The end of the “Battle of the ‘Svatove–Kreminna’ line”

If some alternative media is talking about how the Russians have reached the “suburbs of Kupyansk” and are “edging very much closer to ‘Lyman’”, it’s more than likely it won’t understand from its sources how it could be possible. That best that can be done, it appears, is to make some vague clutching at the idea that a “Ukrainian advance [on Svatovo and Kremennaya] is now definitely reversing”. These places†, of course, represent post “Kharkov offensive” Ukrainian ambitions which there has been seeming perpetual Ukrainian pressure to realise – according to a mythology that has materialised (including stories of entire Russian battalions being destroyed).

Lately it was said at this site that no such thing was going on at this time‡. Before that, it was supposed hereabouts that Ukrainian attacks being stopped in their tracks in December might actually be the Russians hitting the Ukrainians as they moved to their forward defences, given that the inclination of the aggression actually all seemed to be going in the other direction. The reader can see what is meant in the 12th December 2022 article, Charted: Russian Activity In The Kupyansk And Krasny Liman Directions In December Thus Far.

It was noted in the 5th January 2023 article, Keep Watching Southern Donetsk, that the Russians were almost universally talking about hitting the Ukrainians is their defensive positions: again, the aggression appeared to be very one sided, with the busyness of Russian attack,  at distances beyond what was understood to be front lines, in two weeks at the end of the year noted as being quite ferocious.

Moreover, the proximity of Russian attack closing in on Kupyansk was something noted in the article, The Offensive That Isn’t On 17th December: Russian Activity In The Kupyansk And Krasny Liman Directions.

So, if some alternative media is now beginning to report the end of the “Battle of the ‘Svatove–Kreminna line’” two months after we can identify the actual termination of Ukrainian forward movement in the Krasny Liman and Kupyansk directions, it must mean that things are going to transpire which need rapid exposition: in other words, so that the Russians “suddenly” turning up at the gates of “Lyman”, for instance, doesn’t look like an unpreviewed catastrophe.

Well, as it happens, on 14th February, the Russian Ministry of Defence briefing happened to state that

Operational-Tactical and Army aviation, artillery and heavy flamethrower systems of the ‘Tsentr’ Group of Forces hit AFU units in the areas of Tyrny, Krasny Liman (Donetsk People’s Republic), Stelmakhovka (Lugansk People’s Republic), and Serebryansky forestry.

In Keep Watching Southern Donetsk, it was reckoned that the Ukrainians “were pressed in a line from Stelmakhovka to Makeyevka to Torskoye”. Tyrny – if this is referring to “Terny”- is on that line. Krasny Liman is more to the west, of course. On the map below it’s just off the left hand side on the road coming from Seversk.

And the point of the maps, which show the Russian front line at Artyomovsk, Kupyansk, and near Krasny Liman, according to Russian MoD graphics (as at 14th February), is to remind of Russian coyness when it comes to this sort of thing, and to act as food for thought in terms of what might be the real situation. The Artyomovsk map shows how unwilling the Russians are to admit to their own progress even when the Ukrainians have no choice but to admit a good deal of it (in blue). With this in mind, understand that the Russians haven’t changed their Kupyansk and Krasny Liman maps for months.

In any event, whatever the real situation is in these places, surely we can suppose we’ll hear about it – or more likely a damage limiting variation – from alternative media in two months from now, after all the required bad news management (as controlled opposition would see it) has been performed. You know the sort of thing, reader, column space persuasion and air time blag that will do anything but ask an audience to consider the possibility of a now months-old Russian offensive.

† See Svatovo and Kremennaya on the maps in the 2nd December 2022 article, The Kupyansk And Krasny Liman Directions.

‡ In January 5th’s Keep Watching Southern Donetsk:

True, in recent weeks the Russians may well have started mentioning the destruction of Ukrainian “sabotage and reconnaissance” units presumably discovered within Russian areas of control, but for all intents and purposes, there are no Ukrainian “offensives”.

Update, 16th February, 2023:

Consider the maps from liveuamap.com above. The one on the left (3rd February) represents what we might call the Torskoye-Dvurechnoye line – stretching about about 100 miles from Donetsk (the territory of the Republic), running along the rough vicinity of the Lugansk-Kharkov border and then veering into Kharkov itself. The one on the right shows the same thing from the same date as this update. Bearing in mind that the Russian reckoning is already considerably and significantly further west in some places, what can be seen above is an Ukrainian admission of slight Russian territorial gain as has occurred during the course of February.

Now, while this Ukrainian admission might be meaningless, especially in terms of Russia’s primary concern to demilitarise the Ukrainian state, it still shows that territorial progress can’t be denied. While the real picture of Russian advancement – the information that is not given out officially and that OSINT-mongery can’t guess at – is surely going to be very different, the very least that one can say about this front is that Russia has been pinning the Ukrainians back along it for ages. At the same time, of course, all the “expertise” has been telling its audiences about Ukraine conducting some Battle of the ‘Svatove–Kreminna’ Line or other.