From The Institute For The Study of War:
Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, and Mason Clark
June 19, 5:30 pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
The UK Ministry of Defense assesses that the Kremlin’s continued framing of its invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” rather than a war is actively hindering Russian force generation capabilities. The UK Ministry of Defense reported on June 19 that Russian authorities are struggling to find legal means to punish military dissenters and those who refuse to mobilize because the classification of the conflict in Ukraine as a “special military operation” precludes legal punitive measures that could be employed during a formal war.[1] ISW has previously assessed that the Kremlin’s framing of the war as a “special operation” is compounding consistent issues with poor perceptions of Russian military leadership among Russian nationalists, problems with paying troops, lack of available forces, and unclear objectives among Russian forces. The Kremlin is continuing to attempt to fight a major and grinding war in Ukraine with forces assembled for what the Kremlin incorrectly assumed would be a short invasion against token Ukrainian resistance. The Kremlin continues to struggle to correct this fundamental flaw in its “special military operation.”
Russian authorities likely seek to use war crimes trials against captured Ukrainian servicemen, particularly troops that defended Mariupol, to advance its narratives around the war. Russian sources reported that the authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) plan to hold war crimes tribunals until the end of August 2022 and that at least one of these tribunals will be held in Mariupol.[2] These tribunals will reportedly be judged in accordance with DNR legislation (which notably allows capital punishment, unlike Russian law) and be modeled on the Nuremberg format for war crimes trials. The trials are a sham attempt to try lawful prisoners of war as war criminals and support the Kremlin’s false framing of its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as a ”de-Nazification” operation. Despite the fact that DNR authorities plan to try Ukrainian servicemen in the DNR, a source in Russian law enforcement told state-owned media outlet TASS that the deputy commander of the Azov Regiment and the commander of the Ukrainian 36th Marine Brigade will both be transferred to Russia for investigation and trial.[3] Russian authorities will likely use these trials to strengthen legal controls of occupied areas and further demoralize Ukrainian defenders by setting a harsh legal precedent during preliminary tribunals, as well as advancing the Kremlin’s false narrative of invading Ukraine to “de-Nazify” it.
Key Takeaways
- Concentrated Russian artillery power paired with likely understrength infantry units remains insufficient to enable Russian advances within Severodonetsk.
- Russian forces continued to prepare to advance on Slovyansk from southeast of Izyum and west of Lyman.
- Russian forces are focusing on strengthening defensive positions along the Southern Axis due to recent successful Ukrainian counterattacks along the Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast border.
- Successful Ukrainian counterattacks in the Zaporizhia area are forcing Russian forces to rush reinforcements to this weakened sector of the front line.
- Russian forces are likely conducting false-flag artillery attacks against Russian-held territory to dissuade Ukrainian sentiment and encourage the mobilization of proxy forces.
Go here to read the rest. To take and hold ground in a war you need good infantry and that is what Russia simply hasn’t had. Artillery can pulverize an enemy and allow third rate infantry to temporarily take ground, but such ground is only leased, not purchased, as better infantry can always eventually take it back.
“RT,” Russia Today, the official English language government propaganda channel, announced yesterday the claim that “a missile attack had killed 50 Ukrainian generals” who were supposedly in a meeting near a village named Shirokaya in the Dnieperpropetsk area. In a blog dated 6/20/22 Ukrainian Denys Davidov does an in-depth analysis of the alleged site that was hit, and it appears to be partly a farm and an adjacent part a sports complex. Obviously this doesn’t seem like a place for a physical meeting of 50 generals, and a UK expert in a BBC news report says that (in the days of drone surveillance and GPS), it’s highly unlikely that “50 generals” would be concentrated in any one physical area, simply because of the possibility of a mass takeout. That expert said that simply isn’t done anymore.
Obviously, the Russians are stung by the extensively documented reports with names, funeral notices, and official acknowledgments, of the massive numbers of their high ranking officer deaths. The RT “story” is likely just that. Also the storyline only ran with three sentences. One would think there would be much more detail for such a supposed Russian victorious strike.
RT also said that a Ukrainian warehouse supposedly filled with western newly supplied artillery was allegedly destroyed. Again no specific facts. The same you came alter expert said that it simply isn’t done to concentrate weaponry and essential warehouse. It also isn’t practical to disperse it to the fields of action. RT has stopped supplying videos after some of their previous storylines had the videos analyzed and shown to be highly manipulated and basically fiction.
It is also annoying that we have really uninformed people going on new shows, in this case Fox News, and purporting pronouncements about this war and then proceeding to show they seriously do not have sufficient facts.
Yesterday, KTMcFarland, dropped a huge notch in my view when she went on FoxNews and pronounced that “the Ukrainians are losing this war,” and “Russia can fight forever.” She bases this view on the actual fact that the Russians are recouping large amounts of royalties daily for petroleum and gas sold to the West. This much is true. (Many US people don’t know that the US is still buying/paying cash for Russian petroleum daily through June 30. For some mysterious reason, compromised Joe Biden wouldn’t immediately stop Russian petroleum purchases and essentially continues paying cash for the Russian war.) But money itself, though important, does not hold an AK-47 nor drive an armored vehicle.
However, the abundant convergence of facts put together by ISW, Oryx, UK Royal Services, SOFREP, and many other military sites, and even “milbloggers,” both (interestingly) Russian and Ukrainian, repeatedly note serious recruitment problems the Russians are facing, and even the almost complete depletion of their BTG’s (Intercepted phone calls of Russian soldiers to family members back home in several cases have stated that many of their groups have only 15-20 effective trained fighting members left in each one.)
The second issue is, although the Ukrainians are suffering serious losses, there’s no doubt the Russians are suffering even more. much much more. This is why they have stepped up their propaganda campaign. Extensive surreptitious video evidence many of us have seen shows obsolete T-62 tanks being pressed into action, conscripts being sent to the front with only 30 days of training, and they in many cases lacking the knowledge and ability to fully operate their armor (according to Richard Smith, military historian at the UK “The Tank Museum,” Wareham, UK)— and in fact a number of the counter measures that some of the upgraded T-72s and T-90s that have been lost we’re never actually deployed because of an adequately trained tankers) or unable to operate in an urban war environment— which is exactly why the Ukrainians have wanted to continue the urban warfare bloodletting in Severodonetsk. (I have a family member that was three times deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. What he tells you about urban warfare is so completely counterintuitive that anyone not properly trained will be snuffed out within a matter of a couple hours. And that’s what’s happening to the Russian conscripts.)
McFarlane like many people seem to rely on the enormous mobilization and logistical effort the Red Army put into the Battle for Berlin in WW2: but more recent analysis over the last few decades indicates that Stalin’s forces were also seriously mauled and not that far from collapse, which is why he was aggressively pressing Roosevelt to open a new front in western Europe. If the US had been more cynical and held off the D Day invasion, there was a fair chance the Russians might’ve been defeated by the concentrated forces of the Reich. It is certainly true that the Russian suppressed the actual hundreds of thousands of men that they lost.
And any event, it is clear at least to me that KTMcFarland, who I generally respect for her knowledge in diplomatic matters, is not fully versed on the essential facts and that this is a much more even fight, and it’s not a certainty that “the Ukrainians are losing.”
Or to put it another way, if this is a picture of a “Russian victory,” what would be the picture of a Russian defeat?
Also, jailed anti-Putin dissident Alexander Navalny has “disappeared” from his jailed location.
The Russian propaganda campaign is starting to show cracks.