The Peanut Gallery: November 6, 2023
Ukraine and Israel
Welcome to the Peanut Gallery! Your daily dose of unfounded speculation.
For newcomers, this is an amateur's take on the ISW daily bullet points. I know nothing.
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Correction:
Yesterday I called the Askold a cruiser when it's actually a cruise-missile corvette. I got it mixed up with a cruiser from the Russo-Japanese War that I was looking at for "research".
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Russian milbloggers appear to be grappling with how Russian forces can overcome wider operational challenges in Ukraine, likely in response to Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s recent essay on the subject of “positional warfare,” and not coming to optimistic conclusions.
Oh yeah, I think Zaluzhnyi's essay gave the milbloggers a bit of a kick in the ass. They've spent the past two days digesting it and they do not like what they're finding. It's a sober analysis of the strategic situation in Ukraine. It's not a fun read, especially if you're Russian. There's no chest beating and there's very little propaganda; it's just a professional discussing the difficulties of his trade.
It also runs completely counter to the Kremlin's narrative.
Zaluzhnyi is calm. He says the war is positional, that Ukraine is deadlocked with Russia because the ubiquity of battlefield intelligence makes surprise sweeping maneuvers impossible. Defense now reigns supreme, much as it once did in the trenches of the first world war. No, I don't feel it's a stalemate as Ukraine is consistently gaining an incremental qualitative and positional advantage, but an inability to exploit a breach.
These problems are mirrored on the Russian side. We see this in the catastrophic waste of life that is Avdiivka.
The difference between the two is that Zaluzhnyi operates in a political environment where he can perform this sort of analysis, whereas Gerasimov...has Putin for a boss. Problems cannot be solved until they are acknowledged. Case in point,
Select Russian milbloggers specifically argued that the use of small infantry assaults groups will allow both Russian and Ukrainian forces to better achieve operational objectives along the front. Russian sources suggested that some Ukrainian forces may already be fielding the small infantry assault groups that these sources are advocating for.
Small infantry assault groups are the new normal, at least on Ukraine's side. They use bite and hold methods which enable fierce, limited attacks that maintain the capacity for surprise. The goal is to take ground and endure, or hit hard and retreat. Ukraine can't afford to waste people. They can waste equipment; they can waste ammunition; but they can't waste people. Their population is smaller and much more sensitive to unnecessary losses of life. They developed these techniques in response to the heavy losses in the early days of their summer offensive.
The milbloggers want to mimic Ukrainian tactics, but they can't because small unit assault groups require advanced training. It isn't like sticking a conscript in a trench with a mosen nagant and a kiss for luck. A fireteam needs to trust each other, communicate, and use advanced equipment to the fullest extent of its capabilities. Ukraine has a wealth of combat veterans to draw upon. Even their mobilized are trained to a professional level. Russia threw their experienced men away in meat attacks upon Bakhmut and counterattacks around Robotyne. Wagner and the VDV in the early days might have been able to pull it off, but now? Blunt human wave tactics are the best they've got.
Imprisoned ardent nationalist and former Russian officer Igor Girkin argued that Russian forces will be “even less capable of offensive operations than they are now” by spring 2024 given the current nature of Russian offensive operations along the frontline.
I can't help but giggle at that title,
Imprisoned ardent nationalist and former Russian officer
Girkin was so patriotic they stuck him jail.
His critique is remarkably poignant, however. The Kremlin's assaults on Avdiivka are burning through manpower. Even if the Kremlin doesn't give a fuck about its conscript's lives, there's going to reach a qualitative point of diminishing returns. It takes time and effort to mobilize these people, and if Russia is just throwing them away then they aren't retaining experience. The army isn't getting any better in ways that matter.
I don't know how long Russia can keep throwing people away in Avdiivka. I legitimately don't know. Human wave attacks are effective in an overwhelming sort of way. Eventually every mine blows up, eventually ammo runs out, and eventually the position is lost. Eventually. And also eventually the tidal wave of bodies stops and all that's left are the corpses and the crows. Until that wonderful moment happens, however, these attacks will appear inexorable and Russian manpower bottomless.
People don't just appear out of thin air. Putin ripped them from their homes, from their families; that will have a knock-on effect. Indeed, it might already be happening,
The war in Ukraine is likely exacerbating an emerging identity crisis within Russian society resulting from tensions between Russian identity and Russian nationalism.
The RF nationalists are grappling with the sudden realization that 'Russia' is actually just St. Petersburg and Moscow. Obviously that's grossly simplified, but you can't have a 'nationalist movement' if the national identity is solely restricted to white cosmopolitan Russians.
