New phase of Ukraine war

For a long time, Russia has been attriting the Ukrainians across a long war of attrition front that barely moved.

It is still barely moving, but what is happening on that front is rapidly changing.

Russia has been pounding the Ukrainians with a lot more shells, rockets, and bombs, than the Ukrainians have been pounding the Russians. And there are more Russians than Ukrainians. So it was inevitable that the Ukrainians would run out of conscripts, before the Russians ran out of volunteers.

As a result, it is starting to look more like slaughter than war. If you are in a street fight where you are one against three opponents, you are going to take a pounding and the the three are going to take very little harm at all.

Ukrainian lines are undermanned, and rapidly becoming even less manned. So the Russians sneak through the line at one point, and create a Russian salient. Then they sneak through the lines at another point, and create another salient, and the two salients reach around trapping the Ukrainians in a cauldron.

It used to be that what little movement happened was one side pushing the other side backwards. Now it is the Russians trapping Ukrainian troops in killing fields. The Russians are moving forward, not to gain turf, but to prevent Ukrainian troops from moving backwards.

A couple of days before I wrote this, the Russians launched a salient towards the road that connects the Pokrovsk Myrnohrad agglomeration, a city substantially larger than Bakhmut. But the Ukrainians hung onto a village that makes it dangerous for the Russians to approach the road. So, two new salients looking like a rabbit`s ears. Now the village is surrounded on three sides, and the road leading into village on both sides, and the Ukrainians are pouring their remaining elite troops into the village.

So the troops go down a road being shot at from both sides of the road, then they take up positions into village that is rapidly ceasing to be a village and becoming a moonscape of shell craters and bomb craters, while being shot at and droned from three sides.

Because there are so few Ukrainian soldiers left, their remaining soldiers are forced to fight under circumstances that put them at severe disadvantage.

Pouring elite troops into the ruins of this tiny village is undoubted a sound tactic for avoiding losing the city in the middle of the Trump/Putin talks. It is a terrible tactic for winning a war of attrition.

This little village attracts attention because close to the major road to the Pokrovsk Myrnohrad agglomeration, but the same thing is happening in many many places along the front — a day or two before the rabbits ears formed, I saw a cauldron inside a cauldron inside a cauldron, and the outermost cauldron was still bleeding troops into the inner cauldron.

From the big retreat onwards, the Russians have been fighting a war of attrition, and the Ukrainians have been dying for bullet points on tomorrow’s Washington presentation. Over the past few weeks, bullet points on tomorrow’s Washington presentation have become far more lethal.

This is how a war of attrition is lost. At first slowly, then quickly. Because the Ukraine does not have enough troops left, it is losing troops far faster than it was.

Forming salients is still a risky business for the Russians. Sometimes their attempt penetrate fails, and a lot of Russians die. Sometimes a salient gets cut off, and instead of surrounding, the Russians are surrounded. But it seems to work most of the time, and it seems to be working better and better, as Ukrainians rapidly get fewer and fewer. The Ukrainian’s have been trying to emulate this tactic, but they always wind up with salients that instead of surrounding, are surrounded, because the Russians have enough reserves to get themselves out of the mess when things go wrong, and the Ukrainians do not.