All experts qualified enough to judge agree that the Ukrainian offensive has kicked off.
That being said, it’s hard to make sense of the frontline situation and various paltry advancements,
let alone give predictions.
But without trying on the military analysts’ shoes and dissecting every morsel of the map,
we’ll offer you the big picture.
The Ukrainians are focusing on two main directions. The first is Bakhmut.
They clearly need this one to keep a large Russian force engaged and stuck around this place.
Bakhmut is just perfect for this job. Some say the Battle of Bakhmut lasted 8 months.
Others estimate it to be 10 months. It depends on what you consider as a starting point.
In any case, the Battle of Bakhmut has outlasted the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow,
and most iconic fights of WW2 and other 20th-century wars.
What was the result of this drawn-out bloody skirmish?
The capture of a regional center with a population of less than 100K, according to pre-war estimations.
The enormous price the Russian army had to pay for Bakhmut is recognized by independent pundits,
the Ukrainian side, and the Russian pro-war crowd alike.
The strategic value of Bakhmut has long gone. But its political importance can’t be overstated.
Given the death toll and the duration of the battle, the Russians just can’t surrender this pile
of rubble in a matter of days or even weeks.
The propaganda touted the event on par with the 1945 Battle of Berlin.
No matter the price, the Russian army will be forced to have a large defensive force stationed at Bakhmut,
weakening the other sections of the frontlines.
The second direction that will pack the largest offensive potential is the Zaporizhzhia Region, south of Donetsk.
Unlike the Bakhmut situation, it has more practical than political value.
The plan is to split the Russian army in two, destroy the land corridor to Crimea,
and leave the Kerch bridge as the only supply line for the entire Russian Army South.
Should the Ukrainians succeed in disintegration the Russian land forces,
they will a have shot at a large-scale offensive targeting, among other things, Crimea.
The Russians will have a hard time defending the peninsula with a single vulnerable supply line available.
But before we continue, we can’t stress enough the word “if.”
After the successful fall operations and the pompous teasers of the current offensive,
the public may be tempted to pin the highest of hopes on this campaign.
15 months into the war, many people altogether dismiss the Russian army as a competitive force.
But they shouldn’t.
RUSSIAN ARMY CAPABILITIES
The problems the Russian army is facing are no longer front-page news. Its motivation is next to non-existent.
I dare you to explain to a farmboy from the Russian heartland that he must die for a nondescript village
in southern Ukraine he didn’t know existed and couldn’t even find on the map.
15 months into the hostilities, the only slogan that comes close to a motivation is:
We probably shouldn’t have started this mess, but since we did, we better fight to the bitter end.
There’s this huge chasm between the Russians and the Ukrainians. A Ukrainian soldier can’t afford to retreat.
He realizes darn well what the Russian occupation means for him.
By contrast, a Russian soldier doesn’t face the prospect of being occupied.
A military defeat only means he punches his ticket back home.
A considerable part of the current Russian army are mobilized recruits.
Some of them are well-trained, some have worse skills, and some have none at all.
Some of them are ordered to act outside of their occupational specialty.
For example, artillery soldiers may act as assault infantry.
On top of that, following in the Wagner Group’s footsteps,
the army has drafted an incalculable number of convicts.
If there’s one thing inmates can do, they can sure degrade the army.
Next, the command issues are there, too. There aren’t enough field grade officers.
Besides, the army often defies military logic. Instead of carrying out combat missions,
they have to enact the sick fantasies of the political leadership.
The laundry list of problems goes on and on. We’ve discussed them at length in our previous videos.
They were broached by Ruslan Leviev, an expert at Conflict Intelligence Team.
Reasonable experts from both sides of the fence broke it down as well.
The mess is literally ubiquitous, from the shortages of underwear
to fierce infighting devolving into bloody clashes.
Despite all of the above, the Russian army has 100s of thousands of troops.
They sure include well-trained and specialized forces.
The Russian army has thousands of mortars and armored vehicles, 100s of combat-ready battle tanks,
multiple rocket launchers, tactical missiles, fighter jets, and assault helicopters.
We can’t really be more specific, but importantly, according to the Oryx tracking estimates,
Russia has lost 10,500 pieces of hardware.
The number of destroyed tanks is over 2,000, that is, more than German, French, Spanish,
and British battle tank reserves combined.
At the peak of the hostilities, the Russian side fired 10s of thousands of howitzer rounds daily,
which makes out to a total of 500,000 a month.
That being said, Russia still has enough resources to keep waging the war.
Granted, in terms of manpower and materiel, Russia has lost an equivalent of several European armies.
Granted, no one has wasted that many resources in the past 80 years.
But since the war is going on, Putin does have enough manpower and materiel left.
The Russian army had enough time to build powerful defenses at the section of the frontline
that were expected to be attacked in the Ukrainian offensive.
And these include much more than the useless “dragon teeth” fortifications dotted around southern Russia.
They boast significant depth, complete with trenches, barrages, and minefields.
