Ukraine's goal is destroy or seriously reduce the Russian military as a fighting force and to push them out of their country. While Belgorod could be a useful distraction, it does not accomplish the other two goals so it is being watched with interest and minimally supported, but not reinforced, at least at this time. Keeping their eye on the prize is the overriding compulsion for Ukraine's military. JL
Mark Sumner reports in Daily Kos:
One reason that Ukraine may not have pushed for this week’s crossing into Belgorod is that they’re still not prepared to launch their counteroffensive. Ukraine isn’t just training the forces that make up those nine, or ten, or twelve new battalions by having them shoot off blanks on training courses in western Ukraine. Those people have also been spending time at the front, confronting explosions, firing 1,000 rounds a day. They’ve had their turn fighting in muddy trenches and sheltering from massed artillery fire. They’ve lost people. Most of these forces are far from green, and their training is anything but basic.One reason that Ukraine may not have pushed for this week’s crossing into Belgorod is that they’re still not prepared to launch their counteroffensive. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Ukraine isn’t just training the forces that make up those nine, or ten, or twelve new battalions by having them shoot off blanks on training courses in western Ukraine. Those people have also been spending time at the front, confronting explosions, enemy fire, and the hardest thing of all—learning to fire at fellow human beings.
“What if he’s one of our guys?” the soldier asks.“Fire,” Pain orders again. “Fire.”
When the soldier hesitates, Pain shoots his own rifle over the man’s shoulder. Eventually, the other soldier starts to fire as well.
Some of those soldiers at the front lines in Bakhmut ended up firing 1,000 rounds a day. They’ve had their turn fighting in muddy trenches and sheltering from massed artillery fire. They’ve had the excitement of advancing to take an enemy position, but they’ve also surrendered ground. They’ve lost people. Some of them are also veterans of the Kharkiv counteroffensive last fall.
Watching months of videos and images showing Ukraine forces training in western Ukraine and in other countries, it’s tempting to think of the troops about to enter the battle at the counteroffensive as recruits fresh from basic. Some of them are. But most of these forces are far from green, and their training is anything but basic.
They’re going to come to the front not just carrying new weapons and new knowledge, but with the memories of what it meant to stand in a muddy trench and watch the people around them fall. None of them is going to want to be in that position again.
TWO WEEKS IN THE TRENCHES
New Yorker has a closeup look at what two weeks in those trenches on the front lines are like. In this case, field reporter Luke Mogelson joined a small group of Ukrainian soldiers in a tough spot on the front lines. Their small log-fortified home inside one of the trenches had been identified by the Russians and was constantly targeted by both artillery and missiles launched from helicopters. They were surrounded by a field of craters, and by tattered remnants of the dead. They had simple instructions that were hard to follow: Don’t leave, but don’t die.
It’s a very tough read, and not least of all because these men have been fighting for so long, all over Ukraine, and even victory only brings them reassignment to another battlefield.
The 28th Brigade was at the forefront of an ensuing campaign to liberate Kherson. For some six months, the Russians staved off the Ukrainians with a deluge of artillery and air strikes, exacting a devastating toll whose precise scale Ukraine has kept secret. Finally, in November, Russia withdrew across the Dnipro River. Battered members of the 28th Brigade were among the first Ukrainian troops to enter Kherson. Crowds greeted them there as heroes. Before they could recover, they were sent three hundred miles northeast, to the outskirts of Bakhmut, a besieged city that was becoming the scene of the most ferocious violence of the war.The men in this story are almost the opposite of those in the Journal piece. For them, there have been no lengthy rotations away from the front. For the new soldiers who have joined them, there has been little time for any training at all. They were smashed by Wagner forces in the suburbs of Bakhmut, put at the center of artillery strikes near the city, and given raw recruits to replace their heavy losses. Of the 600 who started off together from Odesa, barely 100 remain.
Hopefully, when that counteroffensive finally comes, it will be their turn to follow, not lead. Or better yet, time to rotate far from the front lines to rest, if not recover, from everything they have seen.
With the distraction of Belgorod, it was easy to miss that the Russians got their butts handed to them in a big way directly west of the city of Donetsk. Russia tried to move forces down the E50 highway, and it very much did not work out for them.
Not only did the Russians lose a reported 20 vehicles, they also saw a large number of infantry both killed and captured. Some of this fighting appears to have been to the southwest, putting it even closer to the city of Donetsk and well inside the territory that Russia nominally controls. This could indicate that an attempted Russian attack is resulting in not just a loss of men and materiel, but also a loss of territory.
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