I've waited over the weekend for more information to make hard statements about the Avdiivka withdrawal.

By now it's safe to say that the worst case scenario of encirclement was avoided. Ukraine clearly managed to pull its formations out of the city bit by bit during the nights. However, it does seem that the ultimate decision for abandoning the city was made quite late, judging by Ukraine holding the extreme positions within the perimeter, Zenit and the Pump station until the last possible moment.

I wrote an article for @hsfi about Zelenskyi replacing Zalushnyi and how it might indicate a lack of coherent strategy in Kyiv.

You can read it from the link, but I'll share some thoughts in this thread.

hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2… My main problem with Syrskyi isn't necessarily the man himself, but rather the very apparent conflict and contradiction between the political and strategic goals as outlined by the Zelenskyi admin, and the actual military reality on the ground.

A quick example of the minor mistakes in narratives having large implications.

I'm currently reading "The Battle for Kyiv" by Christopher Lawrence. It's an excellent book. There's however a minor mistake that seems to find its way into every story of the battle.

Ivankiv.
1/ Early on the morning of the 25th of February the Ukrainian General Staff reported that the withdrawing Ukrainian troops had managed to destroy the bridge over the Teteriv river and halt the Russians.

This was then repeated in the international media.

2/

ukrinform.ua/rubric-ato/341…

Reports of first F-16's in Ukraine.

Not surprising, considering the Estonian Defence Ministry idea paper mentioned that the first F-16's would reach Ukraine before the end of the year. Rybars report on the first squadron of 12 (+3) in Ukraine.

If we assume that they are correct and "by mid-spring" means 4 months from now, and that they are delivered in even batches with even intervals, Ukraine could have up to 60 F-16s + trainers, by the end of the year.

While I do agree that Ukraine's ultimate victory is dependent on continued and increased Western support, I still think that the hyperfocus on technology and equipment is problematic.

Ukraine has a lot of training and command issues that hamper the effective use of material.

1/

https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1724849825319924034

If it was simply a question of material, Ukraine should have achieved more during this year's offensives. In fact, many Western commentators hyped up the aid received and expected a quick breakout with the equipment that had already been donated to Ukraine before June.

2/

The discourse on Ukraine's counter-offensive often oversimplifies Soviet doctrine as rigid mass warfare and NATO- as flexible maneuver warfare.

The truth is far more nuanced, and needed for future discussions.

Thus: Soviet tactical and operational doctrine, a thread.

1/ To keep things simple, I'll stick to the operational and tactical elements of Soviet doctrine during the late Cold War—the most relevant period for us and Ukraine.

Soviet operations were conducted by Armies and Fronts. Division and below would belong in the realm of tactics
2/

I saw someone mapping the Ukrainian supply routes into Avdiivka in a rather lacklustre way. So I decided to do my own, more informative, map.

To talk about the logistics of Avdiivka we also need to talk about the terrain west of it.

So Avdiivka, a thread:

1/ Let's start with the roads. To do this we need to differentiate between Main- and secondary supply routes. I'll define them as follows:

SSRs (brown): unpaved roads leading from MSRs into the city of Avdiivka.

MSRs (orange): Paved roads

2/

If the land bridge could be cut with long range fires, why even go for the offensive and not just wait for the GLSDB and save troops for much better offensive environment that brings?

I'm seeing a lot of smart people get aboard this narrative shifting.

1/

https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1695777892779655244

It's frustrating to watch the Ukrainian offensive struggle, and realise that the expectations of a quick victory, that many had, are not coming to fruition.

Being dishonest with ourselves and reframing the narrative however helps no-one.

2/

To add on to what Tatarigami says here, while there are legitimate criticisms with the deliveries of Western aid, blaming the failures of the counteroffensive simply on that aspect is counterproductive and often full of weird tech-utopianism. 1/

https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1687933273006120960

Many of the expectations for the counteroffensive were set by Ukrainians themselves focusing so heavily on Crimea and, for example, talking about war being over this summer.

Yes, more reasonable voices also said it's going to be hard, but UA messaging was mixed at best. 2/

Velyka Novosilka, a thread.

I've been asked about this enough and considering the developments of today on the Tokmak axis, it's good to get it out of the way.

Information presented here is mostly based on satellite data from monday as well as Russian video and reports.

