Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
I don't know, I would take that with a pretty big grain of salt. I don't think you set a trap by allowing the enemy to surround a region on 3 sides and let them be able to fire on your only real route in or out.
I'm sure there's some truth to it (i.e. they probably withdrew to a safer spot within the city to allow them to counterattack incoming forces), but the situation for Ukrainian forces in that region is pretty tenuous based on basically all the evidence coming out. You'd have to think the chance of them starting a large counteroffensive from such a poorly supplied position is pretty remote.
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Defense in depth is a military tactics that Ukraine has used throughout this war.
Russia has a superior force in terms of men and equipment, especially in that area where they heavily outnumber Ukraine. But their leadership is dumber then a bag of nails, spearheaded by Putin's most recent request to take the Donbas at all cost.
They are throwing everything they have on this tiny little city with no strategic value outside of getting closer to Putin's inane declaration. It's a city on the low ground, not very defendable, and on the wrong side of a river (UA's back is to the river). Now losing the city makes it much more difficult to retake, but there's really not much left of the city and UA is withdrawing slowly while inflicting heavy casualties.
The amount of troops thrown is that Russia had 70K troops tied to taking this city and area, and had about 20% casualties so far.
But if you know the enemy's objective and they are superior, you won't face it head on. You let them exhaust and expand their supply lines and hope to catch them flatfooted, and hit them where they are weak. And you never let the enemy stop from doing the wrong thing.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1530470135110180866
Basically UA is retaking Kherson, worth much more both strategically and tactically then keeping a weak position in Donbas that will get Russian troops hemmed in against an advantageous defensive position. Severodonetsk isn't likely going to go fully back in Ukrainian hands when dealing with the counteroffensive that was mentioned there where UA did a heavy pushback within the city itself, but it does mean that Russians are losing significant troops there and are tied up in the area. Meanwhile all around Severodonetsk, UA has pushed back and done significant damage the past 24 hours (Popasna most specifically).