Kharkiv Update, Sumy Invasion Next?

Kharkiv Update, Sumy Invasion Next?

welcome back spare parts Army I’m your average infan Chris Kappy I want to examine how the battle in harke has unfolded so far as the fog of war starts to lift then I want to take a look at recent reports that indicate Russian soldiers might be planning to invade sum oblast next we’ll also take a look at any diplomatic changes in messaging on either side the first thing you need to know is that in the harke direction the number of Border Villages Russia claims to have captured has now increased to between 9 and 12 the exact number isn’t what’s important though what really matters is how close is the closest town to hardc City one such close proximity town that appears to have been captured by Russia is Lansky the reason this is concerning from the Ukrainian Defender point of view is because the next town in line is lepy if that were to fall it could theoretically put harke within Russian Artillery range this is why I think the Ukrainian intelligence General said to the New York Times quote the situation is on the edge every hour this situation moves towards critical however it’s unclear what the goal is for Russian assault units at this point do they plan to continue forward with what Moscow has described as a buffer zone evidence that these claims of Russian advances are likely accurate comes from Ukrainian general of Staff who said quote at present the enemy has tactical success then we could take a look at this video that’s gone viral of what appears to be two Russian platoon marching within 3 MERS of each each other normally if you expected to receive fire you’d be spaced out much further apart instead they appear to be just walking into harke oblast which seems to possibly support the initial defensive lines did not work as anticipated but keep in mind that this situation on the ground is developing rapidly and the information is subject to change this report I’ve put together for you here is a curation of various different sources all of which have their own biases I made sure some were from the Russian perspective and some were from the Ukrainian one I too admittedly have my own personal bias but I think that’s part of being human especially if you’re talking about something you care about however it’s important for you to be aware of those biases we’ve seen reports of major shakeups in the Ukrainian leadership on May 11th just one day after the invasion of harke the Ukrainian Commander responsible for the defense of Northeastern front lines General hosin was relieved of his command and replaced by General mikola dropati dropati was responsible for leading the combat operations in recapturing the city of harison from Russia in 2022 the fact that the former commander in harke was replaced could be seen as another indication that the initial defensive operations didn’t go as planned in har Newsweek reportedly spoke to Ukrainian military and local officials in chonk who said that Russian Artillery shelling On the Border made it difficult for them to build proper fortifications it’s tough to bring in civilian construction equipment and lay down dragons teeth and drudge up trenches when you’re under explosive artillery fire what remains to be seen though what I would be curious about is if the defensive lines were created further back from the border in safer places this is something we will find out in the coming weeks to that point another viral video that I want to bring your attention to shows the opening moments of the assault from Ukrainian defense point of view inside a defensive fighting position you can see them firing their AK-47s and saying they’re Russian and there’s a lot of them you can even hear what appears to be Russian forces shouting at them to surrender these Ukrainian soldiers are outnumbered and within hand grenade range as they continue to return fire new information has come out that Ukraine claims 30% of Russia’s total 50,000 forces in this direction have been committed to the attack so according to this report from ABC who spoke to Ukrainian military leadership roughly 60% of Russia’s total combat power has been committed so far if you trust that Source it could be probing to see how Ukraine responds Russia might be waiting to see where Ukraine pulls reinforcements from along the front so they can choose how to redeploy that remaining 40% of soldiers it’s also possible a portion of those troops were Logistics and it’s also possible that they could be redeployed a 2 and 1 half hour drive away to kers oblast inside Russia so they could assault into Tumi oblast inside Ukraine as we’ll talk about soon the town of V chonco has become the focal point of the harke assault a report by Deborah Haynes of Sky News actually had the chance to speak directly with a Ukrainian defender on the ground in that town the Ukrainian solders shared Drone footage of the battle and said quote they are advancing in residential area of vonk and and are moving into people’s houses this is just the first wave they’re testing our defenses they’re preparing their artillery and then when they completely enter the town they will bring in their reserves he even explained the tactics that were being used by Russia saying they’re deploying small three to five man teams this is a unique strategy that we’ve seen used by both sides recently in Iraq for instance we only ever moved in groups no smaller than a 40-man platoon size unit with