Russia-Ukraine Flash Report for 6-28-22 10:45 PDT - Severodonetsk & Lysychansk Update
Added 2022-06-28 17:59:07 +0000 UTCAlexander Stryuk, the now exiled mayor of Severodonetsk, gave an update on the situation in the shattered city. An estimated 7,000 to 8,000 civilians remain. Russian forces are not permitting civilians to evacuate to Ukrainian-controlled areas - they can only evacuate into Russian-controlled regions for "filtration." The city has no water, sewer, natural gas, or electricity. It is important to note that public utilities have been disabled for months. Russian forces are not allowing humanitarian aid into the city.
There are a lot of rumors that Ukrainian forces are evacuating Lysychansk or will imminently evacuate. Igor Girkin reported on his Telegram channel that Ukrainian forces would be fully withdrawn by the end of the day. Unlike yesterday, where we had clear skies and great intelligence from satellite and NASA FIRMS, today's satellite passes aren't over combat areas, and NASA FIRMS had an outage for several hours this morning.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has tightened OPSEC to a level that, candidly, should have been in place since day one. We know the Chechen TikTok crew were killed in combat. There was a Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) public affairs representative who was even worse at operational security - it appears he has also been killed in action. There has not been a report from him or his unit in almost a month.
Other Pro-Russian reporters are currently "in the rear with the gear." in Izyum (the city), Luhansk (the city), and Donetsk (the city).
Russian state media reports create a ton of work for us to find the truth intertwined with the distortions. We hated the time it took to dissect the reports, but we are missing the intelligence they provided.
ASSESSMENT: We know there is intense fighting for control of the Verkhnokamyanka Oil Refinery. The abandoned facility is adjacent to the T-1302 Highway. If and when Russian forces gain control, the Siversk-Lysychansk Ground Line of Communication (GLOC - aka supply line) will be completely severed. Ukrainian forces may be planning to withdraw from the area.
The next line of defense is at Sivesk and then Soledar and Bakhmut. The satellite images we shared yesterday showed that Russia's use of indiscriminate and overwhelming amounts of artillery made the situation in the Hirske-Zolote salient untenable.
Comments
It’s incredibly frustrating. The thing is it’s not new. All of us in the west though that this has changed in the last decade or so, but it looks like things remained the same. Deficient command and control structure combined with outdated tactics, training are not a recipe for success. However, the main issue is concentration of power in basically any dictatorship when everyone is terrified of those at the top because there is no legal recourse against those in power. So people at lower level hide all the faults and report up false and cheerful things. The whole system is rotten.
Anton Poliakov
2022-06-28 22:14:38 +0000 UTC