Add to it the artillery readiness.
The Russian army isn’t a bunch of savages wielding primitive spears.
It still tops the Ukrainian counterpart in terms of some resources, like tanks and armored vehicles.
In other aspects, like combat aviation, its superiority is measured by an order of magnitude.
While Prigozhin was feeding the Bakhmut massacre with his convicts,
the Russian army had enough time to set up proper defenses. And it’s much easier to defend than to attack.
The current developments can’t be compared to the liberation of the Kharkiv Region that happened last fall.
Back then, that the enemy was capable of putting together a large-scale offensive was a shocker
to the Russian command.
The Ukrainian top brass threw a curveball to their Russian counterpart
as they faked an attack on Kherson while striking the Kharkiv Region.
No one was expecting a breakthrough in Kharkiv, and there were no effective defensive lines.
A large portion of the Russian army was relocated to more at-risk sections of the front.
As a result, the Ukrainian army blitzed the Russian forces, and the Russian front quickly collapsed.
Now it’s a different ball game.
The Ukrainian army is targeting the southern direction in the Zaporizhzhia Region.
That was an expected move. The Russian army was preparing for it.
If you think of the Russian army as a bunch of savages, you can’t be more wrong.
And you’re running the risk of miscalculating.
For the Ukrainian army, from the generals down to the rank-and-file soldiers,
underestimating the enemy can prove fatal.
AD
UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
If you’ve been closely following the media coverage of the war, you may be get the wrong impression
that the Russian army looks like a congress of bungling village drunks forced to attend at gunpoint.
But that’s an illusion whipped up by the media as the videos showing PoWs with WW1-era rifles
and mobilized recruits with rusty Kalashnikovs easily go viral.
These are bombshell videos, whereas things going normal aren’t particularly newsworthy.
That’s why in the run-up to the offensive, many people thought the Ukrainian army would
march on toward Sevastopol, breezing through the frontlines.
Such expectations would be a stretch. For all the flaws, the Russian army is still a force to reckon with.
The Ukrainian offensive will be anything but a walk in the park.
It’ll be a bloody grind that may not bring the kind of results you’re expecting.
You gotta bear it in mind to be in touch with reality.
The Russian army isn’t an armada of yahoos, and the Ukrainians aren’t the X-men.
This is more or less an even-steven matchup.
I’m saying this because most people’s expectations seem to be unrealistic.
And once the offensive fails to live up to the billing, these people will be crestfallen.
The public was, for instance, crushed by the footage of the burning Leopard tanks.
Ukraine has gone overboard trying to secure the supply of Western tanks.
The decision had Europe polarized, if only for a short while.
But it did mark a watershed moment in the West’s military aid to Ukraine.
It made such a splash that Leopard 2 tanks began to be viewed by many as the unsinkable wonder-weapon.
Importantly, that view was shared by both parties.
After all, this idea meshes well with a Soviet worldview.
If it’s made in the West, it’s a sci-fi magic bullet designed by infallible supermen
that can never be matched by the Soviets.
No wonder when the footage surfaced of the burning Leopard tanks, both sides were like,
“Wow, they are vulnerable, after all, aren’t they?”
One side was buoyed up, while the opponents got the blues. Of course, they are!
This is just a battle tank, a common expendable war item.
It’s not a HIMARS system with a range of 80 km (50 mi), which gets ready, fires its rounds, and goes back.
The Leopards are frontline weapons supposed to spearhead the offensive.
At the frontlines, it’s an easy target for the enemy tanks, artillery, anti-tank guided missiles, landmines,
kamikaze drones, and whatnot.
The Leopards will be burning just like any other tank in any other war.
That’s why last year’s momentum swing for the Ukrainian army was ensured by 8 HIMARS systems,
while the offensive calls for hundreds of tanks.
The Leopard example shows that unrealistic expectations can lead to unreal disappointment.
Get this: the upcoming weeks or months even will see a lot of fierce and bloody fighting.
Ukraine coming out victorious is just one scenario. This is a war, and there’s no magic bullet.
Ukrainian soldiers are mortals, and Ukrainian tanks, no matter the country of origin,
catch fire just as easily as the Russian ones.
Both the Russian and the Ukrainian regular armies have been severely affected by the war.
Both armies are by now mostly made up of mobilized recruits.
Some of them previously saw firearms in movies only.
But let’s get back to the southern direction. A full-out, all-in offensive is now unfeasible.
The heavily guarded Russian defenses are the Ukrainian forces are separated by several miles
of a mined open field that’s perfect for artillery fire and that has UAVs hovering over it around the clock.
The Ukrainian army now finds itself the way the Russian army was at Vuhledar.
Any movement of the assault units or hardware will be easily detected from the air.
Both the infantry and the equipment will be decimated by the artillery fire right away.
However, Ukraine can’t afford hordes of suicidal cannon fodder that Russia used at Vuhledar.
It can’t afford the waste of manpower and firepower on this scale.
