Unexpectedly fierce Ukrainian resistance and lack of supplies are creating problems for Russian forces. At the same time, increasingly brutal attacks on civilian targets are being reported.
The majority of President Vladimir Putin’s forces are still 30 kilometers north of Kyiv, and their advance has been delayed by Ukrainian forces defending Hostomel airport, which they aimed to capture on the first day of the conflict, the British Ministry of Defense wrote in an update on Twitter on Monday morning.
All of Ukraine’s largest cities were still in Ukrainian hands on Monday afternoon, although there had been fierce fighting around major cities such as Chernihiv and Kharkiv.
Logistics and negotiations
The British believe that there are logistical problems behind the Russians’ lack of advance – i.e., that Russian forces are not getting supplies. At the same time, for the first time, Russia has had to admit to its own people that they have suffered losses.
Negotiations are taking place between Ukrainian and Russian diplomats in Homjel, Belarus.
Ukraine entered negotiations with demands for an immediate ceasefire. The Russian requirements are not known.
Still trying to occupy Kyiv
Russia’s attempts to seize the capital Kyiv continue, and on Monday morning, the authorities asked all the city’s residents to stay indoors. Nevertheless, many people took to the streets to go shopping, the news agency AP writes. For the first time since Saturday, it was possible to leave bomb shelters and apartments.
Norwegian Yara’s office in the city is said to have been hit by Russian rockets on Saturday. There are also battles near the Zaporizhia power plant in the south of the country.
The EU is said to have delivered fighter jets to Ukraine on Monday as part of a weapons package that was announced on Sunday. These are allegedly Russian-produced aircraft with which the Ukrainian defense has experience.
However, specific details about the deliveries to Ukraine are not known.
Ukraine: Russia is committing war crimes
On Monday, Ukraine claimed that Russia fired large amounts of rockets at Kharkiv, leading to dozens of civilian casualties, according to Deputy Interior Minister Anton Herashchenko.
On Monday, a number of Western sanctions also came into force, and the United States banned transactions with the Russian central bank. At the same time, the country evacuated its embassy in the Belarusian capital Minsk, reducing its presence in Moscow. Russia has also confirmed that deterrent weapons, including nuclear weapons, are on standby.
US authorities also expect Belarus to join the conflict soon.
Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews
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Supply in war can be easily overlooked in planning, especially if a side expects a walkover as it appears Russia mistakenly did.
Israeli military theorist strongly exposed this oversight in his seminal 1977 book Supplying War.
Until recently, in amateur wargaming supply was taken for granted, as long as a supply route could be traced back to a player’s supply sources, although some games did have generic supply pieces.
However, in 2014 Poland’s Phalanx Games came out with 1944: Race to the Rhine in which 3 Allied player commanders – Montgomery (British), Bradley (U.S.), and Patton (U.S.) – compete to try to get the fuel, ammunition, and food/rations supplies they need to try to get across the Rhine. Combat outcome is determined by supply consumption, the stronger Nazi units requiring more supply to defeat.
In the 1990s(?) there had appeared civilian Eurogames, where players usually economically compete for space and resources rather than in direct military combat, so the Phalanx 1944 game was greeted as a military Eurogame.
And this year, after 4 years in production, Phalanx has finally come out with 1941: Race to Moscow, with placenames in the Army Group South commander’s lane like Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, ….
I have come up with other/additional, historical event pieces for it like Nazi Atrocities, which produces more Russian volunteers/units as a result.
But while military supplies are being similarly consumed in the Ukraine War, so – as in World War 2 – are innocent lives, and that number is going to climb astronomically if the Kremlin uses weapons of mass destruction like thermobaric and nuclear weapons, which they were prepared to do when they invaded.
Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld …