Russia-Ukraine Flash Report 30 AUG 2022 14:45 PDT - I Know Things

In respecting Ukrainian officials' request for a complete media blackout - we won't share specifics. But I know things, good things. The things are not related to this picture.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and it will rush to fill any void it finds. That applies to the social media space too. With Ukrainian officials locking out embedded reporters for the coming week, confiscating cell phones from troops involved in the counteroffensive, and appeals for Ukrainian citizens not to share information, Russian bots, hired marketing agencies, and Pro-Russian milbloggers are rushing in to fill the void. They are repeating the lines out of the Kremlin.

Behind the curtain, in private Telegram groups, VK channels, and the corners of Live Journal, the people doing the actual fighting for Russia are sharing a very different picture that doesn't align with the Kremlin's messaging. If things were going as well for Russia as the public information space is claiming, these back channels would be showing receipts.

The biggest eye-opener we see from private Russian channels is a consistent complaint of a lack of artillery support and no air cover. Requests for fire support are going unanswered. This fits with our assessment that there were already signs that ammunition supplies were becoming limited. There was a fresh picture in the public domain of another banana-peeled Russian self-propelled artillery piece. If there is one, there is more. They've neglected maintenance and replacing barrels, which are now catastrophically failing. Before reaching that point, range and accuracy were severely impacted. No amount of expertise in artillery would be able to mathematically account for barrels that are that badly worn and make adjustments to put warheads on foreheads.

Back to the picture. This picture illustrates perfectly why the counteroffensive in Kherson oblast is not going to be the huge rush everyone thinks/expects it to be. Imagine trying to move through that territory to the next village, where they will see you coming from kilometers away.

I know we have new subscribers, hello! This is a good read from July 28 on why the counteroffensive will look less like Desert Storm and a lot more like the Pacific campaign of World War II. Some of the points on geography are out of date now, but our analysis remains valid.

The counteroffensive in Kherson will look a lot like the Pacific Campaign of World War II