MICK RYAN
With the conclusion of the 2023 NATO Summit this week, we turn our attention back to the Ukrainian offensives being conducted across southern and eastern Ukraine. While the NATO Summit did not provide all the outcomes sought by the Ukrainian President, it did result in an ongoing commitment from NATO to support Ukraine as well as the first meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council. As the official communique for the summit notes:
We reaffirm our unwavering solidarity with the government and people of Ukraine in the heroic defence of their nation, their land, and our shared values…We remain steadfast in our commitment to further step up political and practical support to Ukraine as it continues to defend its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders, and will continue our support for as long as it takes.
The Summit also discussed the wider context for this war, ensuring that Ukraine is able to win this war AND establish a durable peace that includes both security and prosperity. Unfortunately, NATO did not provide a clear timeline for Ukraine joining NATO. As the communique describes:
We welcome the strong support in the UN General Assembly for efforts to promote a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace in Ukraine. We welcome and support President Zelenskyy’s commitment in setting out the principles for such a peace through his Peace Formula. We are committed to achieving a just and lasting peace that upholds the principles of the UN Charter, in particular sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.
But a just and enduring peace is not possible until Ukraine defeats Russian forces occupying its territory, ejects Russian forces and establishes the deterrent regime that ensures the long-term security of its territory and its people.
A key part of this the ongoing Ukrainian offensives. It is now five weeks since the beginning of the Ukrainian offensives was confirmed by President Zelensky. As such, it is time for a campaign update on the 2023 Ukrainian offensives.
The Important ‘Battlegrounds’
In my 10 June post about the Ukrainian offensives, I described three important battlegrounds in the wider Ukrainian 2023 campaign. Nothing has occurred yet which changes these three ‘battlegrounds’, although I would add two more: the adaptation and attrition battles.
Logistic and Transport Hubs. The battles for logistic and transport hubs continues as part of Ukrainian deep battle. In the east and the south, the Ukrainians continue seek to seize or strike seize, key locations that will provide a hub for transport and the logistics required to sustain the Russians large scale military defensive operations. Proximate to many of these are also where reserve forces are being held, and these are also high value targets. Ukraine’s armed forces continues to strike these deep targets, while its tactical assaults seek to capture such hubs as part of the close fight.
Seizing the Initiative. Both sides continue to seek the tactical and operational initiative. In essence, this means ensuring friendly freedom of action. In the south, Ukraine has seized the tactical initiative and is conducting its breaches and attacks where and when it chooses. In the east, the situation is a little different. While Ukraine has the initiative now in the Battle of Bakhmut, in the north the Russians are conducting a minor offensive around Kreminna-Svatove that is forcing the Ukrainians to respond. At the operational level, the Ukrainians have the initiative, with large combat forces in reserve, which is allowing them to carefully assess the time, form and location of their next attacks.
The Adaptation Battle. The subject of how both sides have adapted during the war has been one of the central themes of my writing about the war in Ukraine since February 2022. There are multiple examples of adaptation – from tactical to strategic levels – by both sides in this war. In the Ukrainian offensives so far, there is an example of tactical adaptation which Ukraine starting to use dismounted, distributed minefield breaching instead of heavy, mounted breach operations. The Economist article on this by Oliver Carroll was excellent and you can read it here. Operationally, the Ukrainians appear to be adapting their main effort between the east and the south, possibly deceiving the Russians about follow-on phases for their offensives. At the same time, the Russians have also been adapting. An important adaptation has been their response to the introduction of HIMARS in mid 2022. Since then, the Russian have evolved their C2 and logistics to make it harder to target and more survivable, which will complicate the Ukrainian deep battle in their 2023 offensive.
The Attrition Battle. Every military activity features attrition. Even in peacetime, military organisations suffer attrition through training injuries, poor retention and bad equipment maintenance. This is magnified in war by combat losses, injuries and sickness as well as psychological injury. So, to call this war ‘one of attrition’ is to just state the obvious about all military endeavour. That said, the fight to out-produce their adversary, and turn materiel into battlefield capacity at a faster and greater rate over a longer period of time – remains an important element for both sides in this war Russia is pursuing against Ukraine. It is a war of industrial systems, with Russia, the US and Europe beginning to step up production of munitions and other equipment. Key materiel in this Ukrainian includes artillery ammunition, engineer mobility support equipment, drones and precision munitions. There is insufficient information at the moment on either side to judge how this attrition battle is progressing.
The Strategic Influence Fight. Finally, beyond the battlefield in Ukraine, both sides are seeking to gain ascendancy in the battle of strategic influence. Ukraine has demonstrated a mastery of strategic communications and influence in this war, while Russia has also shown the ability to influence the Chinese and global south. As the two Chinese Colonels wrote in Unrestricted Warfare in 1999, “war will be fought and won in a war beyond the battlefield; the struggle for victory will take place on a battlefield beyond the battlefield.”