four armored vehicle and this was the same tactic used at the beginning of the war for Ukraine and Russia which has evolved over time the reason for this distributed approach is likely to spread out and exhaust Ukraine’s defenses it also increases the number of artillery shells Ukraine needs to expend per assault team It lines up with the trend of Russian troops apparently using more Chinese made ATV vehicles and motorcycles these light attack vehicles and recent assaults partly because it’s more difficult to locate and Target an ATV with drone attacks we’ve seen this increasingly being adopted by the US military as they acquire thousands of infantry Squad vehicles and motorcycles themselves a move that shocked people a few years ago when that transition started to what they now call anti-tank hunter killer teams in the Infantry the downside is of course they’re more vulnerable to direct fire according to reports Northern vul chonk has Russian infantry inside of it and it’s currently being contested if you found the report valuable so far in any way spare parts Army please hit the like And subscribe button to promote it to more people a lot of people ask me what spare parts Army means it’s a reference to my old Squad in the Army we were made up of backfills stop-loss guys who had been out for years who were called back in and reclassed who were switched from Engineers to infantry that’s how we got our nickname spare part Squad were there any changes in diplomacy and messaging at the state level due to Russia’s advances in harke there was a surprise two-day VIs visit from US Secretary of State Anthony blinkin to Ukraine the fact that it wasn’t mentioned in advance suggests it was in direct response to the situation in harke possibly from a diplomatic point of view the visit by Anthony blinkin is designed to show the Ukrainian people and military personnel that the US support is still there it was the first high-profile visit since the $60 billion Aid package was renewed Anthony blinkin tweeted that he discussed increases in anti-air assets like two Patriot missile launchers specifically for the har region blinkin said us weapon supplies should be reaching the front lines now on May 13th another update caught my eye that was issued by Denmark they gave an update on the timeline for when F-16 Fighters might arrive in Ukraine they stated it would be within 1 month but that was later corrected to within a few months that delivery has been stalled by over 6 months for unknown reasons Denmark and the Netherlands have said that would deliver 61 f-16s in total these updates on weapon supplies and surprise visits are likely not a coincidence they’re probably time to show support to Ukraine how effective that support will be remains to be seen Ukrainian intelligence general banov made a comment to the New York Times and I’m actually curious to hear what you guys think about it because from my point of view I can’t understand the reasoning behind it he said to the New York Times in a video interview on May 11th quote all of our forces are either here or in Chase are I’ve used everything we have we don’t have anyone else in the reserves this appears to be breaking opsac or operational security he appears to be revealing information about the Ukrainian troop strengths to the public which from a strategy or intelligence point of view I can’t understand sounds like either a blunder or it could be purposeful disinformation considering he’s the head of intelligence anything’s possible but if you have a theory about why he said that please share it with me on the task and purpose Discord server I’ll be chatting with you guys there for a few hours after posting this Chase of Yar is of course the location about 10 km to the west of bmot where Ukrainian forces fell back after bmot fell the Strategic value of this location has been hotly debated with some saying it’s just another town while many saying it’s geography give it a Hilltop view of the surrounding area and make it an ideal springboard into deeper Ukrainian territory so far though as of May 14th Russian forces have yet to make an operational breakthrough in Ukraine’s front line and it appears this assault in harke is an attempt to speed that process up the head of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Agency general budanov made an assessment that he expected Russia to launch a new ground attack into sum oblast within the next few days whether his analysis is correct or not we’ve already observed signs of some crossborder intrusions and potential shaping operations here Russian assault units have deployed near the sui oblast further to the north where they just invaded Haro blast Russian troop movements here reported near the town of Sudan according to Reuters this is the location of the last remaining pipeline through which Russian natural gas transits into Ukraine to European customers after the nordstream pipeline was blown up we know that the Russian 128th separate guard motor rifle Brigade and the 71st guard motorized rifle regiment are deployed in the Russian KK oblast tier it’s where the KK Airbase is located you Ukrainian drone attacks have repeatedly hit this Air Base as bombers fly from here to attack Ukrainian infrastructure the Russian 53rd anti-aircraft missile Brigade as well as the 448th missile Brigade is stationed here Russia has multiple repair and storage bases and Logistics centers that would be necessary for them to launch a