What is interesting is Ukraine made it look like they were attacking Kherson so Russia pulled troops and equipment out to defend Kherson leaving Kharkiv exposed and Ukraine launched those now infamous thunder runs to penetrate deep behind Russian lines. This is like a scene out of Mad Max in the post apocalyptic world, this is pretty wild, Ukraine is causing some major disruption to Russia.

Now just weeks later, they are going after Kherson too, so where did all that Russian defensive structure go? Russia planned poorly for the invasion of Ukraine, they thought this was 2014 again when they marched in pretty much unopposed to Crimea. The Obama administration, NATO and the rest of the world stood by, the messaging to Putin was clear.

The four years of the chaotic Trump administration was equally as indecisive, Trump undercut NATO and sent subliminal messages to Putin that NATO was indecisive, wracked with infighting and inconsequential. With US and NATO assistance, Ukrainian troops received NATO training, adapted NATO doctrine and tactics. The US and NATO were initially reluctant to supply modern weapons to Ukraine as it was thought they would soon collapse and modern weaponry would be captured.

Oh, how wrong everyone was. Ukraine put up an amazing fight, they defeated the Russian advance on Kyiv harassing the Russian forces back. Ukraine began winning on the battlefield with long range artillery and mobile rocket launchers. Russia held a long defensive line and repelled Russian advances around Kharkiv, they spread misinformation and prepared to attack Kherson. Russia was stretched and withdrew troops from Kharkiv to defend Kherson.

That’s when Ukrainian thunder runs exploded through Russian defensives in the east. In what looked like Mad Max intrusions, mobile Ukrainian troops hit multiple points of the front lines in small groupings looking for weakness and holes in the Russian defensives. Then they pulled back and looked for other areas of weakness, these were rapid incursions designed to cause panic. These guys are brave, recklessly so. In what was a bold move aided by western intelligence, small patrols of around 6 men crashed through the front lines causing havoc.

Once these thunder runs had commenced, further patrol followed them in and hit Russian defenders from behind. There was havoc as the Russian officers had already departed, there was panic as these men knew they had been left to die. At this point, their best option was to surrender as Russian prisoners were being treated well. The Russians needed to get out of there, they dropped their weapons and ran, they stole bicycles, vehicles and jumped on their vehicles and scattered.

The Russians left so quickly they left huge stockpiles of weapons, fighting vehicles, armour and intelligence infrastructure and materials. It soon became clear how poorly organised these defences were and how bad morale was. The mass surrender of Russian troops had the potential to derail the fast moving Ukrainian forces, they needed to stop, process and hold Russian POWs. Ironically, Russia is now the largest supplier of weapons to Ukraine, this offensive move was spectacular, Ukraine achieved far more than what I am guessing was the most optimistic predictions- Slava Ukraine.