While many will focus on the tactical aspects of this campaign, the strategic influence campaigns of Ukraine and Russia are being rolled out at pace. We are being saturated with messages from Russian sources (and Russian apologists) about the failure of the Ukrainian offensives and the need to conduct peace negotiations. From the Ukrainian side, there is tight operational security about battlefield progress, but a steady stream of ‘this is a complex and difficult operation – be patient’ narrative. That is true, but in due course, the Ukrainians, have to be successful in their 2023 offensives, and they have to make politicians and citizens beyond Ukraine believe they have been successful.
Keep Calm and Measure Progress
One of the most import aspects of designing, planning and executing a large-scale offensive campaigns is deciding what the objectives and the measures of success are. What objectives, or proportion of objectives, must be achieved, to judge the overall campaign a success?
Back before the Ukrainian offensives were launched, I explored the topic of success and failure in the Ukrainian offensives to come. This is an important subject because the Ukrainians and many nations in Europe and beyond will be watching closely for Ukrainian progress in defeating the Russian forces in Ukraine. As such, it is useful to have definitive measures against which to assess the success or otherwise of the 2023 Ukrainian offensives.
In my Futura Doctrina post on this topic from 30 April 2023, I outlined seven key measures of success for Ukraine’s 2023 campaign. It is useful, at this point of the Ukrainian offensives, to make initial assessments against each of these measures.
Measure 1: Ukraine achieves surprise. Generating tactical and operational surprise should lead to shock. This shock, at tactical and operational levels of the Russian military, should lead to slower decision making and responses to Ukrainian operations, while also breaking down the tactical and operational cohesion of the Russian plan for defending occupied Ukraine. While relatively easy to assess on the ground, limitations on sharing information with news organisations may make this harder to assess in the short term. It is, however, a key component for the success of the Ukrainian offensives.
Assessment: At best, this appears to have been partially achieved. That a Ukrainian offensive was coming was no surprise. That it would occur in the east and south was also not a surprise. The locations in the south could probably have been whittled down to less than a dozen by Russian analysts looking at the terrain and key potential objectives. There may have been some local, tactical, surprise achieved on the ground in the south. But the effects of this appear to have been short-lived. Ukraine does appear to have achieved some tactical and even operational surprise around Bakhmut, which it is continuing to leverage in its advances north and south of the destroyed city.
Measure 2: Ukraine is able to destroy or degrade Russian tactical and operational reserves, C2 and logistics before the offensive. The Ukrainians will want to limit the Russian’s ability to respond to their attacks, particularly if they are able to achieve a breakthrough in Russian positions. Therefore, finding and neutralising mobile Russian reserves before - and at the beginning of - the offensives will be important. And just as the identification and neutralisation of reserves is important, so too is the identification of Russian headquarters. Their destruction or degradation in effectiveness helps break down the cohesion of the Russian response to Ukrainian attacks. Concurrently, identification of Russian logistics – especially artillery ammunition stocks – will be vital in Ukraine generating a firepower advantage.
Assessment: This is an ongoing task for the Ukrainians as part of their operational design. The deep battle to attack, degrade and destroy headquarters, reserve troop formations, fires and logistics is aiming to break down the Russian operating system, which I described here. This is a very complex and evolving task. As I described earlier in this article, the Russians are adapting to improve their survivability as the Ukrainians undertake their deep strikes with weapons such as Storm Shadow. Recent strikes on Russian large ammunition supply locations and Russian senior leadership are part of this approach to the ‘deep battle’ by Ukraine. However, it is an ongoing and only partially achieved measure of success for the 2023 Ukrainian offensives.
Measure 3: Ukraine takes back its territory. This might seem obvious, but this needs to be an explicit measure of success. Underpinned by tactical and operational battlefield successes, recapturing large parts of its territory and liberating Ukrainian citizens from the predations of the Russians is a key measure of success for the offensives. Part of this will be Ukraine’s capacity to reduce and fight through the various obstacle zones created by the Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine. I don’t propose a certain percentage of territory that should be recaptured, but if most of Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are recaptured, this would be a very successful outcome. And it would be good foundation for subsequent operations against Crimea and Donetsk in the future.
Assessment: Ukraine is making steady progress here. Because none of us, except the Ukrainian military high command and government members, know the actual Ukrainian objectives for each phase of the war, we cannot say with any certainty whether this is behind or on schedule. However, Ukraine is recovering its territory, and has taken back more in the past six weeks that Russia seized in its 2023 Gerasimov-led offensives which began in January this year. The recent post by @War_Mapper (see below) outlines the amount of Ukrainian territory liberated so far. Overall, this measure of success would best be described as ‘partially achieved’.
Territorial Gains in Ukraine (Image: @War_Mapper)
Measure 4: Ukraine is well placed for actions to return Crimea at the end of the offensives. As I have written previously, the last campaign of the war may be the campaign to for Ukraine to take backs its Crimea territory. President Zelensky has been clear on this as one of the Ukrainian war termination conditions. Therefore, the coming offensives will be successful if the Ukrainian armed forces are well placed for follow on operations to take back Crimea – either through making it untenable for the Russians to stay, or an actual military operation to seize it.
