Skip to main content

The Hammer and the Sickle - Potential Russian Pincer-Offensive

For the past weeks the social media has been filled with sightings of Russian troops moving towards the regions bordering Ukraine. The buildup was initially called an exercise, but in the most recent press releases Kremlin has been rather clear that the troops have been deployed there as an operational deployment, if Russia feels a need to act upon any real or imaginary escalation in Donbass. The troops will stay in the region as long as President Putin sees it necessary.

Russia Serna-Class landing crafts of the Caspian flotilla


The initial buildup was focused on occupied Crimea that has so far received an additional VDV airborne regiment, multiple mechanized battalion tactical groups and heavy artillery units equipped with at least the enormous 240mm 2S4 Tulpan mortars. 

Additional trains and convoys have been spotted in Rostov, Krasnodar and Voronezh regions. The Russian controlled Belarusian military has also been alerted and multiple, very Russian looking units are operating in the southern part of the country. Unlike the typical training deployments, these convoys have had a larger portion of supply vehicles, including fuel tankers. The main battle tanks, predominantly T-72B3:s deployed have had their external fuel tanks fitted and they more frequently than normally carry dozer blades and mine plows.

Russian T-72B3 with external fuel tanks and a dozer blade


The troops have been gathered all the way from the Central Military Districts Siberian units and some trains are on the way from Arkhangelsk and Murmansk in the Arctic. In addition to the troops deploying close to Ukraine, the Russian ICBM TELs carrying the intercontinental nuclear missiles have been dispersed to the vast Siberian taiga to provide a nuclear umbrella for any upcoming operations.

One surprising location where at least two Russian battalions have been spotted is the port city of Yeisk in Krasnodar oblast. The city is located on the southern shore of the Azov Sea, right across the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.




On 8th of April the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that over ten vessels of the Caspian fleet would transit from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. The Volga-Don canal route takes this flotilla of gunboats, landing crafts and corvettes directly into the Azov Sea, less than a 100km form the Yeisk docks, that are well suited to loading all sorts of watercraft. The flotilla would be able to cross the 50 km stretch of water to Mariupol in less than an hour, bypassing the heavily fortified Ukrainian defense lines east of the city.

Russian beachhead on the northern shore of the Azov Sea would simultaneously threaten the rear of both the defenders of the Mariupol sector and the troops guarding the narrow approaches from Crimea to the Ukrainian mainland.

Another concentration of Russian reinforcements has been spotted building a temporary base of operations in the Voronetzh oblast, roughly 180 km from the Ukrainian border. The base has at least 600 vehicles with heavy artillery and electronic warfare support. Together with the forces of and in Belarus, this multi-brigade force threatens to bypass the Ukrainian forces facing off with the Russian forces already in Donbass. It looks like the Russian high command is setting up a pincer move that would force the well entrenched Ukrainian defenders to react and move. 

The maneuver warfare this would result in, is something that the Russian forces have trained a lot in the recent years and their new command and communications infrastructure allows a tight integration of different components of their force, while the extensive electronic warfare capabilities could severely hamper the Ukrainian response. 

If successful the pincer movement would either force the Ukrainian army surrounding the Russian control areas in Donbass into full retreat towards west or to their complete destruction. It would hardly be the first massive encirclement operation in the Ukrainian steppes.



Popular posts from this blog

Russian Tanks 2022: Thicker and Blinder

  Since the all out invasion of Ukraine the Russian army has lost at least 1700 tanks. This has caused the Russian army some supply problems, when they are re-forming their mauled units. Fighting has also revealed the need for upgrades on most of the Russian tank designs. The most obvious issues with the existing Russian tank fleet are the insufficient armor protection, the lack of reverse mobility and the vulnerability of the automatic loaders and their ammunition carousels. Although the last one has gifted us the sport of Turret Throwing. T-72B obr 2022 tanks Very little can be done for the mobility with the limitations of the existing transmissions and the autoloaders can’t really be replaced with better designs or human loaders either. The armor part on the other hand can be improved during the activation and refurbishment of the deep stored Soviet-era tanks. The first new design that appeared in the battlefield was an upgraded T-72B3 with additional armo,r mimicking the T-90M layo

Russian Spring offensive 2023: Kyiv Take Two

Russian T-80U tanks stuck and abandoned in Ukraine in spring 2022   The spectacular Ukrainian victories during the 2022 forced the Russian army to the defensive. With the Russian retreat from Kharkiv and the areas north of the river Dnipro in Kherson, the focus of the fighting has returned to the Donbass. The Russian forces, with Wagner mercenaries and penal battalions doing the bulk of the fighting and dying, are trying to take Bakhmut in a battle that invokes parallels to the meat grinders of the Great war. The Ukrainian armed forces on the other hand are slowly making progress towards Kreminna. Despite the continuous rumors about a new massive round of mobilizations, the Russian army cannot sustain the present level of attrition indefinitely. By throwing enough men and material against the prepared Ukrainian positions manned by experienced and highly motivated defenders, Russians may be able to gain some localized breakthroughs. But even if the Russian mechanized forces are able to

Redut: Russian Mercenaries Controlled by a Finnish Citizen

  The recent conflicts where Russia has been directly or indirectly involved, like the invasion of Ukraine and the civil wars in Syria, Libya and Central African Republic have introduced the public to the Russian quasi-private military contractors. The most famous of these “private military contractors”  is undoubtedly the notorious Wagner-group that is presently waging an army corps level assault on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after engaging in various war crimes across Ukraine. The group leader Evgeniy Prigozhin has used his close connections to the Kremlin to expand his private army with convicted criminals. But the Wagner isn’t the only such formation operating under the Kremlin's umbrella. Several rumors have been floating around about the increased friction between the Russian military and Wagner. Elements within the Kremlin and the Russian general staff are trying to elevate another private security company called Redut, Russian for a redoubt, to balance the growing power