Click to enlarge Novorussian War Sitrep August 1-10, 2014
According the lying Western media, the rebels have lost a lot of territory in recent weeks, and now their two biggest cities are surrounded and on the verge of defeat.
The two biggest cities are Lugansk and Donetsk. Donetsk is the large population center that can be seen in the southwest of rebel territory. Lugansk is the large city that can be seen in the northeast of the rebel territory. As you can see, neither one is surrounded.
However, there are Ukie forces on three sides of Donetsk. But they are not on the east at all. And in the west and north, in many places they are not even near the outskirts of the city. And everywhere around Donetsk except for a few areas in the west, they are only on the furthest outskirts of this very large city.
The Southern Cauldron is the large area in the southeast of rebel territory near the Russian border. All of this territory was held by the Ukies, but they were surrounded and were getting pulverized by artillery from both sides. From the north, rebel artillery was hitting them, and from the south, Russian artillery was pounding them.
If you see a blue unit with a 24 on it, this was the only Ukie unit in the Southern Cauldron that survived. They managed to break out of the Cauldron by moving to the north. As you can see, they punched their way considerably north into rebel territory. If you see that other blue arrow coming from the north to meet the 24th, that is another Ukie unit. As you can see, they are trying to cut the rebel army in half by separating the Donetsk area from the Lugansk area. If they succeed in doing this, then they will indeed be able to surround Donetsk, and the situation there will become much more serious.
Around Donetsk, the Ukies have been unable in general to even reach the furthest outskirts, so they are shelling the city in frustration. In Lugansk, they are only in the north and on the southeast. The circle with white inside of it south of Lugansk is I believe a Ukie group that has long been surrounded near the Lugansk Airport. In the north of Lugansk, you can see that the Ukies have started to break through the northern suburbs of the city. There is no Ukie presence on the south and west of Lugansk.
It is true that the rebels have lost a lot of territory, but they are heavily outmanned maybe 4-1, and they are outgunned even worse. This is a small rebel army against the huge army of an entire modern European state with modern heavy weapons. It is amazing that they have held out for as long as they can.
In the Southern Cauldron, 4-5 Ukie battalions were utterly pulverized, and there are 3,500 Ukie troops missing in that area alone. All of them are probably dead. Out of an original 6,000 troops, only 1,000 managed to survive to break out of the encirclement, with rest of the 5,000 being casualties of some sort. The Ukies in this area also lost a lot of equipment. A lot was destroyed by the enemy, a lot was destroyed by the Ukies themselves before retreating, but ~100 units of armor were confiscated by the rebels. This presumably includes a number of tanks. The Southern Cauldron was a devastating defeat for the Ukies, and the entire MSM is refusing to report on it. Show me one MSM article anywhere that talks about this battle. One.
Note also that the rebels now have completely open supply lines to the east and southeast. I am not exactly sure what they get from Russia, but now it will be quite simple to bring it across, whatever it is.