Lyman Debacle: NATO is Really Bad at Maneuver Warfare

NATO has a problem; it’s a “defensive military alliance” designed for conventional warfare, but the one thing they’re consistently really, really bad at is… conventional warfare. Ukrainian soldiers supported by NATO HIMARS, intelligence, battle planning, and leadership, set out to encircle a much smaller force of Russians, waded through artillery fire for days, then failed to close the fourth side, allowing everyone inside the cauldron to quietly escape. Let’s take a look at what happened.

Background

In my first post about Lyman, I wrote:

Over the past several days Ukraine has mounted a huge three-sided offensive at an important supply hub in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The sizeable combined arms attack is accompanied by a worldwide propaganda campaign. Apparently, NATO anticipates a victory here and is throwing every available Ukrainian conscript against the barrels of Russian guns. This battle is unique, and significant, for multiple reasons...

I have seen no estimates of the forces on both sides, but an envelopment of this scale would require at least several thousand soldiers. Including the support echelon, there are probably 10-15 thousand Ukrainian soldiers in the general vicinity. This is also much more sophisticated than their earlier offensives like in Kherson and Kharkov, something like this would take a fairly high degree of command and control (C2). This might be Ukraine’s most ambitious attempt at maneuver warfare since their disastrous and humiliating defeats in 2014-15...

From this admittedly limited information, there are some important takeaways:

-Russians not retreating means they have inevitably suffered losses, will continue to suffer losses, and trying to retreat now would be difficult and costly.

-Ukrainians attacking on three sides exposes the Russian defenders to a lot of fire, but also exposes themselves to fire. Actually, exponentially more fire. The Russian garrison has had time to prepare so must have pre-registered artillery targets. This means wherever and whenever Ukrainians attack, even at night, as long as someone sees it coming, friendly artillery can be called down on that position with a push of a button. Since this has gone on for several days and nights, Ukrainian casualties must be staggering.

NATO’s Goal

The game was encirclement, and that’s the theme NATO and neo-nazi propagandists focused on. a town of that size would probably have, at most, 500-1,000 soldiers. As I stated in my previous post linked earlier, the entire Ukrainian force involved in the entire operation probably involved 10,000 or 15,000 soldiers. This would be enough numerical superiority to surround Lyman with enough strength at any one point to beat back Russian attempts to break out. This would also, presumably, be enough to fight off Russian attempts to rescue the garrison. The apparent timeline of the operation? To capture Lyman and all the Russian soldiers in it on 30 September, right as Putin was holding his special ceremony to recognize four independent republics of the former Ukraine.

Naturally, the biggest concern of the week was that NATO would successfully surround a significant number of Russian forces and capture them. With huge numbers of infantry supported by tanks, IFVs (infantry fighting vehicles) and HIMARS launchers, there was no reason for the Ukrainian forces to fail to complete the encirclement. But then… they did fail.

The Failure

On 30 September, journalist Yuri Podolyaka claimed that Russian forces had begun an operation to deblockade the Lyman garrison. All friendly forces retreated from Lyman the next day on 1 October.

From Military Review:

Toward the end of the day, the Russian Defense Ministry published a summary of the events on the fronts of the military special operation. The main attention is focused on the events near the city of Krasny Liman, where fighting has been going on for the past few weeks.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation confirms the information that there was a threat of encirclement of the allied forces, as a result, the troops from Kr. Liman were reportedly withdrawn to more advantageous lines.

This statement was received differently by various military commanders and military experts. Some are wondering why Krasny Liman itself could not be turned into a profitable line of defense, others believe that it was in Krasny Liman that the forces that were there recently did even more than was possible. The former believe that the allied forces were defeated near Krasny Liman, the latter are sure that all the prerequisites have been created for the enemy’s extended forces to eventually suffer defeat. As can be seen, the interpretations, if not diametrically opposed, then differ in many respects.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, commenting on the situation, reports that the enemy threw more and more reserves into battle, achieving superiority in the Krasny Liman region both in manpower and in means.

