https://johnhelmer.net/zelensky-gets-the-ukrainian-trains-to-run-on-time-gerasimov-strikes-them-as-they-unload-at-the-front/

by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

Combat losses of the Ukrainian armed forces along the front have accelerated to a current average of almost two thousand men a day, according to the Russian Defense Ministry’s daily briefing and bulletin. The damage or loss of weapons is also growing fast.

In the first week of July a year ago, the average daily number of Ukrainians killed in action (KIA) was 716. In the corresponding period of this month, the KIA level has jumped to an average of 1,948 — an increase of almost threefold. In the same week of 2023, the destruction or damage of US-made M777 artillery pieces was 8; in the first week of this month, the M77 loss number was 17. These loss rates for men and weapons have remained steady through this week.

The Ukrainians must assemble and deliver more fresh men and materiel to stave off defeat. The troops, artillery, tanks and other vehicles, plus ammunition, are delivered by train to railway stations along the front line. The Russian General Staff, headed by General Valery Gerasimov, knows the precise schedule of these trains, monitoring their departures and their speed in transit. They then prepare for their arrival at the front-line train stations where they are hit by a combination of missiles and glide bombs (FAB, Fugasnaya AviaBomba).

This is the reality of the Russian summer offensive and Ukrainian counter-offensive without the political hype and propaganda.

In the Ukrainian version of the train war, the regime of Vladimir Zelensky (lead image, left) is resisting effectively and increasing the cargo tonnage which Ukrainian Railways or Ukrzaliznytsia (UZ) is managing to pull to or from the country’s western and southern borders. This, UZ calls winning by not losing. For the ports of Poland and Romania the war windfall is profitable; for their road operators and cargo truckers, not so.

MAP OF UKRAINIAN RAILWAY LINES AS OF 2014

Click on source to enlarge view.
Colour key: Grey=non-electrified line; green =electrification with alternating current of 25kV; blue=electrification with 3kV direct current; dotted=the state border

The Ukrainian consultancy GMK Center and its director, Stanislas Zimchenko, reported earlier this month that the principal gateway for railway movement of cargo into and out of the Ukraine is Romania, followed by Poland. In the first five months of this year, rail movement through Romania accounted for 9.3 million tonnes; Poland 6 mt; Slovakia, 4.2 mt; Hungary, 1.1 mt; and Moldova, 0.5 mt. It is unclear from the GMK report whether these tonnages include military cargoes and whether military cargoes are being disguised as civilian cargoes.

Source: https://gmk.center

GMK reports steady growth in rail movement of cargo through Poland. “There are six railway border crossings between Ukraine and Poland, but only four are operational. They are utilized 40-60%.” Notwithstanding, the volumes of cargo moved by rail through these rail hubs at the border have been increasing substantially. “In 2022, 16.9 mn tonnes of cargo were transported through railway border crossings between Ukraine and Poland. It is 36.7% more than in 2021. In January-April 2024, 7.43 mn tonnes of cargo were transported by rail to Poland, which is 28% more than in the same period in 2023.”

It is planned, GMK says, for the Ukraine to increase the number of border rail crossings with Poland by three: Khyriv–Starzhava–state border; Rava Ruska–Grebenne; Khyriv–Nyzhankovichi–state border. UZ claims to have repaired almost 70 km of tracks and renovated 10 bridges on the approaches to these points.

In parallel, according to GMK, there is steady growth in road movement by car and truck. Because road transport depends on high-cost gasoline and diesel compared to the relatively cheap electricity powering Ukrainian trains, and because trains can pull far more tonnage than trucks per energy unit, the railway is the preferred form of transportation, and so a strategic target of the war.

Source: https://gmk.center

It is paradoxical then to report that there has been relatively little effort by the Russian General Staff to attack the rail or road border crossings or to reduce either cargo or passenger movement through these crossings, whether military or civilian. The economic benefit to the Polish ports of Gdansk, Gdynia and Szczecin-Swinoujścieand and to the Romanian port of Constanta is documented by GMK, which claims there are billion-dollar investment plans for substantial increases in the existing port capacities for the future.

