December 31st, 2024 Happy New Year

Next Summary 03 January 2025

The basic summation is that the Russians made along much of the front.

On the ground Russian forces continued to make gains along much of the front, taking terrain on the north-west  and south-east corners of the Kursk salient, to include ground south of Sudzha as they press to cut one of the two roads that supply Ukrainian forces in the salient.  North of the Donets River also sees Russian gains, and they appear to have taken more terrain west of Svatove as they push on the Oskil River, as well as taking the town of Terny (west of Kreminna) on the Zherebets River. There is also some reporting suggesting Russian forces north of Kupyansk have  have pushed further west of the Oskil River,

In both Chasiv Yar and Toretsk both sides appear to be in a series of smaller, see-saw engagements trading fighting positions and small pieces of terrain back and forth in the center of the two towns.

South of Pokrovsk the two sides are also trading ground back and forth but the overall trend remains that, just south of Pokrovsk, the Russians are slowly pushing westward on a fairly broad front and that just south of Pokrovsk there is a north - south line about 7 miles long, about 4 miles west of the western edge of Pokrovsk, and it is slowly rolling westward and the three small towns of  Nadezhdynka, Novovasylivka and Solone are now being attacked. There is no reason to believe these towns will fare any better than the towns just to their east.

Further to the south-east the Ukrainians are still holding in north-west Kurakhove, but the Russians elsewhere continue to move forward and the pockets of Ukrainian controlled terrain in this area are growing smaller. There is now a large pocket that runs roughly from Kurakhove to Nadezhdynka to  Bahatyr and then back to just east of the town of Sukhi Yaly, and then to Kurakhove, and that terrain is being squeezed by the Russians, a roughly triangular shaped piece of terrain about 10 miles across on the western edge, and maybe 12 miles long, east to west (perhaps 60-70 square miles in size).  All but one or two roads into the area from the west have been cut, and the weather continues to not cooperate, temperatures staying at or above freezing and the terrain remaining wet and muddy, preventing easy off-load travel and resupply.

Further south Russian forces continue to press northward from the south of Velyka Novosilke, but they have not yet entered the town. It does seem, however, that the roads into the town have been cut.

Reporting does suggest that several of islands in the mouth of the Dnepr river are now under Russian control as a result of the sustained small boat probes and raids, that the Russian have worn down the Ukrainian capacity to keep unseating every position the Russians set up.

The Ukrainian Air Force (the UAF operates the Surface to air (SAM) systems) reported that it brought down 16,000 targets over Ukraine in 2024, to include 11,200 strike drones, 3,200 reconnaissance drones 40 fixed wing aircraft and 6 helicopters. They did not give a count on the number of ballistic missiles or cruise missile that were brought down. Nor did they provide the number of each type launched against Ukraine.

Thoughts

While he made this statement, a report was released in Ukraine Pravda about the state of the Russian economy, notes that the Russians spent  in particular that Russia spent 16.3 trillion rubles ($145 billion) on defense this year, some 8% of their GDP, and some 40% of the federal government expenditures.

The gist of the article is that this is far too much and that the economy is, to use their words, “cracking.”

They also make the point that Russian soldiers’ motivations are based on bonuses.

The argument is that Russia faces a catastrophic collapse of its economy, and per LTGEN Budanov, this could happen as early the middle of 2025.

Budanov is the Director of Ukrainian Military Intelligence and is a favorite of President Zelenskyy (and reportedly the CIA) so his statements are often indicative of what is being thought in the inner circles of the President’s office. Budanov suggests that 2025 will be a better year for Ukraine than 2024 because the Russians will be forced - due to this looming economic crisis - to make major concessions to Ukraine.

It is possible that Budanov is doing nothing different from others - in Ukraine and Russia - in carving out an extreme position, from which they can negotiate to a more reasonable solution.

However, it may be that Budanov believes that Russia is facing imminent economic collapse and Ukraine needs to simply hold on - which is what he suggested in an interview.

To begin, anyone who has looked at history for the last 100 years will find few cases when a nation’s economic collapse has been accurately predicted. A few numbers suggest this is harder to judge than it seems: Russia’s total federal government expenditures sits at roughly 35% of GDP  (US is not quite 24%). Ukraine is above 60%, and many European nations are above 40% (Belgium 53%, Germany 49%, Portugal 45%, Slovakia 44%, Sweden 47%).

As for paying their troops bonuses, that may sound mercenary, but virtually every military in the west does the same. At the same time, since February 2022 Ukraine has had more than 100,000 desertions; Russia has had fewer than 10,000.

But finally there is this simple problem: Budanov is suggesting that, at its most fundamental, the Ukrainian strategy is simply to survive until the Russian economy collapses, and then the Russian army will withdraw. The level of economic chaos a country can endure is often extremely high: consider Germany, Japan or Italy. Let’s hope this is just a bargaining position.

v/r pete