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THE UKRAINE WAR
WILL THERE BE ENOUGH BULLETS? NYT: Moscow’s Military Capabilities Are in Question After Failed Battle for Ukrainian City 
Ukrainians with an anti-tank weapon on the front line in Bakhmut on Wednesday. Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times Original article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/world/europe/russia-military-vuhledar-ukraine.html Peter Burgess COMMENTARY It is February 2023. A lot of different things are going on at the same time, and it is very difficult to make sense of them all. This is not helped any by the media which gives one the impression that they have little or no idea about what is really important and newsworthy, and which is merely of entertainment value, or merely essential for the maximizing of 'viewership' or 'engagement'. This New York Times article is so much better than most of the video clips that are the medium for much of modern news flow ... but the long form article is more and more becoming an endangered specie. While the attention span of young people seems to be getting smaller all the time, and much digital media is getting truncated in response to this, I have concluded that there is a need for much greater sophistication in story telling rather than more and more chronic simplification. In some way, media must respond to this need ... not for me, but for the survival of a society that is worth a damn. Peter Burgess | ||
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Moscow’s Military Capabilities Are in Question After Failed Battle for Ukrainian City
A disastrous Russian assault on Vuhledar, viewed as an opening move in an expected spring offensive, has renewed doubts about Moscow’s ability to sustain a large-scale ground assault. Written by Marc Santora Feb. 15, 2023 KYIV, Ukraine — As Moscow steps up its offensive in eastern Ukraine, weeks of failed attacks on a Ukrainian stronghold have left two Russian brigades in tatters, raised questions about Russia’s military tactics and renewed doubts about its ability to maintain sustained, large-scale ground assaults. The battle for the city of Vuhledar, which has been viewed as an opening move in an expected Russian spring offensive, has been playing out since the last week of January, but the scale of Moscow’s losses there is only now beginning to come into focus. Accounts from Ukrainian and Western officials, Ukrainian soldiers, captured Russian soldiers and Russian military bloggers, as well as video and satellite images, paint a picture of a faltering Russian campaign that continues to be plagued by battlefield dysfunction. In recent weeks, Moscow has rushed tens of thousands more troops, many of them inexperienced new recruits, to the front lines as President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces seek to demonstrate progress before the anniversary of his invasion on Feb. 24. But raising further doubts about Russia’s offensive capabilities, Western officials estimate that a large part of Russia’s army is already fighting in Ukraine. Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, told the BBC on Wednesday that “97 percent of the Russian army” is in Ukraine, though he did not elaborate or offer evidence for the claim. U.S. military officials estimate that about 80 percent of Russia’s ground forces are dedicated to the war effort. 
Vuhledar this month.Credit...Libkos/Associated Press The fighting over Vuhledar has come at a cost for Ukraine, too, both in terms of casualties and in the vast amounts of ammunition it has expended to repel Russia’s growing number of ground troops. Kyiv’s allies this week expressed concern about their ability to meet the demand, raising the possibly that Ukrainian commanders might at some point have to limit shelling to the most important targets. Vuhledar, which sits at the intersection of the eastern front in the Donetsk region and the southern front in the Zaporizhzhia region, has long been in Moscow’s sights. It has been used by Ukraine as a base for harassing shipments on an important rail line supplying Russian forces. But as has happened in previous Russian offenses, including one in November, “the enemy suffered critical losses,” Col. Oleksii Dmytrashkivskyi, a spokesman for Ukrainian military forces in the area, said in an interview. He said the attacks on Vuhledar had been no surprise — the Russians even warned the Ukrainians of the coming assault through social media channels, in an apparent attempt to scare them. “It was announced and spread,” Colonel Dmytrashkivskyi said. “It was done to diminish the morale of the fighters.” As they have done throughout the war, the Russian commanders made some basic mistakes, in this case failing to take into account the terrain — open fields littered with antitank mines — or the strength of the Ukrainian forces, Colonel Dmytrashkivskyi said. Two of Russia’s most elite brigades — the 155th and 40th Naval Infantry Brigades — were decimated in Vuhledar, he said. In one week alone in the Vuhledar clash, the Ukrainian General Staff estimates, Russia lost at least 130 armored vehicles, including 36 tanks. That estimate has been supported by drone footage reviewed by independent military analysts and by accounts from Russian military bloggers, who are ardent supporters of the war but sharp critics of its conduct by top Russian commanders.
