Nov 30 — Day 280 — Bakhmut battles, Sneaky Saab, Margarita’s Nuremburg Deam

Hi FB!

Starting image is Bakhmut damage. Starting video is UAF mech troops, in mud conditions, recently. In most places in the country probably the mud is less now that it’s started snowing.

The big news today anyway probably was that Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, sent out a tweet video saying among other things that since the start of the war Ukraine has lost 100,000 men and women killed. The Ukrainian government doesn’t publish overall casualty numbers. If Ms. von der Leyen’s numbers were accurate, it implied Ukraine has lost 300–350 people dead, on average, every day of the war, and what’s more, probably suffered more casualties than Russia.

She didn’t mention wounded but conservatively for every soldier killed four are wounded, meaning a half million Ukrainian casualties in nine months, which is, for a conflict of this scale, dramatically worse than the very worse fighting in either of the World Wars. So her comment caused a bit of a sensation, and the rah rah Russia information platforms loved it.

Two hours after that appeared on her Twitter account, it was deleted. It’s fun to think how many EU public affairs people were pointing fingers at each other for the mess.

(Snark: I bet the most junior staffer who got told to put out the tweet, and had no responsibility for the content, got blamed. Meanwhile the senior outreach officer spent the day walking around angry that he/she has such incompetent subordinates.)

Anyway, the internet is forever so no one in the real world really cared about EU public relations damage control. Archive image of Ms. v. der Leyen’s messaging faux pas attached, it went pretty much everywhere.

About an hour after von der Leyen’s people deleted her tweet, the Presidential Administration office in Kyiv said that Ukrainian casualty counts are confidential information, but, von der Leyen’s (now deleted) comments constituted legitimate grounds for war crimes prosecutions against the Russian national leadership. Which was certainly not, from official Kyiv, a flat denial of the 100K number. But it wasn’t a confirmation either.

Towards evening von der Leyen’s press handers put out a statement, what she meant to say was not 100,000 killed, no, she clearly had meant but did not actually say 100,000 casualties of all types, dead, seriously injured, minor injured, stubbed a toe or got a hangnail, and so on. All casualties. This basically tallies with what the Pentagon people have been saying for the past several weeks.

Personally I think that number is about 20 percent high, based on anecdotal reporting over the months of particularly light and heavy casualties at various locations, but I could be wrong.

Bottom line here: Conventional Western wisdom is saying Ukraine has taken 100,000 casualties since the war began and probably 25–30,000 of them were killed, and when even a very senior Western official muffs those data points, he/she and they get corrected lickety-split.

The fighting

Donbass

Russian forces seem to be battling forward around Bakhmut. According to some pro-RF platforms, the advances have been sufficient to the north and south to place the city under risk of encirclement. According to DPR leader Denis Pushilin a pair of villages along these axes were captured in the last 48 hours: Ozaryanivka and Zelenopolie, and encirclement of Bakhmut “is rather close”. According to Ukrainian sources, the line is holding but RF pressure is heavy and casualties are piling up. The RF has been trying to capture Bakhmut and its environs with almost daily attacks, since July.

In my view, the RF reason for doing this is the on-high Kremlin order to conquer Donetsk region, and the UAF reason is to inflict infantry casualties. I don’t think either side sees Bakhmut in itself as critical terrain, but, both sides seem to have agreed it’s an acceptable place for a long, drawn-out, attrition fight.

Possibly linked to that, on Tuesday from the Belarusian opposition that RF troops in country, aside from those deployed in the West vs. NATO, are in rest and refit mod, and that trains and trucks carrying “several units” are starting to head East to reinforce the Donbass sector. No outside confirmation.

Strike Zone

The Ukrainian air force today put out a statement that the Russian bombers gathering at Engels airfield in Saratov Oblast — this is where missile strike bombers came from in the past — doesn’t mean anything specific. Not really sure what the goal was except to try and calm the Ukrainian civilians who, by and large, and particularly in the big cities, are living their lives always with an eye on what to do if the lights go off for a day or four.

I’ve thrown in a video that gives a good deal more detail than usual on a strike by one of those Russian Lancet kamikaze drones. It seems like that a Ukrainian reporter got to the site of a strike the Russians videoed and placed images of on the net, so it’s a rate look at what one of these drones can do. In this case, a direct hit on a venerable D-20 152mm howitzer belonging to 59th Motorized Brigade. The main damage element, it turned out, was cut-up steel reinforcing rod. The hit blew out a tire on the howitzer and chipped some paint. The point here is, a kamikaze drone can score a hit, but a lot of these drones aren’t powerful enough to take out a big piece of military equipment. The much more expensive US version, called Switchblade 300, has the same problem.

