Explained | Is Ukraine’s counteroffensive working?

Ukraine launched counteroffensive in June to reclaim land lost to Russia. US & allies supplied advanced weapons & NATO-trained soldiers. Plan was to conduct blitzkrieg, but Russia had built 3 lines of defence. Ukraine changed tactics to small ops & long-range fire, but breaching defences remains distant. US intel had expressed scepticism, but US still sending more military aid. Russia adapting to new battlefield realities & making more tanks & shells, but sanctions affecting economy. War has eroded Russian power & NATO expanded, but peace remains distant.

The story so far: Ukraine, which launched a counteroffensive against the invading Russian troops with advanced western weapons and NATO-trained soldiers in June, has made incremental territorial gains, but is yet to clinch a major breakthrough. Three months later, as the offensive grinds on, the Ukrainians have said that they would continue fighting to reclaim the land lost to the Russians and have asked for more military aid from the West. The U.S. and its allies seem willing to provide more assistance, but there is scepticism on whether Ukraine would meet its military objectives.

Ukraine had prepared for months before it launched the counteroffensive in June. In the preceding months, its Western allies had supplied highly advanced weapons, including Patriot missile defence systems, HIMAR and MLRS rockets, Stryker and Bradley armoured vehicles, Challenger and Leopard 2 main battle tanks and Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles, besides artillery shells and ammunition. The plan, as leaked U.S. classified documents show, was to conduct a classic blitzkrieg — a lightning operation with an armoured strike force piercing through Russia’s lines of defence, capturing territories and delivering a blow to the Russian positions in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Kyiv opened three axes in its counteroffensive — Orikhiv in the south (in Zaporizhzhia); Velyka Novosilka in the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk border area in the middle of the frontline and Bakhmut in Donetsk (east). The main objective was to reach Melitopol and the Sea of Azov to cut off Russia’s “land bridge” from the mainland to Crimea — the Black Sea peninsula it annexed in 2014 through a controversial referendum — and gain territories in the east. If Russia loses Melitopol, it would put pressure on its hold on Crimea, disrupt its supply lines and allow the Ukrainians to target Berdyansk and Mariupol further north.

Ukraine’s plan to take a quick victory against Russian forces was doomed to fail from the very beginning, wrote John Mearsheimer, American international relations scholar. He said that there were 11 blitzkrieg operations since modern tanks arrived on the battlefield and in most cases, the attacker with substantially higher capabilities against the defender tasted victory, what he calls an “unfair fight”. In the case of Ukraine, Russia had built three lines of defences along the frontline with trenches, landmines, heavy weapons and other fortifications. The prolonged battle for Bakhmut (which culminated in the Russians taking the city in May) pinned down thousands of Ukrainian troops in the eastern city, while providing more time to the Russians to build their defences. Ukraine, which is reliant on old Soviet-style fighter jets, also lacked advanced air cover, which is imperative for any blitzkrieg operation.

So, when Ukraine finally launched the counteroffensive, its troops jumped straight into the traps laid by Russia. According to a report in The New York Times, Ukraine lost some 20% of the weaponry it got from the West in the first two weeks of the counteroffensive. As Ukraine realised that the blitzkrieg was not working, it changed its tactics from attempting for a major thrust into the Russian defences to small operations targeting the rear of Russia’s military machine, while employing long-range fire to attack the enemy’s supply lines. This allowed Ukraine to take some small villages along the frontline, but breaching the Russian defences remains a distant goal.

In the initial phase of the war, Russia made a lot of mistakes. Its plan was to capture territories quickly and hold them with a limited number of forces (some 1,90,000 troops were mobilised for the invasion). But when the Ukrainians resisted, denying a quick victory to Russia, it both exposed Moscow’s weakness and opened new avenues for the West to step in. Last year, Russia was forced out of Kharkiv by a swift Ukrainian advance; and later on, Moscow decided to pull back its troops from the western bank of Dnipro in Kherson. Since then, Russia has changed its focus from offensive operations to defence, its traditional forte. Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, ordered a partial mobilisation, drafting some 3,00,000 men, who the Russians hoped would solve the manpower shortage that plagued their initial thrust into Ukraine.

Since the Kherson pullout, Russia’s territorial advances were limited to Donetsk — it took Soledar in January and Bakhmut in May, in operations mostly involving the Wagner private military company. Besides trenches filled with explosives and miles-deep trip-wired or booby-trapped mines, Russian troops also used the ISDM Zemledeliye mine-laying system that spread mines from rockets at a rapid pace. On the frontline, Russia used this tactic, according to Ukrainian officers, to rapidly re-mine cleared areas, often trapping advancing Ukrainian troops within circles of minefields.