Battle for the AZOM Industrial Complex and urban attrition

Let's recap Russia's tactical history on the Bakhmut front:
After nearly 6 months on frontal assaults against Bakhmut they resorted to efforts to envelope the city via footholds gained on Soledar on the northeast and the heights of Klishchiivka on the southeast. The offensive on Soledar culminated the Wagner penal battalions with 10000-20000 casualties and conventional forces such as the 76th Airborne Division joined in to renew the offensive. Since then the Russian command has been intermittent between frontal assaults and infiltration tactics, and maneuvers to cut-off the T0504 highway and other important roads to the north, in general they failed to create an encirclement or an envelopment because Ukraine launched successful localized counter-attacks near those key routes. According to ISW Russia managed to mount a turning movement: pressuring important supply routes to force the ukrainians to abandon fortified positions based on a calculated risk of attriting the enemy force vs being encircled; this favors Russia because they wouldn't have to engage fortified positions with the combat power shortage they are facing. However, the russians have failed so far to complete a turning movement because the Ukrainian didn't take the bait and frontal assaults on the northwestern part of Bakhmut is back on the menu, and this time on the AZOM Industrial Complex.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >In the north of Bakhmut, Russian troops launched an active offensive against the AZOM plant
    >Assault groups entered the Artyomovsk Metal Processing Plant from the north and began moving deep into the territory of a huge enterprise with dense industrial buildings and a network of underground utilities that go underground up to a dozen floors.
    https://crimeapress.info/bahmut-artemovsk-obstanovka-segodnya-11-marta/
    >Russians are confirmed to be within 800 meters of the AZOM complex
    >https://twitter.com/georgewbarros/status/1634325254154616837
    >The apparent focus on a Russian assault on the AZOM industrial zone (a heavily built-up complex of multiple buildings) indicates that Russian forces are prioritizing a frontal assault on fortified positions in a tactically challenging industrial area instead of opting for a wider encirclement of western Bakhmut via attacks on Khromove. This assault will likely be very costly for the Wagner Group
    >https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-10-2023

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Western intelligence estimates Russia suffered 30000 casualties on the Bakhmut front but battles on more tactically challenging environments like the AZOM complex and the urban network in western Bakhmit (covered by the Balhmutka river) are just about to start and we have seen Russia doing poorly on these scenarios before.
      How far can Russia go in attriting their forces on Bakhmut?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They will lose more people on Bakhmut than the number of people that was living there

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Why in the world would they assault something like this instead of going around? Even if they take it, then what?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They tried to go around but stalled out before they could close the noose. Mostly because they dont have the numbers to stretch the front that far. They had to stop pushing the southern pincer in order to make progress in the north, then the north advanced far enough that it was open field ahead just in time for positive temp and the rains to start. They have fire control over the roads in and out of the city but its not enough to cut it off completely

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Ukraine needs to ramp up Russian casualties with powerful weapons. THEN the Vatnik scum won't have the fricking numbers to encircle the city.

          Hit those flanks Ukraine! Hold the river!

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        My best guess, and this is me being most generous, is that there are only a few roads that the Russians can drive on. The fields are mud, the dirt roads are mud, many roads lead to demolished bridges and traps made of mines and aimed guns, so this allows the Ukrainians to build forts along the few roads the Russians can drive on.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    not reading that wall of text bruh learn how to use the enter key

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      calm your ADHD long enough to read something longer than a shitpost maybe?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >use enter key and make structured easy to read paragraphs
      >"reddit spacing didnt read"
      How do you win

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        That's not what reddit spacing is. Reddit spacing means separating every line you write, because of how the formatting on reddit works, which doesn't translate to other sites. Writing a paragraph, then spacing out the next paragraph is not the same as reddit spacing.
        Granted, most posts on PrepHole aren't really long enough for that to be an issue, given that almost no posts come close to the character limit.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/world/europe/wagner-russia-cemetery.html
    >Western intelligence agencies, the Ukrainian government and a prisoners’ rights association, Russia Behind Bars, estimate that around 40,000 inmates have joined the Russian forces since July — about 10 percent of the country’s prison population. Ukrainian officials have claimed that nearly 30,000 of them have deserted or been killed or wounded, but that number could not be independently verified.
    Sorry, but Wagners are already dead... according to Ukraine

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Convicts were redeployed to southern Ukraine, the Wagner operators now fighting in Bakhmut are a quality force.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Most convicts were redeployed to fertilize the fields actually.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        If by Southern Ukraine you mean Hell then ok lol

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I mean those guys we saw at the bus station.

