August 17 – Day 540 – A little perspective, Artillery wars, Stick and Move

Hi FB!

It’s been lovely having a break from the war but one must pay bills and the Russian army is still in Ukraine, for better or worse time to get back to work.

The pix are the latest strike against Berdyansk, yet again where the Russian navy traditionally parks military cargo/assault ships, and a propaganda photograph courtesy the Azov Regiment public outreach section. Also Russian web reaction to the latest Ka-52 shootdown, it looks like the pilot survived.

Latest LR strike against Berdyansk, looks like the military wharf (again) was the target. As frequently noted, this particular target is well outside the range of all western attack systems Ukraine is known to operate, with the exception of Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles. However, kamikaze drones or home-grown Hrim and/or Tochka-U surface-to-surface missiles could also have done this. The point is, Russian capacity to operate out of range of most Ukrainian weapons isn’t a tech issue, it’s a supply issue.

Azov Regiment is raised from the dead and back on the line. This is a training photograph from the unit’s public outreach section. See the smoke in the background?

Russian Ka-52 knocked down this morning, according to some reports by a modern Swedish missile.

Map of where the helicopter went down, this is near Rabotine.

Also, not checking news developments and hassling sources for information for a couple of weeks, and then returning to the information feeds, allows for a somewhat different perspective than in a “normal” review, where basically I’m trying to cram in all the news developments that have some downstream implication that’s significant, or just are inherently interesting to me but won’t make mainstream reporting, probably.

From the 2–3 week perspective, I notice the following:

Artillery advantage to the Ukrainians

Compared to a couple of weeks ago, Russian propaganda video of Lancets hitting things has dropped off dramatically in volume, and Russian propaganda video of Russian artillery hitting things has practically disappeared. The UAF, for its part, seems to be hitting things with its standard mix of indirect attack weaponry: grenade-toting drones, artillery, HIMARS, and exotically are rarely Storm Shadow cruise missiles. Meanwhile, the Russian “rah rah” internet is more and more confirming the Ukrainian firepower advantage is having effect.

Here is a Wednesday gripe from Russian “military journalist” Simyon Pegov about how the Russians in the village Rabotine, currently the focus of another UAF push, are seeing all that indirect coming in on their positions:

“The opponent returned to the original tactics, with which the counterattack began. Massive artillery strikes destroyed the positions of our fighters, leaving no other option but to retreat to the next line. As one of the sources says, more than 1,000 shells hit the village in a day. Cluster munitions, white phosphorus, shrapnel all are being fired by the UAF. And if our (Russian) soldiers cope well with enemy tanks and other armored vehicles, then there are problems with counter-battery combat. This has not been a secret for a long time.”

 Pegov goes on to argue this only “dooms” the UAF to short-range gains. He does not, however, offer any suggestion on how the Russian army might stop the Ukrainian tactic of smashing a Russian position with artillery and then moving in with infantry, wash and repeat.

Taken together this seems like pretty good proof that the Ukrainians are winning the artillery battle and particularly the counter-battery battle, and further it’s obviously a long slog and we don’t know how much shell and guns the Russians have in reserve. (I suspect, not that much. But no proof). But what is clear is that the Ukrainians have the advantage in the most important battle of this war, the front line artillery fight, and from the perspective of about half a month the UAF appears not only to be maintaining that advantage, but and maybe even expanding it.

I would add, the scale of UAF artillery we are presently seeing is nothing near what is needed for decisive, quick results.

Not the quick knock out, use all 15 rounds to win

The news wires today were all abuzz that Azov Regiment — destroyed in Mariupol but now reconstituted, retrained, and once again under its old commander Denys Prokopenko, is back on the line and fighting, in the north-eastern Serebryanka sector. I think it is safe to say Azov if anything will fight harder than it did back in 2022, I know those guys and for them die-hard defense is now part of the unit’s DNA. They pretty much have become the UAF version of the 24th Welsh or the French Legionnaires following Camaron. So whatever plans the Russians have of advancing in the Kupyansk sector, they just got a lot more difficult.

Also spotted on the line in this sector, following a fairly long period of no real contact reports from them, is 92nd Mech Brigade, which is for my money one of the top two or five combined arms brigades in the entire UAF. If there are two UAF formations the Russian army would not pick to fight, by past history anyway, it would very likely be Azov Regiment and 92nd Mech. However, the opposition is “1st Tank Army”, which in the present seems to mean “regular army formations that aren’t airborne or marines, and usually fight in the east rather than the south”. That Russian forward progress is going to stop in this sector is an easy bet, the more interesting calculation will be how much push back the UAF attempts here.

I am also seeing reports — almost certainly dated by three days to a week — that 35th Marines got pulled off the line following capture of Urozhaine (for which they got an official “attaboy” from Zelensky himself), and 36th Marines are now posting training videos, meaning they probably are away from the front as well. 47th Mech ended 45 days on the line in the Tokmak sector.

However, today a report came in today that a missile gunner from the 47th knocked down another Ka-52 gunship, so it seems like if the 47th is coming off the line in full it’s a rotation still in progress. As an aside, Russian channels are saying it was a Swedish RBS 70 hand-held anti-aircraft missile, which as many of you will recall is a generation newer than the Stingers and Igil launchers the Ukrainians have used with good success for the last eighteen months. The range difference is about 3 km., so it seems pretty likely the Russian pilot — which the Russians use to fire anti-tank missiles from five to ten km. Away — wasn’t aware he was flying in a sector where the Ukrainians were armed with the Swedish missiles.

3rd Assault ended two months of successful fighting in Bakhmut sector either late last week or early this week, and it seems possible that 36th Marines are getting a break.

It appears that, at minimum, that which came out in the southern sector got replaced by 46th Mech, the oldest “new type” UAF combat brigade, and the on paper extremely powerful 82nd Air Assault Brigade (Marders, Strykers and Challengers). That elements of these units have been committed to fighting on the southern front is all over open sources, but whether they are committed in strength, or not, remains to be seen. Reports of 22nd Mech Brigade operating around Bakhmut have appeared as well.

From the two weeks perspective this facet of the overall UAF attrition strategy is pretty easy to see: the high command recognizes formations can fight only so long before they lose steam and energy, and the magic number seems to be 45–90 days. Which is pretty much standard for how long western army units were thought to be able to fight effectively in conventional wars like Korea or WW2.