How Russia Bungled the Last Chance
The west gave Putin a freebie, but he fumbled it
Exactly when Russia began its eastern offensive is unclear. Their attacks on Ukrainian positions escalated slowly since January. Vuhledar, Bakhmut, and Ukrainian positions near Kreminna were repeatedly attacked, showing that the Russian army was trying to advance through multiple axes instead of one.
The following image, the one on the left shows the Russia-Ukraine frontline on January 27th, the image on the right shows the frontline on February 24th.
Can you spot the difference?
The frontlines have barely moved after a month of attacks, so I couldn’t detect a difference.
“Russia’s big new offensive is underway,” said Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, in an interview last week with the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine. “But going in a way that not everyone can even notice it.”
To achieve this extremely difficult to notice change, Russia sacrificed more than 21,000 lives. Instead of advancing on a singular front holding an element of surprise, the Russians have spread their combat force all over the eastern front line and have tried to advance on multiple axes. They have also directed a huge amount of resources towards Bakhmut, a colossal waste of resources.
Other than the two massive blunders, Russia's eastern offensive is a reasonable plan.
- Currently, Russia is trying to move the frontline, not because the conditions are perfect, but because it expects them to get worse. So from the Russian perspective, now is the time to attack.
- This focus on winning the eastern banks of the Oskil river near Kupiansk is a good one. The line has barely moved, but the effort is evident.
A frontline that refuses to move
On February 8th, the Institute for the Study of War, the Washington.,D.C, based think-tank reported that the Russians were attacking from the north of Svatove all the way to Vuhledar in the south. The distance between the two towns is a massive 262 kilometers by drive.
Putin’s generals wanted to move the entire frontline between Vuledar and Svatove, rather than accumulating all their strength at a singular point, pushing forward and advancing along a single axis.
Quantity is Russia’s strength. If you want to know how to waste it, please ask Mr. Vladimir Putin and his generals. The idea of moving a nearly 300 km frontline by spreading combat forces all over is extremely stupid. As a result, more then 21k Russian soldiers were killed in February, the second highest monthly death toll since the conflict began.
Since Ukraine is not advancing, they would have lost much less than Russia. They would use their defensive positions to inflict heavy damage on the enemy.
The Kreminna-Svatove-Kupiansk Line
In early September 2022, Ukraine launched a lightning offensive that liberated 2,000 square kilometers in a matter of days. This offensive was not conducted mindlessly. In addition to taking control of Izyum, Ukraine wanted to make sure that whatever land they liberated would not be returned to the Russians.
On September 6th, Ukraine launched a counter-offensive from Kharkiv. The first salvo hit Kupiansk, then they turned south to hold the banks of Oskil River as protection, then they gained Izyum and finally they captured Lyman.
Russia could have easily replicated the Ukrainian battle strategy to gain. I am not sure if it would have worked because Ukraine has proven that they are ready for any form of attack. But given the kind of quality in the Russian army’s possession, it would have been better if they had advanced on a single axis.
But they did not. It was a huge mistake.
If I have to summarize the goals of either side in their war for the eastern front than it would be this:
Russia wants Kupiansk. Ukraine wants Svatove
Russians have relentlessly pounded the region next to Kupiansk because they desperately want to push the Ukrainians behind the Oskil river. If Russia wins Kupiansk, they will have a much better chance of either winning Luhansk and Donetsk Oblast in its entirety or at the very least they will feel confident of holding what ever they are occupying now.
If Ukraine marches all the way to Staroblisk after it gets its offensive weapons, and takes control of the town after winning Kreminna and Svatove, then the Russian occupation of Luhansk and Donetsk will become untenable.
Because Svatove is an extremely important logistical node that Russia needs to supply its troops operating in Dontesk and Luhansk. Losing Svatove will make it extremely difficult for Russia to continue any of its offensive maneuvers in the region.
What did not happen in the first five days of the offensive is not going to happen in the next one month.
The intensity of Russia’s attacks will gradually lessen since no one can sustain an offensive for long.
The Understated Importance of Training
The Russian army has lost more than 200,000 soldiers since the war began, as well as many more who have been injured. Russia may have devised a set process to transport young men from all corners of the country all the way to the frontlines. These barely trained green recruits are referred to as cannon fodder because a few hours of walkthroughs and a few days of system training cannot replace battlefield knowledge.
Three battalions of Ukrainian soldiers are being trained every month by the West. During the past six months, training programmes for Ukrainian soldiers have ramped up. I strongly believe that this is an extremely significant factor that could decide the fate of the war.
A recent report by New York Times revealed that Ukraine recently captured a medic who was asked to operate a tank. He will react in a very different way when he sees a javelin flying towards his turret compared to a soldier who was trained to handle such events over and over for years.
Both New York Times as well as the Institute of Study of War came to the same conclusion: The Russians cannot conduct an offensive operation. If Russians cannot do it now, when Ukraine is still getting trained on combined arms warfare, they are not going to get it done in the future. Here is the condensed view of NYT as reported by ISW.
NYT reported on March 1 that Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces continued to make serious mistakes and advance tank columns into Ukrainian ambushes in the recent three-week Russian offensive near Vuhledar, which Ukrainian sources characterized as the largest tank battle of the war to date.
NYT reported that Russian forces lost at least 130 tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs) during the three-week offensive, forcing them to resort in the last week to frontal infantry attacks. Ukrainian troops outlined their tactics to NYT, stating they lured Russian forces into kill zones before immobilizing Russian columns and channeling them into mine-laden road shoulders, before destroying them with artillery — including HIMARS, typically used against static, rear area targets.
The Russian elements deployed to the Vuhledar area, primarily the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, are mainly staffed with poorly trained mobilized personnel who suffered massive losses in this area in October 2022 and again in February 2023. ISW previously reported on Russian losses near Vuhledar and assessed that they are emblematic of the Russian military‘s inability to learn from its failures.
The NYT investigation supports ISW’s assessment that the continued recreation and reinforcement of Russian military failures will impede the Russian military’s ability to conduct effective offensive operations.
Because of the fact that the Russian army is filled with rookies, it acts like a rookie. Putin may have found a way to recruit a few hundred Russian men every day, train them, and then drop them on the frontlines. Despite Putin’s best efforts, it is almost always going to fail against the highly trained and highly equipped Ukrainian army.
I never believed that quantity will overpower quality. Also, I do not believe Russia has infinite manpower. Putin would have ordered full mobilization by now if that were the case. Because he fears a backlash, he is slowing down recruitment. The hundreds of thousands of men who fled after he ordered partial mobilization is proof that he does not possess unlimited human resources.
Russia’s eastern offensive has already failed. Even though they have spent colossal resources on Bakhmut, I suspect they will have trouble capturing the town. The Russians cannot change the eastern frontline from here. If the Russian army tries to accelerate recruitment, there will be a cost and it is called internal turmoil.
