“One of the bloodiest maneuvers ever,” said US Chief of Staff Milley, What Ukrainians Must Do: Break through enemy troops. What speaks against, what speaks for your chances?
Flames shoot into the night sky: When a Russian fuel depot caught fire near the Crimean bridge last week, most Internet commentators are certain: it must be a Ukrainian attack aimed at undermining Russian logistics. Another camp in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol caught fire on Saturday.
Are these isolated attacks? Do they signify the imminent start of the counter-offensive? Are they already the counter-offensive? Although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told European broadcasters that he is still waiting for further deliveries of weapons and equipment, such statements are also strategically motivated and therefore have limited reliability.
Zelenskyy’s claim contradicts a statement by NATO Commander-in-Chief Christopher Cavoli. In a hearing before the US Congress, he said that 98% of the heavy equipment promised to Ukrainians for the offensive reached the ground.
Among them are the German Leopard 2 tanks. In the meantime, the Inspector General of the German Armed Forces, Carsten Breuer, in Ukraine, inquired about the experience with the main battle tank. It was clear to him “that he is in combat”, Breuer later said.
In total, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently estimated that the West has delivered more than 230 main battle tanks and at least 1,500 armored vehicles since the start of the war. The first deliveries from the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia are included, that is, in addition to Western equipment, also Soviet design material, but the balance sheet is still impressive. Viennese military expert Wolfgang Richter estimates the proportion of western main battle tanks at 60 to 80 pieces.
Cut off the opponent’s supply
Western experts differ on whether the Ukrainian offensive is imminent and whether the drone strikes on Russian logistics, reported repeatedly in recent weeks, are already part of it. On the one hand, in their first offensive last fall, the Ukrainians proved capable of preempting Russian supply routes to cut off supplies to combat troops. “Shaping the battlefield” is what the US Army calls it, you “design” the battlefield before the fight.
Military historian Markus Keupp sees these attacks, including those on fuel trains and road links, as phase 2 of Kiev’s expected retaliation. “Ukraine is attacking – very skillfully – the logistics inside Russia. With the aim that the Russians can only advance what they already have in the front sector”, described Keupp in “Stern”.
That sounds good like a goal. But is the size of the logistical attacks enough to make a difference with an active front of 1200 kilometers? “Very sporadic, very much like a pinprick,” says military analyst Richter, assessing suspected drone strikes. “If the Ukrainians followed the plan of isolating the battlefield in a large area, then these attacks would have to take on a completely different dimension.” Missile attacks would have to do a lot of damage in a very short time and cripple logistics. Fire must then be used immediately “for movement”. Shaping the battlefield – For the judges, this would need a temporal connection to the battle.
A deficiency that the former colonel sees in the troops of both warring parties: “Until now they have not understood how to coordinate fire and movement, that is, to immediately use what was destroyed on the other side for their own movement”.
However, an important factor in the Ukrainian counterattack will be that the Russians – then in a defensive position – will have less need to move. Ukrainian troops must advance, and if possible, with fire support, because this prevents the defenders from bombarding the advancing troops.
Ukraine is becoming even more dependent on the West
However, if “no movement without fire” applies, it means enormously high ammo consumption. Many military analysts see the supply as one of the Ukrainian army’s biggest open flanks. Especially in the current phase, when troops are increasingly migrating to Western combat systems. He doesn’t have the right caliber for this in his own stocks and he can’t reproduce anything himself. It will therefore be even more dependent on Western support than before.
According to US military theories, the Ukrainians, as the attacking party, should expect material attrition in the ratio of 3 to 1, that is, three times more than the Russian side. The same ratio applies to fighter losses. And the front is long, but the Russians prepared: in many places they are deeply echeloned, that is, with several defensive lines in a row. Ukrainian brigades will not only have to rely on large numbers of combat troops fighting with anti-tank weapons, but also heavy artillery fire.
The long-dug trenches visible in aerial photos are meant to keep Ukrainians vulnerable for as long as possible. Because to overcome the trenches, it is necessary to use armored bridge-laying vehicles, which deploy a bridge that is transported, on which the main battle tanks and armored vehicles overcome the obstacle. An eight to ten meter ditch can be crossed in this way. However, this creates a bottleneck that all advancing units must pass through.
Tanks can no longer advance as far as before, but they form a concentrated target for anti-tank weapons and also for Russian artillery for a longer period of time. According to Richter, the Moscow army has final phase guided munitions, which line up with their target in the final meters of the approach and thus attack very precisely.
Milley appears skeptical of the offensive
“The advance operation is generally one of the most difficult and bloodiest maneuvers ever,” US Chief of Staff Mark Milley said of the challenge. On the flight back to the United States after the last meeting of the Ukraine contact group in Ramstein in mid-April, the highest-ranking American military men spoke with journalist Julia Ioffe about the coming months with skepticism. According to Milley, it was said in Ramstein that the Russians were waiting for the Ukrainian offensive brigades “with buzz saws”.
An attempt to break through in the country’s southeast seems to make strategic sense to wedge Russia’s land bridge to the Sea of Azov and cut off supply lines to Crimea. But precisely because an attack there would make so much strategic sense, according to the chief of staff, the Ukrainians found some of the most heavily fortified Russian installations there.
Every day that passes without the offensive starting clearly shows that the Ukrainians are aware of the difficulty of their task and are dedicating the necessary time to prepare the counterattack in detail. “For such an offensive, the military leadership does not draw up a single plan that is stubbornly executed, but has to work out several options for how and where to attack,” explains military expert Gustav Gressel in the podcast “Eastern Committee of Salon Columnists”.
The final consideration of which one is most likely to succeed is based on assumptions about – among other things – Russian troop strength and reaction times. That’s why “some smaller attacks are underway to test the Russians’ reaction times, how strong they are with what forces and where,” says the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) researcher. Gressel also thinks it’s conceivable “that the offensive starts but peters out after a day or two because it was just a mock attack.”
Such a deceptive maneuver, which could lead the enemy to move his forces there with some effort, “gives carte blanche to other parts of the front for a certain time. Because the Russians need much more time to reorganize their forces.” According to Gressel, Ukrainian troops will use this advantage for themselves, and NATO also relies on the ability of Ukrainians to surprise Russians – as they successfully did before Kiev and in Kharkiv.
NATO “worked” with the Ukrainians
Commander-in-Chief Cavoli assured the US Congress that the Ukrainians are “in a good position” – with some weaknesses “which I prefer not to talk about publicly”. “A possible surprise effect” makes him confident. They “worked” with the Ukrainians on these things.
At the same time, revolts in the Russian military leadership are becoming apparent. The US Institute for War Studies (ISW) analyzes that the power of the supreme commander is waning. Army General Valery Gerasimov is less and less able to control his commanders. From the analysts’ point of view, this means that the army is losing the ability to carry out coherent operations, for which several areas of responsibility must be intertwined. It is “very unlikely that the Russian military will be able to resolve these chain-of-command issues in the near future,” according to ISW.
These clashes are also depressing troop morale, which has never been particularly high in the 15 months of this war – a factor that many analysts clearly see as weakening the Russians. On the other hand, Inspector General Breuer reported on his visit to Ukraine that he had experienced an “almost irrepressible will” among his interlocutors “not only to end this war, but also to win it”. His American counterpart Mark Milley has a similar perception of the Ukrainians’ fighting spirit: “They were free and a free people is not easy to win.”