Sep. 18, Day 572 — Just a flesh wound, 46th and 47th, Who needs war reporters?
Hi FB!
Yeah I kinda thought that might have left a mark…
(And if you are on the fence about ATACMS, please pay attention!)
Many of you will have already seen the photographs of following the Storm Shadow strike on Sep. 13 in Sevastopol that sank a Russian landing assault ship called the Minsk and, according to Kremlin at the time, “somewhat damaged” a missile-carrying submarine called the Rostov-Na-Danu.
Satellite photos and pix from the wharf quickly established, like within 24 hours, that the Kremlin was fibbing about the Minsk (afternoon following the strike: “It will be repaired in due course”), and this morning photographs surfaced of the Rostov, which I have attached. This is what the Kremlin wants the world to consider “partial damage that can be repaired”.
Since this is a naval topic I’ll leave it to the experts and the model-builders (often the same people) to decide the extent of the damage, and in narrow terms, just repeat what I and others have said before: there are three big warship-sized dry docks in Sevastopol port and all three are now out of action, because Sea Shadows hammered the empty one as well. This means Russia’s Black Sea fleet has no way to dry dock a major warship well, for a very long time.
There’s nothing in Novorossisk, a dry dock takes a couple of years to build assuming you have all the money and materials, and there’s no shifting big Russian warships (still) afloat in the Black Sea somewhere else: they can’t be carried on the Volga-Don canal because they’re too wide and heavy, and they can’t leave the Black Sea because the Russians started a war with another Black Sea power and per the terms of the Montreaux convention the Turks have shut down the Straits to belligerent warships.
As a result, on Saturday we got the news that the remaining three big landing/assault ships still operated by Russia’s Black Sea fleet, same class as the Minsk, got relocated out of Sevastopol and placed basically in a holding pattern in the Sea of Azov.
Overwhelmingly, the most probable reason the Russians did this, I think, is if another one of these big landing ships is hit hard by anything, they literally would have no place to repair it. This in turn has delivered a proper blue water Mahan-consistent strategic naval result: the Russia Federation on Sep. 12 had the ability to land a full brigade of naval infantry with armored vehicles and artillery, at least theoretically, on any shore of the Black Sea. By Sep. 13 that capacity severely degraded, and by Sep. 15–16 it was gone, probably for six months at the minimum.
From a regional security point of view — I’m looking at Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Moldova and Georgia — this is a huge step towards stability. Civilian shipping, private sailboats, fishermen, port operators, EVERYONE is safer with the Russian military unable to land troops on a Black Sea littoral whenever the guy in the Kremlin gets a burr in his shchi. If that’s not an excellent argument for putting precision-guided missiles into the hands of the Ukrainians to sink or neuter the rest of the Russian Black Sea fleet (which, lest we forget, recently fired missiles at Ukraine and missed and hit Romania), then I don’t know what is.
Or wait a minute, I probably do. The Kyiv Post resident F-16 pilot (really), a guy by the name of Christopher Stewart, pointed out in an article about 3-D printed kamikaze motorboats (link when it appears) that those three big Russian warships plowing circles in the Sea of Azov right now are just begging for someone to come in and drop the Kerch Bridge, and bottle them up for good.
ATACMS has the range, it has the warhead, and it is designed to penetrate Russian air defenses. Those same features make it an almost perfect tool to destroy Russian military installations on Crimea: air bases, fuel and ammo depots, vehicle garages and of course launch sites for the kamikaze drones that are flying to Ukraine about every other night and killing people.
I won’t get into the politics of a US decision to give nor not to give to Ukraine a particular weapons system beyond acknowledging the US is a democracy and security decisions usually will be politicized, that’s natural. But as that political debate goes on, a piece that might be noticed is this: by waiting and delaying and debating, opportunity is being missed. Three Russian assault ships that threaten every Black Sea state, could be eliminated as a danger, but for that to take place the opportunity needs to be part of the debate about the weapon to do the job. Meantime, people are dying.
Southern Front Sturm und Drang
This next is from one of the bazillion Telegram feeds I monitor, it’s one of about three channels (I know of) associated with 46th Mechanized Brigade. By background, these are the guys whose soldiers were the very first through the “NATO training” (a/k/a basic marksmanship, first aid, house-clearing, and vehicle ops, but NOT coordination with drones and artillery), and as a result became the test case of how effective NATO training is in the Russia-Ukraine war.
