Vladimir Putin could cut off Ukrainian forces in the Donbas from the rest of the country with a series of pincer stabs, leaving Volodymyr Zelensky’s troops shattered, military expert JUSTIN BRONK writes today on MailOnline.
If the Ukrainian units are separated, he said, it will force them to either attempt a high-risk breakout from their defensive positions or fight where they know they will eventually run out of supplies and lose.
This possibility was brought to the attention of Mr. Bronk, a military expert in aviation and technology, who analyzed how the Russians were moving south from the Kharkiv region and north from the Mariupol-Donetsk axis.
Mr. Bronk said that once the southern port city of Mariupol falls, Russian efforts to besiege the area will shift to encircling the Donbass. Today, Russian troops continue to lay siege to Mariupol after the city’s defenders renounced their surrender demands and fleeing civilians spoke of incessant bombardments.
Mr. Bronk noted that Ukraine may lack the heavy armor needed for major counterattacks, but was able to “flank some of the forward offensives and threaten Russian supply lines.”
He said continued application of “aggressive pressure” in areas of Ukraine where Russian forces have lost momentum would be “vital to ensure that Russia cannot focus on one front at a time.”
Mr. Putin’s forces are increasingly concentrating their aircraft and artillery on Ukrainian cities and civilians living there, and the invasion has displaced more than 10 million people from their homes.
Here is the full analysis by Mr. Bronk, Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London:
JUSTIN BRONK FOR MAILONLINE
As Russian forces dwindle across much of Ukraine, they are stepping up pressure in Mariupol and the Donbas.
After almost four weeks of fierce fighting in Ukraine, the Russian army has exhausted its forces in the north around Kyiv, in the northeast near Kharkov and Sumy, and in the southwest near Nikolaev.
However, having failed to storm the entire country, Russian forces have now focused on defeating beleaguered Ukrainian forces in the southeastern port city of Mariupol and threatening to encircle Ukrainian army forces in eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
Storming Mariupol is now the top priority for the Russian army in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government did not believe that Russia would mount a large-scale invasion and therefore did not make serious preparations to counter the siege of the cities until the Russian attack on 24 February.
A Ukrainian soldier stands guard at a barricade in Odessa yesterday as the conflict continues
Destroyed buildings and cars after yesterday’s shelling of Mariupol by Russian forces as Ukraine continues to be bombed
The extremely heavy bombardment by Russian artillery and aircraft over the course of three weeks was deliberately aimed at inflicting maximum damage on the civilian population of Mariupol, including deliberate shelling of infrastructure and hospitals.
Since Mariupol was surrounded in the early days, there was no time to prepare significant stocks of dry food, medicines, ammunition and bottled water in the city before it was cut off.
So while Russian troops have suffered heavy casualties in the street fighting and are not yet in a position to completely take the city by force, the defenders are likely to die from starvation, dehydration and lack of ammunition within the next week or so.
Mariupol is a key Ukrainian city and has been a serious target for Russian forces since 2014.
Stiff Ukrainian resistance repelled repeated attempts to reach the city during the most intense phase of fighting between Russian-backed separatist forces in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Ukrainian army in 2015.
The two main motives behind the attempt to capture Mariupol in 2015 are still relevant today.
First, it will connect the occupied territory of the DPR in eastern Ukraine with the annexed Crimean peninsula in the south.
People gather amid the devastation following yesterday’s shelling of a shopping center in Kyiv.
A satellite image shows a burning apartment building in Mariupol, Ukraine last Saturday.
Secondly, it would greatly weaken the Ukrainian economy in the long run, since most of the Ukrainian maritime traffic passed through Mariupol and further through the Kerch Strait.
Capturing Mariupol would thus strengthen Russia’s logistical position in southern Ukraine, as well as give Russia significant leverage over Ukraine’s access to maritime trade after the war.
This effect will be moderated somewhat by the fact that Ukrainian resistance and the recent counter-offensive around Nikolayev last week have made it very unlikely that Russia can reach and take another key port city of Odessa in the southwest.
However, in the current situation, the priority of capturing Mariupol gives Russia another key advantage.
The Russian army was forced by a lack of capacity to advance towards one key operation at a time, rather than its previous approach of trying to advance on multiple fronts at once.
Breaking resistance in Mariupol will free forces and overstretched logistics capabilities currently centered around the city to resume increasingly stalled operations elsewhere.
People inspect the damage after yesterday’s shelling of a shopping mall in Kyiv as the Russian invasion continues
A satellite image shows burning buildings in Irpin, Ukraine yesterday as the conflict continues to rage.
Russia’s secondary priority at the moment is to try to encircle the main Ukrainian regular army formations centered around Kramatorsk and the defensive lines of the Donets River in eastern Ukraine – the Donbass.
Most of the most experienced and well-equipped units of the Ukrainian army were stationed here before the invasion, holding the line against the separatist forces of the DNR and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) that Russia has supported for the past eight years.
These forces have been partly pushed back by major attacks over the past three weeks, but have not been defeated and remain one of Ukraine’s most powerful formations.
As a result, Russian forces are moving south from the Kharkiv region to the northeast past Izyum and north both from the Mariupol direction and from the Donetsk direction in the Volnovakha region.
If these pincer strikes can cut off Ukrainian army units in Donbas from the rest of the country, it will force them to either abandon prepared defensive positions to attempt a costly and risky breakthrough, or continue to fight on the spot knowing they will eventually run out of supplies and will be overloaded.
A woman clears debris from her kitchen in an apartment building hit by an explosion the day before in Kyiv yesterday
A satellite image shows an overview of deployed artillery at Talakovka northeast of Mariupol in Ukraine last Saturday.
Currently, Russian forces are trying to make significant progress in this effort, but once Mariupol falls, it is very likely that units and the main logistics force sent to besiege the city will be redirected to encircle Donbass.
JUSTIN BRONK is a Research Fellow in Aviation and Technology at the Royal Combined Arms Institute in London.
Ukraine launched limited counterattacks around Nikolaev in the southwest and around Irpin and Gostomel in the northwest of Kyiv.
Ukraine lacks the heavy armor needed to reliably launch large-scale counterattacks against well-defended Russian positions.
However, he was able to outflank some of the forward advances and threaten Russian supply lines, as well as launch attacks on less heavily fortified positions.
Continuing to apply this aggressive pressure where Russian forces have lost momentum will be vital to prevent Russia from concentrating on one front of attack at once.
If Russian positions around Kyiv, Chernigov, Kharkov, Kherson, and Krivoy Rog could be cut off from their supply routes, Russia would be forced to either withdraw from these advanced positions to gain a foothold closer to their bases, or withdraw forces from their main lines. efforts around Mariupol and in the Donbass.
Russia has shown that it cannot support the current major operations on all directions of the invasion of Ukraine at the same time; Ukraine must now force it to try anyway, rather than allow a lull on most of the fronts that Russia will take advantage of.