Putin Bailed on Top Military Meetings After Crushing War Losses
After Russian forces in Ukraine suffered a series of crushing defeats over the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin went into retreat himself.
The Russian president postponed a planned meeting with his top military brass and representatives of the defense industry in Sochi, in a sign that Putin is caught in the lurch after Ukrainian forces reclaimed a lot of territory that Russian armed forces had seized earlier in the war, according to TASS. It is thought to be the largest Russian defeat since the beginning of the war.
“The Sochi meetings are in demand, they will continue,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, indicating that the meeting was just being postponed, not canceled.
Peskov said Putin had pushed off the meeting with Russian defense leadership and defense industry representatives, which is usually held in May, due to a “very, very busy” schedule.
But he also suggested that Putin needed time to digest the new developments in the war, alluding to the losses.
“Especially since as the special military operation develops, certain experience is gained that needs to be discussed,” Peksov added.
This is now at least the second shakeup Russian defense leadership have had to endure in trying to set up this meeting with Putin this year. In the thick of the invasion this May, Peskov suggested there were no plans to hold the usual meeting.
Other signs that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has left the Kremlin shaken have emerged in recent hours. Putin had planned to host a series of referenda as a way to fabricate support for Russia’s takeover. But Putin has now allegedly canceled them, according to Meduza, which cites two sources close to the Kremlin.
A pro-Moscow official in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, has also suggested the referenda are on “pause” given the Ukrainian counteroffensive, although he has sought to walk back his comments, according to France 24.
The news comes days after Ukrainian forces began launching a counteroffensive in southern territories captured by Russia. Ukrainian forces also launched operations aimed at the northeast of the country, which Russian troops likely weren’t prepared for. Russia had rerouted forces to the south to handle the expected counteroffensive there, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
That regrouping may have been a strategic blunder. In the end, Russian forces were outnumbered by eight to one in the Kharkiv region, according to Vitaly Ganchev, a top military official appointed to the region.
Ukrainian forces have so far reclaimed over 3,000 square kilometers of territory since the beginning of the month, according to Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces—a statistic that would indicate the Ukrainians have tripled their won territory in just a couple of days. Ukrainians have reclaimed more than 20 settlements in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, sending Russian forces retreating. Ukrainians have also taken Vysokopillia, Novovoznesenske, Bilohirka, Myroliubivka, and Sukhyi Stavok, Natalia Humeniuk, the head of the United Coordinating Press Center of Defense Forces of the South of Ukraine, said Monday.
The wins that Ukrainian armed forces secured in the last several days could place Russian narratives about the war—which, in Russia, remain focused on an alleged attempt to “liberate” the Donbas—in jeopardy.
According to a British intelligence assessment, the losses will likely inject tension into Russia’s military leadership and exacerbate existing suspicions in Russia’s military ranks, which have been gutted in recent weeks.
“The rapid Ukrainian successes have significant implications for Russia’s overall operational design,” the British intelligence assessment states. “The majority of the force in Ukraine is highly likely being forced to prioritize emergency defensive actions.”
“The already limited trust deployed troops have in Russia’s senior military leadership is likely to deteriorate further,” the assessment read.
Already, Russian officials are second-guessing the entire “special” military operation in Ukraine. Municipal deputies from Moscow and St. Petersburg demanded that Putin resign, noting that “everything went wrong.” Some lawmakers have accused Putin of high treason for invading Ukraine.
Even Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin’s key ally in Chechnya, has started lobbing criticism at Russia’s military.
“Mistakes were made,” Kadyrov said on Telegram. “And if today or tomorrow changes are not made to the strategy of the ‘special military operation,' I will be forced to turn to the leadership of the Ministry of Defense, the leadership of the country to explain to them the situation that is really happening on the ground.”
So far, though, the Kremlin has attempted to project a sense of calm about the losses in Ukraine. Russia’s Defense Ministry hasn’t explicitly admitted a defeat, but rather has indicated Russia has made a decision to “regroup.”
“In order to achieve the declared goals of the special military operation for the liberation of Donbas, it was decided to regroup the Russian forces stationed near Balakleya and Izyum to boost efforts in the Donetsk direction,” Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov told reporters.
Peskov, for his part, said that Russia will continue to work to achieve its military goals.
“The special military operation is underway and will continue until the goals that have been set are achieved,” Peskov told reporters.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/vladim...in-ukraine-war
Ukraine’s southern offensive ‘was designed to trick Russia’
The much-publicised Ukrainian southern offensive was a disinformation campaign to distract Russia from the real one being prepared in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s special forces have said.