1/ Do note, all of this is at least two days old in terms of satellite imagery, and the rest is based on things the Russians themselves have published on various channels.

It's very unlikely that any of what I am going to say is new to the Russian forces in Ukraine.

3/

Russian channels claim that Ukrainians have launched an offensive on the Melitopol axis.

According to their claims there are 10 brigades prepared for this push. Unmentioned but previously reported is another group of 4.

That would make it 14 brigades on this axis. Russian claim for amount of overall brigades in the AO seems to have been pretty OK for Velyka Novosilka, but that means little for now.

We are monitoring the developments.

Tretyaks thread has a problem in its smoking gun: the Rybar message.

It's not talking about the Dam being blown a little last night, but rather references the video of the bridge demolition from last November when the Russians withdrew from the right bank of the river.

https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak/status/1666015265971118082

Careful reading of the Rybar message makes that explicitly clear:

"A small area was blown up during the withdrawal of the RF Armed Forces from the right bank of the Dnieper."

The video in question is here.

I have front-row seats to the real-time spread of rumors about the Nova Kakhovka dam being destroyed across all the Telegram channels.

Let's judge if any of that has any basis in reality come morning.

Sorry. I mean "👀👀👀👀👀👀👀" I do ask everyone to note our catchphrase "RUMINT=SCUMINT".

I'm not really holding my breath here, but interesting development if true.

Geolocated Russian footage of UA battalion level attack to be west of Velyka Novosilka.

47.8243, 36.7393

"Footage of the defeat of armored vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the attacks on the Zaporozhye direction on June 4."

t.me/rybar/48023

@GeoConfirmed Proof of geolocation.

At the moment there's a lot of talk about Bakhmut being the right call, including from Ukrainian officials.

I'm still waiting to pass ultimate judgement due to multiple factors at play (and it might take years to know everything)

Let's talk about it.

1/21 1) Ukraine is claiming that Russians have been pushed back from MSR's.

That might be true, but as of now we haven't seen much to confirm this. At best I think we're talking of pushing the Russians back a few hundred meters. Maps from two weeks ago and now from us and DS

2/21

I'm poking a hornets nest here, but I'm giving my one cent to the discussion of Twitter bans.

Back in November, I made the linked post that I still stand behind.

Let's just say there were now-banned Finnish users who influenced the making of the post

https://twitter.com/J_JHelin/status/1589624422830600193?s=20

One only needs to look at the responses in that thread to see what kind of discourse happens around this war, sometimes even from respected people and experts.

One can look at those comments and wonder if permabans are truly based on singular incidents.

Hanna Maliar made a statement saying the mobilized are not sent to Bakhmut "without training."

This mostly attempts to address the recent complaints from the front and tries to shift the discourse.

It's unlikely to work and may make things worse.

A thread 1/12 The important part of the statement

"Another Russian narrative is that the mobilized are immediately sent to Bakhmut without training.

In fact, those mobilized who have not served in the military are sent to training centres."

2/14

t.me/annamaliar/588

I'm in the mood for semantics.

Learn the difference between the levels of war. STRATEGIC - Focuses on defining and supporting national policy and relates directly to the outcome of the war as a whole

This is probably the dumbest Twitter beef I've seen in the OSINT community.

https://twitter.com/JulianRoepcke/status/1613918721688612869

Honestly, I don't think Röpcke deserves the hate he is getting here for geolocating videos of Ukrainians shooting at Russians.

The Ukrainians generally post stuff at least a day after it was filmed, often more. It's not the first month of the war anymore. The OPSEC is decent

I am wondering if Liveuamap would demand this amount of rigour for any town that AFU has claimed to have captured.

Especially if there is plenty of geolocated video material available on many channels from multiple parts of the town, even if not from every part of the town.

https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1613672204843057158

I am willing to admit that when we made our assessment around 36 hours ago, there was a lot less video material available, and back then a more conservative stance was pretty understandable. Still, at midnight yesterday, there was plenty of more evidence available.

Just to reiterate why I think Russia has a hold on most of Soledar.

In footage that came out of the city today, both in places A, and B, we could observe relaxed Russian troops standing filming in the open with no gunfire anywhere in the background of the videos. Place A, is on the western edge of town basically on the roads leading into the city, meaning Russia probably has at least fire control on these roads. There were destroyed Ukrainian vehicles in the film with later claims of these troops having ambushed withdrawing Ukrainians.