          Why in the world would they assault something like this instead of going around? Even if they take it, then what?

          I don't know. A plausible answers is that they are conditioned to fight this way as a high-attrition force so for them this is the simplest and most obvious method. Going around only works if they can pull a coordinated attack on the north and south, simultaneously but Ukraine has frustrated that with counter-attacks here and there.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Were those the guys that got ACK'ed! maybe a week or two ago in those strikes on Melitopol?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Likely, they have a HQ in Melitopol since at least december and several precision strikes were recorded there recently. Ukraine targeted a bus production facility in Mariupol that was transporting the gaynerites to other towns in southern Ukraine.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      According to the US.
      >Over 30,000 mercenaries fighting for the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group have been killed or injured since the Ukraine war began, US officials say.
      https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64685428.amp

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >30k casualties
        I think that a long running siege like this could easily accur such losses bu these reports of 20-50k dead are a little too unbelievable, even for the Russians but if we count the injured it could easily be that number

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Most reports count killed and injured, it's quite hard to accurately detail only those who have died. The point is that so many were killed or injured before what perhaps will be the most attritional phases of the siege

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Isn't the general rule that for every KIA there are like three WIA?
            If it is like that and there are 30-40k casualties I could easily see them taking 9k dead after so many months.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >Isn't the general rule that for every KIA there are like three WIA?
              If the force in question has a functioning medivac system running

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Some have criricized that ratio as inappropriate for this war.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              highly variable depending on circumstances. the us had 1.8:1 in ww1 and reached something like 24:1 by the end of iraq.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                IIRC the mere introduction of easily usable tourniquets and self/buddy aid training to use them brought it from 2:1 to 6:1 or something. A LOT of soldiers died due to blood loss from severed arteries.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >bu these reports of 20-50k dead are a little too unbelievable
          It's been a year of constant setbacks. If anything, it's too conservative.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            It's easily 150k KIA on both sides, imo, which I admit is rather poorly informed. The larger assaults have cost both sides thousands, and there likely have been hundreds picked off by arty on both sides, every day.

            Everyone in L and R is gone in some way or another. It’s been years man, the majority of their fighting age males are casualties unironically, and a huge portion of their population fled over the years and especially last year. The most pro ukranian elements mostly left the country entire. The whole area is completely devastated, probably worse that the WWI western front. Anyone there right now is either a bitter babushka, a female pro Russian element who couldn’t get a passport, or a Russian themselves. And they’re mostly Russians, not ethnically but literally Russian nationals who settled there. I don’t think the west has the stomach for mass deportations, and bringing it into Ukraine would be a massive economic drain and bring in a bunch of dispossessed and angry people. On the other hand if you give it to Russia it teaches them yet again that the best thing they can do to secure power is to export ethnic russians and then swoop in to “protect them”
            And ultimately russians don’t care about the prosperity of their satellites and exclaves as anyone can see in the many examples we have already

            I unironically think Ukraine should conduct mass show trials to paint them all as traitors and collaborators and strip them of citizenship and send them east. Or create mass panic that there will be reprisals so they flee east anyway post war.
            The west will have to go Japan tier in ukraine to rebuild

