Ukraine is Neither Slow nor Fast
They don’t have to
“Right amount of Crazy”
That’s what Donald Trump told his attorney general Bill Barr which was the key to a good tweet.
His kind understands how to appeal to human instincts on the most primal, baser level. Western media houses often trip and fall into the same trap.
Sensationalism sells.
Often, I have wondered if large publications have a dual personality. Struggling desperately between their desire to attract readers and their need to remain objective. They will be Jekyll in the morning and turn Hyde in the evening.
I hate their coverage when they completely overrule their objectivity and go all out on sensationalism. Western coverage of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the last few weeks has turned for the worse. Rather than presenting the facts and allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions, they argue that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is very slow.
When Ukraine refused to yield Bakhmut, these media houses went non-stop about the futility of fighting for the city. They would often cite anonymous western officials to discredit Ukrainian strategy. An estimated 2.8 million people work for the federal government in the United States. Finding someone who will say what you want them to say shouldn’t be too difficult, is it?
I did not hear the US Secretary of Defense Austin Lloyd or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley say Ukraine was making a mistake by holding on to Bakhmut. Not even once I heard them complain about Ukraine’s Bakhmut strategy in the last 12 months.
As a matter of fact, General Milley spoke of the heavy costs of Russia’s attempt to seize Bakhmut. He described the Russian attempt as a “slaughter-fest” in March.
In recent times, Western media has been complaining non-stop about the pace of Ukraine’s counter-offensive. It’s actually not hard to find military experts who can shed some light on Ukraine’s strategy and explain why the current pace of the offensive is the best way forward. However, it appears they are simply uninterested.
The Battlefield
It was in November of last year that I first noticed Russian defensive fortifications in occupied Ukrainian territory. Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed head of Crimea wrote on Telegram in November 2023 that Russia is building defense fortifications in the region. Following the Russian surrender of Kherson, the Russian army was concerned that Ukraine would advance southward and toward Crimea.
Since then, Russia has been building defensive lines, stretching from the Dnipro river in Zaporizhzhia oblast to the Russian-Ukraine-Belarus border in the north. They haven’t stopped.
In response to Western supplies of heavy weapons, the Russians became more eager to build defense lines. Trenches, barbed fences, mines, dragon teeth and anti-tank ditches started popping out all over the occupied territory.
And they won’t stop building them until the last Russian soldier is driven out of Ukraine.
Traditionally, the western way of war requires them to establish air superiority before sending the ground troops forward.
In the Iraq war, the “U.S. and its allies flew more than 116,000 combat air sorties and dropped 88,500 tons of bombs over a six-week period that preceded the ground campaign. The air bombardment was so successful that the ground campaign was over in 100 hours”.
Western thinking is rooted in achieving complete control over the skies before sending ground troops into war zones. This doctrine even applies to the tanks, infantry vehicles and ground equipment built by the west. The cumulative value of the different pieces of the military puzzle is far higher than the value of individual pieces.
In western combined arms warfare doctrine, the key ingredient or first step is air control. Ukraine has both ground weapons and troops, but it lacks the means to establish air control.
The first ingredient is missing.
The missing piece has been exposed a bit brutally during the opening phase of the Ukrainian counter offensive this year.
As soon as Ukraine started to attack, Russia responded by sending Ka 52 attack helicopters, fighter jets and sometimes even Iskander missiles.
A counter offensive brigade will have 30 tanks, hundreds of vehicles transporting soldiers, supply trucks, engineering vehicles and a lot more. When organized, the line from the first vehicle to the last will stretch into miles.
You cannot hide such a large grouping. The moment all the vehicles crank their engine and release the exhaust, Russian satellites will pick up their scent. Putin will order his pilots to destroy the Ukrainian brigades long before they get closer to the Russian frontline.
Unless Ukraine can find a way to keep those fighter jets far away from the border, they cannot afford to expose their large armored columns to Russian attacks.
It takes months to get the equipment.
It only takes days to destroy them.
Despite the challenges, Ukraine has made good progress. In June, they liberated more than 200 square kilometers of territory in southern Ukraine
That is more than 5 times the size of territory Russia captured during its five month long winter counter-offensive. Ukrainians have done it without gaining air-superiority against an enemy who dug himself in for more than six months. And they have done it by using only a small portion of their counter offensive brigades.
