Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kiev and other places on the Northern Front, the Russo-Ukrainian War has been focused on two, one is Mariupol and the other is the Iyzym-Slavyansk front.
Until April 21, Mariupol had been the most tragic place in the Ukrainian War, especially the core area of the Azov Steel Plant, which had been a meat grinder-level battlefield, but with the Russian side announcing that it would abandon the offensive and transfer some of the Russian troops out of Mariupol, the fighting here was much quieter.
Recently, some analysts said that Mariupol is about to usher in a general battle, and I think this judgment is unreliable.
On the one hand, although the recent Russian bombing in Mariupol is very intense, we all know that the Azov Steel Plant is a "steel fortress" that can withstand a small tactical nuclear strike, and this kind of bombing is unlikely to cause much damage to the defenders, and the current Russian strategy is more like deterrence, preventing them from coming out of the fortress and launching an attack;
On the other hand, judging from the recent photos uploaded by Mariupol, they are not malnourished at all, there should be no shortage of food, so the Ukrainian side does not have an urgent need to break the siege at present, and I judge that they will wait until July or earlier after the start of the great counter-offensive, and then they should cooperate inside and outside to retake Mariupol.
At present, the main focus of the War of Ukraine has shifted to the Iyzym-Slavyansk front, and the most tragic battle took place in rubizhne.
As I have mentioned many times before, the Russian army in northeastern Ukraine has been attacking the important town of Slovyansk in Uzbekistan, and taking it can divide the Ukrainian army in two and lay a solid foundation for the full occupation of Donbass.
As shown below, the Russian plan should be to attack from multiple directions (the red arrow below is the Russian attack point), and finally a ten-sided ambush to besiege Slavyansk, but unfortunately, they fought very badly.
In the past 48 hours, the Russian army encircling the north from the southeast has stopped at popasna (see picture below), and the Russian attacks on brazhkivka, velyka, and the above mentioned rupee day have also failed miserably, especially within the rupee day, the Russian army collapsed several kilometers, which was a major defeat.
Rubineh is a small town about 60 kilometers east of Slavyansk, where the Russians began to attack shortly after the start of the Ukrainian War, and now more than two months later, they have not been able to defeat it. Moreover, their troop losses in the rupee day were very large, for example, one of the companies actually changed three company commanders in a week, two of them were killed, and by the middle of April, there were only a few people left in the whole company.
There are two main reasons why this town is so difficult to fight:
First, the tactics of the Ukrainian army are very correct, they are very familiar with the terrain there, carefully designed a lot of "fire pockets", once the Russian army enters these pockets, it will be attacked by ukrainian machine gunners and snipers from all directions, many Russian troops until they die in battle, do not know where the bullets are flying from.
Second, the Russian infantry and artillery coordination is relatively poor, often broken by each other, for example, a Russian army unit launched multiple attacks, at the cost of huge casualties, finally captured a garage held by the Ukrainian army, but the Ukrainian tanks immediately rushed over, after two hours of bombardment, the garage was flattened. Throughout, the Russians occupying the warehouse did not wait for the support of tanks and other artillery fire.
In fact, these two difficulties faced by the Russian army in the Ruby Day are the epitome of the entire Wudong battlefield, the Battle of Donbass fought for more than 10 days, the Russian army's results can not be said to be nothing, but almost none of the valuable strategic places were taken, and in turn, the price they paid was very high.
Of course, the Ukrainian army also paid a heavy sacrifice in order to crush the other side's attack, but their battle losses were much lower than those of the Russian army, which is an indisputable fact.
I have analyzed before that if Slavyansk is not defeated, the Russian army's goal in Donbass will be in vain.
Today, there is only a week left before May 9, the expected end of the second phase of the War between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian army has not even touched the edge of Slavyansk, and the unification of the two Oblasts of Eastern Ukraine is still far away...
Text/West Wing Drinking Moon
PS: My overview and exclusive analysis of the war situation in Ukraine has been launched in the form of a column, welcome interested friends to subscribe: the United States upgraded the Ukrainian war target, released 3 major signals