Ukrainian forces are continuing to make unexpected, rapid advances in the north-east of the country, retaking more than a third of the occupied Kharkiv region in three days. Much of Ukraine’s territorial gains were confirmed by Russia’s defence ministry on Saturday.
“[It] was a big special disinformation operation,” said Taras Berezovets, a former national security adviser turned press officer for the Bohun brigade of Ukraine’s special forces.
“[Russia] thought it would be in the south and moved their equipment. Then, instead of the south, the offensive happened where they least expected, and this caused them to panic and flee.”
On 29 August, Ukraine’s southern command announced that the long-anticipated offensive in the Kherson region had begun. But soldiers on the Kherson frontline said at the time that they saw no evidence of said offensive or that the active battles taking place were a reaction to an attempted Russian offensive several days earlier.
For the past two weeks, Ukrainian forces in the south took several villages – no small feat given the reported strength of Russian positions and one which nevertheless resulted in injuries.
But the gains were not remarkably different from the steady but limited progress Ukrainian forces had been making in the Kherson region over July and August.
And yet, the capture of these tiny Kherson villages, with populations of a few thousands, suddenly became big international news.
Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern command, had insisted on a “regime of silence” and temporarily banned journalists from visiting the frontlines in Kherson.
But Berezovets said the media stir around the southern offensive was a coordinated disinformation campaign by Ukraine, targeted at Russian forces, that had been building for several months.
It was successful in provoking Russia to move equipment and personnel to the southern front, including partly from Kharkiv region, said Berezovets.
“Meanwhile [our] guys in Kharkiv were given the best of western weapons, mostly American,” he said.
Part of the special operation involved rooting out informants in Ukrainian-controlled parts of Kharkiv to stop them passing information about Ukraine’s preparations to the Russians, said a military source with knowledge of the operation.
“The [informants] were almost completely cleaned up. They mostly comprised normal Ukrainian civilians but there were some Russian agents undercover as Ukrainian civilians,” said the source. “The Russians had no idea what was going on.”
Russia’s defence ministry has confirmed the retreat, describing it as a regroup. It says it has retreated from Izium and the town of to “bolster efforts” on the Donetsk front.
“A three-day operation was carried out on the drawdown and organised transfer of the Izium-Balakliia group of troops to the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” said the Russian defence ministry spokesperson, Igor Konashenkov.
“In order to prevent damage to the Russian troops, a powerful fire defeat was inflicted on the enemy.”
Russian state media and bloggers have confirmed Russian soldiers have been forced to make a large-scale retreat from Kharkiv.
Ukrainian troops have in the past few days pushed Russian forces out of a number of settlements in the region that Moscow occupied since the first days of its invasion.
In a video address late on Friday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Ukrainian forces had liberated more than 30 settlements in the Kharkiv region.
A local resident of Izium, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that the Ukrainian troops had entered the city. Before that, “Russian occupying forces were rapidly withdrawing, leaving ammunition and equipment behind”.
Ukraine’s retake of Izium could be its most significant success in pushing back the Russians since the beginning of the invasion.
By capturing the nearby town of Kupiansk, Ukrainian forces have managed to cut off the supply lines for the Russian formations in control of the Izium area,” said Serhiy Kuzan, a military expert at the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center.
Kuzan said the Russian formations in charge of the south-east area of Kharkiv, labelled the Izium area by military experts, were professional Russian soldiers, not mercenaries or conscripts from Russian-occupied Donbas.
The offensive has been carried out at lightning speed, with a third of occupied Kharkiv being captured by Ukrainian forces in just a matter of days, he said.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has said Ukraine’s counter-offensive took Russian forces by surprise, adding that Kyiv’s forces had advanced 50km (31 miles) along a narrow frontline and retaken or surrounded several towns.
With Ukrainian operations also continuing in Kherson, the Russian defensive front is under pressure on both its northern and southern flanks,” it said.
“We are actually surprised by how poorly the Russians have retreated,” said Kuzan. “Retreat is part of the art of war. When we retreated, we made sure they suffered losses as they advanced and we did to so to ensure that they only advanced 1, 2, 3 kilometres.
“They were so confident that they didn’t prepare their defences,” he added. “This has shown that the only advantage they have is in the number of artillery pieces and heavy equipment. So all we need is the same amount.”
