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Ukraine: military situation update with maps, Dec 18 2022
(’Orc’ is associated with the various hoards of 13th century Mongol invaders, as well as LOTR evil villains)

War in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP2QApi8G2TKc8NZmeDWSUg/videos

Artillery (key to success in this war), Fuller explanation of Orc military structure, Other Bonus articles - see previous postings in “Attack on Europe” (FR title search).

(Numbered printed material below - Some of the items below may be out of date, and not updated yet)

••Denotes Transcribed Dialogue. The entirety of the analysis is from a Ukrainian guy named War in Ukraine’s daily video - I only transcribe it. Extras are just that - from other sites, or my comments marked (Edit: .... )

-—> Current to date and past MAPS: <——
https://militaryland.net/

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Summary:
No essential changes.

Key areas:
- North Lugansk: no changes.
- North Donbass: no changes.
- Central Donbass (Donetsk West): no changes.
- Zaporizhya: no changes.

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Extra:
-—> Ukraine Situation Report: Assessing The Possibility Of A New Russian Offensive On Kyiv <——
Although Ukrainian officials claim a new Russian offensive on Kyiv looms, is it even possible and to what end?
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-assessing-the-possibility-of-a-new-russian-offensive-on-kyiv

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••December 17 and December 18. Unfinished transcript

Africa:
We haven’t really talked about it much - I spoke about it once in July when I was discussing Wagner mercenaries - what’s going on is this is going on like unnoticeable or invisible fight for Africa between Europe, US on one side, and China and Russia on the other side.

China is almost strictly economical, financial approach: they are building ports, renting land for potential military bases; US is almost out of Africa; Europe is still present because of the Colonial influence mostly through France; Russia, 4-7 years ago, just got there, and they are using military force to gain control and influence in Africa.

The tool for that military force is Wagner mercenaries. They have managed to push Europe and France out of Mali, also Central African Republic. France is in Niger because it has deposits of uranium - France has a lot of nuclear nuclear power stations. Russia is going after Niger next. They will try to gain control of those uranium deposits, and also of Senegal to get access to the ocean seaports controlled by China. There they may work with China.

China does gains a lot of influence by loaning local governments, giving them money in exchange for gaining something- for building power stations, or getting a port, or something like that every 3 years with representatives of African governments, and that’s a tool for them to maintain access and gain more access to Africa.

Europe and the US have completely neglected Africa over the past 10-15 years, or they were not focused there then; now they waking up and Africa is almost controlled by China or in danger of almost full control by China and Russia. The US held an Africa Summit a couple days ago - the previous one was 8 years ago, but this was a very poor attempt to re-establish influence in Africa & doesn’t look like its gonna go far.

There was some success for the US: it gained control over cobalt deposits in Democratic Republic of Congo - a limited success. Europe and France are on retreat from Africa, and partially, that retreat was because nuclear was not viewed as green or alternative energy; so then if you don’t need it, you don’t want to invest resources in maintaining military presence, and that’s why part of the reason why Wagner mercenaries have managed to quickly gain so much influence and access in Africa.

Ukraine
I want to mention that Putin is coming on December 19 to Belarus; there is a formal independence maintained so the purposes of international affairs because it gives you two votes instead of one and more more support. This is very unusual because before the Belarus President would usually go to Russia; so a very unusual in event, and many believe that this is related to a future attack or expected or contemplated attack again from Belarus.

I would say that’s very unlikely, almost extremely unlikely scenario, right now. Russia does not have enough resources, or does not have enough manpower to do that because to capture Kiev, you’d need at least 500,000 troops, so chances are very low; Russia does not have readily available manpower or enough military equipment, its extremely

unlikely. Belarus’ armies unwilling to fight: first of all the units that could be conditionally suitable for this are 2-3 brigades, probably more like 3-4 brigades, the total number of them is pushing 15,000, even probably between 10-15,000, so its really nothing there to be scared or worried about this moment.

Another interesting development between China and the US: the US Congress now requires US intelligence agencies to provide information on corruption and wealth of Chinese Top; that’s another huge irritation, probably on a personal level for Chinese leadership, because there’s a tons of corruption there - another level of escalation, on a personal level this time.

Ukraine
The power grid in Ukraine so its still there did not did not disintegrate, but its largely in coma and Russia is preparing another round of attacks; maybe take another attack or maybe couple, but it looks like a Russia is very determined to disintegrate the Ukrainian power grid into several islands, and one by one destroy those islands, but the most important goal is isolate nuclear power stations because they produce cheap extremely reliable energy, they produce significant portion of Ukrainian electricity power generation, the point is to isolate those three remaining nuclear power stations - that’s the next strategic goal here, and that will bring Ukrainian power grid and power distribution system to to couple small islands and that’s pretty much it.

