Dec 12 — Day 292 — Putin on da news, Melitopol mess, Missile gap

Hi FB!

I’ll start out with two Ministry of Defense pix, and a pic from one of the fighting brigades, of UAF soldiers and a civilian preparing food in Bakhmut. I just thought they were pretty good images.

The top news I would say is really non-news, but, today Russian President Vladimir Putin, or more exactly his spokesmen, said that the President’s traditional December “meet-and-chat” discussion with citizens from across the country is cancelled, for the first time in a decade.

This would be roughly analogous to US President Franklin Roosevelt cancelling his weekly “fireside chat” radio programs with the US public in middle of World War Two.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with what’s been called off, every year Putin’s media people organize video links between the President and “typical citizens” across Russia’s 13 time zones. It’s highly stage-managed and typically, there is a spokesman and a group of representative people in the background, often depending on the demographic being represented, wearing folk costumes, or factory kit, or student uniforms, or lots of WW2 medals, and so on. Sometimes a conversation is beamed in with cosmonauts at the International Space Station, and sometimes a mildly critical question is allowed, usually along the lines of, for instance, apartment dwellers in Khabarovsk who can’t get the heat on. Putin always listens gravely and promises he will intervene for the good of the common citizen.

This can go on for four hours and the point is to profile Putin as the all-knowing benevolent Tsar with the best interests of the Russian people at heart, with a secondary narrative about how Russia is a giant, happy country united in patriotism and confidence in a bright future.

Which is not going on the air this year as is not, the Kremlin says, standard New Year’s programming.

The war isn’t mentioned as why the change, but really no one needs to have that explained. The war is overwhelmingly the big issue in Russia, it dominates everything, and Putin is responsible. Four hours of pretending the Russian people want to talk more about potholes and keeping LGBT out of schools, than RF soldiers being killed in Ukraine, isn’t sustainable, it would be a PR disaster.

So Putin image attached.

There is a story bouncing around the internet that really, Putin wants to do the talk but he took a fall and so unfortunately will be hospitalized for a bit. But that sounds like Kremlin narrative massage to me.

The fighting

First, a video, a tank duel, Ukrainian T-64 vs. Russian T-72. This is scary rare footage.

Bakhmut remains the epicenter, and it’s not clear to me at all whether the Russians are making any meaningful progress at all. Over time the scale of the attacks has shrunk, and if a month ago the internet talk was of very heavy Russian artillery, now the reports are much more the daily, routine, blasting of towns and villages where the Ukrainians have positions. I do not see indicators that the Ukrainians are anywhere near cracking, rather, I see possible indicators the Russians, or more specifically Wagner, are running out of steam.

That being said, there is no questions the Ukrainians are taking continuous casualties. Tom Cooper, one of the best war bloggers out there, went through the lists of UAF units in sector and he came out with close to a dozen major units. Most likely this is bits and pieces of a mix of units including regulars, internationals, territorial defense, volunteers, that the Ukrainians are rotating in and out of the line. I’m not going to tell you I know this is happening all the time, but I will tell you just in the last week I talked to two fighters who confirmed that yes, units are rotating in and out of Bakhmut.

The way it looks to me, this is not an indicator of a defensive situation about to go critical, no matter what Russian propaganda says. For the record, the rah rah Ukraine people are saying it’s a calculated trap to meatgrind Russian troops.

Attached is a early December video of a UAF fighter getting evacuated in a wheelbarrow, Bakhmut sector. The point is to show you, if the Ukrainians are taking casualties, in part, it’s because they’re a not fully-equipped force fighting in a conventional war where if you lack support, your guys die more.

Strike zone

First to follow up on Odessa, a lot of lights are still off, it appears one out of four people still don’t have power, and the mayor went of TV and said the authorities have things under control BUT they’re not going to make public when the power will be back on everywhere.

Overnight on Saturday-Sunday the Ukrainians unloaded what appear to have been six or maybe more precision-guided rockets, or maybe just artillery rockets, on a Rosgvardia base in Melitopol. Whatever it was, it was pretty horrific. The target appears to have been a summer resort sort of place occupied by Chechens in the Rosgvardia. Other reports say no, it was regular RF troops, Ossetians, 19th and 58th Divisions out of Vladikavkaz. Two post-strike videos attached.

