Articles and Reporting
Another excellent video from Australian defense analyst Perun, this time covering the threats that Russia faces when it chooses to escalate the conflict.
Relevant Statistics
All vehicle losses are visually confirmed only and thus represent the lowest possibly figure (sourced from Oryx, here and here); they are updated to the nearest 25 daily. All personnel losses are estimates or projections and should be viewed as such; they are updated as new information becomes available.
Russia
Ukraine
War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
Russian forces in Ukraine have committed and continue to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied regions of Ukraine, in violation of international law and basic human decency. Russian crimes in Ukraine constitute genocide and ethnic cleansing, with Russia’s stated war aims including the elimination of Ukrainians as a separate country, language, culture, and people.
Dozens of Ukrainian civilians were killed and hundreds more injured during a spate of attacks over the week, including one that struck a children’s cancer hospital; see the Weekly Conclusion.
Overview
Ukraine
Russia continues to launch drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, infrastructure, and military installations, resulting in large blackouts and serious damage to Ukraine’s energy grid.
Russian forces continue to launch limited raids northwest of Kharkiv and in Sumy Oblast.
Russia
Ukrainian forces continue to launch near-daily long-range strikes on Russian oil and gas facilities.
International
Poland and Ukraine signed a defense agreement, notably appearing to include provisions that could allow Poland to shoot down incoming Russian projectiles, though pressure from the United States seems to have made this impossible.
The United States stopped a Russian assassination attempt on the head of Rheinmetall, an enormous German defense contractor that has been strongly supportive of Ukraine, with reports that several other assassination plots on similar targets were also planned.
Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, the most pro-Russian leader of any EU or NATO state, made a visit to Moscow that was roundly criticized by other Western countries.
During a summit in Washington, D.C., NATO leaders declared that Ukraine’s “future is NATO,” with its path into the organization “irreversible.” In addition, NATO members condemned China for continuing to provide direct, material assistance to the Russian war effort.
The Netherlands announced it would finally be sending long-promised F-16 aircraft to Ukraine, for which they will purchase $325 million in munitions. Japan announced its intention to provide funding and training for landmine clearing equipment and programs. Britain announced a new aid package including artillery, small boats, and munitions worth several hundred million dollars. The United States, announced a $225 million aid package including various munitions. America, Germany, Romania, and the Netherlands pledged to provide one Patriot air defense battery each, with Italy also donating a SAMP/T battery.
Regional Military Updates
Northern Theatre
🟧 Significant action. Ukrainian counterattacks north of Kharkiv made limited gains. Russian assaults in central Vovchansk made limited gains. Fighting reported northeast of Kupyansk. Russian attacks southeast of Kupyansk made gains. Fighting reported northwest of Svatove. Fighting reported southwest of Svatove. Fighting reported west of Kreminna.
Assessment: No change from previous assessment.
Eastern Theatre
🟧 Significant action. Fighting reported around Bilohorivka. Fighting reported east of Siversk. Russian assaults on Spirne made significant gains. Russian attacks north of Soledar made marginal gains. Fighting reported around Chasiv Yar. Russian assaults on Andriivka made gains. Russian attacks towards Toretsk made marginal gains. Russian assaults on Niu York made marginal gains. Russian attacks around Avdiivka made limited gains.Russian assaults in Krasnohorivka made marginal gains. Russian attacks around Novomykhailivka made marginal gains.
Assessment: Russian forces continue to make limited gains around Siversk. The situation around Chasiv Yar is largely static. Russian gains around Toretsk seem to have stalled.
Southern Theatre
🟩 Limited action. Russian assaults in Urozhaine, south of Velyka Novosilka, made gains. Fighting reported around Huliaipole. Fighting reported around Mala Tokmachka. Russian attacks northwest of Verbove made limited gains. Fighting reported around Robotyne.
Assessment: No change from previous assessment.
Dnieper Theatre
🟩 Limited action. Fighting reported around Krynky.
Assessment: No change from previous assessment.
Weekly Conclusion
Note: This Week’s Conclusion is an abridged version of a larger essay regarding recent Russian missile attacks and Western policy on long-range strikes into Russia. The full piece can be read here.
On July 8th, Russian bombers launched a large wave of missile attacks on civil infrastructure across Ukraine, including the cities of Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Pokrovsk, and more. Among the targets struck was the Okhmadyt children’s cancer hospital in Kyiv, the largest such facility in the country. At least 47 civilians were killed, with hundreds more being injured.
If it was not already obvious, the intentional targeting of residential areas and non-military civil infrastructure – including children’s cancer hospitals – is a heinous violation of the laws of war.
These bombers – and the men who command them, and the bases that house them, and the leaders who direct them – are legitimate targets. They are legitimate not just because they are military in nature, but because they have repeatedly, intentionally, and knowingly violated the laws of war in a manner that has become routine.
Ukraine has every right to retaliate against these targets, to ensure that attacks like these do not happen again. It has had that right since the very first city, hospital, child was struck, on the very first day of the war. Ukraine not only possesses the weapons it needs to make such retaliation a reality, it has even been given explicit, public permission multiple times from the nations who have built and supplied such weapons to use them in that very manner.
And yet it has not done, not because it does not want to, and not because it cannot do so, but because the United States refuses to allow it to respond.
Our current policy is intolerable, outrageous, and morally repugnant. We force Ukraine to fight with limitations we ourselves would never accept, to suffer indignities and brutalities that we admit are barbaric, counseling them to simply lie down and suffer what they must, sacrificing innocents so that we may shield criminals for fear of what justice might mean to us.
Continuing in the present manner is not only unjust and deeply immoral, it is strategically bankrupt. The Russian bomber fleet has always posed a large and serious threat to vital Ukrainian infrastructure. This includes not only the energy and thermal infrastructure that we are set to spend billions (potentially tens of billions) repairing, but the airfields that will soon house dozens of newly-furnished F-16s. Russia will use these bombers, this weapon, so long as it retains unfettered access to it. It will do with that weapon all of the damage it can, on whatever targets it can reach, whenever it has the opportunity to do so. No amount of words, no number of photos, no number of dead children will change the Kremlin’s calculus in this regard. That is a feat that only burning Tupolevs and dead airmen can accomplish.
Ukraine has not just the ability, but the will to make that happen. It is disgraceful – it is shameful – that we do not.
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”
