September 8th, 2023
Hello all, Since returning to the US, I have been fortunate enough to continue my speaking engagements about Ukraine and my experiences there. I had the pleasure of traveling to Menlo Park California to give a presentation to a large group of retired tech executives. I also spoke at a synagogue in Carmel Valley California. Most recently I was invited to a roundtable discussion at the local junior college in Sedona with a group called OLLI. I consider these to be of great importance for keeping people informed and to answer as many questions as I can.
On the support front, I continue to work every day to acquire gear and support the initiatives I am focusing on. The 5th Brigade continues to advance in the Bakhmut area. We have been able to fund the repair of the vehicle for the scout team that Sasha belonged to. Unfortunately, we also lost “Slavic” in a battle a few weeks ago. He was another 5th Brigade soldier who I met and provided a rifle optic to in June. Despite the massive number of tactical vehicles NATO has provided, many soldiers and units still go into battle in their own Toyotas, and Nissans.
Little Tania’s school project continues and she has finalized all the logistics for where the first school will go in the village of Shyroka Balka. Two of the welders were drafted into the army so there was a delay, but the project will be finished soon and work on the second building will begin. With your help Tania was able to organize a summer camp for the kids in the four west Kherson villages that we support. They had four days away in a safer location and played games, sang songs, had a BBQ and did church activities. A few days later, once again the reality of life in Ukraine came home to them in the form of an artillery attack on Shyroka Balka. As I have mentioned before there is 0 military presence there. It is mainly children, women and the elderly. One of the shells struck the home of one of the kids who had been in Tania’s group. His name was Artem, and he was 12 years old. Tania had taken special interest in him at camp because he was a shy kid. Artem’s mother and 18 month old sister were also killed.
A new project has begun with coordination and help from our whole network, from Emily in Phoenix, Cait in Indiana to Eileen in Germany, and Hymie in London. Lyudmilla is the mother of six children, several of whom she adopted with her husband Mykola. The family lives in the northern Sumy region. This area is under constant artillery and missile attack but does not get the same coverage as the south and east as there are no major ground offensives occurring there. When it was occupied by the Russians prior to the second counteroffensive last year, Mykola was arrested by the Russians, held in captivity, tortured and then executed by the occupiers. Later his body was found on a road and had been run over by tanks. Their house was severely damaged and even though the area is dangerous they want to continue to live there. Accommodations for seven people are not easy to find in shelters and they want to be in their own home. As winter approaches we are helping them repair the house and Eddy and Brett will oversee the construction and assist with gathering the needed supplies and fixing the roof. We have also raised funds to purchase cookware and some food from the borscht company and the chocolate company in Ukraine that we partner with.
As you may see on the news outlets that still follow it, the Ukrainian counteroffensive has been very slow. This has elicited a lot of opinion from American and western “experts” and retired generals. The fact is that because it took so long to get the Ukrainians equipped and trained, the Russians were able to use that time to develop a complex and interlocking defensive line in the Zaporhizia area which is the main thrust of the counterattack. Minefields are 12 kilometers (7.6 miles) deep and hundreds of Kms wide. According to my friend Harley Whitehead, an EOD tech working the area, there are roughly 5 to 8 mines placed in every square meter of those fields. That does not include additional anti-personnel mines which are constantly dropped on the battlefield by Russian aircraft. The second line is tank traps and trench lines, and the third line is more mines and improved obstacles to funnel attacking forces into kill zones. The Russians are now also dropping gasoline on the minefields and lighting them with drone delivered ordinance while the deminers are working.
The depth and size of the minefields alone rendered almost irrelevant the NATO training that Ukrainians underwent in Europe over the winter as it was based on the idea of “maneuver warfare” and “combined arms operations.” Both of these are NATO tactics that work well when you have no minefields and you have close air support. The Ukrainians have little to no air cover, no quick reaction force, no medevac like we are used to and their communications are spotty. In addition, western doctrine states the attacking force should be 3 times as large as the defending force in people and equipment. In Ukraine the reverse is true. So they have adapted and are doing it their way now.
Nevertheless, The Ukrainians have breached the first line at the expense of an estimated 300 to 500 killed or wounded per day since June 1. They have established a foothold near the towns of Robotyne and Verbove and are now pushing faster into the second line. They have also managed to conduct some pretty daring special operations raids in Crimea which destroyed several Russian anti-aircraft detection complexes and allowed their Baraktar drones to once again conduct air to ground operations after months of being unable to fly.
No general or politician in the west alive today has ever planned operations or fought on a battlefield like this. No amount of National War College expertise or battlefield experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, against a poorly equipped guerilla peasantry in an asymmetrical war, can give a military observer the qualifications to opine on the speed or decision making of the Ukrainian military. As they say, every meter is paid for in blood.
We continue to support Harley as well and his demining team. Ukraine is now the most mined country in the world and at the current pace it is estimated that it would take 700 years to clear the entire country. Hopefully at the end of hostilities more resources will be brought to bear. My next mission is coming up, due to hard lessons learned I will remain mum on the particulars. Thank you all again for your amazing support.
