Bob Homans March 21

20220322

Ukraine – 3/21 Sitrep 
Compiled By: Robert Homans
March 21, 2022

Ukraine – 3/21 Sitrep

As usual, any comments I (Bob) may make are in bold face

Today, in addition to daily updates on developments around Ukraine, the focus will be on the impact the war will have on global food security, and what has become known as “Plan B,” where the Russians limit their direct engagements with Ukrainian forces and, instead, focus on bombing Ukraine into submission.  Specifically, will “Plan B” work as intended?   I have been skeptical that it would work but my contributor, who has been observing the war from Kyiv, has better arguments than I that it won’t work.

Food Security - Ukraine has been suffering economic damage from the time Russia began accumulating an invading army on Ukraine’s borders.  Currently the damage is devastating, destroying life and property, but following Russia’s defeat Ukraine should be able, with reparations and assistance crawl back to the levels of 2021 within three to four years.

Unfortunately for the poorest on this planet the hope for a better future or just a future, is being dashed by Russia’s destruction of Ukraine’s capacity to feed the world.  Without Ukraine’s food exports, particularly of sunflower oil, corn, wheat, vegetable meal and barley, agricultural commodity prices which are reaching record levels will continue climbing until the 2024/25 marketing year.

The United Nations estimated that at the end of 2021 1.3 billion people suffering from poverty had difficulty in feeding themselves more than once a day.  This war which is currently an unfathomable human tragedy for Ukraine will likely lead to the starvation of no less than 80 million people.  That is a war crime much greater in scope than any that has been committed in Human History.

It seems to us that the impact of the war on global food security will have significant impact on China.   China appears to have ended up backing a war that will have negative consequences to them.  First, over the past several years China has made significant investments in Ukraine, much of it in agriculture.   Second, China is a major importer of Ukrainian cereals and oilseeds.   As a result of the war, China will now be paying significantly more for those imports that they had expected.  

Third, the war may significantly impede the progress of the Belt & Road Initiative, China’s signature development project.   Belt & Road is built around infrastructure projects, mostly in development markets in Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, and Ukraine, whereby the host countries borrow substantial sums from Chinese financial institutions, including Chinese development finance institutions such as China Development Bank.  Loans are extended on terms that are often not disclosed, but China fully expects the loans to be paid off.   If countries in Africa and the Middle East are suddenly finding themselves having to pay more for food imports, much of which comes from Ukraine, they will likely have less appetite to borrow money for Belt & Road Projects, not to mention increasing trouble paying off existing loans.

It is doubtful that Pres. Xi is going to tell Pres. Biden that they’re stepping back from their support of Russia, but it hard to see that China support of Russia is paying any dividends, but instead China’s support of Russia may be imposing substantial costs, primarily because of more expensive food imports and their adverse effect on China’s signature development project.

“Plan B” –

Russia has finally understood that its armed forces are inferior to Ukraine’s.  It has changed tactics.  Now the primary objective of its armed forces is to wage war against civilians while defending itself against counter attacks.

Our opinion is that Plan B will fail just as Plan A did. 

To attack civilians Russia plans to move its army into stationary earthen fortifications to protect against counter attacks and to secure supply lines to these positions.  This appears to be happening in and around the suburbs northwest of Kyiv, including Irpin and Bucha, places that are experiencing heavy fighting.  To date Russia’s army has been moving back and forth in narrow corridors to push forward, evade counter attacks, and develop supply lines.  From the stationary fortifications it plans to level everything it can to the ground with artillery and rocket fire.  

Ukraine has succeeded in pushing Russia back from both Irpin and Bucha, as well as around Brovary on the Left Bank of the Dnieper River, east of Kyiv.   This makes it more difficult for Russia to bring in artillery.  Instead, Russia is relying on cruise missiles.  Many, but not all of these, have been destroyed by Ukraine’s air defenses.   Some have caused significant damage.

Currently Ukrainian counter attacks against increasingly entrenched Russians are conducted by small platoons armed with portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets, high explosive mines and small arms.  These counter attacks are very effective in the wooded rolling country of northern and eastern Ukraine.  The tactics used by the Ukrainians in Northern Ukraine, are not as effective in Southern Ukraine.  The flat steppes of Southern Ukraine are not waterlogged like the fields in Northern Ukraine, and they are denuded of tree cover.

