#Map#Bakhmut
One month of last days. Western tanks are still no where near the front, 🇷🇺 has stuck on the outskirts of the city, but managed to capture 60km² around Bakhmut.
Let's take a look at quality of those kilometers.
The funnel of Bakhmut
In order to capture the city you must avoid city fights.
There are couple of ways how to force a surrender:
Erase from a distance or encircle it.
🇷🇺 has no resources for any of that.
🇷🇺 has managed to swing and break 🇺🇦 defense, take over Soledar and capture Klishchiivka by Jan 23.
The South claw won't change since. All the push have happen at North.
But then 🇷🇺 has hit the wall.
The life&death roads
T0504 and O0506 are the most important routes of the war by this day.
A narrow gap in between is a crucial corridor that keeps Bakhmut alive.
🇷🇺 hasn’t made tiny progress in order to overcome that gap, falling into the street fights.
Spill over the edge
The bright idea to trick the defense by expanding the front further to the west.
M03 provides a great temptation to move further but that diverts resources from the city, with some options to make to Hryhorivka.
Currently russia pushes to Minkivka and Predtechyne, both locations provides no quick answers to the Bakhmut question, that can help to wrap a funnel but requires even more resources to execute.
Dominant heights of Chasiv Yar keeps Bakhmut safe and Bakhmut keeps all the eyes away from the towns constellation.
Both settlements benefits from this cooperation.
🇷🇺 has lost a momentum and is forced to grind through the city in endless days of horror. They are capable to erase the city block by block but there wold be no disaster just immense price for the people who wants freedom.
A month of last days, a month of endless hope.
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First time all the available missile titles were used in the combined strike.
Air-defence was not ready for that, or some missiles were guided around it.
There were
58 possible targets and only 34 were shot down.
Kh-47, Kh-22 and S300 missiles are out of reach still.
That would be the first massive strike in a month
Feb 16 attempt can be ignored but...
🇷🇺 launched 12 Kh-101 then and in 3 weeks after that 28 Kh-101 missiles were launched.
Same for Kalibr missiles 8/20
that looks like it's a production ceiling.
Tactics has changed.
In order to overload the air-defense 🇷🇺 used a wide variety of missiles:
28 - Kh101, 20 - Kalibr, 6 - Kh59, 2 - Kh31, 6 - Kh22, 6 - Kinjal, 13 - S300 as well as 8 Shahed drones.
They were launched along the whole front from Odessa to Sumy.
#TalkingPoint#Losses
Watch the strong trend on increased losses since December.
But the growth started back in September.
Kharkiv and Kherson operations added to the overall trend, but that half year trend is obvious.
Those increased losses aren’t believable on their own.
One of the best explanation of them is increased number of troops and @Kartinamaslom5 did a great description of it.
Increased losses are correlated with increased number of deployed forces.
@Kartinamaslom5 For a long time i was convinced that 🇷🇺 is limited in front capacity based on the initial number of deployed BTGs. That was a mistake.
With a change of infantry ratio 🇷🇺 were able gradually increase it's capacity.
So 300k is a planned increase.
There are 5 major directions
1 main objective to fully capture annexed territories🤯
Ignoring Kherson front as impossible for a full-scale invasion over the Dnipro (1M is not enough for that)
Let's explore those directions.
1. Invasion from Belarus towards Lviv. Highly unlikely.
Long supply lines, swampy forested terrain.
The area would be a death trap for a big army 50K+, because of all the complexities.
Impossible to succeed for a smaller group.
This behavior is some sort of pattern, that is repeated by 🇷🇺 army with different frequency on different directions.
Similar swings can be observed near Avdiivka, where both flanks aren’t attacked at the same time.
🇷🇺 is faking the might.
The idea to swing the defense, overloading enemy flank and capturing the area is not recently invented. The main fail of 🇷🇺 execution can be observed around Avdiivka. The northern flank is static since June, with a massive assault once in a month.
#Map Troitske
🇷🇺 fully abandoned Kharkiv region except a small area on the left bank of the Oskil river and there is a geographic reason for that.
With more talks about full liberation of Kharkiv region appears, let’s take a brief look at the area.
1. Troitske belongs to the Oskil river basin and placed on Urazova river, that merges with the Oskil in Urazovo. The village is placed close to 3 water sheds and surrounded by curved terrain of western, steeper, slopes of Krasna and Aidar rivers.
2. Urazovo is closer to the current front, has better transport connection, provides even better control over 🇷🇺 supply lines and instantly liberates the North.
🇷🇺 knows that and use 🇺🇦 inability to cross the border on it's advantage.
#TalkingPoint Holodomor
Was it a disaster - yes.
Was it intentional - 100%.
Was it nation specific - No.
Does it matter - No.
Genocide was a class based and 🇺🇦 were in the wrong one.
Demographic pyramid of 1939 census can show how deep was the cut.
Current war is a 4th heavy strike on Ukraine population since 1900
Ukraine went through
- WWI and Red Terror
- Holodomor
- WWII
- Russian invasion
Each will leave a deep marks in the generations.
Census of 1959 shows that Ukraine has newer recover after the Holodomor.
It was not a single event that made it so horrible, it was a horrible timing that impossible to describe
Agrarian state with fertility rate of 6 went through 3 major population catastrophes to return as industrial state with fertility rate 2.2