The Ukrainian Armed Forces are like mushrooms; The Russian army is harvesting

By Marat Khairullin

Not everyone understands what is happening today in the main directions of the front, so let's resort to this analogy - the Ukrainian Armed Forces are mushrooms. Why? I'll try to explain now, but traditionally, we'll start from afar.

After the capture of Ugledar, the Ukrainian propaganda immediately changed the tune: now they explain to the proud Ukrainians that retreat is not scary. They retreated in 2022 as well, and then they went on and took the whole of Kherson. Now, they say, the Russian army will also reach somewhere, and then we (that is, the proud Ukrainians) will begin a counter-offensive...

The fact that all counter-offensives of the Ukrainian Armed Forces end in a bloodbath is something that the propaganda naturally keeps silent about, but the most important thing that the CIPSO keeps silent about is that by the fall of 2024, the conflict has reached a completely new level.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine in the fall of 2023, even after the counteroffensive of Bakhmut, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the fall of 2024 are two completely different armies.

In strategic terms, the Avdeevka-Pokrovsk operation was aimed at destroying the most combat-ready enemy units – the Khortitsa and Tavria groups. Now, the strongest core of these groups (mechanized brigades) has been smashed to pieces. For example, by last autumn the Ukrainian Armed Forces had almost 40 mechanized brigades - these are units that had their own artillery and tank battalions. In addition, there were 9 artillery brigades and seven tank brigades.

By the spring of 2024, the Ukrops formed seven more mechanized brigades, but there was nothing to arm them with - they remained bare infantry. By the fall of this year, the Ukrops have at most 14 combat-ready mechanized brigades, one tank, and three artillery. The rest are broken. Broken - this means that more than two-thirds of the personnel have been destroyed.

To understand this term in detail, let's look at the destruction of the 31st mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces this summer. After the Ocheretinsky breakthrough, the 31st brigade held the defense near the village of Progress on a front width of only 3-4 kilometers. The brigade included an artillery division (for the Ukrops, this is usually three batteries of 20 guns, including MLRS) and one tank battalion (for the Ukrops, this is usually 50 vehicles).

Ocheretinsky direction April 26th, 2024

By the beginning of our offensive, the 31st had a maximum of 20 vehicles left. After taking Avdeevka and Ocheretino, our troops held an operational pause for almost two months; with the resumption of the offensive in July, the 31st no longer had artillery or tanks.

Here, however, it is necessary to point out one important factor - since the summer of 2024, special counter-battery units have been operating in the Pokrovsky direction, whose task was to completely eliminate enemy artillery. There is no special information about these units yet, but, apparently, we are talking about mixed special regiments, in which units armed with Lancets fight. Experience shows that in the zone of action of these special units, artillery simply does not survive as a species. This is one answer to the question of the "total advantage" of the Ukrainians in UAVs.

In total, the Ukrainians concentrated 9 brigades in the area from Netailovo to Ocheretino, 4 of which were mechanized.

After our breakthrough to Progress and further to the Grodovka-Novogrodovka line, three mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces ceased to exist in full, including the special 47th brigade, special because it had 4 artillery divisions at once. The first division was armed with the M-109 howitzers, the second - with Gvozdikas (122 mm), the third - with MLRS (40 units), and the fourth was armed with anti-tank weapons (ATGMs and Rapiers).

There is no point in talking about territorial defense brigades - they are not troops at all but simply expendable material. If they are no longer supported by mechanized brigades, they are simply destroyed or scattered. The essence is very simple - as soon as a mechanized brigade loses its main striking force in the form of artillery and tanks, it can no longer hold positions. No drones allow holding territories - that's the basic mathematics of war.

A particularly interesting question concerns the seven additional brigades formed in the spring of 2024. The West was never able to fully arm them. The maximum that was achieved was to provide a very limited number of infantry fighting vehicles and some self-propelled artillery. This means that since the spring of 2024 the Ukrainians and the West have lost the ability to form full-fledged combat units capable of withstanding a modern battle. And our country, let me remind you, continues to increase the size of the army. Vladimir Vladimirovich (Supreme, happy belated birthday) signed a decree in August on the next increase in the size of the Russian army.

Experience shows that on the entire huge Donbass front from Ugledar to Chasov Yar, the Ukrops' artillery survives only if it constantly moves from place to place. A stationary artillery point is taken out within 24 hours, no matter how the Ukrops hide it. This means that our troops are advancing on the principle of a mushroom picker - the infantry is walking around the surviving positions and rummaging through the bushes in search of survivors. In fact, this is where the current speed of advancement comes from - it is the speed of a person who is forced to walk, loaded with a machine gun and a bulletproof vest with a helmet, around the multi-kilometer trenches and dugouts that the enemy has dug in huge quantities in the fields around the fortified towns.

A separate story is the cities where the Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to cling to, as they say, concrete. It is interesting to look at the recent history in Volchansk: our guys left the aggregate plant, the Ukrainians with joyful cries immediately counterattacked it - some kind of victory. Our Aerospace Forces laid down exactly three FABs (either one-and-a-half or three-thousanders) on northern Volchansk, and the aggregate plant is again ours by default. The same thing awaits Selidovo and Pokrovsk. The Russian Aerospace Forces strike group is apparently training in Volchansk, while the infantry on the ground is clearing the approaches to these fortresses.