JohninMK Wed Apr 26, 2023 11:29 am
Interesting update, if not quite right for today it can't be long now.
Erik Zimerman
@ZimermanErik
#Bakhmut is a cauldron, at least in terms of supply. Hard pressed withdrawal may still be possible through the muddy fields, on foot and by certain vehicles, but normal supply of the garrison is no long possible.
Wagner forces are keeping a tight seal on information on what is happening in the NW, though there is plenty of progress daily in the West and SW.
Ukraine, if it meant to stay, correctly threw everything it had on the supply flanks, elite forces around the Mig-17 monument in the SW and Khromove in the NW. As we have discussed for some time, they are the key to the whole battle.
As they try to shore up these flanks, the center of the garrison is weakening and withdrawing, with relative easy daily Russian gains. Some internal pockets are already partially a fact on the ground, with Russian forces seizing the intersection of Yuvileyna and Chajkovsokogo st (the T-0504).
But most importantly, RU forces are advancing quietly in Khromove towards the critical rural road junctions. The thermal data tells us the story. Here images for the 23rd and 24th, and then the 25th and 26th. Until a few hours ago, there were no big strikes in the south or main center of the UA grarrison, but rather an advance westward as would be the wisest.
In the last few hours, there is thermal data at the western edge of the city, indicating RU forces readying for the last push, and some heavy strikes in the SW, west of the important intersection taken by RU forces.
An operational cauldron is in place, tigher with each passing hour and day. The encirclement will be hermetic likely in the coming days, but already an orderly wheeled withdrawal without heavy losses is already impossible.
As is typical, the Zelensky regime has abandoned some the nation's bravest to the wolves.
The western mainstream media, with its irational praise of all actions Ukrainian and condemnation of all Russian, regardless of fact or circumstance, has helped convince government in Kiev that all universally agree that the most important thing on this earth is their political survival (not physicial survival of the people nor their land), and that all means are justifiable to this end.
By keeping that up, there will come the point where the Ukrainian armed forces, at least the minority of them at the actual front, will no longer agree.