2022 Special Military Operation in Ukraine - Donbas cauldron

Classic pincer movement: the Donbas cauldron (in green), March 9, 2022. Half the Armed Forces of Ukraine were being encircled.

On March 7, 2022 Russian state media announced that half of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) - 120,000 soldiers - were trapped in the Donbas cauldron. The Donbas cauldron was confirmed closed on March 14, 2022. By March 27, 2022, it was estimated that close to half of this force has already been killed, wounded, taken prisoner, or probably accounting for by far most, deserted and fled.

The city of Volnovakha was liberated on March 11, 2022.

To free up strength for the encirclement of what remained of the Ukrainian army group in the Donbas, Russian units were partially de-blockaded and redeployed away from Sumy to the northwest and Nikolaev to the southwest. The forces redeployed from Sumy moved through Russia proper towards the Izium area. Fresh forces also were brought in through the port of Berdiansk on the Sea of Azov, where a Russian cargo ship was set on fire and sunk under unclear circumstances.

Survivors allege that Ukrainian terrorists took hostage more than 70 people who were in the Kremensk boarding school for the elderly and disabled. As a result of a fire caused by shelling from the Ukronazis, more than 50 people were burned alive. Ukrainian nationalists used employees and wards as human shields. The command decided to occupy the building. The defense was organized on the third floor. Below were people who could not move on their own. Ukrainian media reported that the orphanage was shelled by the Russian armed forces and the People's Militia. However, the survivors blame the Kyiv security forces for this.

By the time the Mariupol cauldron was boiling over on April 1, 2022 some 60,000 Ukrainian forces remained trapped, lacking fuel, in the Donbas cauldron.

On April 10, 2022 Volodymyr Zelensky ordered the AFU to attack the territory of Russian Federation.

Developing encirclements, May 30, 2022.

On April 13, 2022 it was reported that Ukraine formed three new battalions from the Alekseevska, Kachanivska and 43rd penal colonies in Kharkiv, where those convicted of grave and especially grave crimes were kept. These new battalions are supposed to blockade Kharkiv from the southern side and by no means allow the local population to leave the city and the subsequent retreat of AFU combat units.

On May 7, 2022 six civilian vehicles with white flags mounted on them were shot at by AFU soldiers on a stretch of road between Staryi and Novyi Saltov. The photo and video footage were made by specialists from the AFU’s Centre for Information and Psychological Operations.

On May 13, 2022 Armed Forces of Ukraine shelled the civilian areas in the city of Gorlovka (pop. 240,000).

Strategic and tactical military logic would dictate that the Kyiv regime and its Western allies withdraw AFU troops slowly from the cauldron, line to line, with the task of inflicting the maximum possible losses on the advancing Russian troops and, as far as possible, maintaining the combat capability of their troops deployed in the west bank regions of the Seversky Donets river, while accumulating reserves. At the same turn, it was advisable to deploy the equipment received from NATO. But the Ukrainians did not do all this. On the contrary, Kyiv threw more and more reserves into the Donbas meat grinder, which were methodically destroyed by Russian artillery, aircraft and missile strikes.

On May 27, 2022 The Washington Post finally reported in an article entitled, Ukrainian Volunteer Fighters In The East Feel Abandoned, on the fighting men's fate. In mid February 2022 they were still civilians. They 'volunteered' for the territorial defense with the hope of serving near their homes, to avoid a draft into the army:

"Stuck in their trenches, the Ukrainian volunteers lived off a potato per day as Russian forces pounded them with artillery and Grad rockets on a key eastern front line…Outnumbered, untrained and clutching only light weapons, the men prayed for the barrage to end — and for their own tanks to stop targeting the Russians...[A]fter three months of war, this company of 120 men is down to 54 because of deaths, injuries and desertions. The volunteers were civilians before Russia invaded on Feb. 24, and they never expected to be dispatched to one of the most dangerous front lines in eastern Ukraine. They quickly found themselves in the crosshairs of war, feeling abandoned by their military superiors and struggling to survive.... Lapko, built like a wrestler, was made a company commander in the 5th Separate Rifle Battalion, in charge of 120 men. The similarly burly Khrus became a platoon commander under Lapko. All of their comrades were from western Ukraine. They were handed AK-47 rifles and given training that lasted less than a half-hour. “We shot 30 bullets and then they said, ‘You can’t get more; too expensive,’ ” Lapko said. They were given orders to head to the western city of Lviv. When they got there, they were ordered to go south and then east into Luhansk province in Donbas...