According to the Russian official media two people were killed, so we know it was more than that, but how many more is hard to say. The Ukrainians are claiming 200 and that the number of wounded was so high they had to be evacuated all the way to Crimea, no room for them in Melitopol hospitals. Among the dead reportedly was the actor Soslan Fidarov (image) and Kadyrov ally Murad Saidov (image). The latter subsequently recorded a video stating he was alive and feeling fine.

As to the weapon used, there’s plenty of speculation. If it was HIMARS then either the Ukrainians put the system on a barge and sailed it out into the Dnipro river reservoir, or, it was launched from the vicinity of Vasylkivka, Zaporizhia sector, and really close to the front line. The shot would have been 75–80 km. , 80 is the outside max range for HMARS. Fresh video of HIMARS (you know, the weapons system Russia has destroyed every one of) firing more munitions against someone or something. The cameraman deserves extra points for squeezing everything possible out of his camera/phones low light recording capacity.

A secondary theory is the Ukrainains got their Vilha M SSM working, which has the range (130 km) and supposedly has a CEP of 30 meters, which possibly accurate enough to pinpoint a camp 80–90 km away, but possibly not.

A tertiary theory is that it was a Turkish TRLG-230 rocket, which is similar to HIMARS, but may have longer range. The Russians published images of rocket debris but so far I’ve seen nothing conclusive.

If I had to guess I would say the Ukrainians figured out how to reduce the CEP of Vihla, probably with the help of their NATO buddies. Ukroboronprom image attached.

In a probably related-to-Melitopol-and-HIMARS development, on Monday evening reports came in that something had knocked down a bridge connecting Melitopol and Konstantinovka, and the two explosions very much resembled HIMARS. This is consistent with conventional wisdom, which is the Ukrainians intend to spend the next few weeks at least picking away at the RF positions and military infrastructure in Zaporizhia sector. Map attached of that conventional wisdom prediction. Map attached of where the busted bridge is supposedly at.

Update: Evening reports are giving credit for the blown bridge to Ukrainian saboteurs

Missile more or less

According to NYT, who quoted a Ukraine air force spokesman, Russia is capable of manufacturing about 40 total precision-guided cruise missiles like X-101 and Kinzhal a month, this number being based on Ukrainian estimates that since the start of the war the Kremlin manufactured 240 and 120 of the weapons respectively. Image of a Russian missile under construction, attached.

The implication is that Russia can’t sustain its cruise missile attacks on the Ukrainian power grid to any serious degree, as experience shows they need to shoot about 80 missiles, two months’ production to get even a moderate effect on the power grid, and the Ukrainians repair most of the damage in 48 hours and pretty much all of it — excepting major damage that requires capital repairs — in about a week.

Given the repair equipment and air defense weapons coming into the country, and the probability Russia lacks components to keep making missiles at the 40-per-month pace, and by those numbers we can already declare General Surovichkin’s campaign to bombard Ukraine back into the stone age a failure and a defeat. In its way this is a defeat as significant as the recapture of Kherson, because it takes away from Russia’s leadership another obvious piece of its “we’re superior we’ll win” narrative.

There are plenty of reports Iranian ballistic missiles and drones are going to make up the gap, but, exactly how much is Iran ready to deplete its missile forces, given the neighborhood it’s in? So we’ll see, but even though where I live is without power regularly, my money is still on the Ukrainian grid repair guys.

Stuff for Ukraine

France announced they will send Ukraine six TRF1 howitzers, another post-Cold War 155mm piece that was too old and heavy for Afghanistan but probably will do just fine in Ukraine. Two pix attached.

Slovakia continues to announce it definitely is sending Ukraine MiG-29 fighter jets, this time per Rastislav Kacer, Foreign Minister, who told reporters the aircraft aren’t sent yet but they definitely will be soon, “Slovakia is ready”. I take this to be code for, Bratislava hasn’t finalized the deal with the NATO partner state whomever, maybe the Poles, maybe the Czechs, to take over responsibility for Slovakian air space so the Slovakians get hand over the MiGs. A Ukrainian delegation will be in Slovakia to talk fighter jets “in coming weeks”, he said.

Also worth noting, Slovakia already has sent Ukraine air-to-air missiles to be used on Ukraine’s MiGs. I bet what’s going on is the Americans said, OK, we’re doing enough, someone else in NATO pick up responsibility for Slovakian air space, and NATO being NATO that simple task is now drowning in position papers and emails. Anyway, the Slovak MiG paint job is pretty attractive, so image attached.