Early morning briefing by Russian Defence Ministry
▫️Units of the Russian Armed Forces continue to destroy units of the 54th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Currently, they are fighting for the capture of Novomikhailovka.
▫️The grouping of troops of the Donetsk People’s Republic, having completed clearing of Verkhnetoretskoe from nationalists, continued to pursue the retreating units of 25th Airborne Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and took control of Novobakhmutovka railway station. During the night, 3 tanks, 2 infantry fighting vehicles and 6 all-terrain vehicles were destroyed in this area.
▫️On the evening of March 22, high-precision long-range sea-based weapons struck an arms depot in Orzhev, 14 kilometers northwest of Rovno city. As a result of the strike, a large depot of weapons and military equipment of the Ukrainian troops, including those received from Western countries, was destroyed.
✈️💥Operational-tactical, army aviation and missile troops hit 97 military assets of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Among them: 2 launchers and 1 transport-loading vehicle of the Tochka-U tactical missile system in an industrial zone on the northern outskirts of Kiev, 8 anti-aircraft missile systems, including: 6 Buk-M1, 1 S-300 and 1 Osa combat vehicle, 10 command posts, 8 field artillery guns, as well as 3 artillery reconnaissance stations of NATO manufacture.
💥The Russian air defence means shot down 1 Su-24 near Izyum city, 16 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles in the air, including 3 Bayraktar TB-2 near Rozhin, Karashev and Maxim Gorky.
🚁💥The group of “night hunters” consisting of Ka-52 and Mi-28n helicopters destroyed 8 tanks, 5 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, 9 vehicles and towing trucks, 3 permanent fire position and 7 field artillery and mortars during night strikes.
💥In total, 184 aircraft and helicopters of the Ukrainian Air Force, 246 unmanned aerial vehicles, 189 anti-aircraft missile systems, 1,558 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 156 multiple launch rocket systems, 624 field artillery and mortars, as well as 1,354 units of special military vehicles were destroyed during the operation.
Comment by Amarynth:
The next analysis I post with a great big caveat. I cannot confirm this as to being correct with all the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted. The only reason that I post it, is that it reflects what we’ve seen so far in terms of Russian troop movements and progress. This is one coherent explanation that could help those that are not experts in watching military movements, weapons and strategy and optics of war and maybe we can do away with the meme and myths of ‘Russia is bogged down’, ‘Russia is moving too slowly’ and similar.
Really interesting analysis from a frennly anon on /pol.
Full quote:
>Ukraine spent several years preparing a 300,000 army to take Donbass in a 1-2 day blitz, and Ukrainian army groups were deployed across Kharkiv and Kyiv areas in preparation for “active defense” knowing Russia would respond aggressively to a massive assault on the Donbass region.
>The operation was planned, taught, and supplied by western governments.
>And the countless trips of western politicians to Moscow prior to the war were intended to slow down Moscow’s preparations for a counter-offensive. None of those political visits contained any clear talking points, they were just there to win time.
>Russia knew about the Donbass preparations years in advance, and constructed a pre-emptive war plan, to wage war with the benefit of having the initiative, instead of waging a reactionary war.
>Knowing that breaking through NATO-designed defenses the conventional way wouldn’t work, Russia instead used the tactic of “mobile groups” whose primary goal was to “rush B” bypassing fortified Ukrainian defensive lines, and abandoning any military vehicles that malfunctioned or ran out of fuel along the way, since speed was more important than size.
>The “rush B” units had to quickly take control of vital Ukrainian supply and command “nodes” behind enemy lines to make Ukraine’s tactics for “active defense” unfeasible, forcing Ukrainian units to redirect their attention inwards into their own territory instead of facing a Russian advance.
>These RU “mobile groups” were essentially Kamikaze units with a high likelihood of being destroyed within days, given that they dispersed themselves deep into enemy territory in small numbers.
>This is why Russia’s largest causalities happened during the first days of war, and why the MSM was talking about Russia running out of fuel and supplies on the 3rd day of war. They mistook the “rush B” units for Russia’s primary advancing forces.
>Russia has no intention of taking Kyiv. But it has every intention to harass Kyiv to divert attention. (ed note: this should be taken with a grain of salt as we do not know future plans)
https://thesaker.is/briefing-