SITREP 7/14/23: Popov's Sound and Fury and Vilnius Signifying Nothing

SITREP 7/14/23: Popov's Sound and Fury and Vilnius Signifying Nothing
Let’s begin with the most talked about news, which is that the Russian commander of the 58th Army was removed for allegedly questioning his higher-ups, i.e. Shoigu and Gerasimov.
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In fact, the last few days the AFU has launched renewed assaults on Pyatikhatki (west of Orekhov), Robotne (south of Orekhov), and the Vremeske ledge near Velyka Novosilka. These were rebuffed in particularly brutal fashion by the Russian forces yielding a trove of new videos showing endless devastation and mass death for the AFU, including dozens of new captured POWs. It seemed that Zelensky was really trying to make a final dent during the NATO summit as a sort of saving grace capstone, but he failed hard once again.

They did make a slight ingress near Bakhmut, where I’ve mentioned they’ve been pouring untold resources in a desperate bid to catch Russian reservists and weaker units napping.
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One must recall that clusters have unique advantages but also unique disadvantages. Typical wooden trench covers can be easily destroyed by regular 155mm high explosive shells. But small bomblets can’t do anything to them, they’re simply too dispersed and not powerful enough. So if you’re in cover, cluster bombs are very weak and won’t do much to you.

But if you’re out in the open, then they can be a true menace because their area of dispersal is much wider than a normal shell and they can inflict damage to a much larger concentration of troops. So they are not some wonder weapon and in fact, personally, if I had even a shred of cover I’d likely much prefer the enemy to shoot clusters at me than the powerful high explosive rounds. To dispel a myth: clusters aren’t banned by some international conventions because they’re “so powerful” or do so much damage. They’re simply banned for the fact that many of the bomblets don’t explode and are later picked up by children, to whom they resemble small toys.
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And the other point is that the immediate usage of what is likely an inferior weapon suggests the ongoing ammo shortages for Ukraine. In fact, the U.S. itself is feeling the crunch more than ever, as a series of texts from a U.S. artillery officer revealed that the U.S. armed forces at Fort Sill don’t even have any 155mm ammo to fire during training, and are firing concrete warhead rounds instead because all High Explosive ammo has been earmarked for Ukraine:
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The only other thing to report is that the NATO Vilnius summit finally came and went:
And it ended with little fanfare as Ukraine got exactly what we all expected, which was pretty much nothing more than empty promises and more of the same status quo.
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https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-71423-popovs-sound-and-fury?