Ukrainians are understandably upset that the West would deploy forces to help Israel (not a NATO member) shoot down Iranian missiles but won't do the same for Ukraine. This help, however, comes at a great price for Israel, and carries a valuable lesson for Ukraine. 1/19 Since the early decades of its existence, when Israel was attacked by its Arab neighbors, it fought alone, just like Ukraine is now fighting alone against Russia. Both countries bought and received some weapons from other countries but no one fought alongside them. 2/19

Instead of simply letting Ukraine attempt costly obstacle breaching operations in the south, Russia has chosen to also counterattack Ukrainian forces, which has slowed the Ukrainian counteroffensive, but forced Russia to deploy more reserves prematurely. 🧵 Russia's defense of the land it grabbed in the south was supposed to be relatively straightforward: Ukraine would hit Russian fortifications, lose men & equipment from mines & artillery strikes while Russian forces would benefit from smaller casualties as they would be defending.

2 weeks after Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka dam, a WMD event, and the West has no response. Budanov says Russia mined the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant. Feeding off Western weakness, Putin will be tempted to blow it up knowing he'll get away with it & keep the West trembling. As the Ukrainian counteroffensive succeeds, Putin will resort to any means that can slow it down. His main tools are nuclear bluffing and deniability. He can scare the West by threatening to use nukes and instead blow up a nuclear power plant, while denying responsibility.

Ukraine has launched what many, including Russia, believe to be its long-awaited counteroffensive. Combining information from a variety of sources with publicly available information, here are some important details to bear in mind as events unfold. 🧵 According to Russian/Soviet military doctrine, defenses are organized roughly as follows: Behind minefields and other other obstacles is the first echelon of defense, which is manned by the least capable soldiers who are lightly armed. They're the defensive cannon fodder.

Prigozhin threatened to withdraw his Wagner mercenaries from Bakhmut on May 10 because he alleges that the Russian military is depriving his forces of ammunition, sabotaging his attempts to capture the city. Much of what he says is political spin. Here's why: 🧵 Although there is a conflict between various factions in the Putin regime (something that Putin has always allowed as a way to prevent any one faction from becoming too powerful), there are few indications that Wagner is suffering from a severe ammunition shortage.

A fire has erupted at the Ilsky oil refinery in Krasnodar Krai, Russia near the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, after a suspected drone strike. It is an important part of the fuel infrastructure in southern Russia and Russian-occupied southern Ukraine/Crimea. This is one more in a series of suspected Ukrainian strikes in southern Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea that are likely shaping operations that will weaken Russia's ability to sustain its forces in southern Ukraine (which includes Crimea).

Russian nationalists are circulating an in-depth analysis of the military crisis facing Russia. In short: Russian troops are unprepared, underequipped, poorly led and will be defeated unless Russian leaders change course, which they are unwilling to do. 🧵 kcpn.info/articles/%D0%B… The analysis paints a bleak picture of the Russian army, especially it's inability to wage modern wars that require high levels of command and control as well as highly mobile units, not stormtroopers who are sent on suicidal missions by blockheaded Soviet-style generals.

According to two ex-Soviet-trained fighter pilots, to down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea, Russia used techniques developed in the 1980s after a German 19-year-old flew his rented Cessna through Soviet air defenses and landed near the Red Square in Moscow. 🧵 In May of 1987, Mathias Rust, an inexperienced amateur German pilot and budding peace activist, rented a Cessna and flew it from Helsinki to Moscow through what the Soviet Union believed were impenetrable air defenses.

There's much speculation about the situation in Bakhmut, its strategic value, and whether Ukrainians are making a mistake by not withdrawing from the city. Here's an update based on conversations with officers familiar with the Bakhmut theater of operations.🧵 Russian forces, spearheaded by Wagner mercenaries/convicts have pushed back Ukraine forces around Bakhmut and are gaining control over the eastern neighborhoods, east of the Bakhmutka River.

The Russian human rights group Gulagu.net published another letter from "Wind of Change," their source in the Russian security apparatus with additional information about the Bryansk incident, shedding light on what may have happened and what to expect next. 🧵 In short, the Kremlin needs to rile up an apathetic Russian public, which supports the war against Ukraine as long as it has no impact on their lives. To do this, the Kremlin needs to show that Ukraine is a terrorist entity that is killing Russian civilians on Russian soil.

