As the siege of the strategic city of Avdееvka progresses, the playbook that we envisioned in a previous post is taking place.
The MSM has two propaganda narratives going on at once: first they insist that Russian offensive is a complete disaster, has thoroughly failed. At the same time, they begin the disinformation that the city is not important at all. This way, when the Russian victory comes, it will be sold as unimportant.
A Business Insider headline shows these two narratives at once, saying that “Russian casualties soar by 90% as Putin’s generals order furious attacks on small city in east, UK intelligence says”.
Meanwhile, Russian forces maintain unrelenting pressure on the shattered remains of Avdееvka.
Reuters reported:
“The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, in its evening report, said Ukrainian forces repelled nearly 20 Russian attacks around Avdiivka, its buildings now largely reduced to shells. Russian air strikes hit nearby villages, it said.
Avdiivka has become a watchword for resistance, viewed as the gateway to recapturing the Russian-held city of Donetsk and the rest of Donbas — made up of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy: “situation in Avdiivka and the nearby town of Maryinka was ‘particularly tough. Numerous Russian attacks. But our positions are being held’.”
Russian forces are observing strict OPSEC, so the information we have from their side is very limited.
But we do know that Ukrainian Military Commander Zaluzhny was pictured visiting a bunker in the Avdeevka front – just like he did at the height of the Bakhmut battles.
That demonstrates the front’s significance to the AFU.
As for the real prospects of the Russian offensive, we can listen to Zelensky’s former adviser, now in exile, Oleksy Arestovitch.
He has taken on the role of disclosing the hard truths to Ukrainians on the web.
He reminds viewers that ‘It started the same way in Ilovaisik, Debaltsevo, Popasnoe, Severodonetsk, Lisichansk, Bakhmut, Soledar: The threat of encirclement of Avdeevka is real!”
Watch:
Arestovitch: “Now we are savoring the heavy losses of the Russians at Avdeevka. But I want to remind you that the six previous times it ended with us losing the territories that we so brazenly began to defend.
The threat of encirclement and the loss of Avdееvka is absolutely real. It should not be underestimated. I am not the only one talking about this, but also many serious experts. We need to think about how this happens and why we have been caught in the same trap for the seventh time.”
As for the specifics of the military tactics, we turn to one of my favorite analysts on Substack.
To being with, the prevalence of the ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) means that offensive actions are always known to defenders.
Simplicius the Thinker reported:
“It is in fact impossible to accumulate any large scale ‘surprise’ strikes, which means the only way to advance is not to rely on some magical ‘surprise’ armored breakthrough, which utilizes a brief window of your enemy’s unsuspecting confusion to strike past them to the rear, and potentially surround them. But rather, since both sides know where the majority of each other’s forces are, advancement can only be successfully made by way of a step-wise, progressive accumulation of a number of smaller tactical victories in the capture of key tactical positions which gradually weaken your opponent’s ability to defend the sector.”
Russian Federation forces are launching a ‘mass multi-pronged attack’, with many of the directions perhaps being decoys.
The mains thrust appears to be the capture the ‘Slag Heap’ north of the city, in order to cover with artillery fire all future advances with a massively advantageous elevation.
One they secure fire-control over the MSR (main supply route), life will become extremely difficult for the Ukrainian defenders.
“They’ll never run out of artillery because the artillery batteries fire from many kilometers away, outside the scope of Avdееvka’s ‘cauldron’. But the forces inside the cauldron will in time begin to run low on critical items like mortars and ATGMs. Once you’re low on ATGMs, guess what that means? Russian armor pushes will begin getting more and more aggressive and successful. It’s a low boil, constrictor tightening—textbook style.”
That means even a minor pressure on that one and only supply route ‘will be devastating to the AFU because the fields will be far too muddy to move equipment and supplies’.
Once Russians capture more direct fire positions over the MSR, they can “lay back and switch to a more slow going attritional and positional mode. At that point, they can simply starve Avdiivka out with total fire control of the MSR and there won’t be any immediate need to completely shut the cauldron.”
By Paul Serran