Intensification of real and hybrid war

oglX

The war in Ukraine continues unabated. The fighters of the People's Militia from Donbas proved to be particularly tough; and the Chechens, of course, with the added effect of fear following their movements, with lots of battle cries and flags. The experience of those units is crucially important in the field. Eight years of war experience is strongly felt by the people of Donbass, who systematically clear the terrain without rapid movements, but also without retreating. From their part of the front, there are no recordings of military equipment left on the fields and roads, unlike other parts of the battlefield, where civilians find undamaged tanks, missile systems, various combat and non-combat vehicles, ammunition, dry daily rations and everything else that they brought after the passing of the Russians. to war. In front of the people of Donbass and their reinforcements, from the first day of the war, the main part of the Ukrainian army, and that is the better part of it in terms of technique and training, and it also showed its fighting morale. On the night of March 14 to 15, DNR Militia units broke through the front from Gorlovka in the direction of Pokrovsk (until 2016, the city was called Krasnoarmeysk, the name was changed in a wave of renouncing the tradition of anti-fascism).

The Ukrainian brigades have been worn out in three weeks of fighting and therefore they are facing a turning point for the fighting in the east - they will have to hold their positions and stop the penetration, or the front will break and the Russian initial plan will be realized, in the formation of a "cauldron" from which there will be no way out. The bulk of the Ukrainian forces are under pressure from parts of the Russian 8th Army from the northeast.

SITUATION IN THE SOUTH

photos: ap photo

In the south, on the coast of the Sea of ​​Azov, the tight ring around Mariupol is an example of the cauldron in which the Russians want to introduce the Ukrainian forces, who are now a little further north defending Kramatorsk, Severodonetsk and other places that are part of the territories of the LNR and DNR on the maps, recognized by Russia ahead of invasions.

The forces of the group marked "Z", which started the war from Crimea, stretched beyond any reasonable measure from Voznesensk in the west to Mariupol in the east and on the approaches to Zaporozhye in the north. Practical reasons dictated that leadership and command be divided, and that is why the 58th Army remained on the routes bypassing Odessa from the north and towards Kryvyi Rih. The command of the 49th Army and its units were brought to the battlefield, which are now in charge of the eastern arm of the zone in which combat operations were previously conducted by the 58th Army.

The rapid breakthrough across Kherson to Nikolaev, then bypassing the coastal towns and Odessa and the breakthrough towards Kryvyi Rih, has lost its breath for the time being. Parts of the Crimean 58th Army and Marines and the 7th Air Assault Division appear to be worn out and overstretched. Nikolaev is under attack, but not captured, and the main Russian forces that passed towards Voznesensk encountered a strong defense of the Ukrainians. Also, the northern direction of penetration towards Krivo Rog is now at a standstill. Behind the Russian forces that have gone far, perhaps too far, the situation is not favorable - in Kherson, which is occupied, Ukrainians are constantly protesting in the streets, and Nikolaev is not occupied. In the south, large areas remain under the control of Ukrainian forces, or at least not firmly occupied by Russian units. Officially, on March 15, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have full control over the entire Kherson region, but there are reports of fighting in the background. One K-52 was shot down on March 12 in flight over an area marked on maps as Russian.

ON THE APPROACHES TO KIEV

photos: ap photo

In the north, the Russians brought into combat operations battalion battle groups (BBGs) under the command of the 29th Army from the region of Brest, a city in Belarus near Poland, which had been brought there ostensibly to participate in joint exercises in the weeks before the invasion. Army commander General Andrey Kolesnikov, according to Ukrainian claims, died on March 10. The Russian side has not officially confirmed this, but silence is interpreted as confirmation.