The 46th got stuck in Soledar in April, it seems like because and by most accounts the Russian pressure around Bakhmut was severe and the UAF didn’t have time to stick them in a quiet sector to get used to being shot at. They only held for several days, according to some reports some of the soldiers and chain of command couldn’t handle the shock of all that Russian artillery (see how times change?), and there was a minor scandal. I’ve seen reports some of them ran from artillery fire, but that doesn’t prove much, I can introduce you to lots of people who did that.
Anyway, the 46th has since been out of the line and back in at least twice, and reports are they’ve developed into a fairly reliable unit. According to reports they were in on, I’m not clear yet exactly how, the liberation of Klishchiivka. The other thing about them that sort of sets them apart, according to earlier social media and their own public statements, they were the unit operating the Slovenian T-55S (upgraded with thermals and a NATO-standard 105mm cannon) and BMPs.
As you will see from the attached photo, someone from 46th Brigade is telling the world that now they are driving around, at least sometimes, in Bradleys. Or if I’m really specific, they are posting photographs of 46th Brigade infantrymen in front of a Bradly. Not sure what that means. Maybe nothing. Image attached.
But the other, well, curious thing is, the unit we all know to be operating Bradleys for sure, 47th Brigade, the unit that hit minefields and took some fairly serious losses around Mala Tokmachka in the beginning of June, and after that aired some fairly dirty laundry involving finger pointing between senior NCOs and the brigade senior command. They too seem to have if not a standout unit turned into a competent combat formation that can gain ground and use its weapons to destroy Russian equipment and kill or wound Russian fairly efficiently.
Well, on Saturday, the standout (that word’s coming up frequently, isn’t it?) commander of the 47th, a colonel with a heckuva fighting record prior to taking over the Bradley unit, a guy by the name of Yury Sak, got, well, sacked. The name of his replacement is named Oleksandr Pavlii, and from the internet we know he commanded 112th Territorial Defense Brigade in 2022.
Who are those guys, you ask? Well, a whole bunch of people in Kyiv know: the 112th is one of the few territorial defense brigades is the Kyiv region, and in all Ukraine it was one of the only territorial defense brigades that even sort of practiced fighting Russians in 2020–21. You should have seen the volunteers that showed up sometimes: middle-aged women, old dudes, city guys with gun fetishes, wanna-be nurses, Donbass veterans needing a good excuse to avoid chores, grandstanding politicians. I kept waiting to see a gorilla or an orangutang but they stayed in the Kyiv city zoo.
When the balloon went up it was a no choice deal, not everyone in the 112th showed up but enough of them did to be a real piece of the defenses around Kyiv in Feb-Mar. 2022. The Russians definitely didn’t expect them. As I understand it the 112th (they had a lot of help, though) were the backbone of the Ukrainian infantry at Hostomel, it was their Stinger gunners that shot down all those helicopters, and it was their drone operators and observers that called all that artillery fire down on the Russian airborne.
I have wound up working with pieces of the 112th more than once from time to time — they’re not definitely regulars but they’re pretty serious about fighting. From my perspective, that’s more because that’s the kind of people you’d expect to see in a territorial unit drawn from around Kyiv, but in any case now the old commander of the 112th territorials is now the new boss of the 47th. Image attached stolen from Ukrainian telegram of Sak and Pavlii.
My quick read is this is the UAF top command trying to put competence ahead of seniority or, at least, SOP. Sak was in the service since 2015 in 93rd brigade. I met them in Donbass, definitely regular army, decent soldiers and officers from what I saw. He led the 93rd in the first year of the (big/second) war and they were — wait for it — a standout unit. At the time his transfer to the 47th in late 2022 it was seen as recognition he was one of the country’s best brigade commanders.
The internet is silent on why he is now fired, but at minimum the 47th by nomenclature and equipment is a UAF breakthrough brigade and the 47th certainly hasn’t broken through anywhere. I suspect it was really unfair, but, my guess is that this is a case of a commander not getting results. I could be wrong, maybe Sak is getting kicked upstairs to one of the faux-corps commands. But somehow I doubt it.
