Russia-Ukraine Flash Report for 5-27-22 10:15 PDT - Severodonetsk Salient Update

First order of business, there will be a SITREP today!

I had planned to do one yesterday but I lost Internet (local area outage) for about two hours during what would normally be prime review/editing time and I took it as an omen. It also left me unable to post beyond a couple of small tweets as the cell service here is oddly horrible for living in the land of technology. Something about NIMBY, no one wants a cell tower in their neighborhood, the terrain is bad...

It seems there is a lot of gloom and doom about the situation in Severodonetsk within the mainstream media. I'm here to tell you, that among the analyst community last night, we universally felt yesterday was a "good day." That probably seems counterintuitive.

Ukraine lost Lyman, Russians are actively shelling Bakhmut, the T-1302 Highway is a real-life version of, "you bet your life," morale of Ukrainian troops within Severodonetsk is low. What else happened?

Another high-profile pro-Russian social media leader is off the train. Zoka did a thread on Twitter in broken English (not their first language) on the complete failure of the Russian Air Force, and started with the Russian military has underperformed, but the Russian Air Force has been absolutely ineffective. He took a lot of heat for his stance.

Let's recap Russia's operational goals:

• Original goals, demilitarize Ukraine, depose the government, "denazify" Ukraine, expose Ukraine's secret nuclear weapons program and its plot to attack Russia, install a pro-Russian government, integrate Ukraine into Russia as a rump state - timetable for this - 15 days with a blitzkrieg to Kyiv to decapitate the government - President Putin spelled that out in a speech on February 23
• Secure the Donbas and southern Ukraine to create a landbridge to Crimea and pro-Russian states in eastern Ukraine - accomplish this by encircling the Ukrainian military by creating a line from Izyum to Donetsk, with Slovyansk as the center, then reduce the pocket of 40K to 50K Ukrainian troops, 25% of the entire armed forces until they surrender, get it done by May 9
• Hold a southern line to maintain the landbridge to Crimea, capture the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, rewrite history as this was our original plan, bypass Slovyansk by advancing southeast of it, move north of Donetsk, connect west of Bakhmut, encircle Ukrainian troops
• Secure a part of the Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast by advancing from across the Siverskyi Donets at Bilohorivka [Luhansk] and advance from the north at Popasna, encircling maybe 20,000 Ukrainian troops
• Secure the Luhansk Oblast by advancing from Kreminna across the Siverskyi Donets and from Popasna and follow the border of the Oblast, using terrain as much as possible as an advantage - subordinate effort to block the T-1302 by launching an attack toward Bakhmut - take every available military resource we have and throw it at this effort at the expense of every other axis - maybe surround 15,000 Ukrainian troops
• Plan F - push Ukrainian forces westward, give up on crossing the Siverskyi Donets, try to encircle troops at Zolote and Lyman, maybe 10,000 total
• Plag G - Bludgeon Ukrainian defenses with everything we have until there is nothing left to defend and they pull back - General Sherman, United States Civil War, march to the sea, scorched earth

Since the main offensive in the Donbas started on April 18, Russian forces have gained on average 800 meters - a day.  When you add up 800 meters a day since April 18, that's a lot of meters, no denying it. So far, there has been no "Ukrainian collapse" with the exception of one day south of Izyum in late April, when Ukrainian forces lost over 10 kilometers of ground in a day. They were overrun so fast, that they couldn't even get to their secondary defensive line. Since that day, the Russians have not moved the line of conflict on that axis.

Is the news good out of the Severodonetsk salient? No. It's not, it's not good at all. Our regular readers also know that we had assessed what has happened could happen. If Russian forces concentrate their power they can make short-term, targeted gains and capture Severeodonetsk.

Will there be more bad news? Yes, because this is war and war does not move in a single direction. To label what has happened over the last 14 days in Luhansk as a great victory is, bluntly put, rewriting history.

This hasn't been a good week for Ukraine, but Ukraine has had far worse weeks over the last 90-plus days. Sometimes, slowly pulling back to the next line of defense in an orderly fashion, to set more favorable conditions, is winning.