"Surrender or Die" are the choices that are being offered Ukrainian fighters now trapped in the critical city of Severodonetsk. Yahoo News. The Russians have blown up all the bridges between the city and its twin city of Lysychansk, meaning that retreat is now impossible for soldiers and civilians alike. Eduard Basurin, the Deputy Leader of the Donetsk People's Republic made the comment and urged Ukrainians to surrender. Meanwhile Ukraine is begging for more weapons saying they need 1000 drones, 500 tanks and 1000 howitzers to push the Russians back.
My Comment:
The battle of Severodonetsk is basically over. The only question is if the Ukrainian soldiers and civilians will survive the war. If they surrender they probably will. But if they don't then they will do little but die pointlessly.
My guess is that the Ukrainian government is ok with that. They can no longer evacuate these soldiers so they are instead ordering them into a final stand that won't accomplish much. All they will do is buy the government time and perhaps kill a few Russian soldiers. That is probably not worth it at this point.
Regardless, this is a huge defeat for the Ukrainians. Many of their best remaining soldiers were deployed in Severodonetsk and now all of those soldiers will either be killed or captured. That's a huge loss for a country that is already suffering more than 100 dead a day, and that is a conservative estimate. Ukraine can not afford to lose these soldiers.
The problem is that they do not have a good way to evacuate them. All of the bridges across the Siverskyi Donets river have been destroyed so those troops can't get out in traditional means. Some might be able to evacuated if they swim or use boats but even that would be perilous and would require a large number of troops to remain behind anyways. I can't see Ukrainian engineers replacing the bridge and even if they were able to do that somehow it would likely be destroyed in Russian artillery or air strikes. And the ones that will escape will likely have to leave their weapons and supplies behind and risk being shot as deserters.
I think most of this was avoidable. Though Severodonetsk is a critical city there is nothing there so important as the troops that were guarding it. If the Ukrainians had pulled their troops out when it was still possible those fighters would be in a good position to fight the next big battle, which will likely be in Lysychansk. Instead they will likely lose almost all of those fighters.
I do think that Russia has largely changed tactics and they are dramatically more effective than their tank rush to Kiev was. That offensive was beaten back and cost the Russians quite a bit of weapons, equipment and men. It was never suited to their doctrine and the success they are having now is because they abandoned the tactic. Now they are focusing on devastating artillery strikes that are grinding the Ukrainians to dust.
And that is why Ukraine is so desperate for more western weapons. They have expended almost all their pre-war stocks and are rapidly going through what they have been given. But even with US and European weapons they don't have the artillery to counter Russia's massive stockpile of weapons. Ukraine may get what they demand but I don't think it honestly matters at this point.
Why? Because what they need more than anything else is men and they are losing those at an unsustainable amount of troops. They lost a ton of their best fighters in Mariupol and now they are doing the same thing in Severodonetsk. All they will have left are conscripts, old men and whatever foreign volunteers that are foolish enough to sign up.
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