The Ukrainians did what we predicted, and ran up HIMARS/M270 up close to the Dnipro River bank and are picking away at RF supply and command and control sites well behind the lines. Skladovsk got hit on Wednesday, nice map from Twitter.

Recent rear area strikes include an oil storage facility in Russia’s Bryansk Oblast’, near the Ukrainian border, according to some reports this was UAF attack drones, according to others “a munition” did the damage. So this is another case of a Ukrainian strike at a range beyond which the Ukrainians are supposed to have weapons that can reach. Image attached.

And in Perm’, deep inside Russia, the local power plant caught fire big time, 500 people evacuated from the facility, 1500 square meters inside on fire, roof in flames, not clear yet how many thousands of people lost heating to their homes, but a lot. No information that the Ukrainians did it, just saying that a lot of Russian energy infrastructure seems to keep blowing up and catching on fire. Image about that.

Reader Nate Espino a review or two ago point out that one of the lessons of this war has to be that the terrible scare stories about Russia using the internet to demolish its enemies’ power grid and public utilities in waves of uber-hacker attacks clearly, now that we have hot war in progress, were exaggerated. But it got me to thinking: What if Putin last week wasn’t telling the truth about Russia’s internet and linked facilities being supposedly safely isolated from hacker attack? Across Russia over and over we are seeing public utilities catch fire for unexplained reasons. NATO hackers? Or just Russian government sloth and inefficiency?

Stuff for Ukraine — Conventional info

Robo-ambulances: Although probably this will have the battlefield utility of Red Army-era mine dogs (look it up) the Germans have nonetheless announced they will hand over to Ukraine 14 tracked ground robots which are armored and designed to evacuate casualties. On the plus side, it’s better than the present vehicle most commonly used to evacuate a Ukrainian casualty, which generally is a brutally beat up 4WD acquired fourth or fifth hand in Europe and driven by a 19–21 year old with no sense of danger and a hands-off attitude towards maintenance. In the present system casualties are evacuated at very high speed which makes hitting them difficult. The German robot ambulances will be slow moving and unless they can keep rolling after a near miss from a 122mm howitzer, I would assume they’ll get shot up pretty quickly. But we’ll see. Image attached. NOTE: Reader Piotr Sowiński informs me this system was designed and manufactured in Estonia. This increases chances the robot will stand up to a .50 machine gun, anyway.

Also, France has decided to pony up three M270 systems to Ukraine, this small number, high battlefield effectiveness item, this system has twice the firepower of a single HIMARS. Image attached.

Stuff for Ukraine — So you thought HIMARS rockets were the bee’s knees? Meet GLSDB!

A couple of days ago the arms and weapons writers started kicking back and forth a report that the Americans were seriously considering financing acquisition of an artillery rocket called a GLSDB for Ukraine. That’s a “ground-launched-small-diameter-bomb”.

As most of you know, the closest thing to a game-changer military technology that this war has seen was the HIMARS/M270 artillery rocket system, which is a US-made weapon that fires 227mm GPS-guided rockets a maximum 84 km. Each rocket has a maximum miss probability of seven meters, and usually half that, and that’s is more than enough accuracy to target and take out a command post, ammunition dump, troop barracks, or anything else stationary and valuable to the Russian war effort. The warhead is more than enough to destroy a truck or a light armored vehicle, but it won’t destroy a tank except with a direct hit.

Each HIMARS rocket costs $100,000 and a launch pod — a six pack of rockets that goes onto the launcher — reportedly costs close to a million dollars. The Americans for reasons known best to them won’t ship the Ukrainians with rockets that also fit into the pods, but with ranges of 150 km. or even 300 km. This has led to almost continuous Ukrainian blogosphere griping that the Russians know that and have positioned their command posts and ammo dumps 85 km. or more behind the line, while at the same time bombarding Ukrainian cities with cruise missiles able to fly thousands of kilometers.

The short version of what’s worth knowing about the GLSDB, is it is rocket that fits into the HIMARS/M270 pod, is more accurate, cheaper, AND harder to intercept.

What the Saab engineers have come up with — and you have to admit they were really clever — is figured out a way to stick a guided glide bomb on the end of a 227mm rocket. When the rocket fires, it flies like a rocket for a while, and then the bomb detaches, deploys wings, and glide/flies itself to the target.