Effective Ukrainian counterattacks with portable destructive equipment is thanks to Western armament.  Overlooked in the attack and counterattack has been Ukrainian success in holding and destroying Russia’s army in the Donbas. 

Plan B is to repeat Donbas across the entire front.  Ukraine’s current success in Donbas is a credit to its artillery and tanks.  Russia has not been able to attack this force from the air.  It has not been able to engage in an artillery duel because it needs to get close to Ukrainian forces.  Superior Ukrainian targeting due to counter battery radar and satellite intelligence, both provided by Ukraine’s allies, enables destruction of Russian forces trying to get close enough to engage.  Ukraine has enough artillery, tanks, and munitions to turn Russia’s Plan B into a fiasco like Plan A.

Russia’s Plan B currently employed in the Donbas is to send pressganged civilians and poorly trained conscripts directly against Ukrainian defenders, hoping to overrun them with numbers or find chinks in the defense.  This creates mountains of dead and rivers of deserting attackers. 

Once Russia digs in it will be targeted and destroyed.  If Russia keeps moving it will continue to be chopped up by Ukrainian counter attacks.  We believe that Russia will dig in, undertake a national mobilization, and send conscripts in waves against Ukrainian defenses.  Ukraine will turn these waves into modern day Pyramids of the Dead.  Concurrently Russia will continue long distance shelling of Ukrainian civilians creating Seas of Desolation.   However, the appearance of anti-aircraft weapons capable of operating at higher altitudes, including against cruse missiles, will reduce the ability of Russia to flatten Ukrainian cities.

Other Developments - Ukrainian intelligence reports that soldiers are marking Belarusian military equipment near Ukraine’s border with red squares.  The reports indicate that is likely in preparation for a Belarusian invasion of western Ukraine.

Tikhanova, the duly elected Belarusian president in exile said yesterday that Belarussian partisans are mining and destroying railroad tracks linking Belarus with Russia.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General said yesterday that her office has registered 2123 war crimes, arrested 1370 war criminals. Issued 76 inditements against Russian officials and that 115 children were killed and 148 wounded by invaders.

Greece’s consul general said that he never wants to be witness again to what he saw of Mariupol.  He compared it to Guernarica, Leningrad and Coventry.

The director of one of Ukraine’s mobile hospitals serving soldiers and civilians on the front said last night he would like to castrate every wounded Russian soldier they have been treating.

A Ukrainian mathematician committed suicide last night in Moscow.  His suicide note explained that he could no longer be a bystander to the horror and Russian police were not allowing him to return to Ukraine and fight the invasion.

Ukraine’s Ministry of defense briefing today reported that the intensity of Russian aerial bombing in Northern Ukraine has significantly dropped off. 

The Wall Street Journal quoting White House sources reported yesterday that Russia has abandoned its plan to Kyiv.  Instead, it is focusing on taking control of and keeping territory in Southern Ukraine.

British Intelligence update from yesterday confirms a full-scale sea blockade of Ukraine by Russian naval vessels and that Russian force have failed to go around Mykolaiv to attack Odesa.

Poland plans to confiscate Russian owned or controlled property on its territory.

The wife of a former Ukrainian parliamentary deputy, Ihor Kotvytskii, fleeing Ukraine declared 28 million USD and 1.2 million Euro in cash at the Hungarian customs.

Ukrainian armed forces are using Elon Musk’s donation of Starlink wireless internet receivers to maintain communications.  The Starlink system also improves targeting information provided by Ukrainian surveillance drones.

Western intelligence sources quoted by the Washington Post said that Russian advance has been completely stalled for the last week.  If Russia does not rearm and restaff its advance groups, they will be destroyed within two weeks.  The sources said that the Russians are losing close to 1,000 soldiers a day, and significant amounts of equipment.

Russia is trying to rapidly move its military engineering units to Ukraine to restore river crossings disabled by Ukrainian mining of bridges.  They may arrive after the war is over.

Turkey is negotiating an end to American sanctions on Turkey in return for transfer its S-400 Russian made anti-aircraft batteries, likely in return for the U.S. releasing deliveries of F-35 fighters to Turkey.

On March 20, staff at the Chernobyl Sarcophagus finally were relieved as the Russians allowed a shift change.