State Border
Things are more or less quiet, with the exception of some Ukrainian attacks in Belgorod; this is regional center here of this Belgorod region you’ll heard Belgorod region in which would be in Ukrainian so all of these attacks are just propaganda tools, they they don’t provide any military or strategic usefulness or advantage to Ukrainian side - just really based on resources, but nevertheless they’ve done for probably propaganda purposes.

North Donbas:
front line six here are pretty active as you can see Wagner mercenaries is actively attacking pretty much at all main points here the key is they are trying to sorry as you can see they’re trying to exploit this salient that they created that around this village and so but so far they were not successful today which as I said many times doesn’t mean really anything then they are also actively attacking south of Bakhmut because this is the most promising at this point opportunity because they drive up this northwestern direction they really creating threat to Bakhmut because this attack here straight from the east is just really to keep pressure on Ukrainian command and prohibit the withdrawal of the potential reinforcements from this area to the south and potentially a little bit north the Ukrainian troops also nevertheless managed to do some counter-attack directed at Azerian which failed which I said many times why how it doesn’t work for Ukrainian side and the way its being done its its never gonna work by the way.

I just forgot to mention so it looks like a Ukrainian Parliament passed the law that puts Ukrainian soldiers on the same like level with Wagner mercenaries where if you don’t follow something blindly, you’re going to jail for 12 years that’s and what it requires a blind following of the Commanders which are of extremely poor quality in Ukrainian Army, and that’s one of the main reasons why the performance is so terrible; in a way that Ukraine is suffering so many losses being on defense because typically the relationship between the losses of the defender and offender significantly favors defender: at least 1:3 that’s a normal and typical the offender loses 3 more times so attacking forces soldiers down the defender and in general its obviously easier to the defense is easier thing but as you can see Ukrainian side is outnumbering still Russian side right and on and defending and still suffering heavy losses in terms of soldiers and everything and this is really the problem in the root cause is this the Soviet military top the generals that Ukrainian Army it has more generals that any other army just they created auto center don’t really not for the marriage and so that’s where the really the root cause of the problem.

and then as you as the the fish rots from the top always so and then its like all goes down because if you have inapt and unintelligent Commanders, then everything else like they select the same like people for the middle level and then lower level commanders so that’s just that’s what you get and then there’s also pretty much very poor training let’s say on Ukrainian side sometimes no training, but soldiers literally go strong when you wear mobilized one week and you already have a front line to be fair Russian side is exactly the same there’s no no difference in many ways the Russian side even worse because that’s all there’s even more bureaucracy on the Russian side and mindless following orders versus Ukrainian side because of Ukrainian side at the the grassroots at the soldier level there’s much more common sense as opposed to the Russian side, but nevertheless, the point is that this law is an attempt to cover up failure of Ukrainian military talk by forcing ordinary people, Ukrainian soldiers to sacrifice their lives to cover up their mistakes or not even mistakes, its just criminal, and very similar to how it was in the Soviet Union 1941 or 1942, where the Soviet Army was plugging defensive lines with the bodies of the soldiers and there was also this infamous Order 227 which you’re gonna get shot and and if you try to retreat, but even before that order there was it was already being practiced by the Army it was just formalized because it was issued I think in like July of 1942 or August 1942, but that those those units that were shooting in your back, if you tried to retreat, they were always there; that was a feature of the Soviet Army, even during so-called revolution in 1917-1921 those that that was very wide practice in the Red or Communist Army, but anyway so this as you can see this where the roots are coming from right right now so all of this Soviet Communist mentality that still lives and doesn’t allow Ukraine to live and that’s part of the reason why I’m saying that Ukraine is going to this 1917 moment at the same as Russia does, because that’s the way for them to get rid of all of this all of this negative plug that was that happened in 1917.

I would summarize it as things are slowly deteriorating for Ukrainian side, and while the loss of Bakhmut is not going to be anything critical not the end of the world; this probably was going to be more a morale blow to the country, to the population because there is a lot of people who really don’t understand situation on the front line; they almost feel like we’re winning, it is going to take another little bit time to kick out Russian side from Ukraine. so like everything’s like I would say the past is we just need to execute everything is gonna everything is there’s no problem is resolved its just gonna take a little bit more pain to really get there, while its not true and situation is still up in the air where its gonna fall out really.

Central Donbas:
Things are somewhat more active: possible to single out the trash and Command decided to really focus on this southern portion of this Central Donbas front line, specifically Marinka, almost abandoned this Piskey salient and they plan to capture deep because really the focus is here there are reports that Russia troops made some advances in Marinka just like capture another quarter another like 100 meters of the of this extremely large village or like small town I don’t know which way which what’s the best describes probably small town so they slowly moving advancing environica. there’s huge effort here as you can see and that there’s couple Russian divisions attacking here and so on so I would say its very clear like if you compare vaginal machineries how they perform versus regular Russian army if they were wild number sevens here of the same quantity they probably already punched through this defensive line and that just gives you understanding why this entrepreneurial approach of the Wagner mercenaries is a huge advantage relative to bureaucratic disempowered approach of the Russian army and and also Ukrainian Army the same way.