The state of the Ukrainian offensive campaign

Twitter thread by Mick Ryan, AM

It has been nearly three weeks since the initial ground combat phase of the Ukrainian 2023 offensives commenced. What is the state of the campaign? 1/25

In an interview with the BBC this week, President Zelensky described how progress in the Ukrainian 2023 offensives has been "slower than desired”. He then described how "Some people believe this is a Hollywood movie and expect results now. It's not."

This statement is an acknowledgement that military campaigns are very difficult to plan and assemble and are infinitely more complex to execute over time and space. The Ukrainians are fighting through a deep defensive regime constructed by the Russians (more on that later).?

Any 'slowness' of these offensives is partially due to the slow commitment and arrival of foreign military aid at the end of 2022. It is unlikely that this offensive could have begun sooner due to the individual and collective training requirements for western equipment.?The demands of halting the 2023 Russian offensive year will have complicated the timing of this offensive. The Ukrainians still needed to defend large swathes of their land against Russian thrusts on several axes. They did so successfully, but it consumed time and resources.?

Now the Ukrainians are in the initial phases of their offensive. But what does that mean from the Russian and Ukrainian perspectives?

It is worth examining Soviet and Russian military doctrine to understand how these defences are laid out. Every army has some form of doctrine that provides guidance on how to design, construct and execute a defensive scheme of maneuver.?

Defensive schemes have a security zone, which extends for tens of kilometres in depth. This will have a low density of defending troops, which have missions to collect information on advancing troops, impose attrition on them, and force delay upon them.

During this time, longer range fires will probably also be used against high value targets of an advancing enemy, including engineer breaching assets, headquarters and artillery.?

Well behind the security zone will be the main defensive position or positions. These will generally consist of at least two echelons, depending on how likely it is that an enemy will use this axis of advance.?

Deployed behind these main defensive positions are the various artillery units, which will have been pre-registered on key anticipated enemy routes and assembly areas. Behind the main defensive positions will be the different reserve forces that senior commanders have formed.?

These doctrinal prescriptions of defensive layouts have emerged over decades. They are the product of the hard learned lessons of historical combat. They provide standardised approaches for developing a defence, and understanding the resource requirements of them.?These doctrinal approaches by the Soviets, Russians and other armies permit less experienced troops to be used in defensive schemes of maneuver. As such, having these doctrinal layouts helps the Russians given their large numbers of newly mobilised troops.?

Finally, these defences are not evenly constructed across the entire front. In some areas, terrain prevents such approaches. But, they are most dense where the Russians will have done an appreciation of Ukraine’s most likely objectives for their offensive.?

The interesting thing in the coming weeks will be if the Russian appreciation of Ukraine’s most likely and most dangerous (to Russia) courses of action match the actual Ukrainian campaign plan.?The Ukrainian design for their offensive campaign in 2023 appears to have embraced a broad front approach. There are a few reasons why this is the most logical strategy for them to adopt.It generates uncertainly in the minds of Russian commanders. They don’t really know where the main weight of effort for the Ukrainian ground offensive will fall. It permits better operational security for the Ukrainians. It also enables a wide variety of deception operations.?

Operating across a broad front allows more capacity to respond to opportunities that emerge. If a force is overly concentrated, not only is it more vulnerable to attack on the modern battlefield, it is less able to adapt & exploit enemy mistakes across the entire front line.?

Concentrating a large proportion of Ukraine’s ground forces in one area (notwithstanding the excellent contributions of regionally focussed Territorial Defence Forces) might expose Ukraine to Russian tactical and operational thrusts to take more territory.

Gerasimov responds. In a recent article reviewing the options available to General Gerasimov to respond to Ukraine’s 2023 offensive, Mick described one of his options as follows...?

"Gerasimov’s next variation is Option 1, but with limited offensive jabs at Ukrainian weak spots if they open up. This is a more complex option because he would need to assemble the combat and support forces for an offensive operation from his already weakened force."?

It appears that the Russians, rather than sitting back passively across the entire front line, have chosen this option. The Russians have conducted attacks on the Donetsk, Avdiivka, Bakhmut, and Siverskyi Donets axes.?

These Russian attacks also might mean that Gerasimov is concerned about the Ukrainians developing momentum on the southern front and seizing enough territory to place Crimea at risk. He will be desperate to draw more Ukrainian forces to the eastern for a war of attrition.?How long the Russians can sustain these attacks in the east is questionable. Given the Ukrainian preparations for their current offensives, it is likely that the Russian attacks in the east will culminate before the Ukrainian offensive of 2023 does.

#ukraine #russia