A photograph released by Ukrainian Armed Forces taken this month described as showing damaged Russian tanks in Vuhledar.Credit...Ukrainian Armed Forces, via Associated Press Mr. Wallace, the British defense secretary, cited reports on Wednesday that “a whole Russian brigade was effectively annihilated” in Vuhledar, where he said that Moscow “lost over 1,000 people in two days.” The British Defense Intelligence Agency reported last week that Russian units had “likely suffered particularly heavy casualties around Vuhledar.” Mr. Wallace told LBC News, a British news outlet, on Wednesday that the losses in Vuhledar showed the result of “a president and a Russian general staff that defies reality or ignores reality and simply doesn’t care how many people they are killing of their own, let alone of the people they are trying to oppress.” Many of the captured soldiers had been newly mobilized under a call-up Mr. Putin announced in September of some 300,000 recruits, while others had been recruited by the Wagner mercenary group, many of them from prisons, according to Ukrainian and Russian accounts. In recent weeks, a rivalry between Wagner forces and the regular Russian Army has opened up, with the mercenary group claiming that its fighters are more capable. Wagner fighters have led the bloody, monthslong Russian campaign to take the city of Bakhmut, 60 miles north of Vuhledar, while the forces in Vuhledar were made up primarily of regular Russian Army units, though some Wagner fighters were present, Ukrainian officials said. After months of unrelenting Russian assaults in Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces are in an increasingly precarious position, though the Russian gains have come at a heavy cost for Moscow and left Bakhmut in ruins. 
A local resident carrying humanitarian aid through a nearly deserted downtown Bakhmut on Tuesday.Credit...John Moore/Getty Images The Grey Zone, a Telegram channel that is affiliated with Wagner, has been scathing about the Russian military’s efforts in Vuhledar, and called for Russian commanders responsible for the losses to be held accountable in public trials. “Impunity always breeds permissiveness,” a recent post said. After Russia’s November attack on Vuhledar, which was also reported to have ended with enormous losses, Moscow turned to newly mobilized recruits to replenish its ranks. But those troops had just a bare minimum of training, military analysts say, and probably not enough to mount a serious, organized offensive. The Russians faced another problem in Vuhledar from Ukraine’s deployment of American-made HIMARS missiles that forced commanders to position large concentrations of forces more than 50 miles from the front. That made it hard to attack with either speed or surprise. A Russian marine who fought in Vuhledar told the Russian media outlet 7x7, which is based in the Komi region of Russia, that those who survived the battle were considered deserters. The marine, whose identity the news outlet did not disclose, citing the need to protect his safety, said he was part of the third company of the 155th brigade. After the failed assault, he said, only eight soldiers from his company were left alive. “It would have been better if I had been captured and never returned,” he said. Despite the setbacks, Moscow has continued to insist that all is going according to plan. On Sunday, Mr. Putin said that the “marine infantry is working as it should. Right now. Fighting heroically.” For the moment, Colonel Dmytrashkivskyi said, the large-scale Russian assaults have subsided, though the Russians are still attacking in small bands of 10 to 15 soldiers, probably probing Ukrainian defenses for weaknesses. If the Russians continue with that tactic, he said, they will be outnumbered by Ukrainian platoons of 30 soldiers. “They are going to their death, and that’s it,” he said. 
Ukrainian tank tracks lie across a thawing field in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine on Wednesday.Credit...John Moore/Getty Images Steven Erlanger and Natalia Yermak contributed reporting. Marc Santora is the International News Editor based in London, focusing on breaking news events. He was previously the Bureau Chief for East and Central Europe based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa. @MarcSantoraNYT A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 16, 2023, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: After Heavy Losses, Doubts Emerge Anew About Russia’s Might. The Russia-Ukraine War: Key Reporting and Investigations
To get a summary of the biggest news from the invasion sent to your inbox, sign up for the Russia-Ukraine War Briefing. The Times has also created a Telegram channel to make our journalism more accessible around the world. How We Verify Our Reporting Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs, videos and radio transmissions to independently confirm troop movements and other details. We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts. The State of the War
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