I've seen a lot of people worrying about the small advances Russia is making in eastern #Ukraine. They shouldn’t be. Ukraine is trading territory for time, and inflicting terrible losses on RU while doing so. They know a shit ton of heavy weapons are on the way. All they need to do is stall for time and keep their troops alive.

1/5

They are only getting stronger, while Russia loses irreplaceable armor by the day. As long as #Ukraine doesn’t throw their forces away pointlessly, and once their troops are fully trained on all their new goodies, they’ll very easily take back everything they are giving up right now. UA is playing this perfectly right now.

2/5

As it stands right now, #Ukraine can’t compete in artillery duels, and RU has fallen back on their old doctrine of massive arty strikes to force UA troops out of an area, followed by small reconnaissance in force pushes by infantry to capture the area. But this is all contingent on RU having artillery superiority. What’s the best way to counter artillery? Longer range artillery.

3/5

Once #Ukraine troops are fully trained on the NATO artillery, and it makes its way to the front lines, the momentum of battle is going to swing drastically. UA will outrange RU arty, and will very easily be able to push those small RU recon forces back out of everything they’ve “captured” this past week. UA will continue to have the morale, armor, and manpower advantages as well.

4/5

TL;DR: #Ukraine is doing exactly what they need to be doing right now. They just need to stall for time until their new weapons come online. Every loss they inflict on RU right now is nearly irreplaceable. As long as they don’t throw their own forces away, UA will be able to pretty easily retake everything they’re ceding to RU right now.

5/5

Oops! One thing I forgot to touch on: This is the first step in a much larger effort to transition #Ukraine to Western-caliber systems. In particular, right now, this means 155mm artillery. Politically this has some pretty huge implications, as it will break UA’s dependence on Soviet-era, Russian supplied, systems. It will politically cement UA firmly in the NATO camp, and ensure much more effective support for them going forward.

6/5

@jgold The challenge is that while M777s are great pieces of kit they are extremely vulnerable to counterbattery fire and that is a bit disconcerting. However, it seems like there's a lot of push to get eastern European self-propelled artillery to Ukraine along with towed guns and that helps.

Their trading ground for time is going to undo the Russians, because they can't manage the supply lines needed to hold ground. And Ukr SOF is all over them at night it seems.

@NickTheSkydiver @jgold I read that the Russians are fighting in weird timed periods, like on the clock, whereas the UKr’s are 24/7

@Groovyeli @NickTheSkydiver I believe this is because the vast majority of their troops are neither trained nor equipped for night fighting.

UA, on the other hand, has been training their troops in it since 2014, and has received thousands of pieces of night vision equipment since the start of the war.

The night truly belongs to Ukraine.