KHARKIV COUNTER OFFENSIVE
It’s been coming a while but the Ukrainians do seem to have engaged in a counter offensive in the Kharkiv sector. The OPSEC is tight but the move seems to be aimed at cutting off
Vovchansk from its access to the border regions behind.
With Russian forces being forced to deploy to cover the Kursk offensive further north, the timing is good.
This pressures the Russians to stay put and not interfere further north while at the same time achieving - hopefully- another major collapse of Russian positions that would be exceptionally humiliating for Putin. The whole Kharkiv operation has been a disaster from the day it started.
If Ukraine can dislodge the Russians then that places them in a position to enter Russia itself and cause mayhem in another sector of the frontline.
The whole strategic situation for Russia is changing.
The manpower issues are becoming increasingly difficult with losses running at 1300 a day. Recruitment isn’t working and even though they increased manpower in Ukraine from 400,000 to 600,000 almost all of that increase has been burned up. Moscow is faced with another round of undercover forced recruitment of another 200,000.
This has upset the big industrial war producers who are easy targets for the recruitment process because they can’t afford to loose the manpower. Putin won’t declare a public mobilisation because it’s so unpopular.
The army tends to find the softest targets and goes after those, but the regions are also complaining. Lack of manpower is resulting in infrastructure failure due to lack of maintenance and their budgets to enforce conscription and mobilisation are virtually zero.
There has been no effort to recruit women into work or industry - a move also seen as even more unpopular even as it’s technically essential.
It’s all a lesson in how, in an idealised dictatorship, the very fabric of the dictatorship fails to operate and do what it must do to survive, because it’s afraid of unsettling the people and risking its ability to survive if they get upset.
Dressing up victory and war as endless success when you aren’t winning and won’t even admit it’s a real war comes back to bite you in the end. All the pretence about what it is and why you’re doing it starts not to make so much sense. Forcing more men into the meat grinder is just another way of driving home you haven’t got a clue how to win, or when this thing can end. Even the lies start unraveling when every promise and excuse eventually falls flat or fails to materialise.
Putin only has himself to blame. He is clearly no strategic genius, just a bitter little man whose mind seems unable to focus on the details because it’s just too much to listen to. He never visits the front or meets ordinary soldiers and airmen. He never meets the injured or hands out medals to men in their hospital beds. He remains aloof and remote and isolated from reality. He’s become more and more like Hitler as the war proceeds. He could never face the public or the bombed cities, visit troops and couldn’t stand the site of injured or dead soldiers. These tyrants can never face what they have done.
Strangely enough Trump has the same feeling towards injuries and death as he made so clear again recently.
All these men in the end, are guilty cowards.
Today is Ukrainian Independence Day. It’s 33rd.
Day 913 of the war.
I wish the people
Of Ukraine well, I wish them victory and I promise to continue to do what little I can to help them win.
‘The Analyst’ MilStratOnX
Slava Ukraini !