Khodakovsky shared an anecdote of an unidentified Chechen general who, he claimed, conducted a "genetic study" to identify "the ethnic composition " of his Russian friends and found out that "Russian genes" were not dominant.
The recent pogroms down in Georgia lit this fuse. Whatever else they might be guilty of, Russian nationalists aren't antisemites (yet) and they were appalled by the violence in that airport. It seems to have sparked a bit of self-reflection, which might just be a good thing. If a concept of a Russian identity solidifies in a manner than doesn't include Central Asian immigrants then it could lead to some rather intense internal societal tensions.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on November 6.
Russia advanced minorly in Avdiivka amid another series of human wave attacks. The information environment remains opaque.
Ukrainian military observe Konstantyn Mashovets similarly noted that elements of the Russian 15th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Combined Arms Army, Central Military District) conducted a successful attack near Stepove and pushed Ukrainian forces out of a stronghold in the area.
At the moment I'm disregarding the schizophrenic claims of RF milblogger and restricting my interpretation of Truth to Ukraine's statements. If they say they lost a position then I'm inclined to believe them.
The Russian military appears to have increased its stock of high-precision missiles due to reported increases in Russian missile production more rapidly than previous forecasts had suggested.
There is no good news here but it is important to acknowledge it. Despite the overall crumbling of the Russian economy, they are successfully managing to smooth out their supply chain issues. High precision missile production is up, despite sanctions. We may need to recognize that China is playing a part. They are importing *tons* of Russian fossil fuels and their economy is on the fritz. The cold hard truth that we might not be able to ratchet up sanctions because doing so would mean using them against China.
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Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dismissed US calls for Iran to restrain its proxies in Iraq during a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al Sudani in Tehran on November 6. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—an umbrella group of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—doubled its rate of claimed attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria and claimed that it fired a missile at US forces. Iranian-backed Iraqi proxy Ashab al Kahf threatened to target the US Embassy in Iraq, which is consistent with calls for escalation from Kataib Hezbollah.
I am legitimately curious as to Iran's endgame. We tolerate their flagrant assaults against US assets because we want to keep the situation contained.
I'm noticing that the US stopped calling for a ceasefire and I don't know how to feel. Obviously we're no longer scared Hezbollah is going to enter the conflict directly, nor are we scared of popular Jihad. The declining responsiveness in the West Bank is confirmation enough of that, at any rate. But these attacks are blatant and intolerable. Blinken is clearly trying to address this issue in a diplomatic manner, but Iran isn't responding.
Note our attempts at a diplomatic resolution and the less than ideal response. If shit with Iran escalates, please remember that we didn't seek this conflict.
That said, I doubt we will respond with significant force until Israel finishes capturing Gaza City.
Israeli ground forces advanced toward the Sheikh Hamad Hospital along the northwestern Gazan coast.
And it looks like that might happen soon because Israel is pushing hard. That hospital lies dead center between the northern and southern groupings. It is the clear target of Israel's latest push. They are beelining for Hamas' command center.
By the sounds of things, Hamas is learning what it's like to face a first world military.
The IDF Air Force and Navy struck over 450 targets in the previous 24 hours, including Hamas military compounds, observation posts, and firing positions.
Holy fuck. That's almost twenty hits an hour. The collapse of Hamas' headquarters will likely mean the collapse of the city's defenses. It also means that hospital will likely to become a battlefield in the next few days. Be prepared for some hard hitting propaganda. If you'd like to help, it'd likely be a good idea to remind folks around you that Hamas built their headquarters under that hospital specifically to make them feel that way. They took hostages. They took an entire hospital hostage and now refuse to let them evacuate.
Israel must make every effort to avoid collateral damage. That said, if it happens, then it's on Hamas.
The Hebron branch of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade threatened suicide attacks against Israeli forces on November 5.
Oh God just sit down. These guys' entire membership disavowed them,
The group released a list of its members’ names, which it claimed defected from the Palestinian security services, on November 6.[32] A Palestinian journalist said they vetted the list on November 6 and reported that all of the individuals on the list disavowed involvement with the militia.[33]
These are the same guys who gave the Palestinian President twenty-four hours to declare war on Israel. I think these guys might just be the Palestinian equivalent to some homeless biker gang jacked up on crystal meth, completely delusional and feeling spicy. I sympathize with Mahmoud Abbas. Harley-Davidsons are annoying.
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Thank you for enduring today's rant. The Chonhar Bridge Happy Fun Time Betting Pool remains ongoing.
Kremlin-appointed Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova continued to promote the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia under the guise of vacations.
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'Q' for the Community:
How will this situation between Iran and the United States unfold?