What the Russian religious holiday ceasefire told us about Ukrainian artillery and therefore alternative media (as we should’ve already known)

There’s an obvious reason why alternative media is chock full of “former” intelligence agency/military personnel, but that is a fuller subject for another time. Suffice to say, the superficial rationale by which the undiscerning alternative media audience unsuspectingly accepts the situation is because it is felt that the experience possessed by these operatives lends them to the job: they have expertise by which to comment.  But is this supposition even true?

Take this “ex”-CIA Larry C Johnson character, for instance. The other week he was writing to complain how US Government, when it shouldn’t, relies solely on Ukrainian intelligence about the Russian Special Military Operation. Of course, one can’t help but notice how, therefore, US Government activity in relation to the SMO is being framed as being misguided by Ukrainian influence, but it’s secondary and not the point of the writing to which it is leading.

And progressing in that direction, this Johnson character argues that data gathering should be more comprehensive. For instance:

Here is what we know with certainty from open source reports.

‘Russia is firing a staggering 20,000 artillery rounds per day, a senior U.S. defense official estimated, while Ukraine is firing from 4,000 to 7,000 rounds daily.

The Ukrainians are quickly burning through their stockpiles of artillery rounds and other ammunition, including for their air defense systems, officials said.’

We’ll overlook the absurdity of US intelligence gatherers finding new understanding from material introduced into the discourse by their own colleagues, because the device is merely a vehicle that Johnson uses to arrive at his point and purpose, which is to give the wrong idea about how many Russians are being killed by the Ukrainians:

Those rounds translate into casualties on both sides. Put simply, Ukraine is suffering at least four times the number of killed and wounded than Russia.

Thus has this Johnson character lent his voice to, or even germinated a formula whereby someone looking, for instance (and to be topical), at the reports of Ukrainian dead in the defence of Soledar – wherever the hell they have supposed to have originated – will decide that the Russians must themselves in the process have lost 1,750, or 2,250, or even 6,250, depending on whichever number of lost Ukrainians one cares to use. Perhaps more sinisterly, an adherent of the Johnson method of counting might suppose there must have been Ukrainian reciprocation every time a Russian Ministry of Defence briefing gives a report alike the following:

…complex fire attacks launched by Russian units at the AFU have resulted in the elimination of over 100 Ukrainian personnel.

With it not being unusual for such a report to appear very regularly, and sometimes more than once in a single briefing, anyone holding the notion of inevitable casualties as a result of assured, constant Ukrainian reaction will soon be reading between the lines of every Russian statement, and be calculating Russian dead accruing into large numbers.

At the heart of this framework for improving the appearance of Ukrainian potency is a trick that the reader might have seen employed by other alternative media, and it involves allowing the audience to believe that the Ukrainians go through their stockpiles of artillery ammunition by firing it all off. Indeed, Johnson does it himself by not challenging the implication made in the quotation that rapidly diminishing stockpiles is expressly linked to rate of fire.

The truth is that the Russians destroy Ukrainian ammunition stockpiles on an almost daily basis.

Indeed, in January so far the Russians have denied to the Ukrainians a total of 1 “artillery ordnance”, 17 “ordnance”, 4 ”ordnance and equipment”, 1 “armament and hardware” and 3 “artillery ammunition” depots. Moreover, and again, the Russians report on an a daily basis of intercepting rocket-propelled projectiles. The same briefings will also tell of attacks on Ukrainian artillery and mortar firing positions and losses of hardware. Often, and it has become increasingly the case in recent weeks, the Russians will tell of the destruction of individual pieces of the more significant artillery.

The upshot is  that, through destruction of armament one way or another, the Ukrainians do not get to fire anything like all the ammunition that begins any particular day in an inventory, and do not see everything fired for an effective outcome. The Johnson method of counting is nonsense. If there’s any relation at all between outcomes of Ukrainian and Russian artillery fire then it is this: constant levels of the latter equate to exponential decay in the levels of the former. There certainly should be no understanding that there’s a constant factor (irrespective of hard realities) that describes a relationship between Ukrainian and Russian stand-off capability from which a number of Russian dead can be calculated based on Ukrainian casualties from Russian rates of fire.

Completely unsurprisingly, this rubbish was recommended as “excellent” by the barely comprehensible Andrei Martyanov – he whose knowledge of war machines, their workings and their operation individually and in a system represents to him a superior intellect. Controlled opposition can always be seen working an angle†, and this one (quite typically, actually) is able to work his and feed his audience the “lie-amongst-the-truth” because it, like a typical alternative media audience, is dumb, and far too stupid to notice the very simple contradiction that presents itself.

As it happens, however, no one needs to have the “but I can drive my tractor right” smarts of Martyanov to understand that Ukrainian artillery capability can’t remain constant against that of the Russians. There is now, thanks to the religious holiday ceasefire that the Russians unilaterally held over the course of the 6th and 7th January, empirical evidence that Ukrainian artillery is in a shocking state of degradation.

The Russian observance of a ceasefire meant that there came a point when operations would only be prosecuted reactively against Ukrainian initiative – the Ukrainians had made it clear that the ceasefire was meaningless. What happened was that the Russians had to react to Ukrainian stand-off fire, and this naturally got reported in the Russian MoD briefings with the point evidently being to document what the Russians would call a Ukrainian breach.  What follows is the reportage in full (with that for the second day following seamlessly from that for the first):

In Krasniy Liman direction, the AFU have fired 11 mortar shells at Russian positions.

