ISW Profile picture
May 16 4 tweets 2 min read
#Kharkiv Update:

#Ukrainian forces reached the #Russian border in an unspecified location northeast of Kharkiv City on May 15.
isw.pub/RusCampaignMay…
Russian forces around Kharkiv City are notably trying to hold the border and prevent Ukrainian troops from advancing further north, as opposed to previous Russian withdrawals from around Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy earlier in the war, which saw them pull completely back to Russia.
Russian troops may seek to retain positions in Ukraine and continue artillery strikes on Ukrainian positions in order to prevent Ukrainian forces from getting into tube or rocket-artillery range of the outskirts of Belgorod.
The Russians might alternatively hope to conduct a counter-counter-offensive to push back south toward Kharkiv, although such an effort is highly unlikely to succeed.

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More from @TheStudyofWar

May 18
Note: The Kremlin may have agreed to a conditional surrender of the Azovstal defenders to hasten its ability to declare full control of #Mariupol. It may also be seeking to deflect criticism of the failed Siverskyi Donets River crossings and the overall slow pace of the invasion.
The Kremlin might refuse to exchange the Mariupol defenders. Some Russian State Duma members are petitioning for laws that would prohibit prisoner exchanges for individuals accused of “Nazism." The Kremlin may ignore these concerns or use them to sabotage negotiations w/ Ukraine.
In any case, the surrender agreement generated some outrage and confusion on pro-Russian social media, rather than the celebration of the full capitulation of Mariupol that the Kremlin likely expected - possibly undermining Russian information operations.
understandingwar.org/backgrounder/r…
Read 5 tweets
May 16
Eastern #Ukraine Update:

#Russian troops reportedly conducted ground assaults towards #Lyman, #Bakhmut, #Kurakhove, #Shandrygolove, and around #Donetsk City on May 16. These assaults, however, continued to be largely ineffective.
isw.pub/RusCampaignMay…
Additional highlights from Eastern Ukraine:

Russian forces continued offensive operations through Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, making limited gains.
The Head of the Luhansk Regional State Administration Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian forces in the area are focusing on securing territory from the direction of Bilohorivka, continuing attempts to seize Severodonetsk, and taking control of the highway to Lysychansk.
Read 9 tweets
May 13
#Kharkiv Update Thread:

#Ukraine appears to have won the Battle of Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces prevented #Russian troops from encircling, let alone seizing Kharkiv, and then expelled them from around the city, as they did to Russian forces around Kyiv. 1/4
isw.pub/RusCampaignMay…
#Kharkiv Update Thread:

The #Russian command is also likely prioritizing the withdrawal of Russian troops over that of its proxies. 2/4
isw.pub/RusCampaignMay…
#Kharkiv Update Thread:

A Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) serviceman said that the #Russian border patrol along the highway to #Belgorod refused to let his battalion, withdrawn from around Kharkiv City, into Russia for two days. 3/4
isw.pub/RusCampaignMay…
Read 4 tweets
May 13
More highlights from our May 12 campaign assessment with @criticalthreats:

1. Continued and expanding reports of demoralization and refusals to fight among Russian units suggests the effective combat power of Russian troops in the east continues to be low and may drop further.
2. If the Russians abandon efforts to advance from Izyum, moreover, Ukrainian forces would be able to concentrate their efforts on defending Severodonetsk-Lysychansk or, in the worst case, breaking a Russian encirclement before those settlements fall.
3. The Ukrainian counteroffensive around Kharkiv is also forcing the Russian command to make hard choices. UK MoD reports that Russian forces pulled back from Kharkiv have been sent east, but at the cost of ceding ground from which the Russians had been shelling the city.
Read 4 tweets
May 13
#Russian forces may be abandoning efforts at a wide encirclement of #Ukrainian troops along the Izyum-Slovyansk-Debaltseve line in favor of shallower encirclements of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

Read the latest from @TheStudyofWar and @criticalthreats:
isw.pub/RusCampaignMay…
The relative success of Russian operations in this area combined with their failure to advance from Izyum and the notable decline in the energy of that attempted advance suggest that they may be giving up on the Izyum axis.
Reports that Russian forces in Popasna are advancing north, toward Severodonetsk-Lysychansk, rather than east toward the Slovyansk-Debaltseve highway, support this hypothesis.
Read 4 tweets
May 11
As previously assessed, ISW believes Russian battalion tactical groups (BTGs) fighting in Ukraine have been so heavily degraded that counting them is no longer a useful metric of Russian combat power.
@YahooNews: news.yahoo.com/russian-offens…
You can read more on the topic of assessing Russian combat power in ISW's 4/9 report w/ @criticalthreats:

understandingwar.org/backgrounder/r…
The three key takeaways from the 4/9 report:

1) Russia is unlikely to be able to mass combat power for the fight in eastern Ukraine proportionate to the number of troops and BTGs it sends there.
Read 4 tweets

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