Forces under the command of the 35th and 36th armies and airborne units continue to advance to Kiev. The Russians are trying to continue the breakthrough launched in the first hours of the war, on February 24, but they got stuck in places on the approaches to Kiev where they entered the war that they had to avoid - fighting in urban conditions. Blows are exchanged and it is uncertain where anyone is from hour to hour. In general, the Ukrainians are retreating, but they are holding their positions and trying to wear down the Russian offensive potential as much as possible. The Russians are not giving up their efforts to cut off Kiev from the east. It was particularly fierce in the town of Borvari, where the Ukrainians stopped a wedge of tank and mechanized BBG.

The Russians continue to gradually close the "cauldron" in the east, where the most combat-worthy Ukrainian units are still. Anyone who follows the war in the east sees the drone footage of a Russian column being ambushed, losing a couple of tanks and retreating back along the highway it tried to get as close to Kiev as possible. The commander of the Russian 10th Tank Regiment was killed in that battle on March 6.

A big problem for the Russian 41st Army and the various BBGs it leads, as well as the northeastern part of the front where parts of the 2nd Army are located, is the fact that after three weeks, neither Chernigov nor the other cities in the area have yet fallen. The BBG are advancing very boldly towards Kiev and the southeast, all the way to Prilika, and communications are not safe. The wider region of Kharkiv is semi-encircled and on that part of the front are elite Russian units from the 1st Guards Tank Army and parts of the 6th Army.

ON THE BORDER OF A NATO MEMBER a

Russia Ukraine War

Moscow's messages that action would be taken against foreign fighters in Ukraine and to cut off arms shipments from NATO members were clear, so it was no surprise when a Ukrainian barracks in Yavorovo, just 13 kilometers from the border with Poland, was hit on March 18. . Buildings were destroyed with a few dozen "caliber" cruise missiles, and it is estimated that many foreigners who came to fight against the Russians died. High precision is a proven feature of the "caliber", which is launched from surface ships and submarines and has a range of at least 1400-1500 kilometers, as far as is known. On the boards with the rocket's data at some weapons exhibitions, the range of up to 2600 kilometers on ground-based targets is stated, with a thermonuclear warhead. However, the range was sufficient to hit a target very close to Poland from the Black Sea.

NATO reacted to the "caliber" rocket hits with a dramatic tone, and the public opinion's fear of the coming war tide from the east is clearly visible in the media image, which insists on the fact that the base is located near the border of a NATO member state. There is no real answer to the challenge, because NATO has a clear position that it will not enter the conflict directly (and the missile shipments are some unusual humanitarian aid), and for now it will only accumulate reinforcements in the Baltic states, Poland and Romania. In fact, NATO provides Ukraine with very important intelligence support, as it daily forwards information collected on flights of airplanes and drones for electronic reconnaissance of Russian radio communications, the location of surveillance radars, then devices belonging to air defense units, etc.

Russia Ukraine War

Flying radar observation stations patrol the airspace of Poland. Admittedly, there were no AWACS in flight when on March 10, late in the evening, a Tu-141 aircraft that took off from Ukraine flew over part of Romania, all of Hungary and crashed on Zagreb's Jarun. That event almost caused panic, because it showed the weakness of NATO. Many good jokes have been made about the actual effectiveness of the Alliance's integrated air defense system, but the fact is that a random Tu-141 flight was very difficult to intercept by fighter jets. The old aircraft, powered by a turbojet engine, is programmed for a certain route before flight and, although this is part of the reconnaissance system, the Ukrainians almost certainly put an aerial bomb in it and tried to use it as some kind of primitive cruise missile. They may have planned for it to crash into a Russian base in Crimea, judging by the fact that one Tu-141 was documented to have completed its flight on that peninsula. The Ukrainians probably have few Tu-141 aircraft left and the incident that disturbed the Croatian public opinion will not be repeated, but they and everyone else in NATO will work on strengthening air defense. Croats have already requested that an American unit with the Patriot missile system be deployed to them. Last year, that system was on a temporary stay at the Zemunik airport near Zadar, during the NATO exercise of checking the integrated air defense system.