In Soledar, Avdeyevka and Maryinka directions, the enemy has attacked Russian troops, using artillery means 50 times.

More than 60 large-calibre shells have been fired by Ukrainian troops at residential areas of Donetsk, while Makeyevka (Donetsk People’s Republic) has been attacked by U.S.-manufactured HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems.

The AFU opened artillery fire in Zaporozhye region 31 times.

In Kherson and Krivoy Rog directions, the enemy has launched 17 artillery attacks.

Russian forces have returned fire from all the AFU’s positions from which the shelling was taking place, and suppressed them.

In Kupyansk and Krasniy Liman directions, the AFU has fired 78 artillery and mortar shells.

In Soledar, Avdeyevka and Maryinka directions, the enemy used large-calibre artillery fire 155 times.

More than AFU 160 large-calibre shells and 20 multiple-launch rockets have been fired at residential areas of Donetsk.

The enemy opened artillery fire 89 times in Zaporozhye region.

In Kherson and Krivoy Rog directions, Ukrainian artillery has been used 55 times.

Russian forces’ return fire suppressed AFU artillery that had been firing on residential areas.

With the Ukrainians effectively allowed to get free shots – the fact of merely being on the battlefield was not reason enough for the Russians to react – the extent of the Ukrainian capability, before it was smothered, can be itemised in detail in half a page, and with a number not more than 800. This was over the course of a day.

Of course, it could be said in response to this that the Ukrainians acted in a limited manner, or the Russians could not have recorded every stand-off firing because of just not being able to see (for whatever reason) all that could be going on. This is as well it might be, but the least that can be said about what is being conveyed here is that it represents Ukrainian stand-off firing considered to be a threat so that the Russians were forced to respond. It’s not very impressive. And there’s also this to consider: since the Russians were cataloguing Ukrainian breach of a cessation of hostilities, it wouldn’t be in their interest to hide the scale of the transgression.

Nevertheless, you can rest assured, reader, that your alternative media will still be telling you of “artillery duels” between the Russians and the Ukrainians long into this conflict, like it has been doing long since the Ukrainians lost the ability to effectively bring artillery to bear – a thing that happened possibly even as early as the opening salvos in February. However, there must be “artillery duels” or else x number of Russians (found by the formula x = y/4, where y is the value of Ukrainian dead) can’t be imagined.

The latest package of US military assistance does nothing to solve Ukraine’s dire artillery problem – but then again at this stage there is probably little that the US/UK and all of its vassals could do in this respect. And besides which, when there is a reliance on Human Wave attack, as there is with the anti-Russian axis, where an advance is expected to progress quickly away from one’s own lines with horrific attrition caused by the enemy’s guns supposedly accounted for by the size and mobility of one’s forces (but usually not, as is the case in this conflict), then having artillery is not necessarily a great necessity.

Indeed, that the UK/US planners (mistakenly) think that they can continue in the same vein as they did in 2022 (as explained in the article, The Offensive That Isn’t On 17th December: Russian Activity In The Kupyansk And Krasny Liman Directions), is why the package contains 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, 138 Humvees and 55 MRAPs.

Naturally, there was much chuntering in the alternative media about the American IFVs going to Ukraine for the first time, with the corporate-media talking point of the US supplying “tanks” being fully exploited to make claims about “escalation” (as per a history of sensationalism designed to worry an audience about the prospect of World War III in an effort to create global public pressure to stop Russia doling out the UK/US’s punishment). The Bradleys will primarily serve the purpose of being personnel carriers to get the Ukrainians (and other nationalities in Ukrainian uniform) forward fast – at least, that would be the idea [the Russians are way past allowing this sort of thing to happen].

As for the Leopard and Challenger tanks that Poland and the UK Government are now supposed to be sending – for various reasons there’s little chance that they would even be envisioned as capable of surviving very long at the vanguard of a rush-and-push (and this would be damaging to reputation), so let’s suggest that the role for these is going to be ad hoc, third rate artillery, in the same way that the Ukrainian Soviet-era tanks (now in need of replacement) were used. The following is a corporate-media headline from June, 2022:

‘Outgunned’ Ukraine uses tanks as artillery as Kyiv pleas for weapons in growing ammunition crisis

A situation was also detailed on social media very recently that suggested Ukrainian tanks being used as artillery and attempting (and failing) to fire on Russian positions near Artyomovsk – see the appendix.

Ultimately, the issue of tanks to Ukraine is really besides the point. The problem is one of artillery [in conjunction with the Ukrainians being on the defensive] – the huge asymmetry in this respect between the two sides, and it being the reason why the Russians will achieve their objectives – and, as stated above, there’s no reason to understand that it can be fixed.

† See also

Beware Ukrainian Maps (And Those Who Swear By Them) (link)

Where’s The Zaporozhe “Offensive”, Tony, Brian…, Maureen? (link)

The Zaporozhe “Offensive” And For It The Shaping Of The Battleground In Kherson (The “War On The Fields”), According To Propagandists For Ukraine (link)

Appendix:

An encounter  between a civilian and journalist for Ukrainian media in Artyomovsk, as republished by Telegram channel,  @intelslava. (The featured image shows the woman indicating towards the Russian positions – in the opposite direction from the origin of the shelling)

Journalist: Who’s shelling the centre of Bakhmut?

Civilian: Ukrainian tanks

J: Are you sure?

C: Yes, around the city

[another shot is heard]

J: Is this also a Ukrainian tank?

C: Yes because the Russians are on that side!”