Russia-Ukraine Flash Report for 15 FEB 2024 13:15 PST - Some Good News From Avdiivka

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In Avdiivka, Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from the Zenith Air Defense Station and the Water Treatment Plant (not to be confused with the Sewage Treatment Plant by the terrikon). The tactical withdrawal was a success, with minimal casualties and very few resources abandoned.

Good news? How is this good news?

This was the right call. 

Due to catastrophic ammunition shortages and the establishment of Russian air supremacy, these positions were untenable. The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade was brought in to stabilize the lines and facilitate a withdrawal. Ukraine is establishing strongholds in the destroyed residential sector that Russia has bombed flat in the southwest, along the areas of the Industrial Prospect they still hold, and at the Avdiivka Coke Plant.

We haven't reported much on the situation west and northwest of the Krasnohorivka Plateau, but Russian forces continue to be unable to advance across the beet fields and are suffering catastrophic losses. 

ASSESSMENT: Had U.S. aid not ended on September 30, it is extremely likely that this withdrawal would not be ongoing. During the month of February, the Russian attacks followed the same pattern as Bakhmut. Storm Z and Storm V penal and volunteer, indigenously sourced troops from the occupied territories, and units with a significant number of foreign volunteers were thrown at Ukrainian lines. Recent prisoners and the examination of IDs and records from the dead show that many joined the Russian Federation Armed Forces in December and January. Soldiers with two to four weeks of training. Moving in behind have been VDV and GRU Spetsnaz units. 

It is an absolutely frustrating situation. 

Last year, we were firmly against withdrawing from Bakhmut, and at this time, the loss ratio was 1:1 to 1:3. Mid-February of 2023 was likely the darkest moment of the year. This is also about the time that political infighting between Prigozhin and Shoigu boiled over, and PMC Wagner Group was cut off from ammunition. Ehem, we assessed in October 2022 that Prigozhin's ego had grown too big, and either Prigozhin or Shoigu would be shown the door. We just didn't expect that door to be attached to an exploding airplane.

The attritional math improved, reaching 1:3 to 1:5 for the rest of the siege. PMC Wagner, by itself, suffered 41,000 killed and 16,000 permanently disabled - those numbers came from Wagner before it was destroyed by the Kremlin. Less than 25,000 remained, and many of those survivors have either left the fight or have been eliminated in Storm Z and Storm V units. Russia's Bakhmut losses don't account for the 1st and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic, Chechen Akhmat, or the Russian VDV and Naval Infantry Units that supported PMC Wagner during an offensive that took almost 10 months.

In a hypothetical world where Ukraine withdrew from Bakhmut a year ago, PMC Wagner still exists, and Russian forces likely occupy Chasiv Yar and Kostyantynivka. There is a struggle to hold Siversk, which is impacting the ability to hold on to Lyman and positions west of Kreminna, and Ukraine is still out of ammunition. Kramatorsk is under constant artillery bombardment, and Slovyansk is being hit by 10 to 20 UMPK glide bombs a day. 

Russia is going to have an extremely difficult time advancing west of Avdiivka because there is nothing there. It also means that one day in the future, Ukrainian forces will have to cross those same fields to take the ruins of Avdiivka back.

That was preventable.

However, in our final assessment, the right decision was made.

There was a lot of handwringing over the last two weeks that Colonel General Alexander Syrskyi would throw Ukraine's remaining resources into a meat grinder. Politico, The Daily Beast, and Al Jazeera ran headlines calling him a "butcher." Newsweek called his appointment a "last ditch effort to save Avdiivka."

None of those takes aged well.

In his first interview, Syrskyi said his strategy would focus on defensive actions and exhausting Russian forces through attritional warfare. He set a basement for the ratio of losses of one to seven. That is reasonable, even if it is on the higher end of what would be expected of a military fighting a defensive war. In Avdiivka, the math has been 1:10 to 1:13, dipping to 1:7 on bad days.  

The decision to withdraw came 24 hours after Syrskyi and Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov visited the front and talked with commanders. On the surface, this appears to be a purely military decision rooted in reality.

But what about drones?

The battle for Avdiivka exposed the three limitations of modern drone warfare, which Ukraine invented.

Sidebar: Twenty-five years from now, Robert "Maygar" Brodi will be considered the father of modern infantry-based drone warfare. Everything the world knew about late 20th-century battlefield tactics is outdated.

First, as throughout the history of war, weather still rules the battlefield. Fog, low clouds, high wind, heavy rain, freezing rain, heavy snow, and extreme cold impact drone operations. The weather was an ally for Ukraine from October to mid-January. Those fortunes shifted, and unseasonably warm weather created periods of dense fog. Russian forces took advantage of that. Artillery would be a partial solution. Some accuracy would be lost because there wouldn't be real-time ISR to direct fire.  

Second, while drones are great for attacking individual targets, vehicles, fixed artillery positions, and trenches, they can't be used like artillery to suppress large groups of troops moving in the open. Russian forces are reporting there are so many drones over Avdiivka that the skies constantly buzz. Some Russian soldiers are saying on social media that they no longer even hide when drones appear because it's pointless. Ukraine could blacken the skies with drones like the sentinels arriving at the dock in Matrix Revolutions, but it still won't match a fire mission of 155 mm HE for targeting followed by DPICM fired for effect.

The third issue is a combination of one and two. Artillery has an immediacy that drones don't possess. It is difficult to use 20 or 30 FPV one-way drones simultaneously to attack an advancing platoon and impossible to have 100% success. It is much easier to drop a couple of DPICM rounds or a fragmentation round set for an air burst, eliminating combat potential. 

When you have both - you have October in Avdiivka. Up to 1,000 Russian troops killed a day, and over 200 armored vehicles visually confirmed as destroyed. 

The map is going to be brutal in today's SITREP, but make no mistake, this is good news.