The US think tank made the assessment in its latest report on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, published on Tuesday night, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Russian strikes continue, 30% of Ukraine’s energy facilities blown up
The ISW reported that Russian forces conducted “massive missile strikes across Ukraine” for the second day in a row on Tuesday.
“The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces fired nearly 30 Kh-101 and Kh-55 cruise missiles from Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers and damaged critical infrastructure in Lviv, Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhia oblasts,” the US experts said.
Meanwhile, “Ukrainian air defence reportedly destroyed 21 cruise missiles and 11 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs),” as social media footage showed the aftermath of strikes throughout Ukraine, according to the ISW.
The Washington-based think tank also reported that Russian forces “additionally continued to launch attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure with Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones.”
It cited the Ukrainian General Staff as saying that “Ukrainian air defence destroyed eight Shahed-136 drones in Mykolaiv Oblast on the night of October 10 and 11.”
Since Monday, October 10, “around 30% of energy infrastructure in Ukraine has been hit by Russian missiles,” Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said on Tuesday, as quoted by the Ukrainska Pravda website.
'Enthusiasm for brutalising civilian populations'
Russia's defence ministry last week named Gen. Sergei Surovikin as the new overall commander of the country's forces fighting in Ukraine.
The ISW said that “Surovikin’s previous experience as commander of Russian Armed Forces in Syria likely does not explain the massive wave of missile strikes across Ukraine over the past few days, nor does it signal a change in the trajectory of Russian capabilities or strategy in Ukraine.”
The US experts noted that, according to Andriy Yusov from Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR), the recent strikes were linked to Surovikin’s appointment as theatre commander.
GUR’s Yusov stated on October 11 that “throwing rockets at civilian infrastructure objects” was consistent with Surovikin’s tactics in Syria, the US think tank reported.
According to the ISW, “Surovikin has been serving in Ukraine (as the Commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces and then reportedly of the southern grouping of Russian forces) since the beginning of the war, as have many senior Russian commanders similarly associated with Russian operations in Syria,” including Army General Aleksandr Dvornikov and Colonel General Aleksandr Chayko.
The US think tank reiterated its observation that “all Russian military district, aerospace, and airborne commanders served at least one tour in Syria as either chief of staff or commander of Russian forces, and Russian forces deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure including hospitals and breadlines throughout the period of Russia’s active engagement in that war.”
The ISW said: “Disregard for international law and an enthusiasm for brutalising civilian populations was standard operating procedure for Russian forces in Syria before, during, and after Surovikin’s tenure. It has become part of the Russian way of war.”
Russia can't carpet-bomb Ukraine due to lack of air superiority
According to the US analysts, Surovikin’s appointment "will not lead to further ‘Syrianisation’ of Russian operations in Ukraine because the battlespace in Ukraine is fundamentally different from the battlespace in Syria, and direct comparisons to Surovikin’s Syrian ‘playbook’ obfuscate the fact that Russia faces very different challenges in Ukraine.”
In particular, “Russia cannot further ‘Syrianise’ the war largely because of its failure to gain air superiority, which precludes its ability to launch the kind of massive carpet-bombing campaigns across Ukraine that it could, and did, conduct in Syria.”
The ISW reiterated its previous assessment that “Russian air operations [in Syria] would have been markedly different if conducted in contested airspace or a more challenging air-defence environment, as is the case in Ukraine.”
The US experts stressed: “It is therefore highly unlikely that Surovikin’s role as theatre commander will cause a fundamental change in Russian air and missile operations in Ukraine as long as Ukraine’s Western backers continue to supply Kyiv with the air defences needed to prevent Russia from gaining air superiority.”
Ukraine continues counteroffensive in east and south
Meanwhile, the ISW reported that Russia "is likely extracting ammunition and other materiel from Belarusian storage bases, which is incompatible with the notion that Russian forces are setting conditions for a ground attack against Ukraine from Belarus."
According to Russian sources, "Ukrainian forces continued to conduct counteroffensives east of the Oskil River [in the northeastern Kharkiv region] and in the direction of Kreminna-Svatove [in the eastern Luhansk region]," the US think tank said.
It also noted that Russian sources claimed that Ukraine's troops "continued ground attacks in northern and western Kherson Oblast."
According to the ISW, Ukrainian forces "are continuing an interdiction campaign to target Russian military, technical, and logistics assets and concentration areas in Kherson Oblast."
Meanwhile, Russian forces "continued to conduct ground assaults" in the eastern Donetsk region, the US think tank said.
It further noted that Russian reporting of explosions in Dzhankoy, Crimea, "indicated panic over losing further logistics capabilities in Crimea following the Kerch Strait Bridge explosion."
Wednesday is day 231 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, understandingwar.org, pravda.com.ua
