Want to know how to defeat the Kremlin? Take a look at what they are doing on the H-15 Highway
You have to help them hit the self-destruct button.
The United States is going to send the long range ATACMS (missiles) to Ukraine. They deftly changed their messaging from ‘we don’t have enough’ & ‘it will be an escalation’ to ‘we have enough’ & ‘after two years of war, we do not consider this an escalation anymore.’
The decks have been cleared.
With that noted down, I have a small task for you. Take a look at the following map.
Tell me one location, not more than ten miles from the frontline, where you will keep the U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) that can fire ATACMS missiles, reaching targets up to 300 kilometers. Let me make it a bit more defined: You have one HIMARS unit and 240 ATACMS missiles. I will take care of protecting it from enemy eyes.
You tell me where you will keep this single unit?
I will keep it at a place where the south and the east meet, specifically at that spot where the occupied territory takes an upward turn on the map.
Why?
Because it will allow me to hit practically anywhere in the occupied territory.
Heck, I can hit Russia from that location. I can hit the Kerch bridge — slightly tight, but doable. And I can comfortably destroy everything the Russians have built in southern Ukraine.
When loaded with ATACMS, HIMARS is a devastating weapon.
A war-winning one.
It can single-handedly win the war because there will be no crook, no crevice, no building in the occupied territory that will be a safe heaven. The entire Russian occupied territory will be within Ukraine’s firing range. Ukraine can patiently monitor enemy activities from the sky, load the coordinates into HIMARS, press fire, sit back, and watch the impact.
Accuracy: 30 feet.
Now let us zoom in on the rectangular block I drew.
Can you see Vuhledar at the edge of the frontline?
With an elevation of 187 meters, Vuhledar not only gives Ukraine a commanding view over the highways in the sector, but it will also allow Ukraine to fire all over the occupied territory. This little spot on the map is the most strategic location under Ukraine’s control.
Keep a group of HIMARS units in this section; Russians will have no place to hide in Ukraine.
Kupiansk, Vuhledar, and Klishivvka are the three vital locations that the Russians want to capture. They continue to pour a massive amount of their resources into their pursuit to take control of them. I am not going to write what the Russians can do to capture any of these locations. But I am going to tell you what they are doing near Vuhledar and how they keep failing.
Russians do not place any weight on manpower and materiel.
I believe this attitude percolated into their psyche during the Soviet era and passed on to the current generation. They relentlessly poured themselves into Stalingrad with utter disregard for their losses. Their size, production capacity, and the ability to keep dying slowly exhausted the overstretched Nazi forces that were fighting so far away from their home.
That doctrine is stuck somewhere in their brains. Most of the Russian resources, I would guess more than 60%, have been lost in a handful of locations in Ukraine: Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Kupiansk, and Robotyne. The last one made it to the list because Ukraine focused its attention on Robotyne, and the Russians had to respond.
Sadly for the Russians, the “throw everything at one place” strategy has indeed yielded results. That is how they won Bakhmut. That is how they won Avdiivka and Marinka. Every other strategy they tried has gloriously failed. So, why would Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Commander Valery Gerasimov change their strategy? They are not fighting on the frontlines. They are not building tanks. Someone else is doing all of that.
They can lie about the losses, but they tell the truth about the victories. This is a problem created by a system built from the ground up to avoid responsibility. So, they will not stop pouring resources into Vuhledar. That means the rate of daily losses they are suffering is not going to stop until their combat power reaches precarious levels.
The terrain near Vuhledar is not the same as in Avdiivka
Avdiivka was a small pocket locked up from three directions. Ukrainian forces did not have space to move. This allowed Russians to effectively deploy their air force to rain glide bombs over Ukrainian positions. That is not working near Vuhledar.
16 kilometers is a lot of distance.
After trying to breach Ukrainian defenses in Vuhledar through direct frontal assaults, which the Russians attempted for two years, they have made a small update. They are trying to force their way through the H-15 highway. They are constantly attacking Novomykhailivka using their heavy weapons and infantry, while the air force has been dropping bombs along the H-15 highway. The idea is to break the lines behind Vuhledar, slowly shrink the operational space for Ukraine, and then take control of Vuhledar. The Russians are grinding for an advance.
More than a month has passed since the fall of Avdiivka. And more than a month has passed since Russian forces in southern Ukraine turned their partial attention towards Vuhledar, but the frontline in the sector has barely moved.
Novomykhailivka will remain the focal point of attack. Every day, Russians are sending their tanks, armored vehicles, and infantry into the sector, and they are getting repelled.
Russia’s combat capacity on March 30th is nowhere near where it was on February 1st. Commander-in-Chief Oleksandar Syrski said in “February-March of this year alone (as of March 26), the enemy lost more than 570 tanks, about 1,430 armored fighting vehicles, almost 1,680 artillery pieces and 64 air defense systems”. Russians have also lost nearly 1,000 soldiers every day in February. I will be surprised if that number dropped way below 2024 average in March.
Their capacity is waning, but they act as if they have unlimited power. They do not. If you can build 120 tanks every month and you keep losing 300 tanks every month, your capacity is going to drop. It won’t magically keep going up.
They will be praying to their version of God that the Biden administration sends only 24 ATACMS missiles to Ukraine and not 240, or in counts of 240. Because if they do that and Ukraine is still holding Vuhledar at that point, there is not a lot the Russians can do.
Ukraine is still in a spot of bother
They are fighting well, and their cause is supported by heavy losses suffered by Russia in the last two months, and also because Russians refuse to change their operational strategy.
But the situation is still challenging for them. Russia still holds a 6:1 advantage in artillery firing rate. They are also firing around 100 glide bombs across the frontline every day. Due to the severe shortage of air-defense missiles, Ukraine cannot push back the Russian air force. So, they will have to absorb some amount of losses.
The stars have not yet fully aligned themselves in favor of Ukraine. They need to dig deep into their morale and tactics to keep the Russians at bay near Novomykhailivka for another 30 days.
So, what will happen after 30 days?
The 6:1 advantage the Russians have on the artillery front will have no choice but to diminish. This factor alone will eat into their combat power, tilting the combat balance slowly towards parity with Ukraine.
Ukraine’s combat power is on a slow ramp. It is a painfully slow ramp, but a ramp nonetheless. Russian combat power is waning. They will meet at some point in the next 30 days when the artillery shells procured by the Czech-led initiative make their way to Ukraine.
If the Biden administration wakes up and sends hundreds of ATACMS to Ukraine, then let there be no doubt: Ukraine will be the one with more combat power.
Not the Russians.
And if Ukraine is still enjoying the view from the top of Vuhledar when those missiles arrive, I have no idea what the Russians can do in response. I kind of understand why Russians are prepared to lay waste to so much of their heavy weapons to capture Vuhledar. Ukraine will destroy them anyway if they get the ATACMS. So, why bother letting them go up in smoke in storage?
Therefore, Russians are smoking them near the frontline.
