Bob Homans March 24

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Ukraine – 3/24 Sitrep
Compiled by: Robert Homans
March 24, 2022

Prediction From a So-Called Expert

My late aunt would enjoyed relating how much she disliked people who, as she said, “speak in pronouncements.’   There are plenty of so-called pundits and self-described and well-credentialed experts who have made, and are making, pronouncements about the war, pronouncements that turn out to be dead wrong.   Here is one such pronouncement, from “Newsweek.”   Unfortunately, the Biden Administration appeared to have believed some of these pronouncements, about the war only lasting 2 – 3 days.   If so, this may be one reason why Ukraine didn’t start receiving critical military equipment in large quantities, until it became evident that pundits the author of the Newsweek article were dead wrong.

Portrait of President Zelenskyy, by Joan Baez

Along with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez is one of America’s most well-known folk singers.   She painted a portrait of Pres. Zelenskyy, and she’s displaying it outside her house.   My sister, who lives nearby, took the photo, which is attached.

Russian Oil

According to this report, 3 international oil service companies, Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Schlumberger are pulling out of Russia, possibly reducing Russia’s oil output by up to 50%.   The activities of these companies are focused on the fields in Eastern Siberia, where most of the output is sold to China.

Cigarettes

Today, Philip Morris International announced that they were suspending planned investments, and “scaling down” its manufacturing operations in Russia.   The distribution of Philip Morris products in both Russia and Ukraine is controlled by a company called Megapolis, primarily controlled by a Russian businessman named Igor Kesaev.   Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco hold minority stakes in Megapolis.   Kesaev also owns a company called “Tedis.”   Ukraine has accused Tedis of providing weapons to the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.

Other Developments

Chinese Tires – Most of the Russian vehicles and BMP’s operating in Ukraine use Chinese tires.  According to reports, Chinese tires being used by the Russian Armed Forces aren’t produced to military specifications and, predictably, there is a high failure rate.

Jamming – I have mentioned the possibility that U.S. and NATO aircraft flying outside of Ukraine are jamming Russian air and ground tactical communications and, probably, helping to vector Ukrainian aircraft.   This may be one reason why several Russian general officers have lost their lives in Ukraine.   Russian tactical communications nets have not worked properly, causing the Russians to use cell phones.  Conversations between Russian units have been intercepted by Ukraine and posted on line.

3/24 Sitrep – One Month Anniversary

I now have an additional source – as usual, any comments of mine are in bold face.

Amphibious Ship Sunk - This morning, at 7:45, based on the heavy preponderance of accounts, the Ukrainians fired a Tochka-U missile at Berdyansk military port.   Berdyansk is located on the Sea of Azov, between Mariupol and Crimea. 

There were at least three Russian Federation (RF) Alligator class landing ships tied up in Berdyansk, reportedly named Orsk, Tsesar Kunikov and Novocherkassk. (I've seen varying names, that's my best understanding at this point.)   All three are a little more than 100 meters long and designed, each, to carry about 400 soldiers, 20 tanks, 40 armored personnel carriers, and fuel and ammunition for several days of fighting.

Last week, when a RF flotilla was sailing back and forth offshore from Odesa, this warship trio was the amphibious landing threat. In due course the RF apparently decided the Odesites were too well-prepared for armed guests, so, the landing ships sailed to Berdyansk, which the RF controls, and took to unloading their men and equipment.

The missile per multiple videos hit Orsk solidly touching off a massive fireball and fires. She sank at the wharf in about five meters of water. Multiple ammunition explosions were visible. Tsesar Kunikov and Novocherkassk were recorded cutting moorings and taking to sea, the Tsesar Kunikov smoking badly. According to news reports, eight were killed aboard Kunikov and 3 killed and 3 injured aboard Novocherkassk. No information about the casualty count aboard Saratov.   Ukrainian media was quick to point out that Orsk’s captain, Vladimir Khramchenkov, turned coat in 2014, quitting the Ukrainian navy to join the Russian navy, after the Kremlin invaded and annexed Crimea.

