"Russia Taking 'Operational Pause' in Ukraine, Analysts Say"

This seems to be one of those days where the conventional wisdom floods the web. But this had been one of those mornings where I sat up in bed suddenly thinking I remembered there'd been a Russian "operational pause" back in March, just before they completely withdrew from Irpin and Bucha and gave up the attempt to encircle Kyiv. So as soon as I finished my coffee, I started doing web searches, but no matter how I phrased my search, all I got was the latest "Russia Taking 'Operational Pause' in Ukraine, Analysts Say" from all the usual suspects, to the tune of over a million hits.

Whence do these pearls of conventional wisdom emanate? One guess.

Foreign analysts say Russia may be temporarily easing its offensive in Ukraine as the Russian military attempts to reassemble its forces for a renewed assault.

On Wednesday, Russian forces made no claimed or assessed territorial gains in Ukraine “for the first time in 133 days of war,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. The think tank based in Washington suggested that Moscow may be taking an “operational pause,” but that it does not entail “the complete cessation of active hostilities.”

But apparently the ISW got some pushback, from Ukraine of all places. Yesterday's assessment explained it all to the Ukrainians, as well as to the rest of us:

Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian forces are not conducting an operational pause as of July 8 and are continuing to shell settlements and deploy additional tank units to Donbas. Haidai’s statement likely reflects confusion about the meaning of the expression “operational pause” and how such a “pause” actually manifests on the ground in a war. US military doctrine considers the role of operational pauses in warfighting and campaigning in some detail. It notes that “Normally, operational pauses are planned to regenerate combat power or augment sustainment and forces for the next phase.”

Well, there you are. According to US doctrine, about which Mr Haidai is clearly confused, the Russians are supposed to be regenerating combat power and augmenting sustainment, among other vague and gaseous things. This was the sort of stuff that had me snoring in Military Science class, until I realized I could reduce complication in my life by snoring more comfortably in bed instead of in Military Science class, at which point ROTC assisted me in reducing the complication further and threw me out.

The problem is that as far as I can tell, the analysts at the ISW all have advanced Ivy League degrees in Russian Studies, but by and large don't have the actual military experience that would even qualify them to get thrown out of ROTC. And I did have to study logic in school, where I did better at staying awake and developed the ability to ask why the ISW would say this:

The Russian military command, which announced an operational pause on July 7, has apparently recognized the need for a pause given the state of Russian forces at this point in the campaign.

but turn around and cite US military doctrine at length in support of their argument. Do the Russian generals have a set of US manuals on their bookshelves that they use to formulate policy? The condescending tone of the ISW assessment suggests Mr Haidai's remarks maybe hit them in a sensitive area. I pretty much gave up on following the ISW a couple of months ago; their assessments are poorly written and repetitious -- and for the life of me, I can't undertrand how it takes three or more credentialed mandarins to churn out a couple thousand words of obtuse, jargony boilerplate a day.

Anyhow, here's Wikipedia's account of the Battle of Bucha's late phase back in March:

On 22 March, the head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Pavlyuk, stated that Bucha and Hostomel were under the control of the Russian army and that no Ukrainian offensive actions could be taken there at the time. The main task of the Ukrainian military was to prevent Russian forces from crossing the Irpin River.

On 29 March, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin announced that the Russian military would reduce its activity near Kyiv and Chernihiv. By 31 March, Ukrainian forces were moving into Bucha amid a general Russian withdrawal in the area, resulting in heavy fighting with local Russian troops.

I'm convinced that the phrase "operational pause" was also being used to describe the Russian reduced activity near Kyiv at that time, but the current blizzard of stories makes it extremely difficult to locate references from back then. However, until the Russians actually pulled out of Hostomel, Irpin, and Bucha, the conventional wisdom continued to be that the "40-mile convoy" had not yet begun to move, but when it did, it was curtains for Ukraine. Then those stories all disappeared.

What very few people seem to connect is the odd coincidence of exploding Russian ammunition stored behind the lines with this new "operational pause". As described by the Kyiv independent:

It is an almost everyday occurrence in the Russian-occupied parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Russia’s ammunition depots blow up, with large fires erupting as tons of ordnance detonate for hours. Some of these incidents cause giant blasts with a radius of hundreds of meters.

Now that Ukraine has acquired advanced Western artillery and rocket systems, it has gradually begun a campaign to take out Russia’s key military infrastructure. Over the last four weeks, nearly 20 Russian ammunition depots in Russian-occupied Donbas and Ukraine’s south, including some of the largest, have been hit or completely destroyed.

The response of most observers to this undeniable development has been to fall back on the 40-mile convoy theory: the Russians may be reducing activity, or pausing, or whatever it is they're doing now, but just wait til that 40-mile convoy starts moving! Then it's curtains for Ukraine! The current version of that is the idea that once Russia resustains its operational resustainability for the next phase or whatever they think they're doing, they're gonna go right back to shooting tens of thousands of artillery rounds per day and just keep grinding forward, and then it's curtains for Ukraine!

I don't see it. There are only so many artillery rounds, and many tens of thousands of those are now verifiably blowing up every day in depots behind the lines. This whole business of "operational pause" is dezinformatsiya. My guess is that, as it was around Kyiv, the pause is the calm before they pull back in the Donbas.