Getting prepared to clean the South

UKRAINE - In Brief 12 Jul 2022 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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The war again became very tough for Russians over the recent weeks. In fact, the war was tough for Kremlin from the very beginning but, at least, the Russians managed to make modest progress in Donbass when applying "scorched earth" tactics. Just to remind you, Russian forces managed to reach an incredibly high concentration of artillery in the area near Siverskydonetsk and Lysychansk, and with help of a massive 24/7 artillery barrage managed to break the front near Popasna thus creating an operational encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Siverskydonetsk and Lysychansk. Despite heavy losses from the artillery barrage the Ukrainian army kept Siverskydonetsk in the operational encircle for more than a month and withdrew both from Siverskydonetsk and Lysychansk in early July, probably, when Russians brought enough forces to close the cauldron.  The withdrawal from Lysychansk is not good, and it’s a clear indication of the efficiency of the Russian tactics of "scorched earth". But Ukrainian forces, despite heavy casualties, avoided encirclement and managed to buy several weeks of extra time for western weapons to arrive. And in early July we finally received a "cure" against the brutal Russian tactics of massive artillery barrage. A week ago there started working HIMARS and M270 MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket Systems) in different sections of the front, efficiently destroying dozens of Russian ammunition depots (Russian sources confirmed the results). The "scorched earth" tactics require millions of artillery shells piled close to the frontline to bombard areas of potential assault. With ammunition depots destroyed by the long-range MLRS systems, the Russian army simply canno...