            Donetsk city is standing, and for the most part very functional. Ukraine doesn't have the material to spend tearing the city to pieces, and as far as I can tell, wasn't aiming to do so anyway. I'd venture much of the two oblasts were otherwise in decent shape prior to the Russian invasion. The total killed in 8 years of low intensity exchanges was something like 14k. Not nothing, but certainly not the sort of devastation we've seen with the introduction of the open Kremlin assaults.
            You have to remember, Ukraine wants their land back.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >It's easily 150k KIA on both sides, imo, which I admit is rather poorly informed.
              Nah. I believe Russia is above 150k deaths at this point, and that Ukraine is below 100k deaths, probably around 70k, give or take 10k. If the numbers were anywhere near comparable, Ukraine would have no chance.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I think Ukraine has a chance primarily because Kremlin can't adjust to having vehicle shortage in its doctrine. It expected to keep air superiority and field movement with armor. Neither is available.
                Now they're stuck trying to pin Ukie arty into exchanges, and pounding defensible positions into dust.
                The K/D rate isn't great for Ukraine, is my guess, but it doesn't matter, because for Putin to "win" satisfactorily, he now has to take the land that was "annexed". And without the superior tools, it's human waves against Ukraine which can use tech that easily puts defense at 5 to 1, or more.
                I think the Kremlin doomed themselves when they set themselves with The Duma against the idea of Russian law by annexing lands that were recently invaded, and still in active combat.
                Their options for avoiding regime change suck, imo. Their best bet is to get the people forgetting their boys are dead.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >The K/D rate isn't great for Ukraine, is my guess
                This here is the central point of this glavset's drone mumbling post. This is the point he wanted to get across, everything else is negligible.
                This is them trying to be "subtle" and "subversive" and to peddle bullshit buried in seemingly reasonable statements.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >The K/D rate isn't great for Ukraine
                I'm fairly certain that it is. Ukraine is defending, which is a huge advantage. They have western intel and, partially, western training, both of which are huge force multipliers. The amount of destroyed equipment is massively in Ukraine's favor and is a general, if inaccurate, indication of K/D ratios. Ukraine's strategy has also relied heavily on holding strong points that allow them to inflict disproportionate losses on the Russian forces, and their offensives have also been cautious, relying on maneuver warfare, while the Russians rely on human waves and brute force, which has resulted in absurd losses for very little gain.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >The K/D rate isn't great for Ukraine, is my guess
                This here is the central point of this glavset's drone mumbling post. This is the point he wanted to get across, everything else is negligible.
                This is them trying to be "subtle" and "subversive" and to peddle bullshit buried in seemingly reasonable statements.

                I’m not anon and I generally agree with your posts
                But
                Even 3:1 is pretty bad for Ukraine. They definitely are able to keep most casualties as wounded and not dead but even shitty artillery kills, and even 60k casualties is not great for Ukraine. I think we should continue to pressure the west for more aid to Ukraine.
                I think a very good sign is how few western vehicles we see in Bananamut. I think this points to Ukraine
                1 using it as a stall and way to bleed Russia of materiel first manpower second
                2 preparing a mobile reserve for a counter offensive at an opportune time
                Their long range fires are doing a good job of disrupting Russian tempo and capabilities to mass reserves and supplies as well, so I think their future counter offensive will go well
                Really the goal of Ukraine is to put Russia in as weak a position as possible for negotiations down the road and to ensure that western aid does not stop even post-war. Russias goal seems to be to exhaust the west which I don’t see working unless the west feels china will open a “second front” in Taiwan/SEA.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Where are you from?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Australia. My interest in the war is I want it to be a springboard for stronger defence policy at home, a pacific NATO agreement, and a quick and decisive end to the war because I believe we will need munitions in the pacific inside of 10 years, and quite probably inside of 5. Some here believe itll come in 2-3 years and I know some CIA bigwig said he had intelligence pointing towards an internal mandate of PLA capture of Taiwan by 2027
                Also I want Russians to die because they’re annoying on the internet

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                If you're Australian, why is your English so bad?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Answered your own question, bud.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Go back to /sea/, you stingray frick.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Where is my English bad, exactly?
                Are you just projecting that onto me because I said
                >60k casualties is not good for Ukraine
                It wouldn’t be good for anyone. These are people who, in some proportion, won’t be able to work post war.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Where is my English bad, exactly?
                Because your English is bad.
                I mean, from a political perspective, I have no clue what angle you're trying to push, but your English is still quite bad for someone who claims to be a native English speaker.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                What the frick are you talking about? Yeah I write run on sentences but I’m also not really trying on PrepHole. I think you’re moronic and gay, and moronic, also moronic. moron. Point some specific things out or get fricked.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Do not redeem!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Thought so.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >hello sirs

