Not so wunderwaffen, meat storms

War news, July 1-7. Marianna's offensive against the generals. F16 doubts. 20,000 smuggled ammunition rounds uncovered. 14 brigades lost

The Marianna Offensive

On July 1, Zelensky’s political attack dog Marianna Bezuhla wrote yet another official letter of denunciation against current head of the military Syrsky and former head Zaluzhny to the State Bureau of Investigation, Security Services of Ukraine, Office of the Prosecutor General and Ministry of Defense. This is how she commented her latest act of selfless heroism:

It's a tragedy that nothing has changed. The principles of decision making haven’t changed. As a result, we have the current situation in the Kharkiv region, which repeated the preparations for the Russian offensive in 2022 and 2023

Bezuhla is surely one of the most annoying political figures in Ukraine. Despite having only medical military experience (she was trained in a US state department program), she’s taken it upon herself in wartime to become the top military expert, who constantly fumes at the army generals.

In doing so, it’s quite obvious that Zelensky is trying to divert blame for military failures onto the army. She even left Zelensky’s party in February 2024, which is another obvious attempt to present Bezuhla as an ‘independent voice for change’, rather than simply the presidential attack dog.

In particular, it’s an attempt to divert anger from nationalists and their western-funded liberal journalist friends away from the government. Unfortunately, top opinion-makers of the nationalist camp like Yury Butusov openly denounce Zelensky’s attempt to shift the blame onto the army, as I wrote here.

The government tries to present Bezuhla as part of the nationalist intellectual elite, and she constantly goes on the talkshows of the top western-funded papers, such as Ukrainska Pravda (where she makes an absolute fool of herself). She played a role in the removal of Zaluzhny, and is clearly pushing to get rid of Sodol. Not that ‘she’ has much agency here - it’s clear to all observers, as I wrote here and here, that she gets her orders from Mr Yermak.

Not so wunderwaffen

On July 3, Bezuhla accused the AFU of not doing enough to prepare infrastructure for the upcoming F16s. According to her facebook post, the commander of the army’s air forces Mykola Oleschuk ‘refuses to come’ to the parliamentary committee on national security ‘because he has nothing to say’. She went on to write:

From what I can say, unfortunately, the transfer of such aircraft to Ukraine will not change anything drastically. There will be no magical assaults or counteroffensives. Forget about it. Moreover, the infrastructure for them is still not ready, and the attitude towards pilot training from the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is beyond criticism. It feels as if this is needed by our partners, not us.

The well-known general Krivonos (a friend of former president Petro Poroshenko) elaborated on the problems the F16s would face on July 12. He proposed making Ukraine’s highways suitable for F16 take-offs and landings, in order to reduce the danger from Russian airstrikes on airfields containing F16s. Because of the dangers they would face, he urged against ‘considering them wonder-weapons’.

The well-known military volunteer (read: vulture of war) Serhii Prytula also warned Ukrainians not to hope for too much from the F-16s on July 2. According to the Telegraph on July 4, they are likely to be destroyed as soon as they arrive. Russia has also been upping its attacks on Ukraine’s airbases recently.

Zelensky made some more gloomy prognoses on July 10 at a press conference in Washington’s Ronald Reagan Institute:

The problem with the F-16 lies in the quantity and the dates. Let's be honest. Russia uses 300 aircraft against Ukraine every day. We are set to receive 10-20. Even if there will be 50, it's nothing. We are defending ourselves, we need 128; that's a fleet.

There are doubts about other western military systems as well. On June 30, Zelensky stated to a Philadelphia paper that Patriot air defense systems are useless against Russian glide bombs, whose development I described here.

Meat storms

Ukraine’s main military telegram DeepState shared desperate calls for help on July 3 from the 206th territorial defense battalion in the Donetsk region. It shared the following twitter posts:

We have a big problem with the 206th Battalion. They are being wiped out. There are many killed and wounded. Skilled fighters are being thrown into the meat grinder,"

- former soldier Roman Pelekh

We managed to get out of a suicidal mission by agreeing to another, also very risky, but at least with minimal chances,

"A black day in the history of our battalion: 01.07.2024. Mark this cursed day and the continuous nightmare here

- Roman Kulyk, commander of the 3rd company of the 206th

Kulyk published more on the ‘impossible goals’ set for them on twitter on July 4:

It has become an axiom of war – senior commanders overwhelmingly cannot or refuse to objectively assess the capabilities of their subordinate personnel. As a result of such shortsightedness/stupidity/criminal negligence, fantastical tasks are not accomplished, people die, are incapacitated, and when the ambitions diminish and it comes to realistic tasks, there is no one left to carry them out.

Kulyk, lefft

On July 5, more representatives from this brigade stated that bad leadership in the 41st brigade and lack of equipment had led to the loss of (the village in the Donetsk region) New York:

Our complaint is that there is no support. We are light infantry, Territorial Defense Forces, and we have only rifles and a few mortars. We are assigned tasks that even the 3rd Assault Brigade with its young guys and armaments might not be able to accomplish. For example, we received a combat order to send 10 people behind enemy lines to cut off their logistics. In a year, my platoon has received only two reinforcements, who were assigned a week ago. One was born in 1977, the other in 1968, both with health issues, and even they were later taken away.