Sometimes your worst enemies are the people who say they’re your friends.
In case you missed it (from RT):
Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has ordered Russian forces to pull back from the city of Kherson and establish a new defense line along the Dnieper River. The minister made the decision on Wednesday following a report by Army General Sergey Surovikin, the commander of the country’s military operation in Ukraine.
One of the stated goals is to assume better positions and save the lives of soldiers and civilians.
Continued Ukrainian missile strikes on the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam located near Kherson also pose a serious risk to both the military and civilians on the right bank of the Dnieper, according to Surovikin. The dam has already been damaged in Ukrainian attacks, and another “devastating” blow could lead to “large areas” being flooded. It would also lead to massive civilian casualties and leave the Russian troops in the area cut off from the rest of the forces, the general argued as he suggested a pullout. Shoigu said he “agreed” with Surovikin’s arguments and ordered a regrouping of forces to the left bank of the Dnieper.
Needless to say, this news caused confusion and anger among “pro-Russia” commentators. Here’s a particularly galaxy-brained take from Moon of Alabama:
Strategically the move is bad.
It closes for now the possibility of moving into Nikolaev (Mykolaiv) and further towards Odessa. This could have and should have been done earlier. But the Russian commanded did not commit sufficient forces for that fight. There were also sound reason for not doing that. Now it is too late to criticize those decisions.
Planning for offensives that might theoretically happen later is nice, but holding onto a small suburb that’s difficult to supply and costly in lives to defend simply doesn’t make any sense. Making such bold assertions is ridiculous because – and I feel like I’ve said this a million times already – we’re only getting fragments of information, much of which is of questionable quality. Being an armchair general isn’t less foolish with internet access. And of course he talks about how this withdrawal looks to the media.
This move looks bad.
That alone will have consequences. The Ukrainians, the Biden administration and the European supporter of Ukraine will be emboldened by this. The support in Russia for the war will shrink. Some people in Russia will start to call for President Putin’s head. There is no danger though that they will get it.
What is even the point here? Does Kherson make any kind of difference in NATO’s future support of Kiev? Support could go on for another 5 years, or it could end tomorrow. Kherson has exactly zero impact on any of that.
The NATO/Russia war has plenty of risk of escalating and broadening. If nukes start firing off tonight, are these “pro-Russia” commentators going to feel foolish for making such a huge deal out of a single town in southern Ukraine? Probably not, because I don’t think these people are even capable of feeling foolish, that would require too much self-awareness.
Image credit: Sammy-Sander on Pixabay.
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Well, I made several comments on that to cool off heads if idiots. Basically, the army has bo capacity to change into mermen at will and there’s high risk of a flood. Infantry is not supposed to live under water.
Hysteria is not support, panic is not support. Expecting fast victory where it is not possible is not support.
Reminder: we are not fighting Ukraine here, so destroying its infrastructure or killing as many ppl as possible is not as efficient strategy as it could be in a war against an independent country. A proxy feels no pain. A sock puppet feels no pain. Ukraine as a game unit feels no pain. Russia and Russians do, hence the retreat.
sorry for typos.
ps: I read no blogs and “analytics” on the matter to keep sanity.
Yesterday I read comments on MoA and Larry Johnson. Larry’s post was good and quoted the commanders supporting General Surovikin and Defense Minister Shoigu. They said, “Thanks for taking care of the guys.”
In my brilliant 😉 opinion. The command made the correct move.
There was a time I was much like the types you and Maria refer to. Your Dad fixed it. Deeper understanding taught me to do due diligence and look at as many perspectives as possible.
I just want this SMO to end and I want it ended successfully. To the best of my knowledge Russia knows what they’re doing.
Here all the votes haven’t been counted and I don’t think the change we want will come. It must but the lame duck Congress can be crazy.
Kherson will be retaken from the North West.
The von Moltke (the Elder) in me says there will be a great circular movement from either East or West (or both) of Kharkov, destination Odessa.
« Kherson has exactly zero impact on any of that. »
This does not seem true. Western ability to keep arming and supporting Ukraine depends partly on public opinion, and the Kherson withdrawal will be milked as a great victory (the Kakhovka dam is not even being mentioned). The early Kherson offensive was announced and undertaken entirely as a theatre performance for the West to procure the continuity of aid.
« If nukes start firing off tonight »
This seems a non sequiter. Whose nukes? Where? With what aim?
I expect the West to try a limited nuclear war with nukes launched from NATO sites in Europe. They hope that Russia will not respond with strategic nukes launched across the pond. But I think in this case strategic nukes will fire off back.
If that’s the case, I hope Russia has some ICBMs earmarked for Brussels and Strasbourg, among others, so we EU citizens can get rid of our ruling caste, more worried about kneeling before USA than answering to its citizens’ problems.
It is not necessarily bad thing if “western public support” would be boosted.
