visits by business leaders like Bill Gates — also dubbed an old friend by Mr. Xi — and Elon Musk, China has tried to highlight the longstanding economic relationship and the perils of untangling global supply chains.

Such efforts may become increasingly significant as Beijing pushes back against what it sees as the Biden administration’s efforts to contain China geopolitically, militarily and technologically. China is also watching as Republicans and Democrats unite in wanting to remain tough on Beijing, and a U.S. presidential election approaches in which candidates will likely be more critical of China.

ISW Update

Key Takeaways:

The July 17 attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge will likely have significant and sustained impacts on Russian logistics as traffic from tourism to occupied Crimea jams Russian logistics to southern Ukraine in the midst of the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south.

Russian and occupation authorities appear to be consumed with mitigating the consequences of the attack rather than leveraging the incident to levy heavy informational attacks with rhetorical inflections.

The Russian milblogger response to the Kerch Strait Bridge attack largely criticized Russian authorities for failing to secure the bridge.

The Wagner Group continues to prepare to establish a permanent presence in Belarus.

Russia continues efforts to reorganize its domestic security apparatus in the wake of the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front over the backdrop of increased Russian offensive operations along the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border on July 17.

Russian forces conducted active offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line and have likely made marginal tactical gains in this direction.

Russian forces continued limited ground attacks southwest and south of Kreminna, around Bakhmut, and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Bakhmut area and advanced near the Donetsk-Zaporizhia administrative border.

Russian forces conducted limited counterattacks in western Donetsk Oblast.

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued unsuccessful ground attacks in the Orikhiv area in western Zaporizhia Oblast.

Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported that Russian authorities have removed at least eight Russian military commanders without reappointing them to new positions since the start of the war, which is largely consistent with ISW’s previous assessments.

Russian occupation authorities continue to artificially increase the number of Russian citizens in occupied Ukraine ahead of the September regional elections.

Countries are make-believe. They exist because a critical mass of people all agree that “country” is a meaningful category, and that certain groups fit into that category. The exact particulars of both of these vary across time and space, but the modern Western definition includes ideas like “the monopoly on violence”, “Westphalian sovereignty”, and so on. The point is, peoples’s image/perception of a country and the country itself are to some degree one and the same. Things which shake a country’s citizens’ perception of their own nation really do shake the nation itself. Therefore, when the identity of a country is threatened, said country will react in the same way as if it were faced with any other existential threat. Similarly, when a concept or idea is incorporated into the identity of a country, it becomes worth protecting to the same or greater extent as the physical markers of a country’s existence.

China has incorporated the idea of territorial integrity, including Taiwan, into its very bedrock as a nation. There are many reasons why it did so, but they are beyond the scope of this comment. Therefore, China must pursue the reintegration of Taiwan, the same way it pursues “internal security” or “common values” or any other thing that you may consider part of being a “country”. To give up on this pursuit would be a body blow to its people’s consensus that the current “China” is a meaningful entity worth preserving. In short, China must pursue Taiwan because pursuing Taiwan is what the People’s Republic of China does. If ever it was to cease to do so, there would be a real risk of the People’s Republic of China ceasing to be the People’s Republic of China.

It’s Perun o’clock! This week’s episode focuses on cluster munitions and the impact the overall balance of artillery has on a war.

https://youtu.be/1zcUe47xerQ

Ruined, Empty, Mined and Overgrown: Ukraine’s Forgotten Villages

Leave the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium and turn west onto rougher roads, where dead trees and twisted power lines give way to a string of shattered villages.

These enclaves, once the backbone of Ukraine’s agricultural eastern steppe, were reduced to ruin as the war passed over them like a flood tide.

Despite being recaptured by Ukraine’s military last fall, the villages of Sulyhivka, Virnopillia and Kamianka are now at risk of being lost — not to artillery or pitched battles, but to overgrown weeds, wildflowers and minefields. They are another kind of casualty in a war that has claimed many.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-18-2023

Key Takeaways:

The July 17 Kerch Strait Bridge attack is likely having immediate ramifications on Russian military logistics in southern Ukraine.

Russian forces conducted a strike campaign ostensibly against Ukrainian military objects in southern Ukraine in explicit retaliation for the Kerch Strait Bridge attack.

The dismissal of former Russian 58th Combined Arms Army (CAA) Commander Major General Ivan Popov and the issues he cited continue to have effects on Russian military operations in southern Ukraine and the discourse around these operations.

Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive actions on at least three sectors of the frontline against the backdrop of increased Russian offensive operations and claimed tactical gains along the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border on July 18.

Russia continues legislative manipulations to repress domestic dissent through introducing fear of criminal liability.