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Nice to meet you Perun

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          If you don’t know what casualties means you shouldn’t be fricking posting

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Frick you, pidor. What's interesting there is that they're going to run out of convicts, which is kind of hilarious for the purported second army of the world.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They unironically have run out of them and bunker man said they can't recruit anymore in russian penal colonies, that's exclusive of the MoD and Patriot PMC now. In the future we will likely see battalions of sports clubs hooligans since that's the new Wagner recruitment pool.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >In the future we will likely see battalions of sports clubs hooligans since that's the new Wagner recruitment pool.
          Well, why not? They're above the Russian military in status. I mean, unironically.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Well, since Gerasimov took charge of Joint Group of Forces in Ukraine irregular formations like Wagner were supposed to be sidelined in favor of reconstituted conventional military units. Wagner, LRNR, BARS were there to gain time in order for Russia to reconstitute after the failed Kyiv siege. But now that Russia is set to be stalled again and the mud season is coming, with the expectation of costly battles for the Bakhmut industrial zone, on the fortified areas on the outskirts of Donetsk City and Vuhledar irregular formations will take the spotlight again. This is far fron optimal for the Kremlin but it's still less risky to empower lunatics like Prigozhin than to conduct general mobilization. Of course the MoD has said they want to create new maneuver divisions, a new military district based in Leningrad and elevate a few brigades to division size but that will be a long-term reform, perhaps only feasible after the war is over, and until then irregular formations will remain relevant and there's little the MoD and the Kremlin can do about it.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >the mud season is coming
              The mud season is in full swing, lass.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Thing about Wagner is, they always try to walk it in.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I'm gonna AZOOOOOOM

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Azovstal
    >Azot
    >Azom
    What's going on here?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      That's where the nazi kabbalist perform black magic rituals.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Azov is the nearby sea, and the Azo prefix in chemistry indicates a nitrogen compound, so chemical plants near the Sea of Azov that make things like fertilizers and explosives would naturally go for the pun

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Ukrainians have a good sense of humor.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          bar is not that high tbh

          https://youtube.com/shorts/qqvsdi_fLc0?feature=share

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Kek that was really funny tho

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous
  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Azov
    Azom
    Z

    Man Russia picked the unluckiest letter ever.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    There's one thing that's got me wondering. As we know, Ukraine is planning a spring offensive, which implies that they've been building up forces and obvious intend to attack Russia and take back land.
    So, this brings me to Bakhmut. I wonder if they could retake all of Bakhmut and its surrounding areas if they wanted to, if they dedicated themselves to it. I believe they could. I don't think they will, because Bakhmut obviously serves as a temporary killing ground to grind down Russia, and I believe an offensive by Ukraine would result in a lot of unnecessary losses, because of the heavy concentration of Russian artillery in the area, and I'm guessing their eventual offensive will focus on a different front.
    Still, it must be strange fighting in Bakhmut and letting the city slowly fall, when you know your side has the forces to hold it if necessary. Also, it must be strange to fight for the sole reason of grinding down and slaughtering Russians, rather than trying to take or hold territory.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      If they wanted they could retake Bakhmut, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk and Popasna but as you said it would be unecessary and there aren't many operational prospects on that axis for both sides. But the Bakhmut defenders know that their work is part of a larger whole where their efforts slow and grind the russians is used to buy time and rout the russians elsewhere in the theatre. Without the defense of Severodonetsk, Lysychansk and Bakhmut the Kharkiv counter-offensive would not be possible. They are aware of this and trust Zaluzhni.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Yeah, I agree. I also believe that there's no strategic benefit to fighting back at that part of the front, because even if they could reconquer land, where do they go from there? They're not just going to charge headfirst into Donetsk. Assuming Bakhmut falls, which I think is fairly likely at this point, I think they'll simply try to stop them there and stabilize the front, while they launch their offensives elsewhere.
        My assumption is that the spring offensive will focus on the southern and northern fronts, where they'll focus on recapturing the areas that Russia took early on in the invasion. I assume that after that, they'll try to recapture all of Luhansk and Donetsk, and finally Crimea, though I believe there is a small chance that Crimea might be sacrificed in a peace agreement.
        Still, the fact that Crimea could only be supplied by the bridge connecting it to Russia, makes me think they might not give it up after all, and given its strategic importance and the access it provides to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, ceding it to Russia would be insane. That said, it's the only place in Ukraine that actually has closer historical ties to Russia than Ukraine, if we ignore the Tatars who have basically been obliterated as a people.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I have a hard time sorting the political status of Luhansk and Donetsk. It's clear that Russia interfered in Ukraine in 2014. It's also clear that those Oblasts were heavily in favor of the government that was tossed, and for that reason may have a plurality if not majority interested in either independence, or in joining Russia. Or did before the Russians invaded and used the DPR as their attrition force.