Russia and the West are in de facto war of attrition, and winter is generally on our side.
Making EU go through a hard winter rather than “fixing losses” early on seems a good development for us.
While in the “strategic” picture this withdrawal is nothing, and it had even been expected (eg. Brian Berletic of New Atlas had specifically used many times exactly this as an example of what would be a very sensible temporary step from the Russians), this is the third such step during this war that thus far only has had extremely slow and protracted progress otherwise. The war’s aims are broadly known (more or less: Novorossia + parts of Malorossia incorporated into Russia, and a demilitarised buffer state from the rest).
You can’t achieve this in the long run if you only withdraw. Sometime you have to do the opposite too (ie. progress). I know, grinding down the enemy is a goal in itself but the US couldn’t grind down the Afgans who only had AKs and RPGs and pickup trucks. In a sense, the SMO is grinding down _Russian_ resources too. One “pro-Russian” idiot commented: “The way I see it is that this continual obsession with losing ground to save men is absurd. What of the men who died to liberate these cities to begin with? Was their sacrifice meaningless?”
Furthermore, while the West has real economical and other problems, it can continue supplying stuff to the enemy for a very long time, effectively keeping up if the limited special military operation stays really limited. Actually, the West has taken steps to restart the production of a lot of weapons and it takes 1-2 years for an actual result. But the SMO has already approaching the 1 year mark. So, in a sense, these “pro-russian idiots” have a point, and Russia might be much closer to her broad aims already if much greater resources had been committed from the beginning.
Typos, sorry. “has been already approaching”, and stuff like this.
Okay, I don’t want to be a doomer or something but I have to point out that in a sense, time is kinda limited. The West (despite its real, deep, systemic and structural problems) can solve the supply issue in a few years, and it can give Russia its Vietnam. Okay, this is a bad analogy, in Vietnam the US didn’t have the support of the locals, in Ukraine (apart from the Western parts), Russia has broad (albeit mostly passive) support (regardless of the BS we can read in Western press). But this won’t change the fact that the West thinks this can be a Vietnam and it does anything it can for that end. Time is a factor here, and my guess is that there’s a two year window for “victory” in a conventional and relatively limited way, and 8 months have already passed.
A few other observations. Up to July or August, mass surrender of Ukrainian troops were commonplace. Not now. In a sense, in the first 6 or so months the Ukrainians were demoralized (contrary to the BS in the Western press). A protracted conflict itself can change this picture, even without the withdrawals. The hastily trained teroidiots (who volunteered for traffic control to avoid draft) who give the bulk of the Ukrainian fighting force are veterans now. Draft dodgers are gone, who remained are more or less battle hardened. The slow pace of the SMO has actually produced a more determined fighting force. Not to mention the numberless Western mercs. The withdrawals give further morale boost.
The other thing is the “red lines”. The West is constantly pushing these. In the beginning, they only gave light arms. Not even heavy weaponry. Even old Mig-29s were categorically excluded. Air Defense too. But in every turn the West gave up more and more from these self imposed limitations seeing the fact that the Russians didn’t answer them. (NB. Russia has not done anything comparable in the last 30 years, it always adhered to this principle, and it likely expected something similar from the West. In vain.) Now they are openly talking about providing F-16s, and I wouldn’t be surprised if pilot training were under way already.
Back in the old days Marxist were the master of the art of conducting huge operations. Like war. They knew very well that if you wanted to hit, you would have to hit hard. There may be occasional exceptions but those are really occasional.
Okay, sorry for my huge pile of BS. But anyway. If Russia wants to achieve her goals, it’s now evident that she has to do a committed action. Furthermore, it may have to do something to actually counter NATO. Eg. harassing NATO planes above the Black Sea, and shooting down drones. NATO is using these to a great effect. It’s the Black Sea, so any “Article 5” bullshoting can be excluded.
Oops, another observation. The sinking of the Moskva poses a real problem. It was an important ship, and a single one of its class in the Black Sea, a big AD platform, and they can’t replace it at the moment. As the conflict draws longer and longer, more of these problems can be expected.
Or the Kalibr. It was the workhorse of the conflict. My guess is that the Russians have finished the pre-allocated (for this conflict) stock so now they really have to spin up production. They are not out of stock but they have to have basic stock. They don’t have at the moment land launched variant (this is the consequence of the INT treaty), so they launch these from ships, with much effort.
Интересно, что о нас думали осенью 41го года…
In 41 the USSR had to absorb a big blow and did what it could to counter the situation. They didn’t give up Moscow to save men. They didn’t give up Leningrad, for that matter, and, arguably, Leningrad was in a much less defensible position than Herson. Later, they didn’t give up Stalingrad either. Anyway, they _fought_.
