Russian attack helicopters showed up in force on the front lines and have been putting dents in Ukraine's armored assaults

RYAN PICKRELL

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Russia changed the way it uses its aviation assets as Ukraine conducted offensive operations.

Attack helicopters have been carrying out short-range operations close to the front lines.

Ukraine's armed forces are gaining ground and pressing ahead with counteroffensive operations, but the Russians are putting up a fight and deploying aviation assets to the front lines in ways they haven't been until recently to blunt Ukrainian efforts to retake captured territory.

Ukrainian forces are pushing beyond the protection of some of their fixed air defenses without the kind of mobile air defenses they really need, and Russian attack helicopters, like the Ka-52 Alligators able to do damage with its 30mm cannon or anti-tank missiles, are emerging as a threat to Ukraine's ground forces that must be quickly engaged with air-defense missiles before they can eliminate its heavy armor, such as tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.

Senior Ukrainian military officials have raised concerns about Russia's "aviation and artillery superiority" during the counteroffensive operations, which they have said are meeting "fierce fighting," and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told The BBC Wednesday the counteroffensive is currently moving "slower than desired."

In a recent intelligence update, Britain's defense ministry noted that "Russia has re-enforced its attack helicopter force in" southern Ukraine, giving the Russians an advantage in an area where tougher fights have been taking place.

A Ukrainian soldier told The Financial Times this week that Russian helicopter attacks on Ukraine's armored vehicles have proven to be a "very powerful technique" the Ukrainian forces have struggled to match with the capabilities available.

The emergence of this airborne threat may indicate a "gap" in how Ukraine has deployed its "air-defense umbrella," Riley Bailey, a Russia researcher at the Institute for the Study of War, told Insider.

Even as Russia battles a Ukrainian offensive, it continues to lob loitering munitions and missiles at Ukrainian cities, forcing Ukraine to split its already stretched air defenses between two priorities, supporting front-line operations and defending civilians and critical infrastructure.

"It's possible that Ukrainian forces arrayed their air-defense umbrella to focus on that campaign," the constant bombardments of Ukrainian cities, "and they weren't prepared to have that air-defense umbrella cover the front line as extensively," Bailey said.

In this situation, "Russian forces deployed aviation in a way they haven't recently, to front-line positions, and were able to use it more successfully than they have in the past," he said.

Earlier in June, the UK noted that Russian air assets have "been unusually active over southern Ukraine, where the airspace is more permissive for Russia than in other parts of the country."

Russian Air Force Mil Mi-8 and Kamov Ka-52 "Alligator" attack helicopterLeonid Faerberg/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

"We haven't seen Russian forces really use aviation super extensively on the front line," Bailey said, adding "they have been concerned about having aviation losses." But now, Ka-52 and Mi-8 helicopters and other rotary-wing aircraft are conducting short-range operations close to the front to the detriment of some Ukrainian efforts.

"Ukrainian forces are having to adapt to how Russian forces are employing these in southern Ukraine," he said, noting that they are seeing signs of that as the Ukrainians set the stage for their main attack. Ukraine, for example, claimed Wednesday to have taken out a Russian Mi-24 helicopter, and it's not the only loss.

The Ukrainians are presently facing a range of threats not just in the sky but also on the ground as they push along multiple sectors of the front.

Challenges to the counteroffensive, particularly in the south, include effective Russian defenses by experienced troops in which a first echelon degrades an enemy advance with artillery and mines and then a second line counterattacks. Another threat to operations is electronic-warfare systems.

Russian electronic warfare has disrupted Ukrainian navigation, targeting, and reconnaissance. And minefields remotely planted by artillery create a continuous problem for battlefield engineers and sappers clearing assault paths.

Bailey said that addressing the Russian land mine threat will be "kind of an ongoing process that they'll have to do as they try to break through Russian lines of defense," which also feature complex trench networks and obstacles such as concertina wire and dragon's teeth anti-tank barriers.

A Kamov Ka-52 Alligator helicopter during a military aviation competition in Russia's Krasnodar region on March 28, 2019.VITALY TIMKIV/AFP via Getty Images

Fighting a counteroffensive on a 'starvation diet'

Ukrainian forces are conducting broad counteroffensive operations in three sectors along the front in eastern Ukraine around war-torn Bakhmut, around the border of the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts, and in the Western Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

Operations have come at a high cost for Ukraine, both in personnel and equipment, including Western armor. Analysts have, however, cautioned against relying on these losses to assess the success or failure of the counteroffensive, arguing any such assessment would be premature.

Russia is also taking heavy losses. The British defense ministry recently reported that "both sides are suffering high casualties, with Russian losses likely the highest since the peak of the battle for Bakhmut in March."

Bakhmut is a destroyed city of limited strategic value that was captured at tremendous cost in human lives for the Russian military and irregular Wagner mercenaries, the leader of which said losses over the course of the battle were as high as 20,000 fighters. Now the Russians are fighting to keep it as Ukraine pushes back.

Part of what makes the ongoing counteroffensive fighting difficult for Ukraine is that its forces are waging a complex war without everything it needs, like mobile air defenses, breaching equipment, airpower, and additional armor.

Over the course of the war, Ukraine's military has received billions of dollars in security assistance, weaponry, and training from partner nations, with Kyiv's forces more recently receiving capable Western armor, but the current operations are a complicated undertaking that require a lot of combat capability.

"Whatever Ukraine can receive" for "conducting large-scale mechanized advances and penetrations into Russian-held territory would be useful," Karolina Hird, an analyst at ISW, told Insider. But the counteroffensive is going to happen even if Ukraine can't get its hands on that added capability.

"Ukraine needs continued assistance in all forms," she said, "but they will do it whether or not they have the assistance, which is what we saw in 2022 with the previous counteroffensive operations that Ukraine conducted while essentially on a starvation diet in terms of Western military aid."

It remains to be seen how exactly the counteroffensive will play out, if the Ukrainians will break through Russian lines or be stopped in their tracks by a tough defense.

Western officials told CNN this week that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is "not meeting expectations on any front," noting that Ukraine is proving "vulnerable" to Russian defensive threats. It's a "tough drive" they said as US officials told Fox News that advancing without air support is "suicidal."

It's still early days though. The fog of war is thick with chaos and confusion, but the main attack doesn't appear to have happened yet and this fight is likely still far from over.

ISW, which has tracked the war in Ukraine closely, wrote in a Wednesday update that "the overall slower-than-expected pace of Ukrainian counteroffensive operations isn't emblematic of Ukraine's wider offensive potential," adding that "Ukrainian forces are likely successfully setting conditions for a future main effort despite initial setbacks."

Ukraine hasn't committed the bulk of its dedicated counteroffensive forces to a major assault operation, and, as ISW's George Barros said recently, "big fireworks are still to come."