This implies confidence on the part of the Poles and Romanians, as well as the Ukrainians, that the Russian war objectives do not threaten the future of rail, road or port movement across the border.

On the Russian side, a detailed assessment by Alexei Sochnev and his rail sources of the first nine months of the Special Military Operation, published on November 24, 2022, concluded that there have been rapid adaptations in the Russian attack tactics and in the Ukrainian defence.

“The Ukrainian railways had big problems for the first two months of the operation, because everything got into the network. There were a lot of videos, both with equipment and with the results of strikes on traction substations. The videos were immediately analyzed by intelligence, and strikes were carried out on the points of vulnerability. The Ukrainian security forces caught on in time and somewhere around the middle of April 9, 2022] a strict ban was imposed on filming trains and damage to the railway.”

“In April and May [2022], there were rocket attacks on traction substations and the Ukrainians were forced to split trains into several parts and transfer traction to diesel locomotives. It’s a big waste of time. Now everything is classified and nothing is visible. You can only use indirect data to navigate. One-time strikes were also recorded in May and June. But if we talk purely technically, then only massive systemic attacks on vulnerable points make sense. One-time strikes will not slow down logistics, because the railway, as a single organism, is very well adapted to wartime. Ukrzaliznytsia, as well as Russian Railways — parts of the once legendary Ministry of Railways of the USSR — laid down strict standards for them: frequent recovery trains (for every 120 km), duplicate lines, stockpiles of rails along the roadbed. So the railway is being regenerated very quickly.”

MAP OF RAIL TARGETS HIT BY FIRST RUSSIAN ATTACKS OF APRIL 23-25, 2022

Source: https://rtvi.com/
“On April 23-25, there were systematic attacks on traction substations in Western and Central Ukraine, the section from Kiev to Lvov. Substations were de-energized and electric locomotives stopped. They were forced to move diesel locomotives from other points. But since a diesel locomotive cannot take the same heavy train as an electric locomotive, it was necessary to break up and disband the trains or divide them into parts. Ukraine was unready for this, so the strikes led to communication disruptions for about 10 days. From the point of view of the Russian military, I would rate this experiment as successful, but this has not happened again.”

Sochnev disputed calls at the time by Russian military bloggers for air attack on the rail hubs where the transfer of rail wagons and their cargoes from the broad Soviet rail gauge (1520 mm) to the narrower European gauge (1000 mm) was carried out. “This is absolute nonsense. People do not know that Ukraine does not need to rearrange wheelsets to pick up military equipment from Poland. During the Soviet Union and the Comecon, many entry points to Poland with our broad gauge were built from Soviet Ukraine and Belarus. This is a very important point. There are as many as three electrified and one diesel locomotive entry points from Ukraine. The train enters Poland, and in an undisturbed atmosphere loads everything that the Americans or the British have sent to the Rzeszow airfield, this is the important aviation hub near the border and from the Yavoriv training ground in the Lvov region. In addition, all used Soviet-made military junk that comes from Eastern Europe is transported by the same railway through Poland. They are loaded on to trains — and to the frontline zone!”

Sochnev reports that before the war began in the Donbass in 2014, “the total length of Ukrainian rail lines was about 22,500 km, and now [November 2022], due to the geopolitical changes, this has been reduced to 19,800 km. Moreover, 45% of the lines are electrified and represent powerful freight and passenger passages. In particular, an extensive junction (Полигон has been formed in the middle part of Ukraine. Freight traffic has been carried out intensively between Lvov, Kharkov, Odessa and Kiev, this is the veritable backbone of the Ukrzaliznytsia network. And in the eastern, industrial part (especially Donbass), there is a concentration of lines. Historically, this happened because there was a heavy industry there.”