NATO will make an effort to strengthen the air defense of the Allies, as part of wider activities to increase the military presence, but only up to the alliance's border. Official Kiev's demands to initiate a NATO flight ban action over Ukraine are not realistic, because it is an invitation to directly enter the war against Russia, whose aviation is slowly gaining supremacy in the airspace. After the first operations in parts of the Ukrainian air defense system in the first two days of the war, the Russians focused on work above the front. Traditionally, commanders of intervid units who come from the ranks of "dustmen" and tankmen see aviation only as a means of fighter protection and fire support, at the expense of units that are on the front. That is why the Russians call the largest part of combat aviation front-line, from which only strategic bombers are exempted. In practice, such an approach limits the ideas of actions in depth of the opponent, on the tasks of isolating the battlefield (cutting off the background and cutting off the arrival of reinforcements) by acting on communications and bridges. That is why it was possible for the Ukrainians to attempt a counterattack, even with forces equivalent to five brigades, against the bulk of the Russian forces trying to cut off Kiev. In the meantime, some actions were taken in the depth of the territory where Su-34 and Su-24M frontline bombers were engaged, accompanied by fighters of the Su-27 family (Su-27SM, Su-30, Su-35).

Attempts by the Ukrainians to penetrate the Russian air defense with the remnants of aviation were mostly thwarted, but since March 11, the Russian commanders decided to shake up the remaining infrastructure - day after day, "calibre" and "Iskander" missile strikes were carried out on airfields in the depth of the space controlled by the Ukrainian army, all the way to Lutsk, which is near Poland.

FEEDING WAR

Russia Ukraine War

Reports from the field and video analysis show that the Russians brought reinforcements to the front, which they collected wherever they found people they could transfer to the field. Even parts of the 102nd Military Base, a unit stationed in Armenia and tasked with defending its sovereignty under the interstate agreement, were exempted. The units there have been fully professional since last fall and are now called to pay their military debt to the fatherland. Then, parts of the units engaged in monitoring the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh were observed. War must feed.

On March 9, Russian officials confirmed unofficial reports that regular conscript soldiers were sent to war, and ordered the General Military Prosecutor's Office to review who did not comply with the decision to fight only with professionals.

The Ukrainians have reported themselves in active defense and are laying ambushes on the roads of the Russian main forces and supply columns. When the opportunity arises, they undertake local counterstrikes, mostly with company-sized, rarely battalion-sized tactical units.

Russia Ukraine War Day In Photos

In the hybrid war, the Ukrainian side convincingly leads, which publishes dozens of videos from the field every day, which should convince the world public that it is a witness to the collapse of the Russian war machine. The messages are for all tastes - for those who see the war as a video game, screenshots from the screen of a combat vehicle, which destroys a Russian BMP with thirty millimeter shells, are shown. Unfortunately, there are many shots of charred and dismembered bodies. An example of a selective approach is a photo from the first days of the war, in which a group of Russians are blocked in an elevator, when they misjudged the situation and tried to get to the roof of the building by the fastest means. The distraught young men in the trap were almost a comical sight, if there was no continuation of the story for which you need to have a strong stomach - the videos of the bodies of those people who were thrown from the top of the building were published.

Finally, a comment on a topic that has become very common on social networks and in coffee shops: what do "Z", "V" and other markings that appeared on Russian military equipment before the beginning of the invasion mean. These are markings for quick recognition of technical affiliation, without special symbolic interpretation. Russian propaganda subsequently remembered to try to use the labels for propaganda, but only when they were already accepted as part of popular culture. Posters were made suggesting that the letters were not chosen at random, even though they are Latin and not Cyrillic, and therefore at first glance, the insertion of the Latin V into the Russian popular phrase "sila v pravde" (strength in truth) looks like forced propaganda pressure. In the cult film of Alexei Balabanov Brat 2, the main character, war veteran Danila Bagrov, uttered a phrase that is often used by Russians. On the military poster, between the Cyrillic alphabet for force and justice, a Latin V was somewhat implausibly inserted, but it was too late - observers of the war from the "Russian tribune" appropriated "Z" as an informal sign of the current war.