Battle of Donbass could become another debacle for Russia

Battle of Donbass could become another debacle for Russia |

After suffering a series of setbacks during its invasion of Ukraine and retreating after its attempt to capture Kyiv, losing around 20,000 soldiers, the Russian army reviews its copy and aims for a less ambitious goal: capture of Donbass, in eastern Ukraine.

After eight weeks of war, the crucial question is whether the Russians have learned from this disastrous first phase and whether the terrain of this new battlefield – open fields beyond their borders – gives a combat advantage.

In any case, this new phase of the conflict is likely to be even bloodier than the first – it will take the form of a war of attrition, with tank battles unlike anything seen in Europe since World War II. This week, both sides were still in the prep phase, firing artillery shells at their respective positions in hopes of breaking each other’s stamina and draining each other’s morale before the game’s overwhelming combat begins.

into the breach

For weeks, battalions of Russian tanks have been lined up along the almost 500-kilometer border with Ukraine, with the aim of breaking through the defenses and encircling the Ukrainian soldiers from all sides once the fighting has started at full speed.

This tactic works both ways: the Ukrainians will try to open a gap in the line of attack, then encircle the Russian soldiers and in the same movement cut their supply lines (which is very convenient that in the east they are dependent on the railways and the Ukrainians have proven that they know very well how to blow them up).

Biden and some European leaders are sending additional anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Ukrainian units, but also “heavy weapons.”

The issue goes beyond Donbass, a coal-rich industrial region that is home to about 6% of Ukraine’s population. The Russians continue to ramp up pressure across Ukraine, bombing civilian and military targets in Kyiv, Lviv and other cities in the west, and blockading Mariupol in the southeast. If Putin wins Donbass, it could revive his abandoned ambitions to take over the rest of the country, or at least overthrow President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

But when faced with the possibility of failure in Donbass, Putin could launch a tactical chemical or nuclear attack to stop them, in a fit of brutality meant to shock Zelensky and his Western allies. Russian military doctrine calls this ploy “escalation for the purpose of de-escalation”). That’s the main reason why President Joe Biden and some European leaders are reluctant to put more pressure on Putin or directly intervene in the war.

Therefore, it is important to ask already at this stage which side is entering this new phase of the war with the best chance of winning. Geography is in many ways favorable to Russians. The fact that the ground is clear will give Ukrainian soldiers fewer opportunities to ambush Russian tank columns like they did off Kyiv.

The region’s proximity to Russia also means that supply lines are shorter – the Ukrainians cut them easily during the early battles, depriving Russian soldiers of food, fuel and ammunition. Russia also has the advantage of being the aggressor in this invasion. The Russian soldiers who fought the first battles will be redeployed to the Donbass, reinforcing the numerical advantage Russia already enjoys in terms of fighter numbers and firepower.

Not so easy

However, these benefits may not prove decisive.

Biden and some European leaders are sending Ukrainian units not only additional anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, but also “heavy weapons” — tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery and helicopters, many of which are expected in the coming days. In the first phase of the war, these leaders did not dare to deliver these deadlier, longer-range, mobile weapons, fearing that Vladimir Putin would view these deliveries as a provocative escalation of NATO’s military involvement in the war and not retaliate, for example, through chemical or nuclear attacks.

One of the advantages that clearly seems to work in Russia’s favour, the open terrain, could also turn against Russia.

However, concerned about Russian military reinforcements and the relentless shelling of Ukrainian civilians, Biden and his colleagues have revised their acceptable risk criteria and are making additional efforts to improve the Ukrainian army’s capacity not only to organize guerrilla attacks against Russian forces , but also to conduct conventional warfare.

Another factor is likely to fuel the pessimism of the Russian command: the degree of exhaustion of the soldiers. This explains why the offensive in Donbass has not yet fully started. Many of the Russian battalions — some mobilized after failed campaigns in northern and western Ukraine, others newly mobilized from distant Russian bases — have lost too many men, tanks and other weapons to form cohesive combat units, and it may be a few weeks yet much more to fill in the gaps.

Michael KofmanA military expert at the NAC, whose war analyzes have proven to be above average visionary, tweeted on Wednesday April 20: “Overall I think that the Russian army has lost a lot of combat effectiveness given its high losses. […] They gathered what they could from what was left […] send reinforcements. She will not be able to compensate for her losses.

stuck

One of the advantages that clearly seems to work in Russia’s favour, the open terrain, could also turn against Russia. The ground is muddy, which could force the Russian tanks to move in columns on the roads where they would then be exposed to rocket fire and tank drones, or stay in the fields where they would risk getting bogged down.

A four-star general in the US Army, who requested anonymity, emailed me that these facts, in addition to the tremendous incompetence the Russians have shown so far, “should make us wonder about the possibility.” to consider making significant advances against the Ukrainian defenses”.

The possibility of a permanent standoff has a silver lining: it could force both sides to come to the negotiating table.

At the same time, he continued, “the Ukrainians have to constantly stop the Russians.” Even if they don’t break through to encircle the Ukrainian defenses, they could still “penetrate through the front lines.”

If this prediction proves correct, the war could degenerate into a long struggle, as violent as it is bloody, the outcome of which will not be a great strategic victory for either camp, but for one that endures the blow a little longer than the other.

The possibility of a permanent standoff has a silver lining: it could force both sides to come to the negotiating table.

Everything for the Donbass

Some Russian officials have justified their military withdrawal from Kyiv by stating that Putin’s real goal from the start was to take over the Donbass region. This is where the war began – and this is where Russia and Ukraine have been fighting since 2014 in a conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 14,000 people, including 500 Russians.

Until last February, this war pitted the Ukrainian army, then supported by the West but sparsely supplied, against separatist militias benefiting from the arms and support of Russian special forces. Shortly before the invasion, Putin officially recognized the two Donbass regions (Donetsk and Luhansk) as independent “people’s republics”.

He publicly justified the invasion as a necessary step to protect Russian-speakers in those republics from “genocide” by Ukraine. He and his advisers barely mentioned the invasion of other parts of Ukraine until heavy Russian casualties, estimated at 20,000 soldiers killed, could no longer be covered up even by the Russian media.

If this war ends one day, the peace agreement will have to settle the fate of Donbass one way or another.

Shortly after this first war began, soldiers from both sides formed a line of demarcation, with pro-Russian separatists controlling the eastern part of the region and Ukrainian troops controlling the western half (roughly corresponding to the areas inhabited by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians respectively). ). These lines hardly moved over the next eight years.

In 2015, both sides signed the Minsk Accords, which called for a ceasefire and decided the fate of Donbass in vague formulae, agreements that were never implemented. However, in the weeks leading up to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February, US and Russian officials raised the possibility of reviving the Minsk accords in a bid to find a solution.

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If this war ends one day, the peace agreement will have to settle the fate of Donbass one way or another. The outcome of the Battle of Donbass, if there is a clear one, could pave the way for a broader agreement or make it even more difficult to achieve.