Thread by @aleksandrov_76

Vladislav Shurygin. Military publicist.

"So, three weeks into the war are behind us, and today we can already confidently draw a number of conclusions.

About the beginning of the war.

The array of captured combat documents of the Ukrainian forces, as well as materials of interrogations of prisoners, available today to our command,

allow us to draw the main conclusion - by launching a special operation the Russian army was able to preempt the Ukrainian army by five to ten days.

At the time of the first strike, most of the Ukrainian troops were in the process of moving to concentration areas or were already deployed there.

Therefore, we cannot speak of any strategic surprise of the special operation, but we achieved tactical surprise. The Ukrainian army did not have time to complete its deployment according to wartime plans and was not brought to full combat readiness.

The command of the Ukrainian forces was confident to the last that the Russian leadership, which is under political pressure from the USA and the West, would not dare to start large-scale combat operations before the Ukrainian forces had a real reason to start them,

and that Ukraine's allies controlled Russia and would warn Kiev in time about the start of the "Russian invasion".

The important thing! All two months, since the publication of Russia's demands to ensure its security, the Western countries (Germany, France, Great Britain) and the US have been acting according to a single plan,

which did not include any real negotiations and discussion of Russian proposals, but had only one goal - to prolong these negotiations as much as possible in order to give Ukraine time to prepare for war, to transfer large batches of modern weapons to it.

And in this respect, the continuous chain of visits to Moscow by Western leaders, five to seven days apart, was only a cynical imitation of a treaty process that provided Ukraine with the months necessary to complete its preparations for war.

In preparation for it, the command of the Ukrainian forces reinforced its ground groups to the maximum, fully manning them, bringing the total number of Ukrainian forces, including "territorial battalions" and "national guard",

to 300,000, which was more than twice as high as the Russian grouping that stood along the borders.

The latest anti-tank weapons and man-portable air defence systems received as part of Western assistance were transferred to the east, ammunition and logistics depots were established, and air defence assets were deployed and camouflaged.

Most of the serviceable air fleet has been dispersed to alternate airfields and sheltered in various airfield facilities. The command staff was transferred to field and secure command posts.

All these measures significantly reduced casualties from the first Russian "disarming" strike and made it possible to begin active combat operations against the Russian forces almost immediately.

Nevertheless, tactical surprise from the first hours began to affect the course of combat operations and by the end of the first day broke the Ukrainian defence plan, which had been created and practised for several years with the help of American and British military advisers.

The plan was based on the American concept of "active defence" in the 1970s with maximum use of the "supply belt" - terrain in the path of a likely enemy strike.

According to the plan of American strategists, with the beginning of active hostilities in the Donbas (which was where Kiev believed the first large-scale hostilities with the Russians would begin) Ukrainian forces in the Kiev, Kharkov and Kherson directions,

the groups deployed there were to immediately engage the enemy, throwing their mobile units to meet the enemy.

The task of this "cavalry" was to stop and bind the advancing Russian units, forcing them to deploy in battle formations, on which artillery and air strikes would be launched.

The mobile units themselves, without waiting for retaliatory strikes, were to retreat to new positions.

Such active defense, according to the Ukrainian command's plan, should have worn out the enemy in a fortnight, forced it to stop the offensive and take the defensive position, after which counter-strikes were to be launched against it,

which would have completely worn out the Russian groups and made further hostilities pointless.

On the Donetsk direction, the "eastern shield" of the most powerful military grouping of the Ukrainian forces from Mariupol to Starobelsk was to hold back all attempts of the #LPR, #DPR corps to break through to Mariupol and Kramatorsk.

A special role in this plan was assigned to information suppression. The US and its allies prepared an information and propaganda offensive of such scale and power that it was to completely capture the domestic Russian discourse

and become the dominant factor in the Russian public consciousness.

There is every reason to believe that the main strategic objective of this military operation was not so much to defeat Russia militarily, due to the impossibility of achieving victory militarily,

but rather to cause a political crisis, mass demonstrations and overthrow of the incumbent president, supported by the oligarchic groups that the Americans have carefully terrorised all these months, effectively pitting them against Putin.

The response to this Ukrainian-American plan was our strategic breakthrough plan, which ensured the tactical surprise of the outbreak of hostilities.

Without waiting for Ukrainian forces to finish deploying and preparing for war, the Russian army launched swift strikes in all strategic directions.

Instead of the powerful armoured breakthrough fists that the Ukrainian forces had been preparing to face, the Russian airborne brigades and airborne units were thrown in, without engaging the cities, to break through and occupy strategic hubs,

threatening the key political, economic and military-strategic centres of Ukraine - Kyiv, Kharkov, Nikolaev and Kherson.

Such a sudden breakthrough into the rear, forced the Ukrainian Forces command to abandon its "active defence" plans and, to eliminate the sudden threats, throw its most combat-ready units against the Russian battle groups.

