November 12th, 2024

Weather

Kharkiv

37 and mostly cloudy. Mostly cloudy for the next week, snow mixed with rain beginning Wednesday night and continuing through Friday morning. Daily lows will be in the low to m id 30s, daily highs in the upper 30s. Winds variable, 5kts.

Melitopol

40 and mostly cloudy.  Mostly cloudy into the weekend, daily lows in the low 30s, highs in the low 40s. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Kyiv

35 and cloudy. Mostly cloudy into the weekend, snow showers on Thursday and Friday. Daily lows at or slightly above freezing, daily highs in the upper 30s but wind chills in the 20s. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Economic Reporting

Feb 22   Mar 7   Jun10-22Jun8-23 Jun7 Jul9 Sep9 Oct8 Oct25 Nov12

Brent      94.71      119.50 120.90    75.58      80.06 85.19 71.74 77.30 75.37 72.25

WTI     92.10      123.80 119.50  71.29      75.81 81.73 68.37 73.59 71.18 68.50

NG       3.97       4.45     8.41      2.15      2.82 2.38 2.20 2.74 2.51 2.97

Wheat     8.52       12.94    10.71    6.17       6.40 5.71 5.67 5.93 5.82 5.66

Ruble     85         145.70  58.48     82.59      88.77 88.18 90.75 96.83 96.80 98.36

Hryvnia Pre Oct 2023 fixed at 36.4 40.89 41.22 41.33 41.40

Urals 56.56    67.61 67.61 78.83 73.30 67.79 67.53

ESPO 65 77 77 77

Sokol 66.23 72.10 67.51 65.19

Note - less than $1 difference in spot price between West Texas Intermediate and Urals oil, despite sanctions.

A General Assessment

Russian forces remained on the attack along essentially the entire line of contact. Ukrainian forces had marginal gains in the Kursk salient, as the Russians continue to move additional forces into that area. The Russians continue to grind forward, seemingly a never ending string of marginal gains.

Today I’ll confine my discussion to a general assessment of those front lines relative to where they have been, and what seems to be developing, using some maps from the BBC and some maps from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). I will return to the more detailed reporting tomorrow.

Without trying to fit a discussion of the whole war into a few pages, consider the BBC map for May 2024, and compare it to the smaller scale maps of sections of the front, from ISW. As can be seen, Russian gains in the center (west of Donetsk city) and south from there have of note.

As is clear, the real changes in the line this year have taken place south of Bakhmut, from the area just west of Horlivka, where the Russians have advanced westward perhaps 5-6 miles, to the Avdiivka area where they have advanced westward perhaps 25 miles, and to the area between Vuhledar and Marinka where the Russians have advanced westward perhaps between 10 and 15 miles, depending on where you start along the battlefield.

Elsewhere across the south gains have been slow and incremental, but the Russians have slowly pushed back to virtually all the lines they held before the Ukrainian 

in 2023.

(Maps too big to post. see maps at links please):

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-11-2024 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60506682

Returning to a general discussion, it is of particular note, as was discussed when Vuhledar fell in the last few days of September, that Vuhledar anchored both the eastern line and the southern line. 

Earlier, the Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces out of Avdiivka, and Marinka - two heavily fortified towns, and this allowed them (the Russians) to push further west - toward Pokrovsk, and also to invest Niu York and Toretsk to the north. Niu York has fallen, and at least half of Toretsk has been taken. Russian forces pushed westward from Avdiivka but slowed almost to a halt due east of Pokrovsk. They have however continued to push to the south-west, moving slowly into the terrain south of Pokrovsk.

All this was developing when Vuhledar fell. In the 6 weeks since the beginning of October Russian forces have been pushing into the general area north and north-west of Vuhledar, that area of terrain that might have been, under different circumstances, a Ukrainian salient from which they could flank Russian forces as they pushed westward. But the Russian advance continues to benefit from the Russian tactics, which, as I’ve mentioned several times in the past, come right out of Russian army history. 

As the British strategist BH Liddell Hart observed, the Russian style of attack in the latter half of World War II, and also for a while in World War I, was broad alternating strokes at different points, what he described as the natural method for an army with limited mobility but a general superiority of force. Actions are conservative, slow, deliberate. The Russian army was not then, and is not now, capable of rapidly exploiting a gap, or a mistake by the enemy. But it was and is also not really likely to lose. Instead, it committed itself to a long, slow, ponderous grind. And with that grind they eventually destroyed the German army, as they are slowly destroying the Ukrainian army.