The SMO was, from the beginning, full of self imposed, sometimes extreme, limitations. These were, to some extent, justifiable, and made sense in the first few months of the conflict. But the expectations behind most of them didn’t bear fruit, they just lengthened the conflict. So I wouldn’t compare 22 to 41.
To be honest, I’m sure this time Russia will do what it has to, and the conflict will be finished by the second half of 23. But this SMO thing, IMHO, is, more or less, a costly detour.
I agree that timing is important.
If the pace is too slow, the West will be able to start rebuilding weapons supplies, and it really will become interminable. Russia must be careful to retains its escalation dominance and keep nato help out of the theatre.
Whether the EU can fire up (ha ha) it’s industry remains a question, but US might be able to (without Chinese imports?)
One thing has become clear with the withdrawal from Kherson because of the damages to the bridges for supply: The American MLRS system with 80 km range were a game-changer, no matter how many times it is repeated that there is no such thing. It means any plan for taking the remaining coast and Odessa has been completely altered. Russia did not foresee the destruction of those bridges.
Another thing that mystifies me in the whole story is why the Russians have not made more inroads blocking Ukrainian logistics and NATO supplies.
Well, Kherson does make a difference, cause it created a precedent of Ukraine “liberating a major (regional capital) Russian city”.
And this is solely created by an urge month ago to have a short-live shallow hype of holding premsture referenda. Immediately gratification often has longterm consequences.
Would our gov’t postpone those referenda until it could defend the land – or limit the referendum to the span of Kherson region it can and would defend – this won’t be the case.
That is not even mentioning whether the hasty integration of those regions if emancipation of their citizens is good or bad for Russian society.
And there is another consequences from it. Kherson citizens who marked themselves pro-Russian now had lost everything their famikies accumulated for decades. Last i heard, they would be given one time 100K rub payment to compensate for everything that belonged to them but they can not carry away with their hands.
This “sends a strong message” of “Russia is one big conman” to all other Ukrainians what should them do when Russia would ever propose a referendum in their region.
We often enjoy ourselves mocking USA for their military and foreign policy being a side-project to generating stream of shallow guppi-memoryspan PR events. And tightly so.
The referendum in Kherson turned out to be exactly the same.
For some reason I don’t feel anything about Kherson. But for anger at my hysterical compatriots of course. Kherson is a place in the Kherson region that’s difficult to defend for very specific reasons. People are being evacuated, troops retreated.
Comparing us to the USA is incorrect just like it is incorrect to compare this war to any of their wars. Or, it is correct, but we have the USA on their usual side 10K kilometers away.
Kherson was “a place on the map” month ago.
Then there was a huge hype of referenda and “4 new regions of RF”.
Because of that “random place” was uplifted to Russian reigon center, and random local savages weere emancipated to first rank citizens of Russia.
Would our army retrieve two months ago – it would be correct. But non more.
As of now Russia enjoyed one month of cheap PR over “new regions, ra-ra-ra” and not would pay with months of “surrendered region cebter” and 50K citizens stripped of everything their families were accumukating for decades for the sake of few fatcats getting minute of glory on TV month ago.
To me, this looks a bit like the propaganda branch of the Russian government acting too independently from the military branch for whatever reason – be it an interdepartmental feud or lack of communication.
What was the point of organizing a referendum and incorporating Kherson into the RF if she cannot hold it?
Either this was a stupid and irresponsible stunt on the back of the population, or the Russian just temporarily pull out and will come back in force and secure the region.
Some time ago, you had a text that explained why in the long run, the western ammo supply should be drying up, due to the inability to ramp up production anytime soon. But so far, this does not seem to have materialized.
Also, despite the performance of Russian air defences, some of those HIMARS rockets manage to hit where it hurts.
Kherson region is bigger than Kherson
Just look at the map. The Russians will be on one side of the river but the Ukrainians will be on BOTH sides. The Russians have already shown they can hit power infrastructure deep in the West of Ukraine, so clearly they can hit every bridge on that river. If that happens there will be no way to supply those Ukrainian troops.
Game Over.
MoA and his readers have been annoying that way since the beginning. but then he was one of the dumb f_cks celebrating rittenhouse so i’ve been a non-fan for a while. maybe i’m just a little touchy about a kraut in krautistan commenting on US race issues. i’m funny that way.
while i have issues with the “saker” and a few with martyanov, they’ve had the same message i’ve been dropping for months as an internet comment rando: the “psyops” (you can just say “propaganda”, guys) are just dumb assholes talking to slightly dumber assholes. people who get their “info” from CNN are lost causes so it’s odd to care what they(‘ve been told to) think.
a lot of it is just generational and/or cultural; these kids need to take their ritalin and remember that wars take YEARS not DAYS. if it was 1941 these idiots would be all, “pearl harbor got bombed 3 weeks ago…why isn’t the war OVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR?!?!?!111!!??”
rule of thumb: land can be regained, lives can’t.