Since there’s no engine on the bomb, it’s harder for anti-aircraft weapons to intercept it, and since this is the 21st century, and it’s a glider, the shooter can program the glide bomb not to fly directly at the target in a predictable ballistic trajectory, but if wished in weird curves and funny angles. It costs $40,000. Range is 150 km. And, pour résumer, the warhead hits not with a seven meter maximum possible error, but within one meter.

Boeing cooperated with Saab in developing the GLSDB, and the plan was it would take out Taliban bunkers and pickup trucks, but unfortunately for corporate earnings the Afghanistan war ended and so far this weapon has no buyer. To say Russia has nothing like this, is a little like saying a fairly decent American high school football team doesn’t have any linebackers like Lawrence Taylor.

The GLSDB is a weapon that makes Ukraine’s most effective weapon about twice more effective, it cuts costs to the taxpayers in half, and giant corporations with all manner of political pull in the US and Sweden would turn a project that up to now was a big fat money hole, into a cash cow that will basically lay golden eggs (mixed metaphor I know, sorry) as long as the Ukrainians are shooting at the Russians.

Yes, the Americans have said in the past they don’t want give the Ukrainians longer-range weapons because, well, the Americans. My point would be, that position was taken well before all of these Russian city bombardments, Russian failures and retreats at Kharkiv and Kherson, and a pretty obvious shortage of conventional HIMARS rockets in theater, and three to five months of people in the West convincing each other the way to end the war is not to force Ukraine to give up, but to figure out a way to get to a ceasefire line the Ukrainians will accept, which is the Feb. 23 line in my view, in other words, whether they get there quickly or slowly depends directly on the weapons the Ukrainians can bring to bear on the Russians.

It’s not clear whether this is hype being pushed by Boeing and Saab to recoup sunk cost, or if the Americans are really thinking about sending the weapon. But if Ukraine gets GLSDB in substantial numbers, theoretically, it could make the entirety of all Russia-occupied territory in Ukraine, Crimea included, militarily untenable.

On Oct. 28 Saab told trade reporters they were “imminently expecting contracts” for the rockets.

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uparsin

Margarita Simonyan (pictured) was on TV yesterday evening and she scolded Russians particular wealthy and well-connected ones for wringing their hands and feeling discomfort at the Kremlin’s continuing attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and campaign to put as many Ukrainian families, for as long as possible in winter, in cold dark apartments.

Simonyan said this is the wrong way to think and that Russians must concentrate on “not being defeated” because, she argued, if Russia somehow loses the war, then war crimes trials will follow. She’s probably right about that. However, she went on to push the idea everyone in Russia down to “a street sweeper in the Kremlin” would face war crimes prosecution, therefore, the only course is to double down and fight for Russia. A couple of days ago she recorded a public message explaining why Russian men need to stop whining and if they are called up to fight in Ukraine to go fight.

The problem here — and this one of those yawning gaps between rhetoric and reality that any Russian knows down to the marrow of his/her bones — is that there is a double standard in Russia between the rich and powerful few and the everyone else, and it doesn’t just go for living well and getting to ignore laws when convenient, it also goes for identifying who it was that gives the orders and calls the shots.

Simonyan’s argument that everyone in Russia would be held by a vengeful West responsible for the acts of the powerful few, is laughable. Even more, in Russia, one of the best ways to avoid responsibility for criminal or otherwise prosecutable acts, is Ipso facto, just because Margarita Simonyan goes on national television to call on her fellow Russians not to consider “defeat”, meaning rejection of Russia’s war aims, it doesn’t in any way mean that a lot of Russians agree with her.

Russia: OK, so if felons aren’t so useful as soldiers, let’s try putting them in arms factories…

The Latvia-based information platform Meduza uncovered a fascinating story, via the Russian national penitentiary system, that 250 felons will be sent to the Uralvagonzavod factory in Nizhny Tagil, as forced laborers. They will work as crane operators, lather operators, welders, and general factory hands, the report said.

Felons sent will have already served time and demonstrated good behavior, and while serving out the rest of their “sentence” the government will keep 4–20 percent of their salaries.

Uralvagonzavod produces, according to Wiki: Artillery, howitzers, self-propelled artillery, naval artillery, mortars, tanks, main battle tanks, military vehicles, remote weapon stations, turrets, autocannons, tractors, bulldozers, heavy equipment, railway vehicles, containers

This was, in part, in response to increased state orders to the factory, forcing staff to work on weekends and extend the work day from eight to twelve hours. Shop floor image attached.

For those of you interested in history and willing to contemplate parallels between Putinist Russia and Hitlerian Germany, and perhaps Ms. Simonyan’s comment above, two words: Albert Speer. Image attached, extra points if you identify the location.