The Ukrainian army’s (AFU) upcoming offensive has consistently been front-page news over the past couple of weeks.
It will define the course of war and possibly even propel it to a new stage. It could sow discord among Putin’s elites.
It could even reshape international politics. Long story short, there’s a lot riding on the AFU’s offensive.
With regard to the offensive, media is quick to cover every new detail, no matter how trivial.
April saw the publication of the first satellite images of Russian defense lines in south Ukraine.
Even a glimpse of the badly dug trenches sparked a general idea that the Russian defenses are weak,
and they’ll have a hard time repelling the attack.
But then the media broke pictures of well-built fortifications and minefields. They jumped to a new conclusion.
The AFU will have problems breaching them.
The internet is abuzz with “analytics” busy stating the obvious.
We’re going to have a look at the likeliest scenarios discussed by experts.
Let’s kick it off by saying that the AFU’s upcoming offensive should be called that, and not a counter-offensive.
Why is that? Well, technically, a counteroffensive is an offensive against another one.
It’s a military operation that sees your forces advance during your enemy’s advance.
Whatever is left of the Russian offensive is ebbing in Bakhmut.
That’s the only spot on the map where Russian forces are advancing, albeit less than a football field’s length a day.
Other spots on the battlefield are locked in a standstill. In the south, the Russian army is on the defensive.
The AFU liberated several villages around the city of Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine is, therefore, ready to hit and make it a big one. Russia is gearing up to repel it.
NOT YOUR DESERT STORM
To be clear, nobody is expecting a lightning-fast Desert Storm-style operation from the AFU.
With jets leveling enemy military infrastructure for weeks followed by theinfantry slicing its way through
the desert obliterating enemy defense points along the way. The most resilient ones are surrounded and averted.
The AFU have no air supremacy.
It doesn’t have the thousands of tanks the international coalition had amassed for the 1991 campaign.
The AFU’s upcoming offensive will see mechanized divisions attacking fairly strong Russian defenses
with artillery being the main strike force. It’s unlikely that the AFU will have more artillery and shells than the Russian army.
That alone should be enough to expect a WW2-style battle as opposed to a modern battlefield.
We should also keep in mind that the Russian army has boosted its manpower following the mobilization drive.
We shouldn’t be expecting a repeat of last year’s Kharkiv counteroffensive.
Back then, a rather unique scenario played out. The AFU managed to quietly amass several brigades.
They breached the shallow Russian frontline using light armored vehicles.
Next, they rushed forward as far and fast as the fuel reserves allowed for.
The odds are, the AFU won’t be pulling something like that now that the Russian forces have beefed up
their reserves almost along the entire frontline.
To give you an example, besides the force Russia has in the active sections of the battlefield,
there is at least a division in reserve near Rubizhne, Bakhmut, Vuhledar, and Orikhiv.
These are mechanized divisions packing serious hardware.
They can be scrambled to plug the defensive gaps.
Alternatively, they can counterattack the Ukrainian forces should the latter start compromising the Russian defenses.
Importantly, the smallest updates become available to the AFU right away.
Ukrainians peruse NATO satellite images for any movements of the Russian reserve divisions.
And they’ll be looking for a spot where those reserves would find it the hardest to get to.
Or they’ll be trying to outfox the enemy by firingfrom several directions to force Russians to scramble their reserves
to one spot while shifting the main strike direction someplace else.
Ukraine has an upper hand here. It’s in the shape of the frontline. If you look closer,
you’d see a line arching from Kupiansk to Kherson.
The AFU are on the inside of that arc.
Everything is a lot closer here. A Ukrainian brigade would take half the time of a Russian one to get from Kupiansk
to Zaporizhzhia.
Theoretically, the Ukrainian General Staff can change the main attack location several times,
making Russian reserves run to and fro on the outside of the arc.
It’s most likely that AFU will start out with small-scale attacks across the frontline.
It’s meant to strain the Russian defenses and make them tap into their reserves.
For the offensive to be smooth sailing, the AFU should’ve stockpiled hundreds of thousands
of long-range precision shells.