The Telegraph concluded that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Belarusian authorities are actively involved in the forced deportation of Ukrainian children.

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line, southwest of Kreminna, and in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka-Donetsk City areas and made limited territorial gains in all sectors.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations around Bakhmut and advanced north of Bakhmut.

Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia area and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and reportedly made limited advances. Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia oblast area and recently made limited advances in western Zaporizhia Oblast.

Some Russian sources suggested that recent measures supporting the development of the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) allow it to posture as an alternative Russian military formation.

Russia continues to formalize methods of social programming targeted at youth in occupied areas of Ukraine.

007 things the chief of MI6 told POLITICO

On the 55th anniversary of the Prague Spring, the head of Britain’s secret intelligence service sat down with POLITICO’s Anne McElvoy — a journalist with deep experience reporting from behind the Iron Curtain — to talk about Russia, Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, China and AI in spycraft.

Moore offered an upbeat assessment of the battlefield situation in Ukraine, noting that Kyiv’s forces had taken back more ground in the past month than the Russians had done in a year. And he issued a warning to African leaders who are relying on Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner PMC mercenary army, to keep them in power.

Russian improvements over the course of the war in Ukraine:

In hindsight, the decision to withdraw from Kherson and deeply fortify the rest of the southern oblasts was a prescient choice by General Surovikin, one that likely saved their lines from total collapse this summer.

The VKS continues to be a serious threat, one that has remained largely intact and lethal.

Russian drone usage continues to evolve in responsiveness and sophistication. As their counterbattery radars become increasingly attrited, Lancet/Orlan teams have become critical to Russian counterbattery efforts.

The Russian OODA loop has massively improved compared to the start of the war. Artillery fires have been pushed much further down the chain of command, and there are signs that they are making strong use of drone-corrected fires.

US close to providing Ukraine with long-range cluster missiles

The Biden administration is close to deciding it will provide Ukraine with a version of ATACMS long-range missiles armed with cluster bomblets rather than a single warhead, according to several people familiar with the ongoing deliberations.

Biden moved during the summer from a firm and long-standing “no” to saying the issue was “still in play.” Although the administration backed away from initial concerns that Kyiv would use the long-range weapons to strike inside Russian territory, the Pentagon still worried that drawing down enough ATACMS from relatively small military stockpiles to make a difference on the Ukraine battlefield would undercut the readiness of U.S. forces for other possible conflicts.

But the cluster-armed version of ATACMS are more plentiful than those topped with a single — or “unitary” — warhead and are no longer considered a front-line U.S. weapon. From an estimated original production of 2,500, some from the early 1990s, an unknown number were later refitted with unitary warheads, according to a fiscal year 2018 Defense Department publication. But many of the cluster variant remain in stockpiles. Consideration of the cluster warhead ATACMS was first reported by Reuters.

Lots of chatter today around Staromaiorske. To remind everybody who may not know the name of every tiny village in southern Ukraine, this is on the path of the offensive towards Mariupol. The lynchpin of the defense here is still further south, at Staromlynivka, but losing the heights in this area will destabilize the line further north. Good news if Ukrainians truly have taken it, but as always wait for visual confirmation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/15/ukraine-war-russia-mines-counteroffensive/

This entire article was an excellent piece of journalism, but buried within was the clearest account yet of that famous pileup by the 47th Brigade.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/15/ukraine-war-russia-mines-counteroffensive/

An excellent article in its own right, but buried within is the clearest account yet of the 47th's pileup earlier in the counteroffensive.

Another officer in the 47th brigade said that on the counteroffensive’s first day, some of the brigade’s units, riding in Bradley fighting vehicles and Leopard battle tanks, mistakenly took a wrong route, into a minefield, instead of one that had been prepared by sappers in advance.

Obstacle-clearing vehicles were at the front of the columns, but the group was forced to stop when vehicles in the rear unexpectedly ran into mines and got trapped. The chaos created a cluster of vehicles in one spot. The Russians then started to attack the Ukrainians from helicopters overhead and with antitank missiles, badly damaging or destroying several of the personnel carriers and tanks. Some units that left their equipment behind still managed to seize Russian trench positions, according to the Ukrainian officer.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1680701950143152130

Another very bad day for Russian artillery losses, with 7 tube artillery systems and 4 rocket artillery systems visually confirmed to be destroyed, including a rare Tornado-G MRL.

Russia pulls out of Ukraine grain deal, in potential blow to global food supplies

Russia said Monday it was suspending its participation in a crucial deal that allowed the export of Ukrainian grain, once again raising fears over global food supplies and scuppering a rare diplomatic breakthrough to emerge from Moscow's war in Ukraine.

