New Phase Of Ukraine War (Or Not)

If you go to YouTube and do a search on words like "HIMARS ammo explosion", you'll get well over a dozen hits, most representing recent attacks from Ukraine's new NATO high-precision rockets and artillery into Russian rear areas. The resulting detonations of ammunition depots can continue for hours, and in recent weeks, multiple strikes of this sort occur daily. It's difficult to think this isn't having an impact on the Russian campaign: if the assertion is that they've been firing tens of thousands of artillery rounds per day, how can they sustain this rate if some tens of thousands a day are going up in storage instead?

This question has other ramifications, but I'm less interested in how the war is progressing than I am in how this question is being handled by some of our most prestigious analysts, viz, those employed by the Institute for the Study of War. Yesterday I posted on cogent commentary from the UK that suggests that whole cadres of prestigious corporate "knowledge workers" are so pampered and coddled that they serve as little more than domestic pets in the economic scheme of things -- and as I reflected, I began to conclude that the US university system is actually set up to produce a steady supply of such people. But they don't just go to Linkedin or Twitter, they also go to think tanks like the ISW.

I've said here many times that rather than the ISW, the two consistently best sources I've found on the Russo-Ukraine war are Markos Moulitsas's columns in the leftist Daily Kos and the ongoing reddit /r Ukraine Conflict thread. Yet US media almost universally rely on the ISW. Let's look at the contrast. Here's a report from over the weekend at the Daily Kos:

The first phase of the Putin’s War ended when Russia was unable to maintain supply lines to forces besieging Kyiv. The second phase shifted predominantly to the eastern Donbas front, where logistics were suddenly less important.

Russia was able to take Kreminna, Rubizhne, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk all within a few dozen kilometers of their main supply nodes—railheads. Note how the Izyum salient, with its longer supply lines, barely budged in three months. But to the east, not only could Russia avoid long, difficult lines of communication (supply), but they could literally send their tanks and artillery guns to nearby railheads to directly load up on ammo:

Russia is so incompetent with logistics, that they literally sent their heavy equipment to get their own supplies and ammo, rather than do what every other army in the world does—use far more efficient trucks. I can’t even imagine how many of these tanks and artillery guns broke down trying to get their own supplies. These vehicles aren’t [built] for long road trips.

But as stupid as that might’ve been pre-HIMARS (and other western long-range artillery), it’s now literally impossible. With Ukraine’s ability to reach out and touch anything within 85 kilometers of the front lines, Russia is in serious need of 1) new supply depots, well to their rear, and 2) more trucks to ferry supplies. And they better hurry, because their existing depots are going “boom!” every single night.

The report goes into considerable detail on the actual logistical challenges, and it concludes,

Thus, the war is entering a third phase. The Battle for the Donbas might be ongoing, but this is a new kind of war. Russia’s need to reach deeper into Ukrainian territory to contest the twin strongholds of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk will rekindle the same logistical challenges we saw early in the war. In fact, they’ll be much worse, because Russia will no longer be able to stockpile ammunition next to railheads for easy dispersion to the front.

Now let's look at this thread in the reddit Ukraine topic. It cites a paragraph in an unclassified US Army manual that covers strategy for defeating the Russians in a potential war, apparently dated some years before this war but after 2014:

The last major weakness of the Russian supply system is safety. Russian forward ammunition dumps are quite possibly the most unsafe places in any warzone. By doctrine, there are very little storage requirements, no minimum safe areas, little munitions segregation, and many of the munitions are still from the Soviet period or early 1990s and about to expire. Fuel depots are no better. Poorly trained conscript logistics soldiers, combined with these poor storage procedures make these supply depots a tinderbox ready to explode. Russia has suffered several catastrophic supply depot fires and explosions in the past 2 years of combat in Ukraine and Syria. Priority targeting of these areas will cause a serious logistics strain on the Russian system and impact their ability to use maneuver and fires.

Among other things, this adds credence to informal reports throughout the course of the war that the Americans have been running the show, based on both doctrine and intelligence. Every indication so far as been that this strategy has brought about the putative Russian "strategic pause", which is less a "pause" than a result of the US-originated Ukrainian strategy of blowing up their ammunition depots.

So what does the Institute for the Study of War have to say? This morning's report continues to argue with Ukrainian authorities:

Russian forces are in the midst of a theater-wide operational pause in Ukraine. This operational pause has been largely characterized by Russian troops regrouping to rest, refit, and reconstitute; heavy artillery fire in critical areas to set conditions for future ground advances; and limited probing attacks to identify Ukrainian weakness and structure appropriate tactical responses. As ISW has previously noted, an operational pause does not mean a complete cessation of hostilities, rather that ongoing hostilities are more preparative in nature.

They're continuing to respond, days later, to Luhansk regional head Serhiy Haidai's criticism that he hasn't seen any such "pause". I posted on this Saturday, and apparently the ISW still feels the sting. What puzzles me is that both published US military doctrine and serious reporting from a credible source suggests the "pause" is the effect of HIMARS and other NATO weapons on Russian rear areas, but the ISW won't hear of it.

I did a search on HIMARS on that page, and I found only three mentions at the bottom in the comtext of Russian milbloggers, of all things:

Russian milbloggers are increasingly criticizing Russian strategy and military leadership by seizing upon recent successful Ukrainian strikes against Russian rear areas. Russian milblogger Voennyi Osvedomitel’ underlined the threat posed by Western-provided high mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) and stated that HIMARS will complicate Russian logistics in a Telegram post on July 9.

Well, heck, do the milbloggers maybe have a point? The ISW won't say. As far as anyone who's seriously following the war thinks right now, it's probably entering a new phase that will look a lot more like the eventual withdrawal from around Kyiv, and the Russians' main task will be to overcome HIMARS and the other NATO weapons. The coming big Russian offensive will go the way of the 40-mile convoy.

I guess the main task of the ISW is to make sure they get the latest merch or something. Maybe they'll be having meetings on whether they need new coffee mugs.

The US is suffering from very serious intellectual deficiency -- not only is the ISW not up to the task, but the media whose job is to report on the war is also falling short by using them as an authoritative source. Remember, these people either have advanced Ivy degrees, or they're the proteges of people who have them. I would guess they're all basically just corporate domestic pets who've come from an expensive pet store.