This is a Twitter update from Radu Hossu who has given his (cautious) assessment of the state of play in Ukraine based on what he knows & what is reported. https://twitter.com/RaduHossu/status/1686603149258203136
TL:DR: Russia is facing a lot of bad choices.
I've removed the last paragraph as he talks about the sexual war crimes perpetrated by the Russians and I don't want to traumatise or upset anyone on here.
Where he uses the word [SOURCES!!!], it means it's not from a verified source - we're talking about a strong rumor.
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Nightly summary (02.08.2023 04:50 RO/UA time):
[DISCLAIMER] As I said yesterday, even if my professional area (strategy and political communication) is tangentially close to military strategy - because from military strategy was born the field of political strategy, I am a man who spent many months in Ukraine, more than 3 months in the line of contact and even if I am from Romania, I think that at this moment I know better the geography of Ukraine than Romania. From the topographical level, to the level of settlements and where they are positioned. Writing these summaries in Romanian, on Facebook as of 26 February 2022, being 2/3 of the time in the war zone I think I allow myself to make some personal observations which I ask you to take as such: personal observations of a layman in the art of war.
- The counteroffensive:
1.1 Eastern Front (Kupyansk-Kreminna): Silence on the Eastern Front. The Russian counteroffensive is currently at a pause. We can only speculate that this pause is due to the lack of cohesion and coordination between units, reaching the point of culmination or "shell hunger".
Personal note: The counteroffensive on the Kupyansk-Kreminna front was supposed to serve to be a regrouping of AFU troops in this area, having been moved from the Battle for Bakhmut 2.0. Fortunately for the AFU, the Ukrainians didn't fall for it and the bluff (that's how I consider the Russian operation at this point) has been called, and now the Russians have to move troops into the Bakhmut area if they don't want to lose it. And I'm sure Putin doesn't want to lose this symbolic town: the only important symbolic town won in the Russian winter-spring offensive.
1.2 Southern Front-Zaporozhye:
- Vasylivka Axis. Ukrainian Armed Forces continue their advance towards Luhove. What is interesting is that the AFU is hitting Russian military targets south of the Dnieper, on the Valylivka-Energodar axis. On 05.05 i.e. almost 3 months ago I wrote that this would be one of the viable counteroffensive options, given the terrain and other military factor details (short supply lines, sparse Russian defenses etc).
- Orihiv-Tokmak axis. The AFU approached Verbove, being at the gates of the town. In Novoprokopivka it destroyed an ammunition depot. Also from images posted by the Russians, at least Ukrainian reconnaissance troops are well south of Robotyne.
- Velyka Novosilka-Berdiansk/Mariupol axis. Ka-52 attacking positions south of Staromlynka (confirmed by the Russians). This would indicate that the Ukrainians have reached much further south than expected and officially announced. Why wouldn't the Ukrainians tell us that? Because "Plans love silence".
Personal note: Watching the videos filmed from aboard Russian helicopters attacking Ukrainian reconnaissance units, I realize that the Ukrainians have basically reached the main Surovikin Line defense line here as well, on this axis. Even though the defensive lines here are also formed to generate a defense in depth, basically the first fortified line (the second of the 4-6 that are in total laid out in layers all along the southern front) is the most important. If this is penetrated, then the Russians will have a big problem slowing their advance to the Sea of Azov. Whether we are talking about Berdiansk or Mariupol.
1.3 Herson Front - Eastern bank of the Dnieper. AFU attacked and eliminated with HIMARS at least 6 platoons of russian soldiers on the island of Dzharylhach which is only 20 km from Crimea. At the same time on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River the AFU attacked an ammunition depot in the Rybalche area.
Russian military bloggers confirm that the Olesky bridgehead (on the eastern bank of the Dnieper) succeeded by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) was not repelled by the Russians, but just the opposite, it develops it. South of Herson the AFU approaches Hola Prystan, occupying island by island until it crosses the Konka River.
A hospital in Herson was attacked by the Russians with artillery, and a young doctor was killed and a nurse wounded.
Personal observation: the Russians relied on the Dnieper as an impenetrable natural barrier, especially since in the Herson area, we are discussing a delta with many islands that are extremely hard to defend, even if the Ukrainians win them. However, everything that has happened so far tells us that not only are the Ukrainians crossing the Dnieper to the east, but they are doing it through several points. At this point HIMARS is being used as precision artillery against Russian artillery and heavy mechanized artillery, which is putting the Russians in great difficulty trying to push the Ukrainians back from the already liberated islands.
In my opinion we are talking about a few days before the Eastern Herson Front is opened and the initiative will be the AFU's. This will open a serious dilemma for the Russian command, which will have to choose between defending this front - as it is the closest to Crimea (and that would mean moving a significant number of troops defending the Zaporozhye Front) or trying to support it with the resources they have at their disposal, in order not to make the Zaporozhye Front vulnerable. I wouldn't want to be a Russian commander these days.
- Battle for Bakhmut 2.0
2.1 South. Klischiivka has been abandoned by the Russians, the AFU has reached the railway north of the town. AFU entered Kurdyumivka. [SOURCES!!! WARNING!!!] I claim that Special Operations Forces are in contact with the Russians in the forests south of Bakhmut in the Opytne area. If these are confirmed, as the Azov South claim, then the Russians are in an extremely unfortunate position.
2.2 To the north: the AFU continues its slow advance towards Soledar.
2.3 Bakhmut itself: A loud explosion in the middle of Bakhmut, located somewhere east of the railway was filmed by the Ukrainian military. Meanwhile sources [SOURCES!!!] continue to claim that AFU SSO Forces are conducting raids inside the town. In Yahidne the AFU continues to attack Russian positions, and the Russians have little way to counterattack, because the high positions in the north are already liberated and under Ukrainian control.
Personal note: Further, I don't think the goal of this military operation is to hastily conquer Bakhmut, which has been turned into a ruin by the illegal, illegitimate, immoral and Russian invasion. I think the objective is to secure and draw as many Russian troops as possible from the Kreminna area and to destroy the Russians there, in what I referred to earlier as the Wagner Cemetery.
3 Crimea. The AFU destroyed an ammunition depot in Sevastopol. At the same time, [SOURCES!!! Warning!] in intercepts of radio conversations between the Russian Navy's Black Sea command center and two of their patrol ships (Sergey Kotov and Vasily Bykov) discuss a Ka-29 evacuation helicopter allegedly evacuating 1 dead and 5 wounded, although yesterday the Russians denied that AFU marine drones had managed to hit one of those patrol ships.
Personal note: Crimea is about to become an island. Communication lines are almost all severed, Sevastopol is being hit by drones and Storm Shadow. Dzankoy is getting hit as well. The Chongar Bridge is impassable. The Kerch Bridge awaits its end, and the Russian Black Sea fleet is under constant threat from Ukrainian drones, which have the advantage of being cheap, efficient and capable of harassing this once extremely feared fleet extremely hard.
- Poland-Lithuania:
- Belarus has violated Polish airspace with two military helicopters. This is an obvious Russian provocation to test Poland's reaction.
- [SOURCES] Indicates that there is a concentration of Wagner troops on the Suwalki corridor linking Belarus to the Kalinigrad enclave on the Polish-Lithuanian border. The US ambassador to the UN has announced that any attempted attack on Poland by any organisation will be considered a Russian attack on NATO.
Personal note: When we were all saying that Russia would not stop at Ukraine's borders and try to escalate the conflict, many laughed. When 2 weeks ago I wrote about the Wagner hypothesis generating problems in Poland, people mocked me. I think it's time to stop thinking of this invasion as one that concerns only Ukraine and somehow only tangentially the rest of Europe.
Europe, the world in general, is changing (from diplomatic to economic) and is being shaped by this unjust war in which Ukraine is the victim and Russia is the aggressor. Period.
Before concluding, I will tell you that this counteroffensive is strong, that it is far from over, in fact it has only just begun, and that Russia will lose much more territory this year than the military analysts imagined at the beginning.
Slava Ukraini!