Thread by @ThreshedThought

Kharkiv and Kherson: A tale of two fronts

A map-illustrated thread

Those who have been followers for a long time may remember a previous thread ‘Donbas and Kherson: A tale of two fronts’.

And here in lie the point: the Ukrainians are very good at strategy.

Specifically what they keep doing is forcing Russians to make choices that they don’t want to make, and where the outcomes of their choices are all bad.

So what’s going on at the moment?

Caveat: this is super fast paced and hot off the press, so I’ll try and give a few pathways to which way things will go

In a sense, the only peops who know how this will go are the Ukr gen staff, and their US/UK colleagues working w/ them

That is an indicator of what makes them good at strategy (more precisely ‘operational art’) - they are dictating the pace and forcing the Ru to respond to them

Ok - so over the last 3 months, the Ukr have been softening up Kherson - taking territory, gentle shaping of the battlefield.

Then over the last mth or so, they have begun heavily shaping the battlefield and destroying ru C2, log and infrastructure

This caused Ru to strip our units from elsewhere in Ukr to reinforce in Kherson, but it also meant that Ru put lots of its troops on the wrong side of a river in Kherson.

Previously, they’d stripped out troops from elsewhere to do their offensive in the Donbas, and the Ukrainians took advantage of that and started nibbling at Kherson.

Key point - the Russians don’t have nearly enough to do what they want to do, and the Ukrainians are exploiting that by holding the line on Russian attacks and then striking elsewhere.

Then last week or so, the Ukr announced that they were starting their Kherson offensive proper. See this thread:

https://twitter.com/ThreshedThought/status/1566788001350488065

This has been pretty successful. It’s pinned a lot of Russian troops the wrong side of the Dnipro River, and means the Ukr can take their time.

But because the Russians had stripped troops out of everywhere else to reinforce Kherson (strategically important - see embedded thread two tweets ago), the Ukrainians sensed an opportunity in the north east in Kharkiv.

And this lays bare a huge advantage that the Ukr have over the Ru - interior lines versus exterior lines. If the Ukr (blue) want to shift axis of advance or reinforce look how short a journey it is compared to the Russians.

This give Ukr a SIGNIFICANT advantage in what militaries call balance - they can keep their force balanced and shift reserves or key assets around much easier and faster than the Russians.

So what is happening in Kharkiv?

(I tell you the map that I’ve draw for this is 🤌)

Red is the Ru front line. Red circle is Izyum which is a town the Russians need to hold for logistical reasons if they want to go further into Donbas. Yellow is a KEY railway junction and black is the railway from Russia down which all the supplies come.

So as you can see from my artwork, the Ukr are taking advantage of the thinned out Ru front lines to try and capture that railway junction which will cut the supplies to Izyum, which will cause most of that Ru front to collapse. If they pull that off it’s serious rout time.

But there is something also very interesting.

Kherson front = total news blackout
Kharkiv front = loads of videos of Ru prisoners, positions under attack, Ru equip destroyed etc.

(And Ru telegram channels confirm that on both fronts the Ukr are making significant gains)

So why the difference in what the Ukr are allowing out from the two fronts? They are the masters of info ops (or at least have been so far in the war)

My guess is that Kherson is still the prize or main effort - more important strategically and lots of Ru troops trapped there in the blender.

But they are releasing videos of panicking Ru up in Kharkiv to overload Ru decision making, and maybe force them to redeploy some assets

After all - Kharkiv is not a big front - the Ru there can just retreat across the border. Donbas is more important to Ru, and Crimea even more important still (Kherson is gateway to Crimea)

And so looking forward - my prediction from two days ago still stands - that Kherson is the way to Crimea and Russian collapse, but the Kharkiv front is just a nice little side line that makes that easier.

ENDS

https://twitter.com/ThreshedThought/status/1566792485363408898