No one left to train personnel: war newsletter

HOI-4 and Ukraine, encirclements and frontal assaults, fiber optic drones, agonizing losses, dire infantry situation, fortification scandals, Azovites on Trump and peace

Time for another roundup of what frontline Ukrainian telegram accounts have to say about the week’s events.

Muchnoy Jugend, a frontline telegram I often rely on, poses with friends. January 17

Today’s topics:

• Frontline airborne troops serviceman Muchnoy Jugend rages at pro-Russian civilians in eastern Ukraine

• Frontline dispatches: ‘significant losses’, manpower issues, incompetent higher command, Russian advances reveal ‘no defensive strongpoints’, more Russian encirclement operations

  • ‘Unfortunately, the losses here are quite high. I still can’t understand why this area is so important to our leadership. For our soldiers, it feels like agony, and it only plays into the hands of the Russians. The longer we stay there, the higher the losses will be.’

  • ‘The enemy’s primary goal right now is simply to deplete our defensive resources so that we’re unable to hold other territories in the future.’’

  • ‘The situation with infantry is truly dire. In the Pokrovsk direction, the enemy is advancing at a pace that is only possible due to the limitations of our drones. There is literally no one left to hold the positions.’

• Takes on the recent renewed scandal (I wrote about this several weeks back too) on aviation personnel being sent to infantry

• ‘Mannerheim’s Son’ tries to explain the challenges of the past year on the frontline in terms of Hearts of Iron IV. Criticism of the newly-formed brigades of 2023

  • ‘The issue is that we’ve run out of personnel for brigade formation. There’s a lack of sergeants and officers at the company-battalion level. There’s no one left to train the personnel, share experience, lead them into battle, or even simply guide them to positions’

• More fortification scandals

  • ‘Troops at the front are forced to hold positions in the bushes, but no second line is being formed on already prepared positions. As a result, a few soldiers at the front die or retreat, and the Russians take everything.’

  • ‘Who is preparing Donetsk Oblast for surrender to the enemy? The administration, which operates as and where it is instructed, or the generals, who are ignoring defensive planning?’

  • ‘I recently visited the front. Kilometers of such positions stand completely empty, falling apart.’

• Thoughts on peace - not much pacifism among our militarists

• According to the frontline ‘Officer’, the mysterious North Korean soldiers are getting better at fighting

• Overall lessons from the battles for Toretsk and Kurakhove, now that both cities have been taken by the Russian army.

  • ‘The enemy demonstrated their ability to launch frontal assaults. Toretsk was attacked directly in this manner. Such versatility in overcoming defensive lines should not go unnoticed by those studying the enemy and analyzing their combat tactics. While the strategy of combining flank strikes with a powerful central push is nothing new—this was how Krasnohorivka and later Kurakhove were captured—the key point here is the choice of the main attack direction. In Toretsk, it was a decisive frontal thrust through the center of the city.’

• Weaponry: the Russians continue deploying their effective fiber optic drones.

In my last post, I translated a Ukrainian militarist account calling for ‘einsatzgruppen-style’ tactics against pro-Russian civilians in the east, following more videos of civilians greeting Russian soldiers. Here is such a video with commentary from our ‘favorite’ frontline telegram addict Muchnoy Jugend, January 13. His reference to ‘making things up’ refers to the refusal for several days by Ukraine’s high command to recognize the city of Kurakhove was under Russian control.