As in World War II, Russians Using Brute Force Around Kramatorsk

The battle for the Kramatorsk Salient in the eastern Ukraine region of Donbas has intensified, with the Russian army reverting to World War II-era tactics following three months of operational failure.After going on the offensive against the Wehrmacht in 1943, the Red Army became noted more for its tactics of brute force than strategic finesse. The Soviets would deploy prodigious amounts of artillery that would bludgeon the Germans into disarray before advancing with armor and infantry.Fast-forward to the war in Ukraine. After multiple defeats on multiple fronts, the Russians have reverted to this tried-and-true tactic in their effort to capture the strategic salient around the Donbas city of Kramatorsk. In the words of the London Guardian, “Russia’s military appears to have found a way to advance in the Donbas — pounding it with such intense, unsophisticated artillery that Ukraine’s exhausted defenders are having to yield.”These old/new tactics have brought some success to the Russian army in the Donbas region where battles have turned into World War I-style slugging matches replete with trenches and mass artillery barrages. The city of Severodonetsk, at the far Eastern edge of the Kramatorsk Salient, has seen bitter, house-to-house fights similar to those that proved so costly to the Russians in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mariupol.The mayor of Severdonetsk reported on June 1 that Ukrainian forces had been reduced to control over only 20 percent of the city. It is as yet still unclear whether these Russian advances were enabled by a strategic withdrawal by Ukrainian forces from the city.Meanwhile, on the flanks of the Kramatorsk Salient, Russian marines and airborne units attacking from the Popasna sector have advanced about 15 kilometers, threatening the primary Ukrainian supply route into Severodonetsk. Ukrainian units have managed to beat off Russian attempts to ford the Seversky Donets River.While for the moment Ukrainian defenses around the Kramatorsk Salient hold firm, further Russian advances could set in train a major strategic defeat for Ukraine.War of AttritionEarlier this week President Zelensky spoke to the international media about the casualty toll inflicted by these new Russian tactics in the Donbas. The Ukrainian army, Mr. Zelensky said, each day is losing around 80 soldiers killed in action, with another 500 wounded.This combat attrition rate means that Ukraine is increasingly dependent upon territorial defense volunteers with only rudimentary military training. There are reports of morale problems within the ranks of these territorial units, arising from the Ukrainian army’s practice of reserving its most modern weapons for its elite regular force units.In addition to feeling under-trained and ill-equipped, some Ukrainian territorial units are resentful over their deployment to battlefronts far removed from the home communities they enlisted to defend. A Churchillian StanceDespite the growing difficulties faced by the Ukrainian military, Mr. Zelensky stands firm. “We’re not ready to concede any of our territories,” he declared during an interview on May 31. “It’s our independence, our sovereignty; that’s the issue.”In the eyes of the NATO secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, the war in Ukraine is far from over. ‘We just have to be prepared for the long haul,” he said to journalists, “because what we see is that this war has now become a war of attrition.”Rocket ManThe latest tranche of American military aid to Ukraine may put a considerable dent in Russia’s current battlefield artillery superiority. This week the Biden administration announced plans to deliver four M-142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems. HIMARS are truck-mounted rocket artillery systems with a range of 40 miles that are exceedingly accurate, firing six rockets that hone in on their targets by GPS or laser guidance.The systems deliver both high explosive and submunition (cluster bomb) warheads. As Ukraine, like the United States, is not a party to the international treaty prohibiting the use of cluster munitions, there’s nothing to prevent Ukrainian artillerymen from using these highly effective weapons in combat.The American undersecretary of defense for policy, Gordon Kahl, told journalists that HIMARS systems had been prepositioned in Europe “in anticipation of the president’s decision to approve their transfer to Ukraine.” Mr. Kahl also disclosed that American military personnel would train Ukrainian artillerymen on the use of the HIMARS.

As in World War II, Russians Using Brute Force Around Kramatorsk

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