While the Ukrainian military is no longer reporting the over 100 attack days that dominated February and the first part of March, the decline in Russian assaults appears to have leveled off to the extent that I changed the trend line from a simple linear trend to a polynomial curve, which gives a better sense of how things are now going.
There have been some notably low days, but in general, Ukrainian forces are facing down between 60 and 70 assaults each day, most of which are around Bakhmut and Aviidrivka. As with a leveling off of reported artillery firing from 60,000 shells/day peaks down to around 5,000-10,000 shells/day, this may represent a situation where Russia is now operating close to the line of what it’s current logistics and manpower can provide.
Before dawn on Thursday, Russian statement media outlet TASS admitted that as an Su-34 fighter-bomber was flying over the city of Belgorod, “there was an accidental discharge of aviation ammunition.” What they actually mean is that the Russian plane dropped a massive bomb onto the Russian city. One that, according to the Associated Press, left a 20-meter crater in the center of a residential neighborhood and had such force that it blew a car onto the roof a nearby building.
It wasn’t the first such incident in the Russian city of nearly 340,000. Last September, a Russian missile being directed into Ukraine failed on launch. Instead of climbing out to the west, it zipped across Belgorod at just-above-treetop level before exploding in the city. And there were smaller incidents, like a Russian officer who decided to discipline his own troops at a base in Belgorod by throwing a live grenade at them, killing three and wounding 16 others.
TASS is reporting just three injuries in the latest explosion. It’s hard to know if that’s anywhere close to correct. Considering the apparent size of the bomb, Russia should consider themselves very lucky if that’s the actual butcher’s bill. In the wake of the explosion, Russian military sources and social media immediately blamed Ukraine and called for “retribution.” But it’s not clear what Russia could do to Ukraine that it’s not already doing.