I would be delighted to preen and point out we predicted a UAF strike against the Black Sea Fleet about a week ago. Sky News reported today that the US is “working on” sending anti-ship missiles to Ukraine - technically we foresaw that too. Ukraine already has an anti-ship missile of its own design and manufacture, called the Neptune.  It has a range of up to 300 km.   The Neptune was brought into service last year but, to the best of my knowledge Neptune hasn’t been used in combat.   However, the presence of the Neptune may have played a role in Russia’s decision to at least delay launching an amphibious assault against Odesa.

I think, it’s probably more important to ask a simple question (which more than a few of you have already asked).     The Orsk and her resting place in the Berdyansk harbor mud begs the question: Who in their right mind would tie up three big warships to a wharf in shallow water, well within the range of an enemy, who not only has everything from ballistic missiles to bombers to skin divers to limpet mines (but not yet anti-ship missiles, I guess) to attack your ships? And, what’s more, an enemy with probably hundreds of locals ready to report every movement in the port, and if all these grandmothers and spy geeks do miss something, your enemy also has access to pretty much the full intelligence collection and processing capacity of the United States?

The snide answer to that question is: a military leadership clever enough to attempt a blitzkrieg, highly mechanized main attack right through Europe’s largest marsh, precisely at the outset of Spring thaws, that’s who. Or a military leadership that treats attack helicopters and air crews, basically, as expendable firecrackers.

Kyiv - On the ground, there appeared today to be no major movements or developments to the north of Kyiv today, and little material to substantiate or deny the reports that, maybe, the UAF has cut off a portion of the RF army in the forest and swamp approaches to the capital.

Oleksei Arestovych, the Presidential Administration senior advisor, said UAF attacks in Kyiv’s vicinity had left 3,000 RF troops “practically surrounded”, and another 4,000 “cut off and in a very unpleasant situation, they can’t move to the right, and they can’t move to the left.” Another 5,000 are in positions less threatened by the UAF, but, he said, if those units leave then it would abandon as many as 7,000 RF soldiers to their fates. We will, again, wait and see if the future substantiates Arestovych. So far, for the record, his predictions have been pretty accurate.

In terms of the state of fighting in the Kyiv sector, based on a survey of media, official comments, and village websites, it seems like both sides are taking a breather with one exception. One report says there’s a lot of small arms fire and “marauding”. Irpen’ is supposedly 80 percent under UAF control and parts of it got hit by rockets today. According to police practically all civilians evacuated from Irpen’ says ago. Gostomel and Bucha, reportedly, remain are under RF control. The UAF registered “intensified enemy air reconnaissance” in the areas of Glebovka, Lutezh, Lebedevka; and incoming shells hitting in the villages Kalinovka, Gorenka, Pushcha-Voditsa, Novye Petrovtsy and Romanovka.   These are all satellite towns around Kyiv.   The fact that they’re all contested suggests that Russia continues to be unable to move heavy artillery and rocket launchers within range of Kyiv, relying instead on cruise missiles man of which are being launched from Russia or Belarus.

Today was also the day when two large western military institutions - the British Ministry of Defense and the Pentagon - announced that, in fact, the Ukrainians have indeed been counterattacking and that, indeed, they have gained some ground to the north of Kyiv. According to the Pentagon, the real UAF advance was to the east of Kyiv, where RF forces were pushed back 25-35 km.

North - According to mayor Yury Fomichev and the Army General Staff (AGS), today was the town of Slavutych, a Soviet planned community originally designed to house staff at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, and currently primarily home to engineers working at the protective shelter build around the remains of the reactor that blew up in 1986. According those two sources, the RF made a a push towards Slavutych today, but failed to advance. According to one report, the RF column had tanks, Tiger armored cars, and artillery. Fomichev wrote of checkpoints on the town’s north edge getting shelled. The AGS sitrep wrote the RF column was hit hard and it retreated, in some cases RF soldiers abandoning their vehicles and taking to the woods.