          Crimea was plain stolen, but reasoning is obvious for both sides why it turned out that way at the time. It isn't clear to me if the population there cares either way, but when the Russians tell you to vote, you vote.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Unfortunately there is more to it than Russian aggression, there is also Ukrainian naivité and remnants of a rotten culture that ties certain parts of Ukraine to Russia. The Russian language must be abolished, the Moscow Patriarchate must be abolished. Period. Some people only understood after a year of war. Ukrainians repeated a historical mistakes as when the Cossacks turned against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to allie themselves with Moscow just to be later annexed and smashed by the latter.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            The problem with Luhansk and Donetsk is that they do have a lot of Russians, but they're transplants. After WW2, the Soviet Union (as an extension of Russia), sent a shitload of Russian people to those oblasts under the guise of helping to rebuild and repopulate those areas, to the point where Russians almost made up half the population of those oblasts, and the majority in some cities. This was part of their plan to russify Ukraine, which also involved destroying Ukrainian culture and its language, and from a demographic and cultural point of view, you could tentatively make a claim that those places are culturally Russian, but not really.
            Obviously, that shouldn't matter, and ironically it's a result of Communist/Soviet "globohomo" that they pretend to be so vehemently against these days. Basically, this war is a result of the Soviet Union trying to spread their shitty russo-communist ideology and culture to all of the countries that made up the Soviet Union, while exterminating the local cultures, people and languages. They wanted a one world government, with one language and one culture, with all the shots being called from Moscow.
            Anyway, Ukraine shouldn't give up any land because of the Soviet Union's attempts at destroying their people and culture, even if ethnic Russians make up a significant portion of the population in those places. They can either get the frick out, or integrate.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Everyone in L and R is gone in some way or another. It’s been years man, the majority of their fighting age males are casualties unironically, and a huge portion of their population fled over the years and especially last year. The most pro ukranian elements mostly left the country entire. The whole area is completely devastated, probably worse that the WWI western front. Anyone there right now is either a bitter babushka, a female pro Russian element who couldn’t get a passport, or a Russian themselves. And they’re mostly Russians, not ethnically but literally Russian nationals who settled there. I don’t think the west has the stomach for mass deportations, and bringing it into Ukraine would be a massive economic drain and bring in a bunch of dispossessed and angry people. On the other hand if you give it to Russia it teaches them yet again that the best thing they can do to secure power is to export ethnic russians and then swoop in to “protect them”
            And ultimately russians don’t care about the prosperity of their satellites and exclaves as anyone can see in the many examples we have already

            I unironically think Ukraine should conduct mass show trials to paint them all as traitors and collaborators and strip them of citizenship and send them east. Or create mass panic that there will be reprisals so they flee east anyway post war.
            The west will have to go Japan tier in ukraine to rebuild

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              I've seen footage from Donetsk and it looks fine.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Bros I must know, has the Fortress of Garden Store fallen?

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