A thread on Russia's rail supply lines to its occupying forces in Ukraine - how these have been affected by the recent Kharkiv offensive, and what's likely to happen next if, as I expect, Ukraine moves next to retake northern Luhansk oblast. 🧵
The hubs of the rail network supplying Russia's occupation of northeast Ukraine are laid out like a pyramid. At the top is the primary supply hub Voronezh, then the junctions of Stary Oskol and Liski, and finally the forward supply hubs of Belgorod, Valuyki and Millerovo. /2
Belgorod till recently was the most important forward hub and most in the news. Its rail routes west to Sumy, south to Kharkiv and southeast to Kupyansk made it a natural invasion staging ground. But after the Kharkiv offensive, all those routes lead to liberated territory. /3
And now the route from Belgorod to Russian occupation forces is much longer. The options are to loop by train back through Stary Oskol, or to go by road first to Valuyki. In short, aside from inertia, Russia has no more reason to use Belgorod as a forward hub. /4
Meanwhile Valuyki has gained weight. The line from it southeast across Luhansk oblast is now the main supply line for Russians in the northeast. By winding through Luhansk, this line can also supply Lysychansk (east of Sloviansk), recently cut off from routes via Kupyansk. /5
For that reason, the rail line southeast from Valuyki is likely to be among the first targets of the next offensive. Troitske, the northmost major town on the line, is about a 90-minute drive from Kupyansk. (From there it runs to Starobilsk.) /6
Russia's one other northeast forward hub, Millerovo, is reached by a different line from Voronezh via Liski. This line runs across a small part of Ukrainian territory, so Russia is likely to try to cling to that area even if it loses the rest of northern Luhansk oblast. /7
Millerovo has another problem: its line to Luhansk enters Ukraine north of the Donets, an area Russia might lose if it loses northern Luhansk oblast. Ukraine tenaciously held the rail junction at Stanytsa Luhanska (under the "n" of Luhansk) from 2014 until this year. /8
In the southeast the hub at Gukovo is reached from Millerovo, Rostov - the area's main supply center - or Volgograd to the east. If Ukraine cuts the line from Voronezh to Millerovo, the quickest way by train from central Russia to SE Ukraine would be via Volgograd to Gukovo. /9
Turning finally to the south, the crucial rail hub is Dzhankoy - in the news last month as one of the targets of a series of still unexplained long-range strikes by Ukraine in Crimea. Both rail lines into mainland Ukraine from Crimea come from Dzhankoy. /10 end
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Here's a thesis to make Russian hypernationalist veins burst.
In the coming offensive, Ukraine will both outgun and outman Russia.
One reason Ukraine has already turned the war’s tide is that after months of defensive fighting for attrition, Russia's manpower advantage is gone.
Among all the arguing over Russian casualty numbers, a couple figures in the news went little noticed.
On May 2, Gen. Milley estimated Russia's current troop strength in Ukraine at "around 200,000". foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/how-t…
That's about the same size of force Russia started with. In other words, all the manpower added by mobilization, and by all other kinds of recruiting - volunteers, prisoners, forced conscription in occupied regions - has been countered by casualties, desertion and surrender.
THE TWITTER FILES NOTHING BURGER :
How a dumbass far-right billionaire and a crappy former Moscow Exile reporter stumbled over themselves trying to invent a story that Twitter suppressed a big 2020 election scandal. 🧵
Tonight Elon Musk, the tech mogul who bought Twitter to welcome back neo-Nazis, and Matt Taibbi, the gonzo denouncer of "blood-sucking" bankers, published their joint project THE TWITTER FILES, which purports to expose a Democrat conspiracy to suppress a 2020 election scandal. /2
The story tries to make it look like Democrats inside and outside Twitter conspired to heavy-handedly suppress an important scandal just before the 2020 election, when the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop were leaked to the media. Only, they ended up proving the opposite. /3
This little video is truly incredible. I recommend everybody watch it several times, to let it sink in. It says so much about why Russia is losing this war. A short thread.
It shows a Ukrainian drone dropping a small grenade on a group of 11 Russian soldiers huddled sleeping in a (weakly) defensive dug-out pit, on the front line east of Bakhmut. What's amazing to watch is how sluggishly - if at all - the men react.
One man starts to get on his legs, but he merely shoves his way through other groggy men a few feet further from where the grenade hit and settles back to sleep. No one tries to change their overall situation before the next grenade hits. Three of the men don't move at all.
It was a good verdict today. But one point should be clarified. Aside from his superiors in Moscow, the person most responsible for shooting down MH17 was this guy: GRU officer Sergei Dubinsky, who also went by the call sign "Khmury" and the pseudonym Sergei Petrovsky. 1/x
The media has focused more on FSB officer Igor Girkin, who according to the verdict was Dubinsky's "superior" and so the highest-ranking person involved. But this conclusion stems entirely from Girkin's formal title as "defense minister" of the "Donetsk People's Republic." 2/x
The (Google-translated) verdict says: "At the operational level, Girkin was the highest military leader of the DPR and was therefore (finally) responsible for the deployment of military resources in and for the DPR." 2/x courtmh17.com/nieuws/2022/ui…
Putin's declaration of martial law in parts of Ukraine was meaningless, but he did something else today more important and telling. He introduced a kind of martial law across Russia, in what looks like an effort to preempt the possibility of revolt. Here's the details:🧵
1/13
Most of Russia, except the pink and yellow regions of this map, was ordered under a state of "basic readiness". In these areas regional governors are authorized to: 1) Strenghen the protection of public order and ensure public safety.
2/13
2) Strengthen protection of military, important state and special facilities, and facilities that ensure vital activities. 3) Strengthen operation of transport, communications and energy facilities and facilities that pose risks to life, health and environment.
3/13
Why is Russia starting to admit it can't hold Kherson and the rest of the area it still occupies northwest of the Dnipro? The change might owe as much to the recent destruction of the bridge in Crimea as it does to the threat of another Ukrainian offensive in the area.🧵
With the bridge over the Kerch Strait indefinitely unusable for trucks and trains, Russia's supply lines to southern Ukraine have been severely constricted. For supply by rail Russia now controls only one crucial line into south Ukraine.
This rail line runs for more than 200km from just SE of Donetsk to Novobohdanivka, north of Melitopol. Ukraine has already used precision weapons to strike the rail line at Tokmak, where it is about 25km behind the front. In the area SE of Donetsk the line comes much closer.