What Happens When Just 8 Ukrainian Soldiers Defend Half a Mile of Trenches?
Russian regiments can walk or roll right through Ukrainian lines.
There is no Russian offensive in Ukraine, the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team claimed in a thoughtful—and potentially controversial—analysis.
The Russians are slowly advancing in several sectors of the 700-mile front line of Russia’s 42-month wider war on Ukraine not because they’ve intensified their attacks—but because the Ukrainians are so desperately short of trained infantry that there are huge gaps along the “thinned out” front.
“The front line is so thinned out that full-scale encirclements in the traditional sense are unlikely to occur again,” CIT explained. “Instead, the opposing forces are more likely to ‘slip’ through each other’s positions.”
That’s what happened—with ultimately dramatic and bloody results—just east of Siversk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast on July 27. Six Russian tanks, nine armored personnel carriers, an armored recovery vehicle, 12 Lada compact cars, two all-terrain vehicles and a staggering 41 motorcycles from the 3rd Combined Arms Army attacked along at least two axes.
The Russians “simply drove past Ukrainian positions, then got lost and came under fire,” CIT reported, citing researcher Playfra.
The Ukrainian 54th Mechanized Brigade and 81st Air Mobile Brigade struck back with the first-person-view drones, bomber drones and—presumably—artillery. “Most of the equipment was destroyed or damaged,” Special Kherson Cat noted after they and other Ukrainian observers scrutinized drone videos of the assault.
“Russian infantry losses are estimated at around a company killed and wounded,” Special Kherson Cat reported. That’s potentially more than 100 casualties. (See video below.)
No offensive
Austrian analyst Franz-Stefan Gady recently told The Financial Times the term “summer offensive” doesn’t accurately describe Russian operations in recent months.
In fact, the Russians are incapable of attacking “in large formations in a fairly well coordinated manner,” Gady said. Instead, they “push and they find a gap in the front line, they enter a trench, but because they can only do so in fairly small numbers, the Ukrainians usually are able to block the gap.”
“We agree with this assessment,” CIT chimed in. “The tempo of the war has remained nearly unchanged for many months, and we see no evidence of a significant ‘offensive’ in progress.”
But the thinned-out front line does afford the Russians opportunities to slowly advance toward some key objectives. In mid-July, Russian regiments rolled through a thinned-out Ukrainian national guard bridge north of the fortress city of Pokrovsk, 50 miles southwest of Siversk.
The Russian advance further closed a pincer north of Pokrovsk that threatens the Ukrainian garrison’s supply lines—and could soon compel the garrison to retreat. At the same time, a few Russian troops have infiltrated southern Pokrovsk.
“Due to the extreme sparsity of the front line,” the Russians “have slipped past Ukrainian positions unnoticed and established themselves in suburban areas, effectively operating behind Ukrainian lines.”
But “this does not mean they control any part of Pokrovsk, nor that full-scale urban combat has begun there,” CIT stressed.
No, the Russians aren’t attacking harder overall, CIT concluded. Instead, they’re attacking with the same diminished intensity that has defined the last six months of the wider war—but their attacks are increasingly finding empty Ukrainian trenches.
“In some positions, just eight soldiers are defending a 900-meter stretch of the front line,” CIT pointed out. Normally, at least 200 troops would defend that much of the front.
“Even with artillery and drone support, [eight soldiers] is critically insufficient,” CIT stated. Thus “it is no surprise that assault groups and even armored columns can pass through such positions unimpeded.”
It’s been widely reported that the Ukrainian armed forces are short 100,000 trained infantry. If you buy CIT’s argument, those missing troops are why Russia is advancing.
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