96% of Burisma oil and gas production comes from the Donets Basin (Donbas), from a 2018 Burisma promotional video.

The men were put into a frontline ditch and have since been shelled again and again without any ability to respond. They disregarded the orders from above and left. They were then arrested. The Zelensky regime had sent 14,000 members of the ill-trained, ill-equipped, ill-prepared members of the Territorial Defense into the Donbas cauldron.

As the Russian offensive intensified, the pace of surrenders accelerated. The offensives in village after village and town after town was stop and go, as ceasefires were called to allow civilian evacuations.

Izium-Kharkiv front

Since the capture of Izium in eastern Kharkiv province by the Russians in early April 2022, the civilian population of the city became the target of Grad rockets (many bearing cluster submunitions) on a daily basis by the Kyiv regime. On April 28, 2022 Russian air defense forces repelled an attack by a Ukrainian Tochka-U ballistic missile on residential areas of Izium. The target of the strike was the city hospital, where the Russian medical detachment is located providing assistance to the population of Kharkiv Region. “The Kyiv nationalist regime’s indiscriminate missile strikes on the residential areas of Izium and Kherson are a war crime and a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The optical plant at Izium, where the viewfinder for the Stugna-P anti-tank device is manufactured, was seized in early April 2022.

As a high priority in Operation Denazification, on April 11, 2022 the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that it had eliminated a notorious neo-Nazi leader 5 kilometers south of Izium. Taras Bobanich was the leader of the Lviv Pravy Sektor. Tass reported,

Russian troop strength, May 20, 2022 with the Popasana "flower" blooming out.

"Since 2014, he had participated in the Kiev regime’s punitive operation in Donbass. He personally gave orders for bombardments of Donetsk and Lugansk residential areas from heavy artillery guns. He is guilty of the deaths of hundreds of civilians of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, including children," the ministry stressed.

On April 22, 2022 reports emerged of the capture of the largest weapons depot in Ukraine by Russian forces in the Kharkiv region.

The Russians have been firing 400,000-600,000 artillery shells per day, mostly on the Izium front. The United States pledged to send 190,000 artillery shells to Ukraine, which is about how many shells the Russians fire for breakfast. Ukrainian soldiers complained of high losses, constant shelling day and night, of commanders having deserted, no treatment for the wounded, low ammunition, no sleep, and despite malfunctioning weapons, soldiers were told they were forbidden to retreat.

On May 13, 2022 Russian forces took control of the village of Dolgenkoe located 20 km to the South of Izium. The heights near the village fell under Russian control. A large grouping of the AFU was deployed in the forests nearby. After Russian servicemen entered one of the Ukrainian checkpoints, they found the corpse of a woman who had been raped and killed by Ukrainian soldiers.

Ukrainian forces blew up a tank with ammonium nitrate. According to the statement of the Russian Defense Ministry, Ukrainian nationalists under the leadership of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) blew up a fertilizer storage facility near the village of Dolgenkoe. They aimed to poison the local population and blame the Russian army for this.

The town of Liman (pop. 20,000), a key railway hub and the only escape route from the cauldron, was liberated in hours on May 26, 2022 with little fighting as Ukrainian forces fled.

The Russian Armed Forces used a new version of the Solntsepek (or Sunbake) heavy flamethrower system, TOS-2, during an offensive near Kharkiv. It is based on TOS-1A with significant advantages. The platform truck has an increased cross-country capability, increased engagement range and fully automated firing process and protected by an electronic jamming system.