What occurred to me was that the Russians returned to this way of war in 2022 (they began the transition in the spring, but did not fully achieve the transition until early 2023), but it doesn’t reflect what we commonly look for in war: the focused attack, the slashing offensive, the tightly integrated ground and air campaigns. There will be no “Erwin Rommel” emerging out of the Russian officer corps, the Russians aren’t interested.

Instead, they have developed a very basic plan, one that they believe will win - eventually. The army in the field must execute the plan. Don't change the plan, don’t keep adjusting, just execute the plan. And it is an army plan. If the RuAF helps, great. If not, the army will still execute the plan. The Russian Navy? If they help, great. If not, the army will still execute the plan.

It is worth a brief mention of how this grand tactic is being implemented, as it tamps down some other reporting. The Russians are not attacking in large formations. In fact, there have been no more than a handful of battalion sized attacks by the Russians in all of 2024. Most attacks are platoon sized or smaller - scores of them in any given operations area every day. This is partly out of necessity: there are so many drones up - by both sides - at any one time, that movement of even a few troops is rapidly detected. In some cases the Russians have been confining movements to 3 or 4 men at a time. Vehicles are only used to get men near the front. Then the troops get out and disappear into the tree lines and being to move as rifle teams of just 3 or 4 men. For an entire platoon (30 - 40 men) to move as one is rare, for a company to move, even more rare. The Ukrainian General Staff routinely reports on scores of attacks every day, only a handful of which will constitute more than a full platoon.

This tactic also speaks again to the very low risk attitude of the Russian army: if a an infantry squad gets ambushed or shot up it is not the end of the world. They routinely conduct attacks with two or three armored vehicles, and often only 1, to run forward to a certain point, let out a squad (or less of men) and then move to the rear.

This conflicts with the reporting of so-called “meat assaults” cranked out by public affairs officers; there were in fact some meat assaults last year in Bakhmut; they were executed by penal colony troops. Most of the rest lie somewhere between severe exaggeration and outright nonsense. 

As for what is needed to stop the Russian  attack are more very hard points (a la Vuhledar or Marinka) or terrain that lends itself to the defense - like a river. This is what is happening in the north, where the Oskil and Zherebets Rivers, as well as the Donets canal, and several small hills,  been well used by the Ukrainian army to slow and frustrate the Russian attack in those area. The Russians have reached the Oskil River, roughly west of Svatove (north of the Donets River), in the terrain west of Pishchane, further south they have crossed the Zherebets at Makiivka, but progress is slow.

However, south of the Donets Canal, where the water obstacles tend to run more east - west rather than north - south, the Russians have been grinding forward. More to the point, the Ukrainian army and their political leadership refused to trade land for tactical advantage, that is prepare large, hard, defensive positions far enough behind the line that they could be completed, then fall back into them and cede that now vacant terrain. But Ukraine has not built a second strong line of positions like Vuhledar and Marinka, 15 - 20 miles further west, connected by well built and maintained trenches and fighting positions, and has instead insisted on fighting for every square foot of ground - de facto attrition warfare. The result has been casualties that, at least by accounts outside of Ukraine, are on par with Russian casualties; this among a country with one-quarter the population of Russia. 

Where does that leave the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian government with the coming change in government in the US?

In the long run future President Trump is not going to be interested in being seen as the guy who quit Ukraine and handed it to Putin. Nor will President Trump want Ukraine to be seen as outright losing, nor does he want Putin to have an unblemished win. But he wants to end the war. So, he is going to seek some sort of middle ground - literally and figuratively - that presents a bit of a win for each side. As has been noted elsewhere, Trump enters this negotiation position with a strong hand - Zelenskyy needs to recognize that he needs continued US support if Ukraine is to survive in the long run. While the EU could support Ukraine if it were properly organized, it currently has either the leadership nor the necessary industry to support this war on its own. Getting to that point will take years if it is ever to happen.

And Putin, despite his bold talk, recognizes that he moves further and further into unknown geopolitical territory the longer the war continues. Far better to end the war now, particularly if he can get some sort of trade and banking concessions from the US and EU, and rebuild his army, air force and navy in the light of the lessons learned  over the past 3 years.

The likely answer is a Korea - like situation, that is, a ceasefire, but no recognition by Kyiv of Russian control of any Ukrainian terrain. In fact, the war continues, but no one is shooting. Ukraine enters into a de facto mutual defense treaty relationship with the US and NATO, and the shooting stops.

But Ukraine needs to get to the long run. Nothing about those negotiations are going to stop the war before the end of January. Because the Russian movements are slow, the Ukrainians can usually withdraw in fairly good order when allowed to do so by higher headquarters. But the Russian army will keep attacking - and probably advancing - until told to stop. And the only thing that will get them to stop in the near term will be a ceasefire.

v/r pete