That’s why what we’re now witnessing is more like testing the waters than going on a full-scale offensive.
The small Ukrainian armored groups are attacking all over the place,
trying to find chinks in the Russian armor.
The footage of the burning Leopard tank and the destroyed Bradley Fighting Vehicle
are the collateral of such an attack.
They aren’t looking to capture a dozen nondescript villages and push the Russian defenses
a couple miles back.
The real goals are only known by the likes of President Zelenskyy, Defense Minister Reznikov,
and Generals Zaluzhny and Syrskyy.
I doubt if they let the whole world in on their plans. We can only speculate based on what we see.
Small mobile armored groups are trying to chip away at the Russian defenses.
Whether they’re doing it to identify the Achilles heels ahead of the major offensive
or as a red herring remains a mystery. There’s no point in guessing.
However, what can be analyzed is the political repercussions.
The current state of affairs is beneficial to Putin in terms of his 2024 re-election bid.
The two armies are locked in a stalemate and are using their reserves.
Neither side is capable of budging the frozen frontlines any further than a couple of inches.
Local skirmishes erupt here and there, with no palpable success for either side.
The war is spitting out dead soldiers and guzzling up huge resources,
but these are manageable for the Russian regime, both financially and politically.
STABILITY CRUSHED
The way things stand isn’t a carbon copy of the 2015 events of the Donbas war, but there are similarities.
The war is morphing into routine background noise and slipping out of the public eye.
One can avoid making dicey and potentially deleterious calls,
the worst of which would be a new mobilization drive.
This is the kind of stability that benefits both Russian elites and Russian citizens.
Things aren’t getting out of hand, but aren’t getting worse, either.
As the election day draws closer, the talk about the war effort is petering out.
The election campaign may even attempt to overlook the events post-Feb. 24, 2022.
For the Ukrainian side, this status quo is the worst thing imaginable for the above reasons.
Putin stabilizes the system, breezes through the election, builds up the resources, and rekindles the war.
From a political standpoint, it’s crucial for the Ukrainian side to avoid the drawn-out WW1-style
trench warfare that wouldn’t be battering Putin with bad news and could therefore be left out of the public eye.
Apparently, Ukraine is doing its utmost as it launches drone strikes on Moscow,
sends armed saboteurs to Russian border provinces, and hits Russian infrastructure.
Ukraine is doing its utmost for President Putin to avoid a lucky escape.
It pressures him into making bad calls and dreading the limelight.
But that’s not enough. To prevent Putin from riding out this storm, just like he rode out the previous crises
he faced, it takes a large-scale defeat of the Russian army.
Putin will keep making bad calls only if he’s forced to, if the odds of a defeat are overwhelming
and he’s unable to sweep the consequences under the rug,
and if he’s betrayed the time factor he’s been banking on.
All this makes the current situation bad for Ukraine.
Ukraine’s only victory would be at least restoring its pre-Feb. 24 borders.
It’s important so that people are motivated to live through the war times.
It’s infinitely important for the external support.
Everyone wants to partake in a victory — no one wants to meddle in a year-long tussle for an abandoned village.
Both politicians and their electorate would rather stay away from the latter scenario.
If this bloodstained status quo drags on, the international Moomintroll sentiment
will steal the show entirely. Go ahead, hammer out a peace deal, and that’s it.
No one is interested in parroting the Ukrainian geography, which is too much of a mouthful, forever.
Putin’s victory is an averted loss. And it should be clear to everyone.
No one is expecting him to clinch a victory — most will be happy to get back to anything
that’s even remotely reminiscent of stability.
For Putin, WW1-style trench warfare would be the best scenario.
In a way, Ukraine and Russia have traded places.
Early into the war, Ukraine was to hold on come what may, retain it statehood and its capital city,
keep the government afloat, and halt Putin’s offensive.
Ukrainian victory back then was an averted loss. Miraculously, Ukraine succeeded. Putin lost.
He didn’t capture Kyiv or any other important regional hub. Zelenskyy didn’t flee the country.
The government didn’t flinch.
Today, Ukraine needs to oust Putin from its territory, while his job is to hold on and avoid a glaring loss.
This kind of situation requires Ukraine to put in a mammoth effort just to make incremental advancements.
That’s the way it looks from the outside, anyway.
Today, the biggest problem for an external observer is Ukraine being tightlipped about its offensive.
All the footage we’re getting comes from the Russian side.
Of course, none of that footage looks promising. The Russian side spins it the way that’s beneficial to it.
This isn’t to say I’m excoriating Ukraine. No, Ukraine is fighting the war as opposed to putting on a show.
We just admit that the information we’re getting is limited and comes predominantly from those
who are interested in the offensive drying up.
But the picture will be clearing up in the coming weeks.
Drone footage may look cool, but we’ll figure out whether or not Ukraine has advanced
and taken some important settlements along the way.
That’s when both military and political predictions will be shaping up and will make more sense.
See you tomorrow!