A 17th century wooden church designated as a UNESCO historic site at Sviatohirsk was used by Ukrainian forces as a weapons storage dump and was destroyed by fire on June 4, 2022.

Seversky Donets front

The cities of Severodonetsk (pop.110,000), Kramatorsk (pop. 150,000), and Slovyansk (pop. 107,000), south of the Izium front, formed the heart of the cauldron.

The Donbas cauldron on April 1, 2022.

On April 14, 2022, sources said the Pentagon instructed the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to withdraw all the remaining artillery to the cities on the eastern front – Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, where they can fire behind civilians. Restraining the offensive of the Russian troops is prescribed by small mobile groups armed with mortars and anti-tank systems, moving across the steppe in civilian vehicles. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the Americans impose the use of terrorist tactics on their client state, in which the Ukrainian people are taken hostage. Ukrainian sources write about this quite openly, and treat such methods with understanding, and as the only correct one. The CIA-controlled Kyiv Independent stated that Zelensky said there are 44,000 AFU troops on the Donbas front.

By April 15, 2022 the front became more active. Fourteen hours of artillery bombardment across a two hundred mile front on April 19, 2022 sent a foreboding message.

In any city, town, or village the AFU entered, they went straight to the local schools to set up headquarters, making the building a legitimate target per international conventions and rules of war. This was foundational to Ukraine's propaganda strategy and not its military strategy.

On April 18, 2022 the NATO-controlled Ukrainian General Staff reported the number of Russian forces deployed to the Donbass were 70,000, however Pentagon disinformation specialists lowered the estimate to 60,000 so as not to demoralize Ukrainian troops and the public.

On April 20, 2022 AFU pulled out of Ribezhnoe (pop. 55,000) and commenced an organized withdrawal from Severodonetsk across the Severskii Donets river into Lisichansk (pop. 95,000). The AFU launched another Tochka-U missile armed with cluster munitions against the civilian population of Donbas, killing 5 people including one child.

As Russian forces swept through the rural areas of Donbas, it was easy to find were the retreating AFU soldiers had established bases in villages - usually without exception in the local school building. Resistance in Popasna (pop. 20,000) was unexpectedly fierce with street to street fighting with linked underground trenches between most civilian houses. Chechen fighters and the Wagner Group took part in the fighting.

By April 29, 2022 the daily reports of the Russian Ministry of Defense noted that Ukraine was losing several hundred soldiers and some 30 armored vehicles daily, mostly to artillery. A flood of gruesome pictures posted on Telegram by both sides confirmed this. Several Ukrainian attempts to counterattack Russian forces failed. Western propagandists for the first time noted that their side was losing.

Donbas front on May 13, 2022 showing AFU entrenchments.

On April 30, 2022 it was reported that over 70% of buildings in Severodonetsk were hit by artillery strikes.

In early May 2022, AFU forces began withdrawing from the outskirts of Severodonetsk; reports indicated that the Russian military forces were grinding down Ukrainian ground forces by extensive use of heavy artillery. The Ukrainian artillery has either been destroyed or lacks ammunition. The Ukrainian forces have orders from the Zelensky regime to stay in their position and to hold the line, only making sure that Russian artillery strikes will destroy them. Zelensky had been warned by the UK's MI6 about the risk of encirclement of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Severodonetsk, but ignored the warnings. Videos of survivors of Ukrainian combat groups appeared on line accusing Ukrainian commanders of having abandoned the troops on the battlefield. Conscripts and members of the Territorial Defense militia, teenagers below draft age with no military training at all, were sent outside their home regions, in violation of their contracts, to the frontlines as cannon fodder. Captured POWs at the front said they were thrown into the meat grinder with only two days training.

AFU deployment, May 15, 2022.

On May 5 the mayor of Severodonetsk report that LPR and Russian forces began entering the city. According to LPR military officials, the AFU grouping of about 15,000-16,000 servicemen is deployed in the Severodonetsk-Lisichansk region.

