(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Ukraine update: Is Russia's big winter offensive already fizzling out? [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-07 According to the Ukrainian ministry of defense, Russia is now engaged in five simultaneous offensives in Ukraine. One is near Kupyansk, where Russia claims to have occupied the village of Synkivka in the last few days. The second is in that stretch between Kreminna and Lyman, where reported Russian assaults were repulsed. The third is the expansive effort around Bakhmut. The fourth is the endless effort to move the line by a single meter down near Donetsk, with most of the focus on the town of Avdiivka. The final area of attack is more general, with multiple attacks along the southern end of the line from Orikhiv to Vuhledar. The one day losses for Russia on Monday are jaw-dropping By best estimates, Russia now has somewhere between 300,000 and 350,000 men under arms in Ukraine, with all of that force spread along a front that’s now reduced to only about 500 kilometers of contact along the land, and another 350 km in which the forces are facing off across the wide Dnipro River. There aren’t enough Russian soldiers in Ukraine to stand shoulder to shoulder, but if they stretch out their arms, they could hold hands along the front. That’s in spite of losses that are certainly over 100,000 (Ukraine estimates 130,000 Russian soldiers killed). How big is Ukraine’s military? It’s hard to tell. A decent estimate places the total around 240,000, with about half of that number away from the front, either undergoing training or keeping an eye on potential Russian lines of attack from Kharkiv to Kyiv. The Ukrainian military reportedly still has more volunteers than it can train at any given moment, but there’s no doubt it’s also suffering some horrendous losses at the front. On any given day, the largest number of images arriving from Ukraine are the funerals of Ukrainian soldiers. Right now, Russia may be at its greatest advantage in men along the front line since shortly after the opening days of the invasion. And, since Ukraine doesn’t yet have longer-range missiles with which to harass their movement, Russian forces should be able to maneuver behind the lines, massing troops for an assault on any place where Ukrainian forces are stretched thin. And maybe it will. Maybe tomorrow Russia will come surging out of Kreminna, or send for the 30,000 men reportedly massing near Mariupol, or finally break through the lines where it’s been spinning its tank treads near Donetsk since the invasion began. Maybe. But right now, that assessment from the U.K. Ministry of Defense certainly looks accurate—Russian leadership is demanding advances that Russian forces on the ground can’t deliver. Abandoned Russian tank between Lyman and Kreminna Even though kos already covered it last night, it’s worth looking again at the latest debacle around Vuhledar, because it’s a prime example of what’s happening when Russia tries to overreach. At this point, when anyone talks about the game Warcraft, the first thing that comes to mind is the expansive online roleplaying game. However, that’s not where things started. The original game appeared in 1994 (it was released on my birthday, and yes, I bought it), and it was a real-time strategy game in which the forces of humans and orcs faced off in a series of battles. It wasn’t the first real-time strategy game, or even the first to support multiplayer over a network. But it was well done, with a slick combination of easy-to-pick-up game mechanics and fairly deep strategy. It was a big success, and quickly spawned a sequel that was released just one year later. One of the things that made these games popular is that they were not only easy to play, but easy to modify, and one of the modifications that came out breathed new life into the games at a point when most players had just about wrung all the possibility from the boxed product. That new innovation was tower defense. In tower defense, one player represented the human forces and was charged with defending a fixed position on the map. From the other side would enter endless hordes of orcs, who would charge head-on toward that target, more or less following the same path every time. The job of the human player was to simply place defenses along that route—machine guns, artillery, flame throwers, bombs—so that the advancing orcs went down as fast as they spawned. As more and more poured onto the field, action could become frantic. But the careful placement of those defensive positions could simply take down an almost unlimited number of forward-marching orcs. Former orcs and defensive towers from Warcraft 3 In a tower defense, the key is simply getting the right defensive emplacements in the right places, then waiting for those orcs to fall. But what makes it really possible to defend against such lopsided numbers is knowing that the brainless opponent will follow the same path again. And again. And again. Something very much like this. x We had already the news from @Tatarigami_UA that 30 Russian vehicles in the sector of