Over the next five days of sustained fighting, these brigades suffered, in the face of Russian air superiority, serious losses in manpower and equipment, and were forced to retreat to the cities and cover themselves there with civilians.

This substantially reduced their losses, but deprived them of the ability to conduct active combat operations, turning them into fortress-like garrisons.

At the same time, the defeat of the southern Ukrainian grouping at the Kherson-Nova Kakhovka line forced its remnants to retreat to Mykolaiv and Odessa, where they went on the defensive, opening the way for Russian troops to reach the rear of the Donetsk grouping,

taking Mariupol and the vast territory of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya into the ring.

It was in this first phase that we suffered our heaviest losses. In fact, we were breaking through the battle lines of the Ukrainian forces at speed, taking advantage of the element of surprise.

For the sake of speed and surprise, it was even decided to sacrifice equipment from which, in case of breakdown, the crew was removed and it was simply left for further evacuation by the repair units who were travelling with the main forces.

But very soon the Ukrainians came to their senses and fierce fighting ensued. Not all commanders were able to quickly and adequately get involved in the course of the "special operation", for which they had to pay with the lives of our soldiers and lost equipment.

And the videos of several of our columns being burned down are still the main weapon of the Ukrainian propagandists, who post them over and over again. Ukrainian networks are flooded with these "propaganda" videos.

Today our army and the armies of the Donbas republics are fully engaged in the operation, have gained combat experience, have formed a single unit and are confidently smashing the enemy.

The only area where the Ukrainian forces' plan has worked is the Eastern rampart in Donbass. The Ukrainian grouping fought fiercely and skillfully here from day one.

The Ukrainian forces' positions here had to be simply "gutted" with massive artillery and air strikes, gradually "winding down" the Ukrainian defence from the north and, having broken through it in the Mariupol direction,

where, after the Donetsk corps met the advancing Russian units, Mariupol was completely encircled, after which the slow "winding down" of the Eastern Wall from the south also began.

Today.

What do we have today? From a strategic perspective, Ukraine is in a stalemate.

While maintaining numerical superiority in manpower so far, Ukrainian forces have almost completely lost the ability to conduct active combat operations in three weeks of fighting.

Most of the armoured vehicles have been lost, the main mechanised units have either been crushed or are so shabby that they can only defend themselves.

The Ukrainian forces themselves are "torn" into several parts - groups in Kiev, Kharkov, Donetsk and near Mykolaiv-Odessa. There is no communication between them and troop redeployment is impossible due to the total air superiority of the Russian Air and Space Forces.

The Ukrainian Air Force is almost destroyed and cannot provide any support to its ground forces. Ukrainian air defence is spotty and increasingly relegated to the field level of man-portable air defence systems.

All Ukrainian formations are embroiled in combat and suffer constant losses. For 21 days of fighting, the Ukrainian Forces command has failed to organize a single operational-level counterstrike,

and all attempts to advance by individual battalion tactical groups have been repelled with huge losses for the Ukrainian forces.

The elite army grouping of Nationalist units in Mariupol is gradually losing combat effectiveness, being squeezed by assaulting troops and doomed to destruction.

The "eastern fortress" in the Kramatorsk - Avdeevka - Severodonetsk triangle is under continuous fire and slowly collapsing, with no prospect of organised withdrawal.

Its defeat and the fall of Mariupol will make further resistance to Kiev pointless. The Donbass and Russian Federation forces freed up after their fall will most likely be thrown into the Nikolayev and Odessa direction,

with the prospect of Ukraine losing its access to the seas altogether.

There is little hope of reinforcements from the western regions. The promised formation of a new army turned out to be a bluff. The local male population is dodging conscription and fleeing abroad.

And those already conscripted are not even enough to staff a single corps. There is no talk of fully training and harmonizing these forces. There are even more problems with the armament of this corps.

While the issue of small arms and anti-tank weapons can be resolved with supplies from the West, heavy equipment and artillery is nowhere to be found.

In addition, this corps must somehow be redeployed to the combat area, which is extremely difficult to do without heavy losses, given the air superiority of the Russian Aerospace Forces. And the "no-fly zone",

which Kiev has been dreaming of all these weeks, the West has refused to establish.

As long as Kiev manages to keep the internal stability of the population by means of horse-drawn propaganda tranquilizers about "monstrous losses" of the Russian army,

the imminent depletion of Russian ammunition and missiles, some unprecedented success of Ukrainian forces, "powerful offensives", NATO joining the war, etc.

But once Mariupol falls and the Ukrainian forces are defeated near Donetsk, it will be impossible to convince the Ukrainian people that the war is going well. And this is a matter of next week, I think...".

20 March 2022.
Source: vk.com/wall248078488_…