Thread by @ThreshedThought

Time for an update on Ukraine.

It’s hard to draw big strategic conclusions from the last week or so.

It has been a week of shaping for the Ukrainians, and impotence for the Russians.

First, the Ukrainians seem to have been having an operational pause after their successes in the North East (Kharkiv) and more recently in the South (Kherson).

They took two big chunks back of their territory.

The Ukrainians also severely damaged the Kerch bridge between Crimea and Russia.

The Russians haven’t managed to get this back up, and their supply routes into Crimea / Kherson / the South are seriously restricted.

(There is only one other railway into the south for the Ru)

Over the last week the Ukrainians have been pushing in the north east at the Kremina-Savatone line. If they cut these lines the Russian position in the Donbas looks more precarious.

And they seem to have been standing still in Kherson.

The Russians for their part have been bombing civilians in cities, which is a sign of stupid impotence. Why waste munitions on targets that aren’t firing back at your forces?

It’s aimed at their own domestic audience to demonstrate that they are doing something.

This tells us something about who the Russian leadership is most worried about: the home front.

Coupled with this, Putin has just announced that the mobilisation is now being curtailed. It has achieved its objectives or something.

But in reality the mobilisation was having greater effects on negative political stability at home than it was ever going to have in positive term (for the Russians) on the battlefield.

More people fled Russia than were mobilised.

And we’ve already seen some of those mobilised civilians dying on the battlefield in Ukraine … with no training … a criminal pointless waste of life.

And the final thing is that the Russians and the Belarusians are posturing on the northern border of Ukraine.

It’s not clear whether they are going to cross the border (I’ve been wrong on this before!), but either way it does tie up Ukrainian troops, and so has a use. That is the military effect that it achieves whether or not they cross the border.

I would imagine that they won’t cross the border … but then Russia has done some pretty stupid stuff in this war and so you can’t rule it out.

So that’s the background picture. What’s the specific?

There has been some heavy signalling that the Ukrainians are about to go on the move again in Kherson. British Defence Intelligence mentioned it etc.

The Ru there apparently called on Moscow to help evacuate the civilians in Kherson so they are obviously expecting something.

On Saturday there was a brigade sized attack by the Ukrainians on the Russian positions to the north east of Kherson.

Hard to tell what happened as there isn’t much news coming out (some say there is a blackout, but hard to confirm), but it does seem that the Russians repulsed the Ukrainians.

Impressive considering they don’t have any supplies due to the Kerch bridge being knocked out.

Not clear whether the Ukrainians will continue with this axis of advance or switch to something in the south towards Melitopol or Mariupol. Anything to get to the Black Sea coast, basically.

There have been quite a few Ukr attacks on supply dumps in this area, so that would be the one that I watch.

So, all in all, hard to say what is going on with precision.

But the Ukrainians want to get one more push in before the winter. It’s just a question of where it falls.

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