The Peanut Gallery: Putin schleudert Panzerbataillon auf Tonenke – die Ukraine hinterlässt nur wenige Überlebende

Welcome to the [Peanut Gallery](https://www.nuttyspectacle.com/)! Today I’d like to focus on the savage beatdown Ukraine dispensed in the Avdiivka direction.

Please remember that I know nothing.

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**Correction(s):**

Two today. Let’s start with the important one.

I want to apologize for flaking on last night’s issue. I woke this morning with the intent of hammering out the rest of the post, then found myself sucked away as a thousand other obligations in my life made themselves known. I’ve got a nasty habit of overcommitting myself (time is a nebulous concept to my conscious experience) and that really came back to bite me in the ass . Every time I sat down, something else popped up, and now here I find myself at our usual meeting place…wondering where the day went.

Next, as /u/External_Reaction314 correctly pointed out, Orthodox and Catholic Easters fall on the same day, but they disagree upon the number of days in a year. Orthodox Christianity follows something called a Julian Calendar, a stupid and wrong calendar.

“Storyteller, what the hell is your problem with another culture’s calendar?” you may be asking yourself, and to that I have to say: it’s eleven minutes off. Every year it’s eleven minutes less accurate, meaning that their seasons gradually shift in terms of months. Imagine, if you will, fall in July, winter in August, and summer all the time thanks to global warming.

Granted, we’re talking thousands of years to experience significant seasonal drift, but let’s have some consistency, yeah? December is Christmas because December means winter. If we mess with the date, then all of our songs are wrong, and have you heard the new shit they’re pumping out? It’s awful. If I have to hear *‘Santa Baby’* one more time I’ll fuckin’ lose it.

Anyway, this correction is relevant because I made some comments the other day which referenced Easter and Russia’s spring conscription as possibly being related. Apparently they are not.

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**[Ukraine:](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-31-2024)**

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>Ukrainian forces appear to have repelled a Russian battalion-sized mechanized assault near Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast, on March 30 — the first battalion-sized mechanized assault since Russian forces began the campaign to seize Avdiivka in late October 2023.

>A Ukrainian serviceman reported on March 31 that Russian forces, including elements of the Russian 6th Tank Regiment (90th Tank Division, Central Military District [CMD]), committed 36 tanks and 12 BMP infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) to a large-mechanized assault near Tonenke on March 30.

>Geolocated imagery published on March 31 shows a large number of destroyed and damaged Russian armored vehicles and tanks along a road northwest of Tonenke (west of Avdiivka). The Ukrainian serviceman stated that Ukrainian forces destroyed 12 Russian tanks and eight IFVs during the assault and noted that the frontal assault failed to break through the Ukrainian line.

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Yep, we’re starting with yesterday’s news because this shit is important.

The quote is for a ‘batallion sized’ force, meaning about a thousand attackers. It’s an assault roughly on the scale of the initial attacks on Avdiivka. And just like Avdiivka, Ukraine kicked Putin teeth down his throat.

Ukraine’s resilience implies two things:

Russia is willing to commit significant resources to keep up pressure. While this should, nominally, be a period of rest and reconstitution following a major offensive, the Kremlin is nevertheless maintaining a pattern of constant assaults. These assaults result in marginal gains, but the cost to men and material is significant. Each life lost, each turret tossed will be one less in Putin’s imaginary summer offensive.

Ukraine established a defensive hardpoint in [Tonenke.](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tonen'ke,+Donetsk+Oblast,+Ukraine/@48.1731043,37.6214361,12z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x40e0828ff2dcfbeb:0x320abf631dcc57d0!8m2!3d48.1372414!4d37.645881!16s%2Fg%2F1s0486f8t?entry=ttu) If the settlement wasn’t sufficiently fortified, then they’d have abandoned it under an armored battalion’s worth of pressure.

Unfortunately, despite the savage beatdown Ukraine inflicted, Russia will likely be back soon. Very soon. Lately the Kremlin’s been switching up their assault doctrine; rather than target one hamlet, they’re alternating between two. At the moment their objectives are Kupyansk via Lyman and continuous pressure upon Avdiivka’s (supposedly) unfortified outskirts.

This changeup strikes me as a clever way for Putin to compensate for his army’s limitations. By rapidly cycling offensive units in and out, he’s able to maintain pressure, ensure every attack is made with fresh units, and improve morale with frequent recovery. And as a bonus it makes it easier for the Kremlin to assess actual losses following each attack.

All-said, Putin must be patting himself on the back. Top-down? It’s a genius move. Tactically, however, it’s asenine.

Yes, each blow hits hard, but now they’re predictable. New arrivals have no time to learn the lay of the land, get to know the terrain and formulate a way to overcome the local defenses. It’s attack-rest-attack-rest on a fixed schedule. Yeah, you ease the burden on local logistics, but at the cost of handing Ukrain an opportunity to dig-in, assess, respond, reinforce, and smoke.

Constant pressure won Prigozhin Bakhmut, and constant pressure eventually broke Avdiivka, but this isn’t constant pressure, is it? It’s alternating strikes, switching from the hydraulic press to the jackhammer. Its success will be predicated upon the severity of Ukraine’s equipment shortages.

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>A joint investigation by 60 Minutes, the Insider, and Der Spiegel strongly suggests that the Kremlin has waged a sustained kinetic campaign directly targeting US government personnel both in the United States and internationally for a decade, with the likely objective of physically incapacitating US government personnel.

>The investigation, which the outlets published on March 31, indicates that the infamous Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) Unit 29155 (the same unit whose operatives attempted to assassinate Sergei Skripal with the Novichok nerve agent in the United Kingdom in 2018) may be using nonlethal directed energy or acoustic weapons to target a large number of US government personnel, each of whom has reported experiencing an “anomalous health incident” (also called “Havana Syndrome”) of varying severity between 2014 and as recently as 2023.

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This isn’t hybrid warfare. It’s warfare. We just aren’t ready to admit it.

To be honest, I don’t know how this is going to end. The United States hasn’t overtly accused the Kremlin yet, but you can be damn certain Biden’s mulling over our response. We might not even publicly comment—we seem to be doing that less and less lately. Knowing Biden, he’ll respond behind the scenes. Macron’s talk about a coalition sending troops into Ukraine isn’t an idle threat. It’s a reality which can become very real very quickly if America decides to throw their weight behind the initiative.

I say do it. I say we send in a few fixed-wings and give Ukraine back her skies.

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>Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stressed that materiel shortages from delays in Western security assistance are constraining Ukrainian forces and forcing Ukraine to conduct a strategic defense.

[Please give Ukraine what they need to bring this war to an end.](https://u24.gov.ua/)

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‘Q’ for the Community:

* How should NATO respond to this Havanna Syndrome assault? Do you favor direct intervention in Ukraine?

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* Join the conversation of on /r/TheNuttySpectacle!