Using them would allow them to go through the Russian reserve even before the main operation phase began.
Let’s dissect it. Imagine, a couple of dozen HIMARS launching 120 missiles into the Melitopol area.
They bust the warehouses full of ammunition or fuel stockpiled for a Russian reserve division.
Ta-da. Said division can’t head to the battlefield. And even if it does, it won’t have ammo to shoot.
While the Russian top brass will be hastily bringing ammunition and fuel from Crimea or mainland Russia,
the remaining Russian forces will have to take the brunt of the AFU’s mechanized attack.
Most experts agree that Ukraine doesn’t have enough shells capable of firing 40 or more miles into the Russian defenses.
At least, they don’t have them now.
This means that the Ukrainian General Staff will probably try to make Russians spread their defenses as wide as possible.
Ukrainians will also be hitting Russians with long-range artillery before shifting the assault to the most vulnerable area.
ASSAULT FORCE
Leaked Pentagon papers mention special brigades among other details about the offensive.
According to the leak, Ukraine prepared eight to 12 brigades armed with Western weapons for the offensive.
That is 25,000 to 35,000 personnel.
Crucially, it wasn’t classified info as such.
That is, late last year, Kyiv announced that an Assault Guard — eight brigades —
was being formed and monitored by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to liberate the occupied territories.
They were accepting volunteers and ran campaigns on radio, TV, and online.
The formation deadline and the attack dates were kept secret, though.
It’s unlikely that those brigades will form the core of the Ukrainian assault group.
An attack is the hardest military operation.
Most in the military know that the first day of an attack sees every perfect plan in shambles.
Logistics goes down the drain first. An enemy manages to take out a warehouse full of ammo here and there.
Some of the fuel is late, some tankers are spotted by your enemy. The hardware fails, too. It calls for on-site repairs.
The repair shops need to be protected from artillery and air strikes. Not all of that works smoothly.
Let alone the training of personnel.
I doubt that they’ll send eight fresh internal brigades into the mess. Even if they are mechanized with light armored vehicles.
It won’t mean much even if 80% of the troops are volunteers with combat experience who weren’t called up during
the Ukrainian mobilization drive.
Any manager will tell you that a potpourri of 3,000 seasoned employees doesn’t necessarily translate
into the same-size close-knit team with consistent output.
The main Ukrainian assault force could be comprised of the AFU divisions that participated in the Donbas war
(2014–2022) and all of the Russian full-scale invasion.
An example could be the 92nd and 93rd brigades that lived through the Bakhmut massacre in one piece.
Experts note that there are no videos online from any other popular divisions.
It’s safe to assume that they were sent to the rear several months ago.
If they are going to be the main force, we can say that Ukraine will employ more than 40,000 soldiers in the offensive.
Head of PMC Wagner Prigozhin is screaming that there’ll be 100,000.
We should also consider that the main tanks used in the offensive won’t be the Western ones.
According to the open sources, Ukraine was supposed to get around 300 Leopard tanks.
In the scale of this war, it’s a drop in the ocean.
Possibly we’ll see the assault on Russian positions using tanks and IFVs well-known to Ukrainian tank operators.
From the Western media, we know that Ukraine lacks frontline air defense systems.
Ukrainian SAMs are covering cities with civilians and defense company facilities.
You need different air defense systems for the offensive, ones that’ll follow the rest of the forces.
If the main force stops hitting enemy defenses, it becomes a convenient target for the enemy airpower.
This means that radar systems need to follow the assault force and constantly search the sky.
Mobile SAMs come next together with radio suppression systems.
The suppressors act on navigational signals to prevent Russian pilots and artillery from getting target coordinates.
Those SAMs and suppressors become priority targets for the Russian artillery and air force.
It’s unlikely that Ukraine will send rare and expensive Patriot or NASAMS systems to the frontline.
Those systems are most likely to stay in the rear.
The very moment the Ukrainian offensive enters full swing, Russia will start looking for gaps in Ukrainian air defense.