Yesterday 8 civilians were killed by a rocket attack on Kyiv’s Podil district.  The Retroville Shopping Center in the city was destroyed by rocket attacks.   The shopping center is brand new, and it is a 10-minute walk from where we live in Kyiv.  One of the photos in the attached article shows the remains of SportLife, where I was planning to join when I return to Kyiv.  Retroville was an anchor of a new planned community, where many upper middle-class families live.  The destruction of Retroville, along with the fighting in the upscale satellite cities of Irpin and Bucha, are examples of how the Russians are insidiously targeting Ukraine’s upper-middle and professional classes.   We are trying to find out if the windows in our place, on the 16th Story, were blown out.  

Head of Kyiv’s Self Defense Forces said last night that Russian are regrouping outside of Kyiv, and it appears they will try to build a pontoon bridge over the Irpin River.  If successful, this will allow them to go around the devastated city which has successfully resisted Russian occupation attempts from the second day of the invasion.

Yesterday Russia lost attacking tank platoons of the sixth mechanized army trying to reach Kyiv.

Shooting heard last night near the city center of Kyiv was the self-defense forces liquidating a group of Russian military saboteurs.  All four in the group were killed.

Last night an artillery shell hit an ammonia holding tank at Sumykhimprom fertilizer factory releasing deadly ammonia gas into the air.  Fortunately, plant staff were able to seal the leak this morning and the ammonia concentration in the air is falling to safe levels.    There is an ammonia pipeline that almost completely crosses Ukraine, from north to south, terminating at the Odesa Portside Plant.  This pipeline is only one of two similar ammonia pipelines in the World.   The other is in the U.S., going from two separate locations, in the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma, and ending in Minnesota.

Attacks on Sumy have stopped but the Russians continue shelling.  Satellite communities face occasional skirmishes.  Russian forces shot and killed unarmed civilians on the outskirts of Trostianets in Sumy Oblast.

Kharkiv’s mayor reported that 972 buildings in the city have been damaged or destroyed of which 778 are apartment buildings.  Kharkiv’s zoo was the target of shelling yesterday.  Shelling continues in Chuhuyev as do skirmishes.  Ukrainian forces destroyed Russian checkpoints around Izium.

Russia continues dropping cluster bombs on Kharkiv.  Yesterday they dropped three.

Russian forces seized five ships loaded with Cereals in the port of Berdiansk and left the port.  Their current location is unknown.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said that yesterday there were seven attempts to break through Ukrainian defenses in the Donbas.  None succeeded.  Russia lost 12 tanks, 7 armored personnel carriers, 3 unarmored vehicles and approximately 170 soldiers.  Russian forces have not asked for a temporary cease fire to collect their dead, so they remain under the open sky.

Russian forces destroyed an old age home in Kremenaiia, Luhansk Oblast killing 56.

According to territorial defense forces a bomb is falling on Mariupol every six minutes.  Ships from the Azov also started shelling Mariupol yesterday.

Yesterday, 1500 people were evacuated from Mariupol. 

The municipal government received a seven-page declaration from Russian forces surrounding Mariupol warning them that they must capitulate or be levelled with the ground.  The mayor and its entire elected council and city administration told the Russians to shove off.  The capitulation order included three pages of history lessons written by Putin.

The governor of Mykolaiv Oblast reported that spring sowing is starting in areas that were not affected by the invasion.  Areas where the invaders have retreated from are currently being scanned and cleaned of mines and unexploded ordinance.

Civilians in Enerhodar, Zaporizhia Oblast, prevented Russian soldiers from kidnapping people on the streets, surrounding their vehicles forcing them inside.  The vehicles were allowed to leave.

Ukrainian paratroopers liquidated a Russian shore brigade in Kherson Oblast.  The 128th Russian Shore Brigade was from Sevastopol and its soldiers defected from Ukraine in 2014 to join Russia.

Civilians chased armed Russian military personnel and equipment in Kherson and Skadovsk yesterday.  Demonstrations also took place in Kakhovka but the there were no arrests or shots fired there.

Russian naval gunfire destroyed several homes on the outskirts of Odesa.  This is the first report we have of attacks on the oblast or city.  Ukrainian large caliber machine gun fire strafed a Russian navy vessel off the coast of Odesa today.    Ukraine still has not deployed the Neptune anti-ship missile.   They may be waiting to use it, in the event of a Russian amphibious assault on Odesa

A military base in Rivno Oblast was hit by two rockets yesterday.