Russian sources claim that in the attacks against Lyman, more than 200 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, five tanks and IFVs destroyed. Such casualties are consistent with one or more assaults that were repulsed. There’s no way to know for sure, but I suspect most or all of those casualties were from Russian fire and close air support, and the initial Ukrainian attacks were insufficient in size to sustain such losses and still overcome resistance from the defenders of Lyman. It makes little sense for such a careless attack to happen with insufficient preparation, but remember that they were on a timeline. Those soldiers died because of their NATO officers’ unrealistic goal of capturing Lyman in time to embarrass Putin and ruin his ceremony on 30 September. Remember there’s a general 3:1 ratio for wounded and killed, and the Ukrainians endured equally bitter fighting and shelling in villages and forests surrounding Lyman. It’s not impossible, or far-fetched, to suggest that the Ukrainian forces tasked with putting Lyman in a pocket suffered 10% or even 20% casualties to do it. And still failed to actually fulfill their goal of trapping the garrison.

I’m not dismissing the territorial gains made by the Ukrainian armed forces. But I am pointing out that territorial gains mean very little, especially when NATO and Ukraine laid out very specific intentions for this maneuver and failed to deliver. NATO won’t defeat Russia by capturing tiny villages, and they certainly won’t win by suffering monstrous casualties each time. This failure isn’t unprecedented. in post-WWII history, NATO has

Historical Precedent: Hamburger Hill

The 1969 Battle of Hamburger Hill took place on Hill 937. More than 1,200 American airlifted on helicopters and supported by aircraft and artillery, launched a full frontal assault against heavily entrenched Vietnamese soldiers. Ten days later, the first American forces reached the peak, but at the cost of 72 (and 31 South Vietnamese) dead, and 372 wounded. Afterward, American officials claimed that the enemy had lost 630 soldiers while defending Hamburger Hill, and the US military is famous for never lying or exaggerating enemy casualties. From the Wikipedia page:

US estimates of the losses incurred by the PAVN 7th and 8th Battalions of the 29th Regiment included 630 dead (bodies discovered on and around the battlefield); including many found in makeshift mortuaries within the tunnel complex. There is no count of the PAVN running off the mountain, those killed by artillery and air strikes, the wounded and dead carried into Laos or the dead buried in collapsed bunkers and tunnels. During the ten-day battle, US forces captured 89 individual weapons and 22 crew‑served weapons

Once American forces neared the top of Hamburger Hill, Vietnamese soldiers who had survived up to that point apparently still had a clear path to escape, which completely defeated the point of attacking them in the first place. Hamburger Hill, though technically a victory for the USA, is remembered as a microcosm for the Vietnam War: incoherent goals, poor planning, and foolish waste of life eventually leading to bitter failure.

Historical Precedent 2: Operation Anaconda

In 2002, early in the ill-fated Afghan war, there was Operation Anaconda. From Wikipedia:

Operation Anaconda was a military operation that took place in early March 2002 as part of the War in Afghanistan. CIA paramilitary officers, working with their allies, attempted to destroy al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. The operation took place in the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains southeast of Zormat. This operation was the first large-scale battle in the post-2001 War in Afghanistan since the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. This was the first operation in the Afghanistan theater to involve a large number of U.S. forces participating in direct combat activities.

Between March 2 and March 16, 2002 1,700 airlifted U.S. troops and 1,000 pro-government Afghan militia battled between 300 and 1,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters to obtain control of the valley. The Taliban and al-Qaeda forces fired mortars and heavy machine guns from entrenched positions in the caves and ridges of the mountainous terrain at U.S. forces attempting to secure the area. Afghan Taliban commander Maulavi Saif-ur-Rehman Mansoor later led Taliban reinforcements to join the battle. U.S. forces had estimated the strength of the rebels in the Shahi-Kot Valley at 150 to 200, but later information suggested the actual strength was of 500 to 1,000 fighters. The U.S. forces estimated they had killed at least 500 fighters over the duration of the battle, however journalists later noted that only 23 bodies were found – and critics suggested that after a couple days, the operation “was more driven by media obsession, than military necessity”.

