Ukraine Aims to Wear Down and Outsmart Russian Army Distracted By Infighting

Ukraine’s recapture of the small village of Neskuchne in the eastern Donetsk region earlier this month encapsulates the opening strategy of a major counteroffensive launched earlier this month. Small platoons bank on the element of surprise and, when successful, make incremental gains in territory and battlefield intelligence.“We had a few scenarios. In the end, I think we chose the best one. To come quietly, unexpectedly,” said the 41-year-old deputy commander of the battalion that retook Neskuchne, Serhii Zherebylo .Across the 930-mile front line, Ukrainian forces are attempting to wear down the enemy and reshape battle lines to create more favorable conditions for a decisive, eastward advance. One strategy could be to try to split Russia’s forces in two so that the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, is isolated from the rest of the territory it controls.Ukraine’s troops were given a morale boost last week by an armed rebellion in Russia that posed the biggest threat to President Putin’s power in more than two decades. Yet how the revolt by Wagner group mercenaries under the command of Yevgeny Prigozhin affects the trajectory of the war remains to be seen.The infighting is a major distraction for Russia’s military and political leaders, but experts say the impact on the battlefield so far appears minimal.For the past four days, Ukraine has stepped up operations around the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Wagner forces seized after months of intense fighting and then handed over to Russian soldiers, who continue to lose some ground on their southern flank.Along the front line, however, the strength of the Russian military remains unchanged since the revolt.It is not clear where Ukraine will attempt to decisively punch through, but any success will rely on newly formed, Western-equipped brigades that are not yet deployed. For now, Russia’s deeply fortified positions and relative air superiority are slowing Ukraine’s advance.Military experts say it is hard to say who has the advantage: Russia is dug-in with manpower and ammunition, while Ukraine is versatile, equipped with modern weaponry and clever on the battlefield.But with the autumn muddy season only four months away, some Ukrainian commanders say they are racing against time.“Although Ukrainian forces are making small and steady gains, they do not yet have the operational initiative, meaning they are not dictating the tempo and terms of action,” said an analyst with the British security intelligence firm Janes, Dylan Lee Lehrke.“This has led some observers to claim the counteroffensive is not meeting expectations,” Mr. Lehrke said. But it was never going to resemble Ukraine’s blitzkrieg liberation of the eastern Kharkiv region last year, he said, because “Russian forces have had too long to prepare fortifications.”Russian authorities say Ukraine has suffered substantial losses since the start of the counteroffensive — 259 tanks and 790 armored vehicles, according to Mr. Putin, whose claims could not be independently verified.Grinding battles are being waged in multiple combat zones. Still in its early stages, the counteroffensive could offer a glimpse of whether and to what extent the newer weapons systems have strengthened Kyiv’s ability to stand up to Russia.Analysts say they are cautiously optimistic.“Ukraine is in a much better position to be able to conduct a combined arms warfare than where they were in the beginning of Russia’s full-scale reinvasion of Ukraine,” a Russia analyst for the Center for Strategic International Studies, George Barros, said.One sophisticated American-made mobile rocket launcher sent to Ukraine has received a lot of attention — and for good reason: HIMARS gave Kyiv’s forces the ability to hit targets farther away and with much greater accuracy than Soviet-designed ones.The West has sent Ukraine the Patriot and the Avenger air defense systems to help provide a shield for the missiles Russian rains down on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure almost daily.At $4 million per round, Patriot missiles are meant to shield against larger ballistic missile attacks, leaving simpler weapons to deal with the cheap, slow-flying Iranian exploding drones often used by the Russians.Ukraine needs the “punching force” of tanks and other fighting vehicles if it’s going to break through Russian lines, Mr. Barros said.Tanks delivered so far — which include multiple models of German Leopards and the British Challengers — are more sophisticated than the Soviet-designed T-64 and T-72 tanks Ukraine relied on at the start of the invasion.Washington, meanwhile, has sent Bradley fighting vehicles, which offer better protection for troops they carry and have better firepower compared to Soviet-era armored vehicles that Ukraine has used.All of these vehicles can inflict high casualties and destroy other weapons systems, making them invaluable for a counteroffensive.Training is important too. In Britain. and Germany, in addition to other neighboring countries, Ukrainian forces have been trained on infantry tactics and on certain specialized equipment, such as the Challenger-2 tanks. Deception has been a key part of Ukraine’s most significant battlefield success to date, last fall’s “Kherson ruse.” By making it appear that the city of Kherson was the main target of that counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces were able to swiftly retake the northern Kharkiv region.A commander of the 30th Mechanized Brigade operating near Bakhmut, Colonel Volodymyr Silenko, pays no mind to criticism over the pace of attacks. It’s much more important to focus on how the adversary is thinking and responding, he said.“A war is not a competition of raw force and strength of weapons and people, it’s more about who’s more cunning,” he said.

Ukraine Aims to Wear Down and Outsmart Russian Army Distracted By Infighting

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