Still Not Paying Attention

The video above gives what I think is a good representation of the current state of affairs in Ukraine. It's been produced and released by the Ukrainian authorities, but I've got to conclude that from what's available from open source intelligence, it reflects what must inevitably be taking place. (Basically, anything taken from a drone is from the Ukrainian government, but the problem is that the drones don't lie.)

First, at this point, the Russians are less and less able to move. The Institulte for the Study of War's summary of yesterday's action is pretty brief:

Main effort—Kyiv axis: Russian operations on the Kyiv axis are aimed at encircling the city from the northwest, west, and east.

Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations northwest of Kyiv in the past 24 hours for the third day in a row. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces prioritized reconnoitering Ukrainian positions in preparation for resuming attacks on Kyiv.

. . . Subordinate supporting effort—Chernihiv and Sumy axis

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces northeast of Kyiv “moved to the defense” in the last 24 hours and focused on replenishing supplies and conducting reconnaissance.

. . . Supporting Effort #3—Kherson and west:

Russian forces did not conduct any offensive actions toward Mykolayiv or Zaporizhia on March 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are gathering reserves, including additional VDV (Airborne) forces, south of Zaporizhia for a likely offensive toward the city but did not conduct any attacks on March 13. Russian forces may intend to advance to encircle Zaporizhia but are unlikely to have the forces necessary to do so while Russian forces in the south remain committed to the encirclement of Mariupol.

The Estonian reservist Artur Rehi updated his report on the video from the March 9 attack in Brovary, which I discussed in this post. He apppears to have revised his estimate of this encounter and now refers to it as a "battle" in the video below:

He also collects a number of individual videos that had been on YouTube late last week and identifies all of them as vignettes of the same battle, a defeat of the Russians at the battalion level. The bottom line is that the Russians have no choice but to move their columns along Ukrainian roads, while their unencrypted radio and cell phone communications are fully monitored by the Ukraine army; the result is that Ukraine predicts their movements, and they can pick them off with anti-tank missiles, artillery dialed in on GPS coordinates, and drones at their convenience.

It seems to me that this explains the recent lack of Russian movement around Kyiv or toward Mykolayiv or Zaporizhia for days on end. But the video at the top of this post also illustrates the next step: the Russians have been in static artillery positions that they have used largely to bombard civilian targets in the Kyiv area. With Russian armor effectively neutralized, Ukraine is now moving infantry in to eliminate the static artillery, positions.

This is all happening on a daily basis, as Artur Rehi points out. The Russian armored units that continue to move are regularly ambushed by Ukraine with horrific results, while their static positions are being increasinly mopped up as well. The puzzling thing is how little of this is reparted by any US media.