After the big territorial gains made this week by Ukraine, Moscow is sending columns of military reinforcements to the Kharkiv region, according to reports in Russian media.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ation-campaign
Yahoo News Ukrainian soldiers are refurbishing abandoned Russian tanks and trucks
KYIV, Ukraine — It was an early and delightful symbol of underdog resistance. Dubbed the “John Deere Brigade,” Ukrainian tractors were shown all over social media lugging away hastily abandoned Russian military equipment, from tanks to self-propelled artillery systems to complicated air defense platforms, worth tens of millions of dollars. Western predictions that Ukraine would fall to its invaders in as little as three days proved wildly off base. The breadbasket of Europe could punch above its weight. And now it was in the repo business.
Around the time of the Battle of Kyiv, captured Russian vehicles were generally just given a quick coat of paint and liberally decked out with Ukrainian flags before being sent back out to fight their previous owners. But what was at first an organic and ad hoc tractor effort by Ukrainian farmers has transformed into something far more organized and systematic, as the Ukrainian military have pushed vast quantities of captured Russian armor into frontline service. And since Ukraine retook almost all of Kharkiv district in the last week, there has been a windfall of new vehicles to “MacGyver” and repurpose.
In the aftermath of Ukraine’s successful Kharkiv offensive over the past week, fleets of Russian armored vehicles were left abandoned on the battlefield, left behind by Russian troops as they desperately tried to escape the Ukrainian advance. Footage uploaded to social media by victorious Ukrainian troops showed rows of BMP infantry fighting vehicles, neatly parked in the liberated city of Izium, seemingly in near-perfect condition, while T-80U tanks from Russia’s elite Fourth Guards Tank Regiment were left abandoned at a maintenance station, in various states of repair.
According to the independent monitor Oryx, which uses publicly available footage to visually confirm Russian and Ukrainian equipment losses, the Ukrainians have captured a minimum of 1,841 pieces of heavy Russian military equipment since the start of the war, including 356 tanks, 606 armored fighting vehicles, and 363 trucks and jeeps. As Oryx only includes equipment that has been visually confirmed as captured, the true total is probably much higher.
“During the early days of the war, a lot of Russian vehicles totally ran out of gas and were abandoned in perfect condition,” said Yuri Matsarsky, a soldier in Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces (TDF), the nation’s military reserve. “That’s happening less in the last few months. But after Kharkiv, it’s picked up again.”
The Ukrainians have been repainting these captured vehicles in their now-familiar digital camouflage. They’ve also been upgrading and improving them. Captured “Tornado-U” trucks were given an extra Browning M2 heavy machine gun mounted on the cab, while a BTR-82A armored personnel carrier was upgraded with extra armor, a thermal-imaging sight, and Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet platform.
“Many of the vehicles we captured have been MT-LBs,” Pavlo Kazarin, another soldier in the TDF and a well-known journalist before the war, told Yahoo News, referring to the versatile Russian armored vehicle often used as an armored personnel carrier or an artillery tractor. “At least one of these has been upgraded with added weapons, such as a ZSU-2 23 anti-aircraft autocannon.”
In fact, one TDF brigade has an entire garageful of repurposed Russian armored vehicles, owing to what Matsarsky described as “special tactics” to immobilize Russian vehicles and force their crews to abandon them. “One group of TDF fighters used a light mortar to shell a Russian BTR armored personnel carrier that took a regular patrol route, intentionally bursting the vehicle’s tires and forcing the crew to leave it behind.”
“Many Russian vehicles that are left behind are not that badly damaged,” Matsarsky said. “The Russians simply lack the motivation or the discipline to repair them.” Despite Russia’s inability to match the latest Western advances in drone technology or precision-guided weapons, building rugged heavy trucks is always something it has historically done well.
And because so many Ukrainians were pressed into military service as a result of the war, they initially had to rely on civilian cars for transportation. Generally, these had limited off-road capability and no armor, making them highly vulnerable to Russian attack. One of Matsarsky’s commanders went through three vehicles in a single month due to shelling.
Thanks to what the Ukrainians have nicknamed “Russian Lend Lease,” more and more of Kyiv’s soldiers now drive around with bullet- and artillery-proof plating. That not only translates into fewer casualties but also into greater operational sustainability on the battlefield. Matsarsky joked that it’s often easier to simply steal a Russian armored vehicle for TDF’s use than to barter or argue with other units in the Ukrainian Army for an official deployment.