I feel like Operation Anaconda’s similarities to the NATO-controlled offensive against Lyman are self-explanatory.

The Propaganda, oh God, the Propaganda!

When I write about battles, I try, when possible, to give a clear idea of the proportions of what happened. However, pro-NATO outlets don’t do this and the Lyman battle was no exception. They deliberately lied to their readers, and no one even tried to accurately gauge the size and scale of the battle. CNN published propaganda piece after propaganda piece heralding the upcoming destruction of the Russian military. Ukrainian propaganda claimed 5,000 Russian soldiers were in the town. Austrian painter Tom Cooper, who has spent the last 7 months masturbating to pictures of Ukrainian and Russian corpses, made an even more ridiculous claim. That there were least five regiment-sized units trapped inside Lyman:

Know only that — between others — entire or at least elements of following Russian and Separatist units were inside, the last few days:

– Bars-13

– Bars-16 (also known as ‘Kuban’ unit; this unit used to have 1,000 combatants; about 400 were inside Lyman)

– 208th ‘Cossack’ Motor Rifle Regiment (LPR)

– 503rd GMRR/19th MRD (was holding Torske, i.e. the way in and out)

– 753rd GMRR

Look, any time you see someone spouting off lists of units allegedly in a position, regardless of that person’s political persuasions or how reliable you think he is, take it with a grain of salt. A soldier is assigned under the administrative control (ADCON) of a brigade or regiment, but that doesn’t tell you much. In combat, subordinate units tend to split from their parent unit and put under the operational control (OPCON) of someone else. For example, when I deployed with an aviation brigade to the Middle East, we had units split up to Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria… Russians use temporary, mission-oriented formations called battalion tactical groups, so trying to extrapolate how many soldiers are in a certain location just from rumors of what parent brigades are present is a bit futile.

This is a great example of how completely and utterly divorced from reality these “experts” are, and how it is utterly pointless to even try to get the “NATO side of the story.” Look at that list again. That’s 11,000 soldiers. I’m glad Tom clarified that there might just be “elements” from those units. Russia might not in fact have put 20% of the entire operation’s combat power in a single village! Again for context, Lyman’s entire pre-war population was 20,000. I have no idea how Tom thinks enough fighting positions for 11,000 soldiers could fit in such a small town, or why they would even want to do that. But really, it’s a moron writing for an audience of morons. In a previous post, Tom claimed that a single HIMARS strike killed or wounded 500 Russian soldiers (this would actually be plausible if Russia was cramming thousands of soldiers into a single house like Tom thinks they do). This is what years of irrational hatred and nazi indoctrination do to a person’s brain, and they are all like this.

Anyway, Tom went on to gloat that the Ukrainians had the Russian untermenschen surrounded:

Of interest is that the ‘final blow’ — the move that closed the pocket — apparently came from the north-east: by an Ukrainian [sic] advance over Ivanivka, Bilohorivka, Terny, and Yampolivka into the eastern side of Zarichne (Torske was cleared of the Russians before that, but, apparently, from the south).

Actually, I like Tom Cooper’s map. He posted it to highlight how the Ukrainians had cut off all retreat, but accidentally predicted the future.

Ian Kummer

Support my work by making a contribution through Boosty

• Facebook
• VK
• LinkedIn

All text in Reading Junkie posts are free to share or republish without permission, and I highly encourage my fellow bloggers to do so. Please be courteous and link back to the original.

I now have a new YouTube channel that I will use to upload videos from my travels around Russia. Expect new content there soon. Please give me a follow here.

Also feel free to connect with me on Quora (I sometimes share unique articles there).

---

---