Putin's War - The Daily Brief - March 31
5 weeks ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. After some initial gains, their progress rapidly slowed. Now, every day for the past week, Ukraine has retaken more territory than it's lost.
See this thread for a series of maps and downloadable data.
To highlight the significance of the past week, here is a gif showing changes compared to a similar map I made last week. All the areas circled in blue are where Ukrainian forces have gained territory, in red shows where Russian forces have.
(ignore the changing colour scale)
These maps show the forward line of Russia's troops. A significant portion of the land behind these lines remains outside of what I would define as their firm control. See this map below for a more detailed map of territory under firm Russian (red) and Ukrainian (blue) control.
The challenge for Russian forces approaching Kyiv from the East is much clearer in this view. They have only recently managed to establish supply lines to their forward troops in Brovary, and these have constantly been destroyed and attrited by Ukrainian forces.
If any journalist or interested person wants to download this control data for your own visualisation or to explore in Google Earth, you can download the file here mega.nz/file/2FBEWCDI#…
🤙 Please credit me in any maps made from this data 😊
Because of the scale of the base data, some areas are overly generalised and please don't take it as a tactical map at the city level. I have tried to map with as much detail as possible in areas like Mariupol
For a more detailed map of these areas please see @Militarylandnet. They have very good and reliable maps.
The difference between the forward line of Russian troops and the areas that I assess to be under their firm control (meaning they are able to prevent the fielding/maneuvering of significant units of enemy forces) is clear in this map, so are the difficulties for Russian troops.
Early on in this war, I was publishing maps that only showed Russian troop movements across the countryside, as Russia had not made many attempts to secure the flanks or rear of their positions. This map is still relevant, but a changed Russian strategy makes it less central.
But, it has allowed me to consistently map the progress of Russian soldiers in Ukraine over the 35-days of war. This video shows that progress and subsequent recapture of territory by Ukraine (please view in full screen as some early days are less clearly marked).
Or, this map showing the forward line of Russian troops, since March 11th (when I started making these maps).
A number of the changes are the result of more information being available and not necessarily genuine change on that day, so keep that in mind.
Or, a video showing the areas under control every day since March 22nd. The same disclaimers apply.
I'll put some close-up crops of the key areas in the tweets below.
Firstly, a close-up of Kyiv and the axes that Russia is attacking the city from.
(The dates are cropped out, sorry).
Most importantly (imo) you can see Russia's attempts to develop a secure supply route to Brovary that keeps getting harassed and attacked.
Next, the Southern-Front, from Mykoliav to Mariupol. Here, Russia has lost considerable ground around Mykoliav, while starting a new push to Kryvyi Rih, which has now stalled and in parts been repelled.
The slow grind in Mariupol continues.
And finally, the Sumy/Kharkiv/Lugansk fronts. In Sumy Russia has recently suffered an almost-complete defeat in the region, lifting the defacto siege on Sumy.
In Kharkiv and Lugansk, Russia has made some recent progress around Izyum and Rubizhne. Some Ukrainian gains too.
COVID put me out of action for a few days, so excuse the lack of updates, but as you can see, I was spending my time trying to get a clearer picture of some of the areas where the situation was unclear. I think it is mostly accurate now!
Thanks for reading to here!
PS. if anyone wants to georeference the 'forward line' and 'movements' map please DM me and I can send you the full-res files along with a set of GCPs to georeference the raster map!
BTW. Here's a map of all the settlements that have been recaptured by Ukrainian forces so far today.
Already adding to that...
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I've started reading Our Enemies Will Vanish, a masterful book on the Ukraine War by @yarotrof. Highly recommend it. It contains heaps of tidbits and insights that even someone who followed the invasion closely (i'll count myself) had no idea of.
I'll share some threaded here.
@yarotrof (get your hands on the book if you possible can, the tidbits here are just the tip of the iceberg, truly recommend reading the whole thing).
Firstly, this account of a meeting between Bill Burns and Putin months before the invasion where Putin cited US' impotence post Afghanistan
@yarotrof And that Ukraine's military preparations on the heel of US intel warnings were so secret that even Washington had no idea about them (to prevent info going from GUR > DC > Kyiv > Russian Fifth Column)
I was wanting to check if this IDF graphic was an approximation or a measured/to-scale diagram, so by tracing the various video walkthroughs, I was able to make my own NOT TO SCALE map, suggesting it was a pretty accurate representation but missing some 'branches' explored since.
The most notable difference is a partially-blocked tunnel leading beyond where the walkthroughts turn left to go towards the spiral staircase. A seperate IDF video showed a 3rd entrance around 125m beyond that intersection, so I've assumed that's where it leads.
I've done my best geolocating that entrance by looking for a wide-ish street (with no road markings), that curves slightly to the right & goes downhill, and that has two visible small but distinct orange-roofed areas, along with some vegetation in a front yard. Decent match.
In Loikaw, a State capital in Myanmar, the district court has been overrun and destroyed by the KNDF and its armed resistance. After capturing the university on Wednesday, they are now barely 1km from the state capital building.
The attack on Loikaw comes simultaneously as an attack on Moebye, another major town nearby where ~6 Junta posts have been captured. The KNDF has been spending the last week systematically eradicating junta presence from between Moebye and Loikaw, to stage for these attacks.
The KNDF has now captured the Kayan Tharyar Crossroads junta outpost on the highway linking Loikaw & Shan State. The only outpost in the Loikaw surrounds still under junta control is the Kone Thar outpost which appears to have not been attacked since it's on an evacuation route.
I have the utmost respect for Forensic Architecture, but when the analysis conducted is only valid in the scenario of one hypothesis and is invalid had the circumstances of another hypothesis happened, then it's not really useful in determining between them.
One quick look at the video of the missile that practically everyone has seen (and I'm sure FA has too) shows that this projectile wasn't on a clean parabolic trajectory and appears to be changing direction mid-air.
This is why it can be known as the 'Iron-Dome shield', each missile battery can defend against ~150km2 and targets the rockets towards the end of their trajectory, after the fuel has burnt off and the trajectory is more predictable.
You can see this in this video, where the rockets are struck after reaching the peak of their trajectory and at the beginning of the descent-phase
First, I want to preface this analysis by pointing out that this account has been spreading disinformation and denialism about Ukraine for over a year. They have never acted in good faith, but for the people sharing his crap without knowing this I'll refute it at face value.
The argument is immediately refutable since the same camera did film the explosion at the hospital, in footage youve probably seen, an hour earlier, at 6:59pm.
The time stamp in the video he shared is an hour later, at 7:59pm.