The Russians are being cautious. The pressing we have been seeing from them has been testing to see if the ukies are about to collapse or not. The loss of Avdeevka has been a major blow for the Ukrainians. If it was a rout, as people have been saying it is, than the Russians must have thought "This is it, the Ukies are finally breaking for good, this will be over in a couple months." The Ukrainians it appears, however, haven't broken. So the Russian high command is telling everyone to slow down and not over extend themselves.
I don't think this is a permanent pause just a temporary one. Russia is doing things that suggest they would like to keep a high amount of pressure on Ukraine. There are slow shaping attacks in the North that you wouldn't do unless you planned to push there in a couple weeks or so.
Avdeevka was a route and I don't know how you could say it wasn't. The effects of how Avdeevka fell and what Ukraine had to defend after it are still being felt. There have been tremendous successes there to the point the Ukrainians might get trapped against a river if this keeps going right. Ukraine should retreat from Orlivka and stop trying to defend anything there because they can't. Now if you define a route to be a complete destruction of the Ukrainian Army I would agree with you then
I think Russia is either moving things to prepare for offensive action perhaps moving things to west of Avdeevka because they didn't expect it to be a major success or somewhere else.
It could also be something like this.
A big part of this war is controlling the space around where the fighting is occurring. Anti-air, anti-drone, artillery and a whole lot of other systems have to be place for operations to be successful. If troops get ahead of that umbrella of protection, they are really exposed in the current style of warfare and very bad things can happen. The slow methodical advance bringing everything forward at the same time is necessary.
And even if the advance seems slow, its still moving very fast for the Ukrainian side to deal with.
It could also be Russia is engaging in Bombardments with Artillery and FABs before they conduct another round of attacks. I think after writing this post that the answer is probably a combo of what Strix said and Russia conducting a round of Bombardment. There do seem to be an excessive amount of drone videos and strike videos of things like Ukrainian armored vehicles artillery, and infantry positions.
My mention of this got deleted because I was browsing bits if the thread and I didn't realize.
This seems like more saber rattling over Transnistria. Ukraine/Moldavia isn't actually going to invade for the obvious reasons but this is a sign of desperation. You don't do things like this unless things are really bad. Think of it kind of like your body giving you a fever when you are really sick.
There’s a guy on Substack who’s more right than wrong, who have pointed out something interesting.
Apparently Russians are quietly evacuating villages in the Sumy region, and the Ukrainians fear a Russian offensive here:
I was going to say it was possible but right as I was writing this post I saw this tweet. I think Further Escalation somewhat soon is very likely. If the reports about Crimea are true, the reports of stuff happening in Sumy and this ban of export of fuels suggests it heavily that Russia is about to escalate even further. This makes sense because Russia smells blood.
This guy being a actually useful Finance guy has his finger on the pulse and knows how to predict things based off of little things like fuel exports being banned.
