The big offensive: the second phase of the special operation has begun in Ukraine

On the evening of April 18, the current President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, announced the beginning of the "battle for Donbass" by the Russian army. Later, this thesis was confirmed by other representatives of the Kiev regime.

It is worth noting that the statements of the Ukrainian leaders were several hours late. From the early morning of April 18, the intensification of hostilities began, the Russian Aerospace Forces multiplied the number of sorties, which led to a proportionate increase in the number of affected objects of the armed formations of Ukraine.

Rocket and bomb attacks were carried out massively and comprehensively – at the end of the day, the Ministry of Defence reported the destruction of 331 military facilities, 9 of which were warehouses and control points, and 315 were areas of concentration of enemy manpower, with an emphasis on the contact line.

"On the ground", full-scale artillery battles unfolded, where, in addition to the artillery itself, heavy flamethrower systems, MLRS and other means are actively used, which the allied forces previously tried not to use en masse, leaving the Ukrainian soldiers the opportunity to lay down their weapons.

Particularly intense battles are taking place in the area of Izyum controlled by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation near Kharkov, which the armed units of Ukraine are trying to re-capture.

Since the time allotted for the possibility of the Ukrainian group blocked in Mariupol to lay down their arms has expired, active work is being carried out on the fortified positions of the nationalists with means designed to break into such fortifications.

On social networks over the past day, a large number of videos have appeared in which it is possible to identify the Tu-22M3 and even the Tu-95 and Tu-160. The activation of strategic aviation can speak of extremely powerful strikes that were inflicted on the “Azovstal” enterprise, in the premises of which there are hundreds of nationalists. In fact, this is the only fortified area that remained under Ukrainian control in Mariupol – the day before, the Ilyich Mariupol Metallurgical Plant was taken.

Neutralising Western support

The Russian army command reacted adequately to the increased supply of weapons to Ukraine from NATO countries – among other things, on the morning of April 18, the 124th Joint Logistics Support Center of the logistics forces command of the Ukrainian troops located near the western Ukrainian Lvov was destroyed.

The object with an unremarkable name was one of the key nodes of the foreign arms supply network – according to the Ministry of Defence, in this particular case, a batch of weapons that had accumulated over the past 6 days, arriving from the US and the EU, was destroyed.

In addition to the tactical benefits for the Russian group, against which fewer weapons will be used than could have been, the work on Ukrainian warehouses with Western weapons revealed another remarkable side effect. It turned out that NATO's stocks of weapons suitable for rapid transportation over long distances were less than necessary even for a conflict on the territory of Ukraine.

According to the Pentagon's own statement, the West supplies weapons to Ukraine by 8-10 flights a day, "and an almost constant stream of convoys."

In March, Politico published an article with the remarkable title "Sorry, Ukraine, we ran out of guns”, which described the inability of Canada, despite the lobbying efforts of the Ukrainian diaspora and a huge number of descendants of Banderists in leadership positions, to supply Kiev with additional amounts of weapons.

Germany expressed concern about the depletion of reserves, and Forbes published an article with dry figures, from which it follows that the American military-industrial complex will compensate for the weapons already supplied to Ukraine such as "Stingers" and "Javelins" until the 2030s.

It turned out that the production of American ATGMS and MANPADS depends on the only company Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, and already back in 2017, a member of the US House of Representatives Dave Lebsack (Iowa) warned that "the main national enterprise for the manufacture of large-caliber ammunition" is outdated, "requires manual labour and does not have the adaptation necessary for the introduction of new production technologies."

"Ukraine spends Stinger and Javelin faster than the United States can produce them," is the main idea of the article.

It is curious that by "saving" Ukraine, the United States seriously exposed Taiwan. It turned out that the United States has not transferred $14 billion worth of weapons to Taiwan, which they pledged to provide in 2019. The "blanket" of the American military-industrial complex, which turned out to be too short at the same time for Russia and China, certainly plays into Beijing's hands, as was stated by Steve Chabot, a member of the House of Representatives, who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee with a specialisation in Asia and the Pacific.

"It is obvious that Ukraine is now in the spotlight — and this is right — but we'd better not forget about Taiwan, because China's actions are becoming more and more provocative," he told the media.

Let's not forget that the United States, in fact, supplies both sides of the conflict in Ukraine. The number of captured Stinger and Javelin in the hands of the allied forces already exceeds all imaginable limits. The exhaustion of American and European arsenals will certainly be beneficial for American arms companies – separate RUSSTRAT material was devoted to the specifics of the American military-industrial complex. However, in the next few years, the Euro-Atlantic bloc's ability to conduct intense conflicts at a distance from its own territory has somewhat decreased.

The pace of demilitarisation

Summing up the results of the first phase of "Operation Z", the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation published statistics of armoured vehicles destroyed and preserved in the ranks of the UAF, aviation and other types of mechanisation. Based on the successes achieved since that time, we can talk about the almost complete elimination of heavy Ukrainian armoured vehicles, which limits the operational capabilities of the Ukrainian side to defence in populated areas.

As of the evening of April 18, 139 enemy aircraft, 483 unmanned aerial vehicles, 250 anti-aircraft missile systems, 2,337 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 254 multiple rocket launchers, 1,009 field artillery and mortars, as well as 2,196 units of special military vehicles were destroyed during the operation in Ukraine.

It is to be expected that the pace of destruction of Ukrainian equipment is much higher where the main fighting is currently underway – the "Izyum" front and the line of gradual advance of parts of the DPR and LPR. In particular, two Ukrainian MiG-29s were shot down by air defence forces near Izyum, a Su-25 was destroyed in Donetsk’s Avdeevka district, and in total, a dozen Ukrainian UAVs of various types were destroyed yesterday.

Since the beginning of the special operation, the confirmed irretrievable losses of the UAF amounted to 23,367 people – this figure is most likely not final, since it implies only documentary confirmation. According to the Russian Defence Ministry, there is also a large number of missing and defected Ukrainian servicemen, which is confirmed by captured documents.

Based on incoming and verifiable messages, Operation Z has moved into the phase of a major offensive along a wide front from Kharkov to Nikolaev, with a visible concentration of efforts on the Donetsk-Pokrovsk and Lugansk-Kramatorsk lines. The strikes inflicted by the allied forces on Ukrainian positions in the area of Nikolaev and other "flanking" settlements, apparently, are of a chilling nature.

In the next two days, we should expect a concretisation of the situation on the "Donetsk front", which gives an answer to the question about the purpose of the offensive that has begun – the squeezing out of the entrenched between Izyum-Severodonetsk-Gulyai-Pole largest group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the territory of Donbass or its encirclement, followed by a complete defeat. The goals and results of the offensive in this area will largely determine the course and outcome of Operation Z as a whole.

In addition, we should expect significant news from Mariupol within 48-72 hours. We are talking about the possible complete breakdown of the nationalists' resistance with the cleansing of their last major stronghold at “Azovstal”. This will mean the actual transfer of a strategic settlement under the control of allied forces, which may lead to political effects inside Ukraine and in the West.