ground assault from what we do know is that the Russian spetnaz units or essentially Special Forces sabotage teams have been operating in Sumi oblas that inreased rates in the last two months a pro-russian mill blogger named condo reported that they have systematically been eliminating Ukrainian border guards in sui in the past month the center for Eastern studies also corroborated these reports of spetznaz forces saying on March 17th Ukrainian forces prevented three Russian sabotage and reconnaissance groups from penetrating deep into sui oblast Moscow claims these attacks were due to Ukrainian activity in the Border in KK region the reason we might see a Russian attempt at assaulting in Tumi is because they claim the Ukrainian Military Intelligence has carried out their own infiltrations into the KK side since March Ukraine has repeatedly hit electrical and oil refineries inside kers if moscow’s goal is to create a buffer zone it would hypothetically make logical sense that they would make a move here based on their own stated line of reasoning reports on April 1st from Ukraine’s military confirm these sabotage attempts were occurring in early last month in April however they reported repelling those intrusions Russia’s artillery shelling and missile strikes have also increased in Sumi in the past month indicating potential shaping operations here within a 24-hour period on May 12 there were 21 missile attacks within Ukraine sum oost this includes airdropping landmines directly onto the small Border Town of serida airdropping landmines is a tactic that goes all the way back to World War II to and it could be used for various reasons include denying Ukrainian Defenders freedom of movement an attempt to pin them down in place could also see these tactics as seen them as shaping operations for an offensive or an attempt to prevent reinforcements from moving to harke only time will tell which one it is it might sound a little confusing but Sumi oblast is both the name of the region it’s also the name of a city in that region that City sui has a population of 250,000 people making it the 23rd largest in Ukraine the city itself has come under frequent missile and Rocket attacks ever since Russian forces withdrew in 2022 after nearly surrounding the city during the initial Invasion according to a recent Wall Street Journal report Russia has increased their missile and drone strikes by 45% in the past 6 months at the same time Ukraine’s missile interception rate has dropped from 73 to 30% largely due to a lack of anti-air Munitions from the West in response to that increased pressure in sui Ukrainian authorities issue a recommendation to two Sumi towns to evacuate 10 km from the border the pro-russian mil blogger K Adriel claims that the immediate border has already been cleared of Ukrainian landmines and Engineering obstacles by Russian forces although I couldn’t independently verify that information from what I could dig up the picture here has quickly changed because only 2 months ago on March 18th a spokesman for the operational command north of Ukraine vadom meny said quote we are not currently seeing a large enemy group for a large-scale invasion of Sumi region he stated Ukraine was strengthening their fortifications with three lines of defenses here the reason this is potentially a significant development is because if Ukraine has to send reinforcements to harke and also Sumi oblast they’ll be stretched out across the front line even further which many people believe that’s Russia’s goal to create an operational Breakthrough by spreading their troops out similar to some military leadership shakeups in Ukraine Russia just had their own the Russian Ministry of Defense Sergey Shu the Russian Minister of Defense Sergey shogo has been replaced after 12 years of service some say surprisingly by an economist without military experience named Bosa but other experts believe this makes perfect sense since Russia’s pouring vast amounts of money into the defense industry now and it will require Financial experience to manage those resources before you ask no it doesn’t seem like Sergey will accidentally fall out of window or end up on an exploding plane it looks like he’s being given a lateral style move where he isn’t technically taking into motion but he won’t be involved in the day-to-day shaping of the Russian military when we think of a minister of defense it’s easy to accidentally think of this position as an actual military planner or a field General when in reality none of those skills of an actual Soldier would really translate to be useful in this job in the USA for example the analogous role as a secretary of defense they’re in charge of budget and big picture devotion of resources I think of it like I wouldn’t want a really young athletic doctor I want the old dude who looks like he’s been around and knows the game maybe I should pick doctors better though on the fifth day of Russia’s opening up of a new front line there remains a lot of unanswered questions about how far they will attempt to push if they will try to start lobbing artillery shells into harke if they can it’s still not clear if Russia intends to make ground assaults in Tumi but join our community in the task and purpose Discord server if you want to discuss this further with me I’ll be chatting there with you guys for the rest of the night I’m your average infan Chris Cappy thank you guys for watching signing off this net time now