One of the main questions of this war that has not been entirely answered is whether Russia can effectively use mobilized Russian troops and regular Russian army units in suicidal human wave attacks like it did with Wagner convicts. Any success may depend on it. 🧵 In this regard, the battle for Vuhledar is not only important because it will determine the fate of Russian logistics in southern Donbas/Zaporizhzhia, but because it is a test of Russia's ability to make progress without first sacrificing single-use troops.

The battle for Bakhmut and Soledar and the public reshuffling of Russian generals commanding the war in Ukraine continue a well-established pattern that has plagued Russia's effort to secure anything resembling a victory.🧵 By late summer, when it became clear that Russia's hold on Kherson was untenable, the Russian military needed to convince Putin that leaving the only regional Ukrainian capital they had seized was the only viable option if they didn't want to lose their most combat ready troops.

The suicidal Wagner human wave attacks, which failed to capture Bakhmut are now being against Soledar with more success. As one Ukrainian soldier there put it: "It almost feels like they have more bodies to throw at us than we have ammo to stop them." The place is a living hell🧵 The Russian strategy is twofold:
1) Destroy any standing structures/buildings, layer by layer.
2) Send wave after wave of Wagner-recruited convicts on one-way/suicide missions to capture the rubble until Ukrainian forces are forced to retreat as ammo runs low & casualties mount.

A personal story about how the seemingly invincible power of Russian television propaganda can quickly collapse. One of our sources from 2014 (who had previously been a colleague in Russia) fled to Europe, but his parents refused to join or even visit him because they were staunch supporters of Putin and, after February 24, supported the war against Ukraine.

Ukraine's successful counteroffensive is providing cover for the Biden administration's dangerous Russia policy, which is prolonging the war and leading to increased bloodshed and a potential escalation. 🧵 First a reminder of how we got here. In 2014, in response to Russia's invasion of Crimea and Donbas, the Obama administration adopted a policy of appeasement, refusing to provide any weapons to Ukraine for fear of "escalation."

Russian front lines north of Izium (Balakliia/Volokhiv Yar) are collapsing as Ukrainian forces make significant gains (in some cases in perilously unarmoured pickup trucks because you can't wait for Western IFVs forever). Russian sources claim some of their units are surrounded. For its southern offensive, Russia moved significant assets away from the area north of Izium where Ukraine is now on the offensive. The Russian border is close, and Russian military planners may have hoped it was safe to weaken this area with most of the action elsewhere.

Severodonetsk update. 🧵 As the temporary administrative center of the Luhansk region (the actual administrative center, the city of Luhansk, is occupied by Russian forces), Severodonetsk has been the primary target of Russian forces in recent weeks.

The battle for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions is now the epicenter of the war between Russia and #Ukraine. Here's how it's shaping up. 🧵 After failing to take Kyiv, Russia shifted its attention to the east, hoping to encircle Ukraine's largest & most combat-ready forces in Luhansk & Donetsk. Key to that strategy was capturing the city of Izium, giving Russia control over the main road between Kharkiv and Sloviansk

Western military aid continues to flow into Ukraine, but it is still primarily for defensive purposes. There are nowhere near enough heavy weapons to push Russia back. News headlines about "massive" military aid are misleading but politically convenient for Western politicians.🧵 A lack of adequate heavy weapon shipments forces Ukraine to wait for Russia to advance so that it can use its defensive weapons to destroy Russian armor. If Russia doesn't advance, Ukraine doesn't have enough long-range firepower to hit entrenched Russian forces.

Reports from Kramatorsk indicate that a Russian ballistic missile carrying cluster munitions hit the train station, killing more than 30 people. Strikes using ballistic missiles are weighed carefully & it's clear that this strike was a premeditated attack on evacuating civilians. The side of the Russian missile that killed 30+ civilians in Kramatorsk says "for the children" in Russian, implying that Russia is avenging the killing of children. Hard to imagine a more fitting symbol for Putin's war.

Ukrainian sources and officials increasingly expect that Belarusian troops will invade western Ukraine in an attempt to cut off supply lines from Poland. 🧵 Ukraine has been preparing for this scenario, but it is unclear that the several tens of thousands of troops that Lukashenko can muster would be able to reach and capture Kovel and Lutsk (which Russian missiles have already hit), or Lviv, a much more ambitious target.