By Michael F. Duggan
After months of discussion and speculation, the Ukrainian offensive has begun. I don’t know how an army is supposed to launch an effective breaching attack along a fixed line when virtually everybody has called attention to it for so long. Such talk has not helped the Ukrainian cause. I will not repeat anything here that one cannot access on any number of public sites.
What appears to be happening are battalion to brigade-size attacks in front the Russian lines to the south and east of the city of Zaporizhia. There are also attacks in Donetsk around Bakhmut and further to the north. The media, parroting each other, are delighted to have discovered the military term “shaping” to describe these attacks. Although the Ukrainians are certainly trying to shape the emerging battlefields, they are also preforming reconnaissance-in-force attacks, or the use of battalions, regiments, and brigades to probe the Russian defenses in search for weak points and to determine enemy strength generally. These units would then be robust enough to exploit holes in the enemy lines and perhaps act as spearheads for brigades of the main force to the rear.
At this point, there appear to be several possible outcomes for the operations already underway.
First, if Western-trained and equipped probing units reveal that the Russian lines are too strong to be breached, the offensive could be called off, and a new strategy formulated. This could be the beginning of the frozen war of which some commentators have spoken, although the Russians might see an abandoned attack as an opportunity to launch their own offensive (as with the American Civil War, the Western Front in the First World War, and the Eastern Front in the Second, counterpunches could be effectively used in this war).
Second, the Ukrainians could proceed with the offensive and commit the main body of attacking units. If reports are correct that Russian forces have created a defense in depth—successive lines with pre-sighted kill zones between them—the Ukrainians could be facing a strategic disaster that could shift the course and nature of the war. This is because of the inherent advantage of the defensive mode of warfare and the fact that the Russians have had months to dig in. Without a significant advantage in heavy artillery and air superiority, it is doubtful if any combined arms campaign could succeed against a well-entrenched foe.
The front in eastern Ukraine is often compared to the stalemate, the “trenchlock,” of the Western Front in the First World War. Throughout most of WWI, both sides believed that a single exploited breakthrough would rupture the equlibrium and could win the war. But the final victory in that war was actually the result of a general collapse of the German lines due to exhaustion vis-a-vis the arrival of 2 million American troops. It seems possible that even a dynamic breakthrough will not end this war either, so long as both armies have the capacity to fight. The end may come as a general collapse of the line.
Third, the Ukrainian forces break through to Mariupol or Melitopol or some other point or points on the Sea of Azov. If so the Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine would cut in half, and the land bridge from Russia to Crimea would be severed. The Ukrainian forces would then have to immediately turn their focus to the south with a holding action to the north. If not they would find themselves in a narrow corridor facing attacks from two sides (like the allied Arnhem campaign of September 1944). This scenario seems unlikely, and were the Ukrainian forces to push through to the Azov, one can only wonder what would happen next.
Was it wise to put so much pressure on the Ukrainians by suggesting that the entire course of the war was riding on the outcome of the offensive (I have even read that the entire “rule-based international order” of the world is hanging in the balance)? Over the past week, a number of media outlets have been trying to manage expectations by walking back statements on the either/or importance of the offensive. There now appears to be a failure of confidence among the pundits, or else a partial return to caution after so much blather. Did talk help drive events? A video released a few days before the offensive showed a sequence of Ukrainian fighting men sushing the viewer not to talk about the offensive. Good advice. But it was too late for that. The element of surprise was blown months ago, and now efforts to tamp-down speculation about the offensive and expectations are just another part of the story.
Initial reports are that Ukrainian units on the offensive are encountering considerable resistance. A push to the north of Bakhmut near the village of Berkhivka appears to have gained ground, but elsewhere the Russian lines have not been breached. There are now stories and grainy images from the battlefield of destroyed Bradley Fighting Vehicles and a Leopard 2 tank, although at this point in the campaign, such images do not mean much.