From "The Analyst":
RUSSIA STARTS MULTI-PRONGED OFFENSIVE ON NORTHERN FRONT
For several months the Russians have been rumoured and then observed to be building up forces in the northern front area - from the border to just north of Bakhmut.
That offensive has started. Its aim seems to be to regain the territory they lost in September 2022 during their near rout.
Almost everywhere along this sector of the front there are attacks, probing to find weak points, knowing the Ukrainians are short of manpower and ammunition. They know that sooner or later they will find a weak point and then they’ll exploit it.
The Russian troops involved are not especially well equipped or trained. However right now you could say that about the Ukrainians too. New equipment is hard to come by and the forces in the north are not the battle hardened core that’s been fighting in the south and Avdivka over the past year.
The Russians smell blood. They are convinced there is weakness and they know Ukraine is almost out of cluster munitions and standard artillery rounds. Because they don’t care about their losses, they have no compunction about attacking even if its costs in an excessive loss of men. They only care about the result.
The ultimate aim seems to be to reach the Oskil River - long imagined as the ‘new border’ for the occupied territories by Russia.
The Russians have attempted to do this in a piecemeal way before, often with significant losses and little success, and any small hamlet they took rarely provided any advantage and came at losses well into the thousands, let alone the machinery.
By making the entire sector a problem for Ukraine the Russians think they are stretching defensive resources. If they make this sector the centre of operations then it’s possible another sector will go undefended, and that too pressed hard if they can find it.
There are said to be as many as 40,000 Russians on this front available for slaughter but as of yet they’ve achieved nothing substantial.
Yet it also has to be pointed out they haven’t tried too hard yet either.
The ground has solidified. There is far less mud than there was, the winds have dried it out and the temperatures are between 0-8C during the day, which for Russians and Ukrainians is generally mild for the time of year. Operationally the conditions are good.
So as this offensive starts to roll out, we will have to see how flexible both sides are in delivering attacks and parrying the blows.
Ukrainians face having to rely yet again on the ‘elite’ battle hardened units that race to the rescue when things go wrong - the 47th is notorious for being such a unit. But they can’t keep up this pace of putting out fires.
Ukraine’s parliament is dragging its feet on mobilisation laws because it’s not a popular subject - nobody wants to go and fight if they don’t have to. The trouble is they do have to or they have to be prepared to face the consequences- and they don’t want those either.
Slava Ukraini !