The “Tornado-U,” for instance, is one of Russia’s latest heavy military trucks, and the models the Ukrainians have captured feature an armored cab, a 440-horsepower engine and a 6x6 chassis. The Tornado-U can also easily drive off road and haul a range of towed weapons, such as howitzers or anti-tank guns.
Ukrainians have also been snagging other types of Russian kit. One BM-21 “Grad” Multiple Launch Rocket System was found beyond effective repair, and so the Ukrainians salvaged the rocket-launcher tubes and mounted them on the backs of pickup trucks. While it is old technology (Grad rockets are not too dissimilar to the “Katyusha” rockets the Soviet Army used in World War II), ammunition for such systems is still relatively plentiful, and the rockets remain deadly.
Ukrainian soldiers insist, however, that refurbished Russian materiel is no substitute for continued support from their Western partners.
Russian guns and tanks show a lot of wear and tear. The barrels are worn out and the age of the equipment is extremely dated, 30 or 40 years old, and sometimes even older than that.
“Imagine what miracles we could perform with a brand-new Abrams tank,” Matsarsky said.
Ukrainian soldiers are refurbishing abandoned Russian tanks and trucks
Russia Has No Reserves Left As Ukrainian Troops Surround A Key Eastern Town
May 27 was a dark day for Ukraine. That was the day Lyman, the last free town north of the Donets River in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas River, finally fell to Russian forces. Capturing Lyman helped the Russian army to consolidate its position in Donbas and secure supply lines across the region.
Lyman was a domino. As it fell, it knocked down Severodonetsk, the last free city east of the Donets. And as Severodonetsk fell, it toppled Lysychansk, its twin city on the opposite side of the river.
Nearly four months later, the dominos are falling in the opposite direction. A Ukrainian counteroffensive that kicked off east of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city 100 miles northwest of Lyman, in a heady two weeks has liberated a thousand square miles of northeast Ukraine.
Fleeing a dozen eager Ukrainian brigades, Russian forces in Kharkiv Oblast —including the once-elite 1st Guard Tanks Army—have fled east across the Oskil River, leaving behind hundreds of vehicles and potentially thousands of casualties.
The Ukrainians’ momentum, weighted by aggressive air and artillery support, has carried them a short distance across the Oskil and south toward Lyman. Now several of Kyiv’s brigades—a mix of paratroopers and territorials—also are closing on Lyman ... from the opposite direction.
It’s a proverbial noose for the Russians in the town.
The Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. explained what’s at stake. “Further Ukrainian advances east along the north bank of the Siverskyi Donets River could make Russian positions around Lyman untenable and open the approaches to Lysychansk and ultimately Severodonetsk.”
The Russians, in other words, might soon lose a lot of the territory they spent the summer—and much of their combat power—capturing.
The disposition of forces in and around Lyman favors the attackers. As recently as last week, one analyst placed just four Russian battalions—motorized infantry, mostly—in the area. A battalion might have just a few hundred front-line troops. A brigade usually includes several battalions.
ISW’s own assessment is even less favorable for the Russians. “The Russian defenders in Lyman still appear to consist in large part of ... reservists and the remnants of units badly damaged in the Kharkiv Oblast counteroffensive,” the think-tank stated.
Worse, “the Russians do not appear to be directing reinforcements from elsewhere in the theater to these areas,” ISW added.
That latter point should come as no surprise. The Kharkiv counteroffensive at its climax a week ago consumed a Russian battalion every day. The vaunted 1st Guard Tank Army lost at least half of its roughly 200 T-80 tanks as it pulled back across the Oskil.
Perhaps most embarrasingly for Moscow, the reserve 3rd Army Corps—which the Kremlin struggled to form this summer—rolled into Kharkiv in a desperate bid to slow the Ukrainian attack, promptly lost a few skirmishes then joined the wider Russian retreat.
That is to say, there are no reserves to reinforce the Lyman garrison because the Kremlin already spent the bulk of its reserves—the 3rd AC—in a failed effort to stop the initial Ukrainian counterattack. Russia has run out of healthy young men and spare modern equipment and no longer can stand up effective new units.
The Russian garrison in Lyman is outnumbered, increasingly isolated—and on its own. It’s a safe bet the Russian troops occupying Lysychansk and Severodonetsk closely are watching as the Second Battle of Lyman looms.
They, after all, are next.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidax...h=196d7ef43126