Elsewhere on the front, based primarily on the AGS 1800 sitrep:

- In Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv intermittent RF bombardments of civilian homes and businesses continued. RF units were seen to be digging in.

- Ownership of Izium is shared with the UAF in the south and the RF in the north. The RF made another attempt to cross the river dividing the city, it failed.

- In Melitpol, locals observed RF engineers constructing a new supply and airbase at a private airfield effectively adjacent to the town. A city official said the RF was trying to use Melitopol residents as human shields. This may be the RF’s new solution to problems finding an airfield in the Kherson-Mykoaliv sector that is close enough to the front to allow good air support, but far enough away that the Ukrainians don’t destroy it and many of the aircraft on it. By unofficial count (mine) somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of all helicopters lost by the RF in the entire war, were destroyed on the ground at the airport outside Mykolaiv.

- Fighting in the east was reportedly static, no ground exchanged hands, shelling in Avdievka and Marynka

- In the north, UAF forces destroyed the headquarters of 49th Combined Arms army (Arestovych briefing)

South - In occupied Kherson, via the RF-controlled official media, reports came out today that Rosgvardia units were preparing to conduct a house-to-house “purge,” attempting to crush public opposition to RF occupation. As is common with such RF attempts to intimidate an uncowed population, the message included a threat to bring in “Chechens”. A novoe vremya magazine report said RF authorities want schools open by April 1 with a full Russian-language curriculum.

- According to a FB post by mayor Ihor Kolykhaev, that may be, but, when artillery shrapnel cut down the Ukrainian flag flying over city hall, despite the fact the city is supposedly occupied by the RF, citizens found a bigger one and replaced it.

- UAF air defense forces reported Wednesday was another relatively busy day, claiming seven combat jets, a helicopter, a UAV, and two cruise missiles.

- In Mariupol, based on news reports and official statements, RF authorities are forcibly moving civilians out of the city. Russian human rights activist Mark Feygin, in an interview with Ukrainian television, said the forced migration already can be described as mass deportation, with 15,000 Mariupol residents already transferred to a sorting center in Novoazovsk, or to detention centers in the RF’s Rostov Oblast’. The Kremlin’s intent, he said, is twofold: first physically to remove an anti-RF population from Mariupol, and second, to create a new manpower pool from which to draft new soldiers for the war.

According to an UNIAN news agency report, some Mariupol transplants are now in the RF Black Sea city Genichesk, many older persons quartered in the city’s Ukraine movie theater. At that location,. the report said, RF authorities were registering people to receive montly RF pension payments of 10,000 rubles ($USD 104) .

Russian Losses - The GCS made some interesting predictions about the RF army today:

- To replace losses, particularly in lower-level combat unit leadership, the RF is now calling up reserve officers and sergeants. It will remain to be seen if the RF will repeat the mistake made most famous by the US in wars from 1941-1973, and rotate individuals into badly-hit units, with all the personnel chaos and confusion that approach creates, instead of rotating coherent units in and out of the combat line, which is less efficient in terms of manpower, but fosters personal relationships and drills critical to an effective combat unit.

- Likewise, heavy equipment losses are obliging the RF to fill gaps in its tank and armored personnel carrier park with Soviet-era equipment from depots, because practically all modern vehicles in inventory have been committed to combat and somewhere between 25-35 percent of them have been destroyed. Over time, the estimate said, RF army equipment must deteriorate in quality, because of sanctions the RF cannot build many of the modern weapons it went to war with.

- 20 major RF defense companies, including the country’s only tank plant in Cheliabisk, has stopped operations due to component shortages.

- I’ll quote this one: “The Russian military leadership is beginning to realize that the available forces and resources are not enough to hold temporarily occupied territories and conduct defensive operations.” That, to me, is a declaration that the UAF fully intends a more substantial offensive.

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