I have written a couple of general overviews of the Russo-Ukraine conflict (March 2022 and December 2022) in which, I believe, the included assessments and predictions have – so far – proven accurate.
It’s now April 2023 and as I believe this conflict is nearing the ‘end-game,’ it’s time to bring my thinking up-to-date.
As I write, both Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been sufficiently encircled as to render troop movement and resupply subject to withering and almost continual Russian artillery fire-control. Both towns are defensively unsustainable, though Avdiivka may not fall under complete Russian control for three to six months. Given that we are now being told that Bakhmut is strategically, tactically and operationally ‘insignificant,’ I’m somewhat perplexed as to why the Ukrainians are insistently submitting themselves to such incomprehensible losses in manpower and equipment in its doomed (eight-month-long) defence… but there you have it. Be told.
Since the end of their ‘Kharkiv Offensive’ which ended in October 2022, Ukraine has not undertaken any significant offensive operations, though they have mounted localised counter-offensives in various locations with some transient success. However, since October 2022 Russia has made incremental gains along the contact-line, predominantly on the Donetsk region frontline and most-notably with regard to the capture of Soledar and environs, as well as the above-mentioned situation in Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
The Ukrainian situation in Bakhmut is critical. The fall of this stronghold fortress town is inevitable. Avdiivka, another stronghold fortress town will follow before winter 2023, which will be of some relief to the residents of Donetsk after nine-years of indiscriminate shelling from the Ukrainian artillery/missile positions around Avdiivka.
Russian gains have also been marked on the ‘Kharkiv’ front though the ‘Kherson’ and ‘Zaporizhzhia’ fronts have been relatively stable. Fighting for control of the villages of Marinka and Vuhledar has been fierce, with a number of brief setbacks for the Russian Army. An amphibious assault by the Ukrainians across the Dniepr against the Zaporizhzhia Power Plant and the village of Enerhodar was a costly failure, as have been numerous small assaults across the Dniepr in the vicinity of Kherson.
In short, there have been no battlefield ‘victories’ or territorial gains for Ukraine since October 2022. It is the Russians that have been dominant and successful.
Which is not to infer that ‘territorial gains’ are central to Russian objectives, at present.
In my earlier posts, I tried to highlight and illustrate the Russian objectives, as stated back in February 2022 by Putin himself and on numerous occasions by Russian government and military personnel. Since this conflict began I have been surprised and dismayed by the inability of NATO, western governments, and Ukraine (along with their attendant media organisations and punditry), to grasp, understand or even acknowledge these clearly-articulated and obvious Russian goals.
There is a fundamental blinkered refusal of ‘the west’ to see the reality of what the hell is actually happening in Ukraine. This childish lunacy is reflected in their lack of understanding and capacity for appropriate action both militarily and diplomatically. ‘The west’ is seeking a geographical ‘victory’ for Ukraine over Russia which includes the recapture not only of those eastern and southern territories currently under Russian control but also of the entire of the Crimean peninsula and Sevastopol. They see ‘defeat’ of Russia in these territorial terms. They think Ukraine can militarily defeat the Russian Armed Forces. At which point, Ukraine would join both the European Union and NATO and live happily ever after.
As if any of this were possible.
The stated view of the politicians and military commands of western nations (and of Ukraine) is that the goal of the Russian military is to capture Kiev, roll up the western regions of the country, and perhaps even invade the Baltic states and Poland. Why? Because (or so they argue) Putin is a mad dictator hell-bent on building a vast Russian Empire from the borders of Russia to the Atlantic coast of France. According to UK media outlets, Putin even has designs on the United Kingdom. Heck.
All of this is fantasy.
Russia’s primary goal is to ‘demilitarise’ Ukraine.
This entails the killing of tens of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen and the destruction of as much of the military infrastructure, capacity, and capability of Ukrainian industry as possible, never to rise again.
Tanks, helicopters, artillery systems, air-defence systems, infantry-support vehicles – every military thing – is to be destroyed. How much? Sufficient to render the entire Ukrainian Military non-existent and to remove it from any and all capacity to be resurrected.
This is what the Russians mean by ‘demilitarisation.’
It’s an horrendous prospect. Any sane person should seek to avoid it.
That ‘the west’ cannot even acknowledge this reality, despite the casualties and destruction that Ukraine has already suffered, merely guarantees that the death and destruction will continue until the Russians attain their goal.
This is a war of attrition.
It will only end when one side is sufficiently attrited such that they simply cannot continue. That losing side can only be Ukraine. Why? Because Ukraine (and it’s ‘coalition allies’) does not have the supply stockpiles of ammunition, missiles and military hardware (of all kinds, whether land, sea or air), the manpower, the economic and industrial capacity and resilience, the will, nor the popular support, that Russia has.
Once the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been ‘demilitarised’ Russia will have achieved her goal and the conflict will end.
That’s it. That’s all there is to understand.
The Ukrainian military is an organisation with finite resources, in men, equipment, offensive vehicles, helicopters, missile systems, ammunition – everything. They are losing all of these at a faster rate than the Russians, despite ‘replenishment’ from a wide number of countries.
This is what attrition looks like.
Ukraine has ‘lost’ two armies already. The losses suffered during the ‘victorious’ Kharkiv and Kherson ‘offensives’ depleted their army of many of their best, most experienced and well-trained men. Add to those the men killed and matériel destroyed in the defence of Mariupol and along the Donbas front, from the battles to defend Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, Zolote, Popasna, Soledar, Bakhmut, and Avdiivka… to the futile and costly failed ‘offensives’ towards Svatove, Krasnorichenske, and Kreminna on the Kupyansk front… and the continual ineffective to-ing and fro-ing along the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson fronts.
During these contests, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have seen their initial Soviet-era equipment all but destroyed, along with the bulk of the western replenishments of those Soviet vehicles delivered throughout 2022. The missiles and ammunition upon which all of these Soviet-era systems depend have all but dried up… and with no further opportunity for effective replacement or replenishment.
Greece is being badgered and pressured by NATO and the US to ‘donate’ it’s four – FOUR – Soviet-era S300 air defence systems and associated missile ammunition to Ukraine. This is but one illustration of how desperate Ukrainian air-defence currently is. The Greeks are stubbornly resisting such a suggestion.
The west has been forced to supply NATO standard equipment and systems to Ukraine, from small arms to tanks, artillery and air-defence systems, to the plethora of differing calibres and types of ammunition such equipment requires.
Most significantly, Ukraine has been bleeding manpower. Catastrophically so. Given the continual, howling, need for personnel tasked with defending the front line (let alone the somewhat luxurious prospect of building a reserve capable of an effective, war-winning offensive), her army has had no choice but to forcefully recruit from the streets where individuals are press-ganged and thrown into vans that shuttle them off for a week’s ‘training’ before being dropped into a trench on the front line and told to fight.
The men in uniform could show up almost anywhere, any time.
They knock on civilians’ front doors and randomly stop them on street corners, handing out draft papers that can turn lives upside down.
Ukraine needs more soldiers — and fast. Kiev is preparing for an imminent assault on Russian occupying forces, and while Ukraine does not disclose its casualty counts, commanders in the field have described large losses.
Previously, officials could only deliver draft papers to people’s homes, and some avoided the notices by staying at different addresses than where they are officially registered. But new rules have widened the scope of places where men can be stopped and questioned about their draft status.
Oleksii Kruchukov, 46, a washing machine repairman waiting in line outside a recruitment office in Kiev, said he was ordered to report there after police broke up a fight he got into on the street. He did not have any valid military exemptions and said he expected that the incident will result in him soon being sent to training, and then the front.
Oleksandr Kostiuk, 52, a road repairman who helped set up barriers against Russian forces around Kiev last year, recently received his notice via his human resources department at work. He is willing to go to the front if he has to — but fears for his safety. “Now we understand what’s going on, so I’m more nervous,” he said.
Washington Post
On a recent afternoon outside Lyman in eastern Ukraine, a seasoned enlisted leader vented about the quality of initial training among newly arrived troops, describing it as largely glossing over fundamentals needed in the field that have to be taught when they get to their units.
“They’re taught to sing songs and march” in basic training, the leader said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with reporters.
Once deployed, the troops need instruction even on the most ancient practice of soldiering: how to dig, the leader said. They do not know how to hold their shovels or fortify trenches and fighting positions. For practice, a group of fresh troops dug their spades into a nearby trench line.
Washington Post
More fortunate individuals have been transported to western Ukraine, Poland (or other EU countries) and the United Kingdom where they undergo a (usually three-to-six-month) ‘basic’ infantry training course in no more than a month. These are then considered sufficiently ‘trained’ to be equipped and sent back to Ukraine as trained, trained soldiers. Trained. And sent off to fight the better-trained, better-equipped, better-supported and infinitely more-experienced Russians.
Some uber-fortunate and ‘motivated’ recruits (those that join the bestest, most-famousest nazi-inspired Ukrainian military units, for example) get the bestest NATO gear and equipment, though even they cannot avoid the ‘truncated training’ regime. Despite losing the battle for Mariupol, the ultra-nationalist ‘elite’ AZOV unit has been expanded and stuffed full of recruits…
Meanwhile, at a training camp in the Kiev region, new Azov recruits lined up at a shooting range, learning to use C7A1 rifles. One of their trainers, a Russian-speaking former American Marine who joined Azov and goes by the call sign Frodo, said that “the majority of these guys a month ago were civilians.” One sat against a wall, studying a translated U.S. military handbook.
That they were motivated enough to sign up on their own means they act more like “warriors than soldiers,” Frodo said.
The training condenses the roughly three-month U.S. Marine Corps basic training into just four weeks, he said. During that time, the troops learn everything from marksmanship and cartography to radios and engineering. It’s possible — likely even — they could then be deployed almost immediately to the country’s hottest front lines.
Washington Post
How lucky are they?
Here are some Ukrainian servicemates proudly displaying symbols denoting their shared European values… albeit on the interior roof of their vehicle…
Some individuals have been and are being trained in some shiny new NATO tech… Challenger II and Leopard (I and II) tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, French AMX-10RC six-wheeled ‘tanks’ and a variety of other artillery, air-defence and logistical-support vehicles. They learn – atop any ‘basic infantry training they have received, and on (yet more) accelerated training courses, naturally – to drive and shoot these vehicles and guns and to press buttons on various systems. Even if we assume proficiency is achieved (which isn’t a safe assumption, to be truthful, given the truncated nature of their training), this does not enable these men to be ‘effective’ (and thus their tanks etc) and the only chance these soldiers will have to become ‘experienced’ will be in actual combat against their Russian foes. Not a wildly heartening prospect, I think.
Each of these new bits of NATO kit do not readily fit in with the strategic, operational and tactical familiarity and ‘doctrine’ of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Brigade and battalion commanders will have no knowledge as to effective application of such tanks (etc) and systems on the battlefield. Basic combat will be a steep learning-curve… combined-arms combat, doubly so.
The unplanned emergence of a plethora of unfamiliar vehicles and systems into the Ukrainian Army will be a nightmare for a variety of reasons, not least from the logistical, repair, maintenance and supply perspectives.
In truth, whatever emerges from this combination of truncated multi-national NATO training and provision of multi-calibre NATO equipment will be an entirely new Ukrainian Armed Forces… created from a whole cloth stretching from how to strip a rifle all the way to the application of intelligence, logistics, supply, maintenance, equipment use and familiarity, tactics and battlefield-winning operational combat across a number of military disciplines… and forged slap bang in the middle of a hot war.
Whatever offensive Ukraine might launch with this basket of mixed equipment and untried soldiery will have to overcome the multi-layered, pre-prepared echelon defence of the Russians.
Not, I would argue, a recipe for victory.
In my opinion, should the Ukrainians manage to deploy this NATO stuff effectively such that they enjoy any success against the Russians, it will be almost miraculous. I tend to think it will be disastrous.
One final point. I cannot imagine that Russia will allow the concentration of such force to occur unmolested. I would expect large-scale drone and missile attacks (perhaps even glidebombs) to occur once such concentrations are detected. This would include transportation hubs (railway depots), deployment points (unit dispersal zones), chokepoints (bridges), ammunition storage and supply facilities, and any identified command centres. Such targets might present themselves in/around Poltava, Kamianske, Dnipro, Pavlograd, Zaporizhzhia, Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, Balakliya, and a number of smaller hubs in smaller settlements characterised by metal road and/or rail junctions, particularly those between 20km and 300km from the contact line but also those force concentration and training areas further to the west.
Some things bear a little repetition.
Everything the Ukrainians have, from men and arms, tanks, planes, air-defence systems, helicopters, infantry-support vehicles, and ammunition… is finite, as it is (of course) for the Russians.
The difference being is that it is morerer finite for the Ukrainians who, in order to overcome this more finiterer state, must slaughter the Russians and destroy Russian land, sea and air assets at a far greaterer rate than they themselves suffer. That’s how wars of attrition are won. I have seen no evidence that Ukraine is capable of accomplishing this marvellous feat, nor that they can ever achieve such a victory.
Besides, ‘attrition’ is not what the Ukrainians are trying to do, and it’s not how they’re fighting this war, and it’s not a goal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces… and it’s not how they understand or conceptualise what victory looks like or how it will be achieved.
The Ukrainians (and the west) think that the Russians have identical objectives to them and visualise ‘victory’ in the same way.
The Ukrainians are not fighting the same war as the Russians. They refuse to see reality. Defeat for Ukraine will come as a shock to the western world because we are not being informed as to the realities of the conflict and we are being lied to as to what it is that the Russians are fighting for, how they are fighting, and what their objectives are.
Towns don’t matter. Villages don’t matter. Forests, hedgerows and fields don’t matter. Geography and territory don’t matter. Until ‘the west’ realise this, Ukraine is utterly doomed to bloody defeat.
Napoleon (a far more capable military leader than the comic actor Zelenskyy) took and captured Moscow and even he lost. The might of the Wehrmacht managed to penetrate Russia to within fifteen miles of Moscow (a feat way beyond the combined forces of NATO, let alone Ukraine) and the Red Army still captured Berlin.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces are incapable of the territorial accomplishments and successes of The Grande Armée of 1812 or the Wehrmacht during Operation Barbarossa from June 1941 to January 1942. How on earth Ukraine and the west believe that they will achieve ‘victory’ over Russia by merely recapturing the Donbas and Crimea is beyond me. Isn’t anyone in charge in ‘the west’ even slightly aware of history?
But this isn’t a territorial war. Victory cannot and will not be achieved through geographical conquest.
It’s a war of attrition, dummy!