It’ll do so by launching missile strikes on the frontlines and on civilians.
Flawed air defense could stall Ukraine’s effort to reclaime all of its provinces.
WHERE TO?
The most obvious path for the Ukrainian offensive is the south of the country.
If the Ukrainian army is to get to the Sea of Azov either near Mariupol, or Melitopol, it’ll cut Russian forces in half.
Whereas Russian forces in the East could be supplied from Russia,
the only way to supply forces in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions will be over the Crimean Bridge.
It’ll complicate things for a proper defense.
A successful attack in the south will pave the way for the AFU to get to Crimea and begin the blockade.
The Russian high command understood the risks and tried to defend the south frontline the best.
The defense line here is 2 to 3 layers deep.
The Russian command is also ready for the AFU to get to the Sea of Azov.
In the Tokmak area, there’s a defense line detected by satellites that goes at a right angle to the frontline.
It’s there to defend the right flank in case the frontline collapses.
Key cities in the Zaporizhzhia Region, Melitopol and Berdiansk, are also protected with significant defenses.
Russians didn’t have time to set up proper defenses between the frontline and the sea.
The steppes there only have defense points around the main crossroads and the hills.
It seems that the Russian army is ready for a serious skirmish here.
The AFU could also attack Kherson. They could also pretend- cross the Dnipro river. Kherson is located at the estuary.
There are plenty of islands that allow one to cross over to the eastern bank.
Ukrainian Special Operation forces already pushed the enemy from several large islands between Kherson and Oleshky.
It would be difficult for the heavy mechanized brigade to cross, but light infantry can absolutely pull it off.
The Russian General Staff can’t ignore a threat to its western flank anyway. It’ll have to keep some resources there.
The other possible direction that makes sense could be the Donbas.
The largest Russian army group is located between Vuhledar and Bakhmut.
If the AFU manage to smash it, the Russian army will be severely weakened.
Ukraine will be able to force the endgame.
It won’t only get to the pre-Feb. 24 borders but move further. They could get to the Russian border.
But it’s hard to imagine Russian generals missing an assault on the Donbas.
As a last ditch, they can fall back to heavily populated cities: Donetsk, Horlivka, and Makiivka.
That’ll force the Ukrainian army to destroy their own cities and suffer heavy casualties by capturing them house by house.
Finally, there’s another path for the main assault. It’s the least buzzed-about.
The frontline between Kupiansk and the Siverskyi Donets river looks like a more coveted target than the Donbas.
There are no large cities close to the frontline. Larger towns like Starobilsk are in the deep rear of the occupied territories.
During the winter offensive, the Russian army couldn’t manage to push Ukrainians behind the Oskol river
to get better defensive positions.
It’s a hilly area, though, unlike in the south or the Donbas. The Russian army will be holding tooth and nail onto every hilltop.
THREE OPTIONS
There’s no easy path for the AFU there.
Ukrainian military experts together with official spokespeople are united as they discourage rosy expectations
from the upcoming offensive in Ukrainians and foreign elites.
It would be too much to hope that the AFU will get to the state border or defeat the main forces of the enemy.
It ‘s more likely that we’ll see heavy fighting that will last months, not weeks.
The AFU’s offensive may end up in the fall when the season of muddied roads (rasputitsa) begins.
Ukraine will probably need one or several offensives to resolve its large-scale issues like reclaiming their state borders.
There’s one thing, though, that most experts agree on. After many months of attacking the Donbas,
the Russian army lost its offensive potential and had to go into a deep defense in an attempt to retain the occupied territories.
You can see the rot in the Russian army from afar. It’s impossible to hide.
Prigozhin isn’t just cussing at Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff, Gen. Gerasimov.
He accuses them of high treason.
That’s new for Russian politics.
Kyiv has seized momentum. It now has time to prepare its offensive. 15 months into the war,
the roles have reversed with Moscow, the aggressor, going on the defensive.
That’s a new reality for both the Russian army and propaganda.
How much defeat would cost to Kremlin now is difficult to imagine.