Freaking brilliant by Ukraine.
I see it differently. An act of desperation to change optics, but little on the ground, which continues to bleed the UA white.
A report from down-range:
"Ok some thoughts. Now that we have more material surfacing a few things are becoming clear. First off Ukraine's break in wasn't anywhere near as clean or easy at it looked at first. Ukrainian forces broke through with a fight, losing considerable numbers vehicles and likely personnel. Second, we have Russia tracking down and hitting many of the mobile groups. Note this doesn't mean some don't get through, and many of the ones that got destroyed probably spent quite a bit of time running around before they got hit. Third, once Ukraine got slowed and partially halted they attempted to expand the area in play. This mostly failed, with several Ukrainian border attacks being repulsed, but Ukrainian troops apparently did get across the Psel river, and pushed into Spal'noe though fog of war makes it unclear how firm this presence is. It's not clear if this will lead to anything further, additional Russian forces are still arriving in the area, and the scale of the Ukrainian attack is still relatively small. Territory-wise these are substantial gains, sustainability and ultimate goals remains in question. It's also unlikely Ukraine can hold them long term, especially with Russia hitting the rear areas.
Some general notes. The Ukrainian forces involved use a particularly mixed bag of vehicles. We have Strykers, VABs, M113s, BTR-60s, and BTR-4s, Kozak-2s, armored Humvees, MaxxPro and Cougar MRAPs, Bradleys, Marders, T-80s, PT-91s, T-64s. For every major category of ground equipment there are multiple types. Yet the total forces committed are not that large. In other words, we see pieces of many brigades, likely btln and company strength formations pulled out. To me this raises questions. Ukraine, at least fairly recently, had reserves. Are they no longer available? Pulling single btlns out of other units is generally bad practice, especially when it's this many different ones. Some of these units were definitely not at the front. We haven't really seen Strykers active on the front lines in a long time. Ukrainian artillery support is hard to gage from existing footage, we can confirm 2S1s, they're the most common Soviet SP-howitzer Ukraine has these days because they got quite a few from Eastern Europe. We can confirm an M777s, and speculatively Krabs. There was also a 2S7 in the footage from inside Sumy region. It's also a mix, but not quite as severe as with other categories of kit.
With separate btlns, using different kit, casualties can cause units to degrade faster, and it's hard to combine units. It also makes logistics more complex. For weaponry on light armor vehicles for example, Ukraine has M2 .50s on most of their western MRAPs, and on the Strykers. But the BTR-60s have a KPVT 14.5mm. The BTR-4 has a 30mm autocannon, the Bradley a 25mm Bushmaster, and the Marder a 20mm. The MBTs are all compatible on ammo, and this
might be a reason western MBTs aren't being used. In general MBTs appear in small numbers. Mostly we're seeing single tanks leading mech platoon groups. This allows them to be less noticeable, and move quickly, but it also means that a single drone strike can deprive the formation of a large chunk of its firepower.
None of this points to a single obvious conclusion but in general these formations are getting hit, the longer they're stuck in they more they will lose, and they're almost certainly losing more kit then Russia is, the destroyed trailers with tanks notwithstanding. Widening the operation didn't work, and I wonder why they did it that way in the first place. If they had forces to advance in a wider front, why not start wide to begin with? If they don't have forces to advance in a wider front, why does widening it help? I'm skeptical that this will turn out well for Ukraine, and to me it seems these resources could have been better used on the defensive. In Toretsk Ukrainian forces narrowly escaped encirclement by Russian forces advancing through Novgorodskoe (techincally they were briefly operationally encircled when Russia took the school). On the Pokrovsk axis Russia seems to have settled into a rhythm of successful attacks, multiple per day, gaining ground in many directions in a fairly wide front, and the curving nature of the rail berm means they don't have to push too far from the high ground to end up with a fairly wide area. The 47th Mech in particular has been worn very thin trying to blunt these advances, unsuccessfully so far. It remains to be seen what the consequences of this are."