Vuhledar have been knocked out or damaged and this picture from Deep State UA corroborates it. #Vuhledar #Donetsk #Ukraine https://t.co/s7WBY2OylP pic.twitter.com/gzzqFqmbuu — (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) February 6, 2023 What are those Russian forces doing? Well, the ground is soft and muddy. So they’re driving up the road in convoy. This is the same road where the last two major assaults on Vuhledar were destroyed. Ukrainian forces don’t so much have to defend this road and just … press the trigger. They’re already pre-aimed. In some ways, this is a replication in miniature of Russia’s biggest defeat so far in the invasion: Those “40 kilometer convoys” that were supposed to crush Kyiv. Lining up slow-moving vehicles and parading them past ambush points was a big part of why Volodymyr Zelenskyy is still in his home, and not leading a rag-tag militia in Ukraine’s western mountains. x #Ukraine: The aftermath of an attempted Russian attack on Vuhledar, #Donetsk Oblast yesterday: a Russian BMP-1 was destroyed, a T-80BV with a KMT-7 mine trawl, BMP-2 and another BMP-1 were damaged and abandoned. The vehicles blew up on AT mines and were targeted by artillery. pic.twitter.com/ineslHQgnP — 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) February 7, 2023 If the two forces were meeting on even ground, fighting off in some theoretical nose-to-nose battle, Russia might quickly capture Vuhledar. Somewhere, there is absolutely some general fuming that they have sent more men and more armor to capture the town that Ukraine has in position, so why don’t they have it? Because this isn’t a battle. It’s a tower defense. And in a tower defense, sheer numbers of opponents only matter if you run out of bullets. This is also a pretty good explanation of why Ukraine has not made that final charge for Svatove or Kreminna. With current conditions limiting the approaches to trying to bring in lines of forces at a few points, any of them could end up with the kind of losses Russia is seeing a Vuhledar. Ukraine isn’t going to do that. It’s certainly not going to do it over and over. These days, the follow-up to Warcraft—a game called Starcraft—is more famous among real-time strategy fans. It’s the games of that series that spawned the first international video gaming leagues and introduced the world to the infamous “zergs” that try to take down enemy positions with sheer numbers. The tactic is so well known, that Russia’s human wave attacks at Bakhmut and other locations have become known as zerg attacks. The term has even entered into official dispatches from military officials. But before there were zergs … there were orcs, which seems completely appropriate to what’s happening at Vuhledar. x Speaking to @RTErdogan, I expressed condolences over the tragedy that befell the 🇹🇷 people due to the earthquakes. I informed of the decision to send a group of rescuers and equipment from 🇺🇦 to 🇹🇷 to help in overcoming the aftermath. They will soon arrive in 🇹🇷 affected regions. — Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) February 7, 2023 Ukrainian emergency workers have unfortunate experience in digging civilians out of buildings that collapsed in one horrific instant. What does it say about the Russian military that not only has a major portion of the front been handed over to Wagner, everyone wants in on the game? This is just one of several such announcements. x ⚡️Ukraine’s intelligence: Russian Gazprom to create its own private military company. Russian state-owned energy monopolist Gazprom is creating its own private military company, Ukraine's military intelligence said on Feb. 7, citing the decree signed by Russian PM Mishustin. — The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) February 7, 2023 Wealth, plunder, and a tough guy reputation without coming near the battlefield. Yevgeny Prigozhin is living the Russian dream, and everyone wants in. Just about the only thing Russia hasn’t lost over the last couple of days was aircraft, largely because the attacks going on seem to have little to no air support. But it looks like the U.A. is going to have to update that number for downed Russian planes. x 💥 Ukraine's Border Guard shoots down Russian Su-25 jet over Bakhmut https://t.co/ovf1IsU16F — Ukrainska Pravda in English (@pravda_eng) February 7, 2023 Sometimes the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has too much fun with these videos. x Hunting season is coming soon! 🎥 @saintjavelin pic.twitter.com/GQ2QF8OTVn — Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) February 6, 2023 Markos and Kerry are joined by University of St. Andrews Professor of Strategic Studies, Phillips P. O’Brien. O’Brien, an expert in military history, explains how we got to where we are right now, what is unique about the world’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the parallels between the conservative movement’s isolationism in World War II and now. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/7/2151546/-Ukraine-update-Is-Russia-s-big-winter-offensive-already-fizzling-out Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/