More and more videos from Ukrainian units are showing their fatigue and declining morale, as well as their lack of equipment and support. We will address this in a dedicated post on http://lettrevigie.com, but this should raise concerns in Kyiv.
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Restart action and monitor Donbass center and Donbass N
21/ restart action. The battles on secondary fronts do not yet seem to affect the main confrontation. If the main part is playing out in Donbass N, we must monitor Donbass center where localized ruptures could also occur.
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Northern bypass and encirclement to clear Donetsk
19/ They seem to want to bypass it from the north and encircle it (toward Orlivka) so as to form a new pocket to be reduced by attrition. If this were to happen, the entire city of Donetsk would be cleared from immediate fighting.
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Fighting continues in Donbass despite reduced attention
In central Donbass, fighting continues and receives less attention. Yet, the Ukrainian forces had also been breached three weeks ago near Kamyanka. The Russians did not choose to directly besiege Avdiivka, a Ukrainian stronghold facing Donetsk.
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Risky Ukrainian forward battle decision, Russian pause
17/ Thus, the UKR decision of a forward battle is risky. However, RU seems less active in this sector over the last 72 hours: operational pause before resumption or need for more numerous and longer reinforcements to come in order to exploit?
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Bakhmout as RU tactical objective, isolating Slavyansk/Kramatorsk
16/ under direct RU fire. Bakhmout should therefore logically constitute the tactical objective for the coming weeks for the RU: this would almost completely isolate Slavyansk while bringing Kramatorsk within range (25 km).
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Russians take control of a 7×20 km area towards Bakhmut
15/ which is weakened, we will come back to that. But the Russians easily took control of a 7×20 km area and relaunched their action from south of Popasna directly towards Bakhmut, now pressed from the S and from the E. The road between Bakhmut and SK is thus contested.
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Abandonment of Svitolodarsk to protect Bakhmut, impact on Hirlovka
14/ Luhanske reservoir. The city of Svitolodarsk (20,000 inhabitants) was abandoned to avoid the risk of troops being trapped there. They were redeployed further north to protect Bakhmut. However, in doing so, the entire UKR deployment around Hirlovka
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Ukrainian strategy: hold ground and gain time
12/ One exchanges one or two of these factors for the third. This very simple grammar remains a valid analytical framework. In the present case, the UKR want to leave forces to hold the ground and gain time. Perhaps it is a matter of preparing a line of
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Ukrainian forces held in SK salient
From Komyshuvakha and Toshkivka. This suggests that the Ukrainian General Staff has decided to maintain its positions at the bottom of the SK salient, including SK, Lysychansk, and Zolote. Some estimates put the number of troops in this position at 10,000 to 15,000 (about 1/6 of the AFU).