The voluntary evacuation of Kherson has been completed. I assume that this translates to the civilian part of the evacuation being completed. The second, military one, may take place soon too.
In the Kherson region, a mass evacuation of residents has been completed.
"The mass evacuation of residents of the right-bank part of the Kherson region has been completed. Residents of Kherson can privately evacuate without hindrance. The evacuation is not forced," Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the region's regional administration, wrote on his Telegram channel.
In the coming days, events are expected to unfold in Kherson.
"We are ready for any decisions, even the most difficult ones," Stremousov wrote.
Recall that back on October 18, the commander of the NMD, General Sergei Surovikin, called the situation in the Kherson region difficult and did not rule out making "difficult decisions."
Are we being prepared for some bad news to drop?
What are these ominous “difficult decisions” that we are being continually warned about?
Does this mean that the forward positions beyond the river will be abandoned?
This time, I thought I’d check in with what other sources of information are saying. SouthFront also mentioned the possibility of an imminent Russian withdrawal across the river in their latest video review.
They also mention the possibility of a Russian trap, but specify nothing. It begs the question: what kind of trap is even possible?
Just think: it’s the Russians who are threatened with being caught on the wrong side of the river, unable to retreat or resupply. It is the Russians who are outnumbered and outmassed in the region. What advantages does Russia enjoy that might be turned into a trap against the UAF? The only one that comes to mind is the fact that this area is open steppe. Russian artillery enjoys an advantage here because of the lack of cover. Other than that, literally nothing comes to mind.
“Why not hold the city?” you ask. Well, holding the city would certainly make the Ukrainian advance more difficult. It would make sense to make the city into a Mariuple in reverse, no?
Answer: I don’t know, really and I don’t want to act like I do. Frankly, I’m sometimes just as puzzled by why Russia does what it does as you guys are. But, we’re piecing things together here, bit by bit. Perhaps the Russians don’t want to have the city sieged and shelled because it looks bad? Well, we will see. Maybe they will. The Ukrainians still have to break through the frontline defenses for us to find out. The problem is that they almost certainly can break through if they attack en masse and in force like they did in Kharkov.
Another point worth considering: the 5D dunce-bloggers have been extraordinarily quiet about the Kherson situation over the last month. Not even a mention of it to condemn the latest batch of Anglo-Crusaderist-Pigmyist-Zionist demoralization disinfo. Perhaps they’re also afraid of what they see developing Kherson and don’t want to make any bad predictions publicly.
By my calculations, the Ukrainians still have a little more than a month of overwhelming manpower superiority to use against Russian positions. We’re at 80K mobilized (according to the latest Shoigu sit-rep) having been deployed, which means Russia is not even 30% reinforced yet. Also, to be fair, there’s that small new volunteer force thats finally been cobbled together, but I simply don’t have the facts on it yet. They’re probably somewhere near Bakhmut next to Wagner.
Are the pronouncements of both General Surovikin and now Deputy Stremousov a 5D trap to lure the Ukrainians into an ambush near Kherson or are they a way of softening the blow for when news of a Russian retreat hits the interwebs and TV channels?
I suppose we will find out soon? The anticipation is killing me. I can’t focus on writing or analyzing or thinking about anything else related to the war in Ukraine. It all seems to pale in comparison to the drama unfolding around Kherson.
However, if we take a step back and look at the larger situation, we see that no large Russian counter-attacks have occurred since the losses in Kharkov and Lyman. This can easily be explained as the result of a lack of manpower. However, when Russia reaches near-parity with Ukraine in about two months time, will that mean that Russia will lead a large counter-attack?
What if Russia wants the men just to fortify and entrench the current positions?
What if Russia just wants to defend the gains that they’ve already made?
It sounds absurd, and suicidally stupid … but de-escalation and a cost-saving defensive holding action may be the plan of the Kremlin going forward.
Let’s look at the reality;
Russia refuses to to fly inside enemy territory. Aircraft loss must be too high.
No blitzkrieg? Mechanized loses must be too high.
Guided artillery sparingly used. Artillery barrage is the only thing holding the line on both sides.
No sign of any war industry. Literally using up stocks. Over-Reliance on private industry and promises to ramp up existing production that probably only exists in the first place for the export market.
Non-stop desire to negotiate.
Existential war that’s not existential enough to try to overrun the enemy.
Unfortunately the current prognosis is allied forces desperately need to break the enemy through manoeuvre warfare, because they can’t face a reinforced enemy. Unless they get on their knees and start begging for negotiations, plausible at this point, then Russia is forced to counterattack. The electric grid is being hit for this reason. So any territory is technically open to surrender to get a better foothold. To say this is modern warfare would be insulting, I’m surprised they’re not reintroducing bayonets. How tragic what has been done to Russia. Thank God Ukraine is the most corrupt place in Europe.
I think they are there until they can't keep it anymore if that makes sense
It's becoming clear that Odesa is a pipe dream its about 130 km from the Dnieper to Odesa in a straight line.
Of course its not a straight line they would have to take a large part of the north of Nikolaev & Odesa into the hostile anti-Russian ethnic Ukrainian big land maybe up to Kryvyi Rih or allow a very difficult to defend northern flank, as if defending the land part of the Zaporizhzhia oblast wasn't hard enough.
It gets worse if they try for a land bridge to Transnita 250km from the Dnieper with an even longer land flank. Also the Odesa oblast goes deep in the SE near Romania, are they really going down there? near the US 101 airbourne & NATO with non-Russian population?
They probably looked at all this & reached that conclusion.
This is all the result of allowing the village idiot in charge back in the 90`s, the Ukraine crisis has been a slow moving car crash ever since, absolutely inevitable.
Putin did his best to mitigate things, but enemies waited patiently to act. He couldn't stop the time bomb that was set from 1988 -1999