On May 7, 2022 Russian forces breakthrough the heavily fortified town of Popasana. Since the Wagner Group and Chechens showed up a week earlier, the AFU began losing about 150 troops per day. Popasana sits on the high ground, and the breakthrough the Russians refer to as the "flower", which can been seen on a map as Russian forces flood through beyond the previous line of contact. The fall of Popasana cut off the main supply line to 12,000 AFU troops in Severodonetsk-Lisichansk. According to residents, Ukrainian tanks were deployed near residential buildings on Popasna and purposefully fired at buildings where local civilians were hiding. Polish mercenaries were deployed alongside Ukrainians, shot at civilians, and would not allow people out of their houses for 4 days even to get water.

On May 9, 2022 Russians troops encountered a failed river crossing at Bilohorivka.

Relative AFU troop strength in the Severodonetsk-Lisichansk-Zolote pockets, May 24, 2022.

On May 13, 2022 Biden defense minister Lloyd Austin, who only a week earlier boasted of weakening Russia, called Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu to beg for mercy for the Nazi proxies.

As of May 20, 2022 Russian VDV mobile infantry and Wagner group fighters advanced up to 15 kilometers west of Popasana and captured several towns or villages within 3 kilometers of the one paved, continuous, Ukrainian-controlled main road into Lisichansk-Severodonetsk. Without this road, there will be no meaningful resupply for, or organized evacuation of, thousands of Ukrainian servicemen in the eastern part of the north Lugansk cauldron.

With the destruction of so many frontline AFU force, by May 21, 2022 most of the AFU troops operating in Severodonetsk had been withdrawn across river to Lisichansk, leaving about 4,000 troops spread out in surrounding villages and suburbs and about 800 Ukrainian troops hiding from Russian strikes in the industrial zone of Severodonetsk. The only escape route remaining was one bridge impassable with heavy equipment. Partisan forces of Novorossiya were reported to be taking part in the fighting. An estimated 10,000 AFU troops were concentrated west of the river in Lisichansk and 3,000 in the Zolote pocket. Some AFU units were refusing to fight after their battlefield commanders fled the field. Elite Ukrainian paratroopers began surrendering.

Ukrainian tank hidden in Severodonetsk apartment complex.

In the morning of May 24, 2022 DNR and Russian forces established full control over the town of Svetlodarsk (pop. 10,000), which is located northeast of Gorlovka. This town, as well as earlier liberated Popasna, was heavily fortified points of Kyiv’s forces. The highway between Bakhmut (pop. 70,000) and Lisichansk is cut off by forward units of the Russian military.

The Russians introduced the Terminator tank in combat in Severodonetsk.

On May 30, 2022 the first reports a partial liberation of Severodonetsk from fascist forces emerged. Reports indicated Russian control of about 40% of the city, with the two battalions of Ukrainian forces trapped in the city retreating to the industrial area as they did in Mariupol. Even Western media reported, “Russian forces advanced Monday into the center of Severodonetsk, one of the last Ukrainian strongholds in the eastern Donbas region." Reports of Ukrainian forces shelling civilian areas of Severodonetsk continued. The Territorial Defense appeared incapable of withstanding the Russian offensive so Ukraine sent in its foreign mercenary contingents and the last of its elite Special Operations Forces from the Kramatorsk garrison. Russian forces identified Polish and English speaking mercenaries fighting on the front line in the city of Severodonetsk. The mercenaries were withdraawn a day later following heavy losses up to 90% in some units.

On June 1, 2022 only the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk was in Ukrainian hands. Ukrainian forces exploded a large tank containing nitric acid at the plant.

By June 6, 2022 the Russians were able to establish a bridgehead on the west side of Seversky Donets river. The Russian Ministry of Defense reported, "Ukrainian barrier troops blew up a road bridge in the town of Svyatogorsk in the northern part of the Donetsk People’s Republic...Cut off from the main forces and supply lines due to the destruction of the bridge, the troops abandoned military equipment and their weaponry and scattered along the bank of the Seversky Donets river...Up to 80 Ukrainian servicemen crossed the river by swimming. Russian soldiers have knowingly not opened fire on them."