The agreement, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July 2022, was officially set to expire at 5 p.m. ET on Monday (midnight local time in Istanbul, Kyiv, and Moscow).

Cutting off the nose to spite the face.

https://twitter.com/MaxRTucker/status/1685564979930386432

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1685564979930386432.html

Great thread from a journalist embedded with the forces who took Staromaiorske this week.

I joined the Ares battalion of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army as they and the 35th Marine Brigade assaulted and then liberated Staromaiorske. It was a bruising, infantry on infantry battle after artillery had pounded the village. The only good use for western vehicles on these narrow streets was to drop off troops and collect casualties. Stay any longer and they are vulnerable to anti-tank weapons. In previous villages the Russians had been hunkered down in building that were levelled.

But this time the Russians dug trenches in gardens, vegetable patches and animal enclosures and waited until the Ukrainians were upon them to open fire. “They let us approach as close as 20 metres before shooting,” UVA soldier Oleh tells me. “They got smarter after Neskuchne."

Neskuchne is where the Russians built their first line of defence on this route to Mariupol. The Ukrainians have had to obliterate it to liberate it. The manoeuvre warfare of the Kyiv and Kharkiv counteroffensives has been replaced by Soviet-style tactics — attrite and advance.

Over the past eight weeks the Ukrainians have fought south down the T01508 road to Mariupol through Blahodatne, Storozheve, then Makarivka, now Staromaiorske. Cottage by cottage, Oleh’s platoon fought the Russians there with rifles, grenades and portable anti-tank weapons.

A trench would be taken one night, then the Russians would hit them the next day with artillery. After that they would come back to try and retake them. Some of the battalion’s positions would be cut off for days, with soldiers eking out an existence on tiny sips of water.

For one week, Oleh’s unit experienced hell, he said. He saw his comrades carried away bloodied, concussed or shell-shocked. One was killed. Then, when a Russian armoured personnel carrier rolled into the village, they thought they were done for.

The marines closest were armed only with rifles and a heavy machine-gun, and could only watch as it rolled up to the village school, its gun pointed in the direction of the Ukrainian positions. They braced for it to fire. Instead, five Russian paratroopers emerged from the building and dashed into the vehicle’s protective hull. The Russians were withdrawing. On Wednesday night the UVA’s thermal imaging drones captured them on camera as they fled.

They shared the livestream with a Ukrainian artillery unit, which hit them as they went. By Thursday the Ukrainian forces were able to pull out those in Oleh’s platoon who were still standing, rotating in fresh troops to fortify the damaged positions they had taken.

By Thursday night, Ukraine controlled every village street and the UVA and the 35th hoisted the Ukrainian flag. President Zelensky commented on the victory: “Our south! Our troops! Glory to Ukraine!”

The Ares battalion of the UVA, a territorial defence unit composed mostly of men and women from the nearby city of Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky’s home town, were sent into Staromaiorske because they are highly motivated. They are also resourceful.

An artillery crew showed me how they had taken launch tubes from a burnt-out Russian Grad rocket launcher and welded them to the back of a pick-up truck to create their own multiple launch rocket system.

In the neighbouring village of Storozheve, we hunkered down with the UVA drone team, the thud and crash of incoming artillery far too close for comfort. An elongated splashing noise denoted the sound of Russian cluster munitions bursting nearby, said Father Serhii, 29.

Occasional bursts of automatic weapons fire startled the team. Then a call came through on the radio — Ukraine had taken casualties inside the village and an armoured vehicle would evacuate the wounded from the battlefield. One pilot, Kipesh, beckoned me over to watch the stream.

We saw a US-supplied armoured vehicle stopped on outskirts.“This is good time to have a drone in the air because Russian artillery tries to hit the medevacs as they leave, we can spot where they are firing from and direct our artillery against them,” Kipesh explained.

Yet the vehicle did not move. More calls came through — Russian drones were operating in the area too, dropping fragmentation grenades on Ukrainian positions where the wounded men were taking cover. A move into the open would be too risky, they would have to wait for nightfall.

That would be too late for us to leave, so we pulled back to where Thor, a Ukrainian special forces team, were waiting impatiently for a mission.

“We have a no-fly zone over our troops now and we can’t use our mortars when they are advancing, said the team leader. They’re moving quickly and there is a chance of friendly fire.” The UVA and the marines took one week to take the village, he said, and there are 12 more down the road. He looked up and grinned. “At this rate we’ll soon be in Mariupol.”

Read the full dispatch here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/on-the-front-line-of-ukraines-slow-bruising-counteroffensive-kppm5vmz9