Russia Has Lost 1500 Casualties In Past Week As Ukraine Stabilizes Kharkiv Sector

The initial Russian assault on Kharkiv appears to have petered out as unexpectedly fierce Ukrainian resistance has inflicted significant casualties on the Russian units committed to the attack. JL 

The Independent reports:

Russia has lost more than 1,500 soldiers in the past week in the grinding war in Kharkiv even as Vladimir Putin claimed he has “no plans” to take Ukraine’s second largest city  .In the past 24 hours, Russian troops have tried to break through Ukraine’s defences using aircraft and guided aerial bombs, and there have been around a dozen ground skirmishes. Russia has lost 1,572 soldiers in just the last seven days and 263 units of military equipment, including 75 drones, 66 army vehicles and eight tanks.

Losses In Ukraine Force Russians To Recruit More Women Soldiers

High ongoing casualties in Ukraine are causing labor shortages in Russian industry, forcing the Russians to  recruit more women to replace military losses despite Kremlin opposition to using women for combat. 

Russia experienced a 4.8 million shortage of workers in 2023. The recruitment of women is seen within Russia as a sign of desperation for the military. JL

Anatoly Kurmanaev and Ekaterina Bodyagina report in the New York Times:

The Russian Army is expanding the role of women as it seeks to balance President Vladimir V. Putin’s promotion of traditional family roles with the need for new recruits for the war in Ukraine. The military’s stepped-up appeal to women includes efforts to recruit female inmates in prisons.The Russian Army's attack in Ukraine has come at very high cost, requiring a constant search for recruits  “It creates a very unpleasant reputational risk for the Russian Army,” because most Russians view such a breach of social mores as a sign of desperation.

Ukraine ATACMS Destroy 2 More Russian Ships. Half of Black Sea Fleet Sunk

This attack is considered significant both because of the use of ATACMS missiles, which are generally used for surface to surface targets and because one of the ships sunk was a Russian guided missile boat capable of launching missiles at Ukrainian targets, so a strategic Russian loss. 

It is not clear how many ships Russia has in the Black Sea as so many of those considered operational have now been sunk by Ukraine.

Stefan Korshak reports in the Kyiv Post:

Ukrainian precision-guided missiles sank an armed minesweeper tied up at a military wharf in Sevastopol and likely also blew up one of the Russian navy’s most modern guided missile boats. The Tsyklon is a guided missile corvette, one of Moscow’s newest, delivered to the Black Sea Fleet in August 2023. The vessel’s main armament is the Kaliber cruise missile, a weapon used since October 2022 by Moscow to bombard Ukraine. Russian news platforms confirmed the loss of both ships, and reported the use of  US-manufactured long-range ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles. By warship tonnage, since Russian invaded Ukraine, more than half of the Black Sea Fleet has been destroyed in action.

How Ukraine Has Thwarted Russia's Chasiv Yar Offensive

Ukrainian drone operators supported by revitalized artillery concentrations decimated Russian troops and armor to such an extent that Ukrainian forces were able to counterattack weakened Russian units. 

This was an aspect of the race between Russian attempts to attack before US and NATO resupply reached Ukrainian forces. The Russians lost that race, still hampered by poor coordination and tactics, as effective Ukrainian intelligence and artillery identified and took out Russian concentrations before they could deploy. The expert consensus is that Russian opportunities to take Chasiv Yar appear to be fading. JL

Euromaidan Press reports:

Ukrainian artillery and drone operators provided fire support to the forces in the Canal District, suppressing Russian Artillery and troop concentrations. The Ukrainians took advantage of Russian weakness caused by losses and launched a series of successful assaults towards Bohdanivka. Ukrainian forces used small arms fire and grenades to clear out Russian Fighters. During the cleaning operations, Ukrainian fighters destroyed ammunition caches in the dugouts, killing additional Russian troops. By the end of the operations, a single Russian soldier surrendered, because no one else survived. As a result of the successful counterattack, Ukrainians entered southern Bohdanivka yet again.

Why Tight Labor Markets Are Forcing Leaders To Change HR Approach

Despite some well publicized layoffs at tech companies, there is still a war for talent. It is driven both by demographics and by the still reverberating impact of the pandemic on employees' attitudes about work. Unemployment continues to be low - and so is productivity growth. Traditional indifference to training, compensation and stress has been supplanted by concerns that a labor market incapable of supplying enough people with needed skills (think AI) means organizations have to grow their own. 

The result is that Csuite leaders are rethinking their approach to HR as a cost management tool and are  exploring how to make it a source of employee optimization. JL

Peter Capelli and Ranya Nehmeh report in Harvard Business Review:

C-suite surveys place employees higher than shareholders - and talent, especially acquiring it, is the most critical factor affecting their business. Over the past 40 years HR practices and operating cultures (have been) based on the notion that squeezing employment costs and HR resources had little downside, like not filling vacancies and shrinking training budgets. That model is no longer working. The U.S. unemployment rate has been below 4% for five years. Productivity growth has lagged. Slow growth in the labor force, will probably keep the job market tight. Meanwhile, overwork, lack of advancement opportunities, and worries of being replaced by AI have created an epidemic of workplace stress.

Dozens of Chechen Fighters Killed In Ukraine Strike On Occupied Vovchansk Building

Ukrainian forces are effectively targeting Russian units with their renewed supplies of artillery ammunition, especially in the Kharkiv sector. 

Chechen units are particularly infamous for their lax electronic communications security which has made them easy targets for Ukrainian troops. JL 

New Voice of Ukraine reports:

Dozens of Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov's fighters were killed in an airstrike on the frontline town of Vovchansk, Kharkiv Oblast (but) “Kadyrov dilutes his units a lot, usually he has about a dozen soldiers from other regions for every one ethnic Chechen." The powerful airstrike targeted a central hospital building used by Russian assault units as a hideout and place to mass troops in Vovchansk. The strike was carried out using glide bombs equipped with a JDAM kit.

Ukrainian Have Now Disrupted 14 Percent Of Russian Oil Refining Capacity

Continued Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries has now reduced Russian refining capacity by 14%, a significant amount that is now having an impact on Russia's economy. JL 

\Khriystina Bondarieva reports in Ukraine Pravda:

Ukrainian drone attacks in early 2024 disrupted 14% of Russia's oil refining capacity and led to an increase in domestic fuel prices. The loss of some of Russia's refining capacity led to a 20%-30% increase in domestic prices by mid-March and triggered an export halt to focus on meeting domestic demand. "To mitigate the impact of these strikes, Russia banned gasoline exports for six months starting in March, began importing refined products from Belarus, planned to import from Kazakhstan, and prioritised shipments of petroleum products by Russian Railways"