That’s what some are calling it now, ‘The Zelensky Line’. It runs from Siversk in the north down through Soledar to Bakhmut and south then to the heaviest Ukrainian defenses of all, opposite Donetsk City.
The so-called Zelensky Line consists of a mass scarring of trenches over a thousand kilometers long that from the air appear as myriad zig-zag stitches dug into the land, a modern mirror image of World War I battlefields.
Dugouts buried deep below the surface provide multiple places of refuge when the Russian military bombard with up to 6,500 missile attacks per day. In and around all this are solidly built buildings and bunkers that can stand huge punishment as they consist of reinforced concrete, the most common construction material in the time of the Soviet Union.
All along this line, built continuously over the eight years since the Russian-speaking Donbass rose up against the collapse of democracy in Ukraine that came with the insurrection on Kiev’s Maidan Square, heavily armed troops in huge number stand ready to repel the Russian military. Provided with training over this period and some of the most modern weaponry available the Ukrainian military had a huge initial advantage and even now, after almost six months of conflict they still put up a fight.
However, the Zelensky Line is now showing distinct signs of buckling. Opposite Donetsk City where Ukrainian artillery daily shell the civilian population of the city the Russian military has recently punched a hole in the line at Pisky and is now threatening Avdeevka. Further south still Marinka is also under threat.
The tactics of the Russian forces are to pummel all along the line with incessant multiple missile strikes for as long as it takes to decimate the majority of resistance before moving forward to occupy the freed-up territory, mopping up any remaining resistance and position their artillery for the barrage of the next target. This is an inexorable process of incrementally grinding down the vast barriers that run all along the border of the region known as The Donbass.
The Russian Meat Grinder as it has come to be known is incessantly eating into the rock-solid defences it is encountering while its long distance missiles hit a variety of targets all across Ukraine. Fuel and ammunition dumps, barracks, factories, supply lines and train depots/control centres and much else. Fire control is established over road after road denying the Ukrainian military reinforcement or resupply.
Every once in a while activity picks up and rather than a kilometer or two’s progress Russia’s military moves quickly to take towns and large swathes of land surrounding them. All movements across the 2,000 kilometer long battle line coordinated in ever-evolving strategies, the most frequent being the creation of cauldrons. A cauldron is formed when a town or city is surrounded on several sides with all access roads and train lines under fire control. At this point all hopes of defending such a town or city are lost.
Most of the time however, a slow, grinding war of attrition is being fought with the vast preponderance of gains being made by the Russian military with sporadic gains by the Ukrainians which more often than not are of a very temporary nature and can even indicate a withdrawal by the Russians to lead their enemies into a trap where they are swiftly dealt with.
It is a bloody business where mass carnage is commonplace, this has been especially so in the latest period of the conflict stretching back around a week from the writing of this commentary. Ukraine has been losing a great many troops on a daily basis. The average is surely running at more than four hundred per day currently and the injured many times this number.
The Ukrainian authorities have recently raised the call-up age to seventy. This fact alone speaks volumes for the attrition rate among its troops. Every able-bodied man appears to be at risk of being frog-marched immediately into the military. If they are lucky they may get a few weeks training. Most of the NATO-trained troops have been eliminated, either killed or rendered incapable now of combat. Those who take their place can surely be little more than cannon-fodder sent to face Russian troops given regular rest and recuperation behind Russian lines, rotated every couple of weeks.
New Russian battalions are being formed and the rumour is that a massive series of Russian offensives will be unleashed soon.
Just as soon as the Zelensky Line collapses once and for all, a nut finally cracked by the relentless and utterly inexorable pressure exerted by the combined forces of the Russian military.
And then…?
And then we reach the final phases of Russia’s campaign, the taking of Kramatorsk and Slavyansk, the last stand of Ukrainian forces in the Donbass… leaving the road clear all the way to the Dnieper River… and beyond.
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