Sicher, Russland hat Kurachowe endlich erobert, aber zu welchem ​​Preis?

Welcome to the [Peanut Gallery](https://www.nuttyspectacle.com/)! Today we’re shaking off the holiday funk.

Please remember that I know nothing.

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**[Today’s Source:](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-23-2024)**

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I hope everyone had a merry Christmas, and I hope we’re all ready for the new year, because 2025 is coming in fast and hot. We’re already a quarter of the way through the Twenty-First Century. Ain’t that a head trip? Time is funny the way she moves, always pressing forward.

Anyway, let’s get to it.

>Russian forces have likely seized Kurakhove following two months of intensified offensive operations aimed at seizing the settlement and eliminating the Ukrainian salient north and south of the settlement.

Folks, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but someone’s got to do it, and it sure as shit isn’t going to be the Reddit algorithm.

All appearances suggest Kurakhove fell, collapsing the pocket and ensuring significant Russian advance in Donetsk. [Here’s Kurakhove on the map.](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kurakhove,+Donetsk+Oblast,+Ukraine/@47.9852823,37.1916285,11z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x40de1e6031f6b799:0x65b8a17a97e2a073!8m2!3d47.9865822!4d37.2906965!16zL20vMGd0cGZ3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D) Note that it’s immediatly west of Donetsk City and situated along the critical H-15 Highway to Andriivka, a critical juncture between the H-15 and the T-05-15 Highway leading to Pokrovsk. It links to the two ‘halves’ of the Donetsk front together. Andriivka will likely serve as the next hard point of Ukrainian defense.

The fall of Kurakhove isn’t the end of the world, nor is it particularly surprising. Russia spent two months hurling their best and brightest at its walls so it was inevitable they would make progress. Ukraine yields ground because that is their strategy for success. It’s the NATO style of fighting: exchange ground for lives and material. It just looks bad if one judges this war solely by what they see on a map.

And rest assured, the Kurakhove offensive cost Putin a lot. ISW says Russia mustered about 35 thousand soldiers for a blitz on a town with a prewar population of 18 thousand. It’s been a grinding, brutal two months where Russia’s average casualties have hovered between 1,500 – 1,600 per day. Much of that is due to the heightened activity in Donetsk as it’s the theater of primary focus.

It comes down to a difference in philosophy. Putin prioritizes acreage over human life; Zelenskyy prioritizes human life over acreage. Now I don’t know the correct answer between the two, but I do know it will decide the outcome of this war.

>Russia has continued to expand its domestic production capabilities of Iranian-designed Shahed drones ahead of its Winter 2024-2025 strike campaign against Ukraine.

The headline buries the lede. Russian Shahed production doubled in 2024 to 5,760 Shaheds produced between January and September. It’s a significant increase in productive capacity and a formidable strategic threat to the Ukrainian energy grid. That’s the main target for these drones. They’ll serve as ‘chafe’ to waste Ukrainian ammunition and distract from missiles interspersed in Russian strike packages.

Oh, speaking of chafe, y’all remember how Russia’s sneaking in decoy drones lately amidst the real Shaheds? They’re little more than wings and motors? I thought the idea of a decoy drones were ridiculous since Russia still needed to, you know, build a damn drone, but ISW weighed in and revealed the cost-benefit of these decoy drones: the manufacturing cost for decoy drones is ten percent that of proper Shaheds. At those numbers Russia could launch drone swarms in the low thousands. Sure, most of them won’t do anything, but Ukraine won’t know which is which and will have to exert endless effort shooting them all down lest a real one gets through.

Fortunately Ukraine’s electronic warfare systems are developing swiftly and are already responsible for knocking down 50 percent of the Shaheds Russia sends. Even better, sanctions restrict Russia’s ability to important high quality motors, so they’re reduced to using faulty ones from China. These faulty motors mean many Shaheds never leave the tarmac, or they fall out of the sky before reaching Ukrainian airspace.

>A Russian air defense system reportedly shot an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 passenger aircraft over the Republic of Chechnya on December 25, after which the plane crashed in Aktau, Kazakhstan.

Well this was a fucked up story.

This Azerbaijan passenger plane was doing laps about Grozny airport trying to land, but Russia kept refusing it clearance. At some point the Grozny air defense crews targeted the airline with EW and a Pantsir air defense system. The airplane took the missile like a champ and remained in the sky, but by the sounds of things they lost a few engines. The plane requested clearance to land at Grozny and was denied. They were also denied for the next three Russian alternatives they tried. Russia informed the plane their best bet was to cross the Caspian Sea and land in Aktau. With no recourse that’s exactly what the Azerbaijan passenger plane attempted, where the plane crashed in Kazakhstan. Half the passengers and the pilot perished in the wreckage.

The thing that gets me about this story is the pointlessness of the whole affair. There was no good reason for Russian to deny the plane a chance to land at Grozny. There was no good reason to fire an anti-aircraft missile at the plane. And there was no good reason to then send them all the way to Kazakhstan for emergency landing. It was horrible from a humanitarian standpoint; pointless from a defense standpoint; and counterproductive from an international relations standpoint. All around it just makes me ask, “What the fuck?” and then feel impotent at Russia’s endless cruelty. May the perpetrators of this disaster roast in hell.

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>Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Head off the Department of Combating Crimes Committed in Conditions of Armed Conflict, Yuri Bilousov, reported on November 1 that Russian forces have executed at least 109 Ukrainian POWs since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 and that Russian forces have intensified the number of POW executions they commit in 2024.

[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:

* Kurakhove fell. Do you think Ukraine should change tactics and seize the initiative from Russia? Or should they maintain their current strategy of defense, slowly yielding land in exchange for Russian lives?

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* Join the conversation on /r/TheNuttySpectacle!