Direct from the 46th
In the dynamic and exciting world of modern military public communications, the UAF generally allows combat units and soldiers to run blogs and have Telegram channels but it’s on your honor with the understanding that the UAF could get mad if you publish the wrong thing, and honestly OPSEC isn’t consistent and neither are the UAF information control people.
One upshot of this is that the amount of information units put out can be all over the map, some basically doing nothing but reposting the daily General Staff situation estimate, and others running information operations Madison Avenue would envy (Azov, I’m looking at you) and others sort of depending on the mood of the junior officer or sergeant or whoever that happens to be responsible for the brigade blog.
As noted above, 46th Brigade went through some tough times and in that unit’s case the messaging was “we’re trying hard and we’re getting shot at not you so have some patience and understanding”. This evolved into “we’re doing OK, don’t worry about us.” But on Sunday I guess the 46th blog guy had some time on his hands, the fighting wasn’t that intense, and the brigade information control officer was off or something. They’re in the Rabotyne sector so this is pretty relevant, and I bet 100 hryvnas it’s as accurate as the writer could make it, and when I read it I decided you sure don’t need me to filter it:
Good morning, relatives!
(We’re working, everything is fine)
The situation in the last few days in the section Novoprokopivka — Verbove:
⚔️ Direction Novoprokopivka. Battles are taking place almost on the outskirts of the village. The Armed Forces managed to capture one of the strongholds on the approaches to the village to the north. But the heights to the northeast and east of the village are still under Orc control.
⚔️ Verbove direction — battles on the slopes, there are tactical measures against the first line of defense but no forces are anchoring anywhere.
🔺 Over the past few days, the enemy has done the most important thing for himself — he has pulled up reserves in the most dangerous areas for him. The battle formations in the areas of the breakthrough of the Armed Forces in the area of Novoprokopivka and Verbove are now being strongly reinforced by enemy personnel.
🔺 In addition, the orcs strengthened the flanks (around the UAF salient) with their 7th and 76th divisions of the DSHV for defensive purposes and for possible attacks on the flank of our grouping — time will tell what will come of this.
We are seeing the Orcs leave positions that they do not consider essential and retreat, so as not to lose people. But they don’t let you enter these areas — they cover the places with artillery, mortars and MLRS. These changes in tactics are associated with an increase in the weight of the volley and the accuracy of our (UAF) artillery. At the same time, they are fiercely resisting on the main positions that are important to them. Their advances are of an exclusively tactical nature.
🔺 As for the “first line” of the enemy’s defense fortifications — there are no major breakthroughs there and none are expected yet. The heights on the line from Novoprokopivka to Verbove, through which the main line of Orc defense passes, are under their control.
🔺 The last few days there has been a pause in the entire area without serious advances
We are working hard.
Yours sincerely, 46th Brigade
So as expected, they're waiting on the new VDV orcs to make their play.
I'd really love to get a soldier's take on what changing weather conditions will do for troops on the front line. How badly will the Orlan-fires complex be degraded in poor weather? When the leaves have fallen, will ruscist artillery be easier to find and kill? How badly will drone flying times be impacted by cold and wind?
My instinct is that Ukraine is getting very good at small team infiltration. Mud and rain might present an advantage here. Plus orc guns aren't moving as fast in the mud, especially towed ones. Japan's combat history in the early part of the Pacific campaign offers some intriguing parallels. It wasn't all "Banzai" charges - they were experts at getting in close and overwhelming defensive positions until whole chunks of the line cracked apart.
Bottom line - assumptions about the advance slowing or halting in fall and winter might be highly incorrect. This artillery range and precision advantage isn't something to sneeze at. Now that we know S-400 and S-300 systems are less effective than expected, ATACMS becomes much more useful.
Rostov-on-Don and Belgorod gonna be interesting places to live soon. Very foolish of my idiots ruscist sympathizing brother-in-law to take his family to live there in June.
Define 'shchi', if you would. The only juicy Russian words I know are a few gathered from my father who overheard them from his father who served, as a musician, in a Czarist military band. Can you imagine? A Jew in an army band under the Czar? Most unusual.
Thank you for this update which goes a vast distance beyond the so-called 'news' reported by so-called mainstream media. Your reports are the best and are most appreciated.