Comments by "William Morris" (@williammorris584) on "Alexei Navalny 'murdered' in prison | Ukraine: the latest | Podcast" video.

  1. Ukraine inserted a reserve brigade, which was perhaps their only fresh reserve, to break the encirclement of Avdiivka and extract what they can of the defenders who must choose between surrender or flight across ground swept by Russian artillery and air-delivered ordnance. An appalling military decision presumably made for the sake of the information space. This debacle had been predictable, and was predicted by many for weeks. And with the Europeans disarmed by decades of fecklessness, Ukraine’s main hope is staked on the US House, which is in recess and whose Speaker has no inclination to bring the passed Senate bill to the floor. Unless cutoff positions have been prepared, the Ukrainians have just left their most heavily fortified positions on the whole front to face the Russians in unimproved terrain with battered units, albeit on a shorter line, and the Russians have cleared Donetsk as a logistical hub for further operations.
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  2. No, they just outfitted Avdiivka for years as a fortress and an artillery position to fire on Donetsk, and declared they would “defend it to the last”. No significance at all, just like the tiny and not-too-distant Prokhorovka had long ago.
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  3. It was extensively fortified and close enough to Donetsk to serve as an artillery interdiction position. At some point it was useful to produce attrition vs the Russians, since the attackers sustain more losses than the defenders. But at a certain point, as positions are degraded and the position is flanked, a salient becomes increasingly costly to the defenders, and difficult to supply as the neck of the salient narrows. And at the point that the position collapses, the defenders lose many more than the attackers, either as killed or captured. There is a balance point in such defenses when it becomes preferable to pull out and establish a straighter, shorter and less vulnerable line to the rear. Unfortunately Ukraine got politically invested in Avdiivka as a symbol that they could resist the Russians successfully. The Russians accepted the challenge, hammered in the flanks, ranged artillery all about, stormed the town, and won both the battle because they had more forces, more choices, and the Ukrainians were stubbornly anchored to a symbol.
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  4. devilishdeed is becoming the most popular commenter.
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