“The remaining 55% of the lines are diesel locomotion. They are concentrated in the southern steppe zone between Odessa and Crimea, in Volhynia, in Bukovina (Chernivtsi) and Tavria, and also adjacent to the northern borders — northern Slobozhanshchina and southern Polesie (Sumy, Chernigov, Nizhyn, Korosten). At the beginning of the Special Operation, Ukraine had 1,720 mainline electric locomotives, about 700 mainline diesel locomotives, of which only 250 were serviceable but already with high wear. And about 1,200 shunting locomotives, which, in principle, can also be used for small trains. The Ukrzaliznytsia park is a very old one — half of it was produced before 1970; that is over 50 years old. There are even VL8 electric locomotives in the fleet which are 65 years old. In Russia, they were decommissioned 30-35 years ago.”

The Vladimir Lenin (VL8) locomotive.

A second round of train strikes followed the start of the electric war in October 2022. “After the sabotage on the Crimean Bridge [October 8, 2022], massive attacks on the Ukrainian energy sector began on October 10. For the first 7-8 days, this did not affect the railway service, because there was a reserve of installed capacity. They were able to organize the flow of energy. The unified Soviet energy supply system made it possible to do this. But since the strikes were systemic and lasted for three weeks, from about October 17, parts of the railway began to be de-energized, electric locomotives stopped, trains were delayed. They switched back to diesel locomotives. When the strikes stopped, the repair crews had enough time for a week or ten days to restore capacity reserves.”

In Sochnev’s analysis of this second round of the train war, he concluded that to have durable impact the one-off retaliation tactics ordered by the Kremlin were bound to fail. Sochnev and his sources also concluded that pinpoint strikes against the trains themselves or the tracks were too ineffective and too costly. “The locomotive itself is a singular target, it is easy to disperse it. Here, too, there is a problem, if you do not make an impact on the locomotive depots and repair infrastructure, then all this can be quickly regenerated. When you disable a single locomotive, it would be driven to the depot, repaired in the workshops, and it will go on. The depots in Ukraine are mostly big in scale and weight. There are dozens of locomotives there under repair or at standstill, or ready for flight — and so the consequences of a strike will be different from single-line or single-locomotive strikes. There are vulnerable points among the depots, but during this conflict, the depot was never hit. I suspect that this is a purely political decision.”

That last sentence, published at the end of the first nine months of the SMO, has been repeated in the military blogs. It signifies the operational conflict between the General Staff and the Kremlin. It does not mean that the Ukrainian regime and its US and European allies have been able to succeed in their defence.

In their response to the electric war, the UZ management has been claiming that if power losses cripple much of the electric train operations, their backup will be diesel locomotives. “No, absolutely not,” Sochnev replied. “They use diesel locomotives only in extreme cases. I repeat, they have few serviceable locomotives. This is a big problem which they had before the conflict and no one has solved it. Now it has escalated. The standard wagon weight norm for an electric locomotive is 70-75 freight cars. Part of the problem will be solved by manipulating the logistics of low-power diesel locomotives which can pull 20 wagons. A serviceable mainline diesel locomotive will pull about 50 wagons.”

“Let’s assume that the entire energy system will be de-energized, then by reliance on diesel locomotives they will be able to get out of the predicament to some extent within a month. GBut this remainder of the fleet will already be worn out. Ukraine will switch to shunting locomotives that will transport cargo in small parts. Supplies coming from the West will be about three to four times slower in movement, with much higher labour costs. So it is impossible to completely replace electric locomotives.”

With Russian air attack on fuel stocks running simultaneously with the electric war, the best estimate of Russian railway experts is that the shift from electric to diesel locomotives would last for no more than a month before there would be a system-wide collapse. Replacement of Ukrainian stocks of Soviet-era diesels with European equipment reconfigured with the broad gauge would be “long and difficult”, Sochnev and his sources concluded.

Why can’t Russian drones disable the railways by bombing the tracks? “This is a rather amateurish opinion,” Sochnev said. “The fact is that if somewhere the track was disabled in the middle between stations, that is, where the tracks pass along — even if it is a double track, and even if it is electrified and there are contact network poles — then the segment hit by the explosion can be restored in about two to three hours…Even in the Great Patriotic War, if the partisans undermined some section of the rail line, then again a recovery train came, and in a few hours everything was restored. Hitting the stations, not the tracks, are more difficult to restore — repairs will have to work for one and a half to two days.”

