Ukraine War Day #189: In The Tradition Of Ilovaisk

UPDATE WITH ERRATUM: Commenter Nicolàs noted that the initial image in this piece, which I believed was from Ilovaisk Battle, was actually from the Falklands War of 1982! Eek! My apologies, in my own defense I googled “images from Ilovaisk” and that was one that came up. So blame google. Anyhow, I deleted the photo from my post, that was the only change.

Dear Readers:

The big news on the war front continues to be the Ukrainian counter-offensive. It’s been only 2 days so far, but the Russian press is already declaring the project DOA. Today I have this piece by reporting team of Darya Volkova and Alyona Zadorozhnaya. Who interview various experts to get their opinions and analysis of these breaking events.

It was exactly 8 years ago, end of August 2014, that the Ukrainian army suffered its greatest defeat up to that time: the Ilovaisk Cauldron. Ukrainian forces, including regular army, National Guard and Azov Nazi formations, made a daring attack well behind enemy lines, surrounding the city of Donetsk from 2 or 3 directions and almost reaching the Russian border. They would have taken Donetsk, were it not for the courageous resistance of the DNR militias, led by Alexander Zakharchenko, along with Givi, Motorola, and Alexander Khodakovsky. [Some people say that regular Russian troops were also there, providing support behind the scenes, wink wink.] On August 26, 2014 the pro-Russian forces were able to out-flank and push the Ukrainian troops into a cauldron, where over 1,000 of them perished.

Ever since that day, patriotic Ukrainians have demanded revenge for Ilovaisk. Hence, it is probably not a coincidence that Zelensky picked this anniversary (which is called Day of Defenders) to launch his current counter-offensive against Kherson. But instead of revenge, all the Ukrainians got was a remake. At least, if one is to believe Russian military analysts. Who claim that the current counter-offensive has turned out to be even more of a disaster for the enemy than Ilovaisk, with something like 1,200 men killed, just on the first day.

Next we start hearing the opinions of various Russian experts. Igor Korotchenko is the chief editor of the military journal “National Defense”. Unlike some of the others, he does not believe that Zelensky picked this day out of respect for the Ilovaisk memory. Instead, he thinks the timing has more to do with the meeting of European military brass currently underway in Brussels. “They are in the process of discussing more EU aid to the Ukraine. Zelensky timed his counter-offensive to this meeting, in the assumption that he could show them some successes.” Unfortunately for him, “the counter-offensive just turned into an insane loss, and also sharpened the conflict between Zelensky and his main commander, General Valery Zaluzhny. As a result, Kiev is standing in front of a broken trough.” Korotchenko believes that Zaluzhny was opposed to the Kherson counter-offensive and warned the political leadership that it was bound to fail. [yalensis: once again, I don’t know where these analysts get their info or wherefrom they think they know what Zaluzhny said to Zelensky, but maybe they have spies, I dunno…]

Pundit Alexander Perendzhiev, also reporting for duty in the Sontaran fleet.

Another analyst, Alexander Perendzhiev, who heads the Faculty of Politics and Sociology at Plekhanov University, believes that Zelensky can still make use of the events, even a defeat, to bargain for more money and weapons out of the EU. A victory would have been better, of course, but even a defeat can be useful in this respect. Zelensky will show the Europeans his terrible losses, along with video images of dead Ukrainian soldiers; the Europeans will recoil with pity and horror, then rush to give him more stuff. This is an especially cynical view, in my opinion.

Next we meet a man named Roman Sapon’kov, who is a reporter himself, a military correspondent currently assigned to cover the Special Operation. He gets into some details of tank placement tactics: “The Ukrainian armed forces applied a rather large amount of resources. At each one of the 3 staging areas they placed 20 tanks and 2 infantry battalions.” This particular number, 20 tanks, is typical of the Ukrainian counter-offensive methodology, it’s exactly the same number they used when they tried (unsuccessfully) to retake the town of Kodema. They also used the same diversionary-strikes technique in Kodema; the Kherson counter-offensive was almost a carbon copy of Kodema, so it’s easy to guess what they are going to do next.

Given these facts, the analysts enter into an interesting debate as to whence the Ukrainians have learned these tactics. Military expert Alexei Leonkov believes that they learned these methods from NATO: “I have no doubt that the Ukrainians were taught this by Western instructors. If they were working according to the model of the Soviet military, then they would have applied more armor, at least 40 tanks per battalion.” [yalensis: maybe they didn’t have enough tanks for that?]

Leonkov’s theory is backed up by open-source information, confirming that, since 2015, Ukrainian military have been training with American, British, Canadian, and even Danish instructors. The American training program is called JMTG-U, the British counterpart is called ORBITAL. These NATO-sponsored courses focus on such technical matters as how many tanks per battalion, how many battalions to per kilometer of front line, that sort of thing. Leonkov believes that he sees the Ukrainians applying this training very literal-mindedly.

General Alexei Brusilov: “Yep, me and my moustache, we invented that tactic!”

Perendzhiev, however, disagrees. In fact he detects a pre-Soviet, Tsarist model at work here: “To a certain degree the Ukrainian armed forces appear to be using a tactic similar to the [1916] Brusilov counter-offensive [in World War I]. They launch diversionary strikes, and then the main strike in the main direction.”

Another military expert, Vladislav Shurygin, disagrees with Perendzhiev: “I don’t see anything particularly special in these Ukrainian efforts,” he scoffs dismissively. “All I see is everything according to the Western template. Around a month ago somebody leaked this entire Ukrainian plan to the internet.” The fact that the Ukrainians attempt to break through in several places simultaneously (3 places in the Kherson area plus another attempt at Bakhmut), is just par for the course. You try various things, something might click.

Still another expert, Konstantin Sivkov, thinks the Ukrainian strategy could have been more successful, had they been able to keep their aims secret. Unfortunately for them, everybody knows their plans in advance; plus, they have no air power. “Not to mention that the Russian army has complete dominance when it comes to artillery.”

Shurygin gets the last word, summarizing what we know as of today, Tuesday, the last day of August: “To launch a counter-offensive on a flat ground, practically the steppe, not having any kind of dominance, and not having crushed our artillery systems in advance, by definition they doomed themselves to enormous losses.”