When Bizarre becomes a effective strategy
The Ukrainian strategy in the south is unlike anything I have seen before. They are not moving forward in one or two axes, but are attempting to move the entire frontline in the south, which covers nearly 225 kilometers. You can see the green patches of liberated territory in the image below.
Only one logical explanation makes sense: Ukraine seeks to undermine Russian combat power in the south while limiting its own losses.
While a focused attack on one or two sections of the Russian defensive line might increase the possibility of breaking Russian defenses in the area, it will also give Russia a clear view of Ukrainian troops. By attacking the entire frontline, Ukraine refuses to give Russia a clear target.
And it is working.
Ukraine liberated 200 plus square kilometers from Russian control. Such a large area could not have been liberated without Russia losing a great deal of manpower and resources. According to Wagner chief , Prigohzin, Russia is losing more than 1000 men on some days.
It is important for Ukraine to make sure that whatever the cost it pays to advance, Russia will pay a little more.
Russia’s defense is good. Not the offense
Ukraine and Russia are fighting over a large territory, with the active frontline stretching over 600 miles. Ukraine is on the offense in the south, with Russia working the defense. The roles are reversed in eastern Ukraine. Each side is unwilling to allow the other to concentrate on a small region.
Russian strategy to play offense and defense is not a bad strategy on paper. They are forcing Ukraine to engage in eastern Ukraine. This Russian strategy forces Ukraine to spread its troops between the south and the east, instead of concentrating all their attention to the south.
But it deprives Russia of the advantage of defense.
“Imagine, for example, two states separated by a body of water. It is plausible that the the difference between the expected value of attacking the other state and of defending against an attack increases with the size of the body of water.
The state which is trying to attack must take the initiative, catching the enemy off guard and exploiting vulnerabilities”. This can necessitate the use of intelligence, reconnaissance, as well as specialized units to cross the river and tactics that will allow the troops to operate inside enemy territory. Offense in this scenario is risky. It can lead to a decisive defeat on the battlefield.
The cost of offense is often far higher than the cost of defense. By counter-attacking Ukraine in the east, Russia has increased the cost of its war in Ukraine.
Between Russia and Ukraine, there is only one side that prioritizes human lives.
The western equipment in Ukraine’s possession prioritizes the protection of its crew. Russia never cared about the lives of its soldiers.
Since the time of Joseph Stalin, Russian soldiers have often been considered expendables in war. The Russian army does not worry about losing soldiers. They only worry about recruiting the next one. As a result, the weapons they manufacture reflect this philosophy.
The MiG fighter jets are widely known as the flying coffin in India.
“In 2012, then defense minister A K Antony had given an alarming statistic. He informed Parliament that out of 872 MiG aircraft purchased from Russia more than half were lost in crashes, killing over 200, including 171 pilots”.
When the Indian government decided to add more squadrons to its air-force, they did not choose to buy them from their long term defense supplier, Russia. Instead they placed a multi-billion dollar order with the French government.
Continuing to attack Ukraine will cause Russia to lose resources at a much higher rate than if they had merely defended. Russia is constrained on the production of ammunition. But that is not going to be their biggest problem, it is going to be the size of their troops in Ukraine.
Putin ordered his army to commence mass recruitment of soldiers (partial mobilization) in September last year. He has yet to order another one. Last year’s mobilization order allowed the Russian army to recruit hundreds of thousands of soldiers. A whole lot of them were killed or injured during Russia’s winter counter offensive.
The rate of deaths has picked up pace over the last four weeks. Wagner Chief Prigozhin said that one some days Russians are losing more than 1000 soldiers. If this pace continues, Russian troop strength in the frontline will soon hit an inflection point.
Once you hit that point, the rate of loss will increase. It will not decrease. The weaker the army becomes, the higher the loss it must suffer.
The only way Putin can address this looming imbalance is by ordering another round of mobilization.
But unfortunately for Putin, the little mutiny Prigohzhin orchestrated last week has turned Russia into a tinderbox. Putin will not throw a match into that box. It’s too risky. One million Russian men fled the country during the last mobilization. This time, one million Russian men might actually march towards the Kremlin.
Putin is caught in a bind.
All of this won’t materialize immediately. It will take time. Ukraine has to remain patient. Despite what the western media says, mounting a large-scale attack makes no sense.