Assessment: This measure of success is tightly coupled with Measures 2 and 3. Ukraine must liberate the majority of Kherson and Zaporizhia to have a chance of threatening or placing at risk, the Russian occupation of Crimea. We are only assuming that Crimea is an objective for the 2023 offensives. Given the Ukrainian operations so far, this measure of success can only be assessed as ‘not achieved, and dependent on success in measures 2 and 3’.
Measure 5: Ukraine captures or destroys Russian forces. Related to the recapture of its territory is the capture or destruction of Russian forces. The Russians have to be beaten and they must be seen to be beaten. A successful Ukrainian offensive will reduce the quantity of Russian forces that the Ukrainians have to fight, and it will also force the Russian commander Gerasimov to make hard decisions about pulling forces from other areas to replace those destroyed. This leads to other opportunities for the Ukrainians. And, it should go without saying, it will have an impact of Putin’s calculus. A successful Ukrainian offensive will also ensure sufficient Russian combat power is destroyed to prevent Russia conducting any follow-on offensives for the remainder of 2023. Clearly it will also aim to degrade Russia’s military capacity in the short term, but it could have a significant impact on politicians in nations friendly, and not so friendly, towards Ukraine.
Assessment: The Ukrainians are clearing achieving a good level of destruction of Russian combat power in the south and the east, but at the same time, have taken significant casualties to their own forces. The current correlation of forces between Ukraine and Russia remains uncertain. Just as the discussion on attrition above implies, this will be a race to generate a relative advantage in forces (mass, good tactics, etc) over the coming weeks and months. Therefore, the assessment of Measure 5 is ‘steady progress but ongoing.’
Measure 6: Ukraine preserves sufficient combat power to continue defending some areas and conduct subsequent offensives in others. While the Ukrainians will invest a significant part of their air and land combat power in this offensive, they will want to do so in a way where they don’t sustain massive casualties. Not only is this a tragedy for individuals killed and wounded, but it would also hinder further defensive and offensive efforts by Ukraine for the remainder of 2023. The degree to which Ukraine can inflict disproportionate casualties and destruction on the Russians in the coming offensives will be an important measure of success.
Assessment: The Russians have been conducting a series of attacks in north-eastern Ukraine as part of what is best described as a spoiling offensive on the Kreminna-Svatove line. This has been ongoing for several weeks, and the Russians have managed to advance beyond the lines they held in early June. Despite this, the Ukrainians have been able to defend against the Russians and minimise their gains. As such, the assessment of Measure 6 would be ‘partially achieved – but let’s wait and see what happens in the next couple of months.’
Russian Attacks in Luhansk (Image: @War_Mapper)
Measure 7: Ukraine’s supporters believe the offensives have been a success. Not only must Ukraine achieve considerable tactical and operational success in its operations, the Ukrainian people, foreign leaders and populations will need to think they have succeeded. One does not automatically follow the other. Therefore, ongoing strategic communication from the Ukrainian government will be essential to tell the story and achievements of the offensives. This can be challenging at times, given the imperatives of operational security. But news of success is essential to Ukrainian morale, as well as ongoing support for Ukraine and pushing back on Chinese and Russian ‘peace’ overtures that would essentially freeze the conflict to Russia’s benefit.
Assessment: This measure of success is one of the most important. The perception of campaign success will be almost as important as actual success over the coming months. There has been a wide range of views expressed in the West, in Russia, in China and beyond on how the Ukrainian offensives are progressive. And while the accuracy of these narratives can often be questioned, it again highlights just how important it is for Ukraine to achieve a success on the battlefield and in the minds of people – in Ukraine and beyond. As such, the assessment of Measure 7 is, at best, ‘too soon to tell’.
The Rough Road Ahead
We have passed the ‘end of the beginning’ in the 2023 Ukrainian offensives and should no longer be talking about initial attacks. And while some of the initial attacks by the Ukrainians probably did not succeed as well as some – inside the Ukrainian armed forces and in the commentary community – hoped, there has been steady success and adaptation to Ukrainian operations.
As with all wars, there remains an abundance of ambiguity and uncertainty. The degree to which both sides are having their fighting power – intellectual, moral and physical – degraded in the Ukrainian 2023 offensives remains unclear. The Ukrainians do have the operational initiative and have secured the tactical initiative in some parts of the front.
But there are months of tough fighting, artillery duels and influence operations ahead. The Ukrainians are seeking to advance against an enemy that has prepared well for a large-scale defensive campaign. The outcomes of the five battles described earlier in this article will largely determine the success or otherwise of Ukraine’s 2023 offensives.
In conclusion, we should remember that the Ukrainians have achieved significant victories at the gates of Kyiv, in Kharkiv and Kherson. They have done so with a paucity of resources but a surplus of innovation and courage. Any judgements about progress in their current offensives are early and remain tentative.
The Ukrainians have demonstrated the ability to hand the Russians defeat multiple times. My sense is that they are capable to generating a breakthrough of the Russian lines, but this will be costly to achieve and difficult to exploit. But, as Ted Lasso might say, when it comes to General Zaluzhny and his soldiers - Believe!
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