Again, Sochnev raised the political question – “Why they don’t hit them is a question for the military: they naturally start from the availability of their weapons and performance criteria. Apparently, other goals are considered a higher priority.”

For other goals, read the Kremlin. That was at the end of November 2022, twenty months ago.

Starting in April of this year and continuing through this month, reports from the front indicate the General Staff has begun to target stations, cargo store and load hubs, and the infrastructure required to sustain movement – electrification, bridges, fuel storage tanks – with the heaviest of the air-dropped glide bombs. They include Kharkov city and region, Chernigov, Sumy and Poltava regions.
The map illustrates that these targets are west of the current fighting along the line of contact, but serve vitally as the logistical concentrations for continuing the fight with fresh troops, arms and ammunition, as well as for evacuation of damaged machines for repair and casualties. These are also the hubs supplying the Ukrainian units firing drones, rockets and missiles into Belgorod and Kursk regions.

RED MARKS THE SPOT – ELECTRIC WAR, TRAIN WAR TARGETING, JULY 24, 2024

Source: https://www.rbc.ru/
In a new report on the electric war by the semi-official Vzglyad medium, published on July 23, the timing and targeting are Kremlin decisions. “It will be really difficult to spend the winter in such a [electricity deficit] situation. In the current state of its energy facilities, the Ukraine has not yet begun the new winter season. During this [past] winter, the situation in Ukraine was different. A new wave of attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities began exactly after April 1, 2024, when their heating season ended. Probably, it was a political decision of the Russian leadership so that ordinary people in Ukraine would not suffer in cold weather."

“It’s a pity that [we are] in the third year of the SVO, but better late than never,” commented Tsargrad, the Moscow online television and website platform, on April 27 last. “In the previous two years, massive blows [were designed] to some extent to have more of a psychological effect,” wrote Vadim Yegorov. “But now they are applied purposefully and almost every day. As far as I understand, these are only the flowers, the berries will come later. Accordingly, the air force works at an operational and tactical depth of 50-70 kilometres. And the missile troops are already at a depth of several hundred kilometres, where the Ukrainians are trying to concentrate, assemble, park, conceal their materiel. I think this is due, among other things, to the fact that no one canceled the goals of liberating Donbass and creating a sanitary zone along our borders. The only question is how wide this zone will be…As [the President’s spokesman Dmitry] Peskov has said, the longer the enemy’s missile range, the deeper the zone should be. And at the moment it is 300 kilometres, but if the Ukrainian armed forces come up with something new that is longer in range, then the zone will be further in depth.”

“I want to believe that the slogan ‘we haven’t really started yet’ is a thing of the past. Because it was really necessary to start back in 2022. Now that time has finally come.”

A US military engineer source confirms the change in Russian tactics for the train war. “We knew last fall that the deployment of western tanks [German Leopards, US Abrams, French AMX] was no tactical, let alone operational coup, on the Ukrainian battlefield. Yet the Army Materiel Command went through the expensive, and ultimately futile logistics exercise to get 31 Abrams tanks into the field so the Russians could practice their aim. After all that, the tanks, what’s left of them, have been withdrawn from the field to depots where we can guess they have also been struck. The General Staff knows that someone has more money than brains. They also know there’s a limit [of resupply].”

Source: https://www.npr.org

“Striking the trains and equipment closer to the front line makes a sort of sense. The ordnance to do so — glide bombs — is cheaper, more plentiful, and plenty effective. The result achieved is the destruction of equipment and rolling stock; the latter must be hard to replace. All the reports we’ve been reading recently indicate that the General Staff orders are to wait for the trains to reach their near-front destinations for unloading and stocking ordnance and materiel, and to discharge troops on rotation to the front. These hubs and stocks are then hit hard.”

NOTE: The original of the lead image depicted Mussolini on the train station platform as German troops rolled into Italy. The cartoon was by Herbert Block (Herblock) and was first published on March 8, 1941.