Jack Keane
U.S. military personnel are voicing their frustrations over the way Ukraine is conducting its counteroffensive. This is alarming. American officers appear to have unrealistic expectations of what a single counteroffensive operation can achieve. The U.S. should be focused on helping Ukraine fight the war the way it wants to fight, not chirping from the sidelines.
American military leadership wants Ukraine to concentrate the forces the West has equipped and trained for the counteroffensive on a single sector in western Zaporizhia oblast, where the goal would be to break through Russian lines rapidly and seize the city of Melitopol. American officials are reportedly irritated that Ukraine has kept large numbers of forces in its east, particularly around the town of Bakhmut, and that Ukraine has been pursuing multiple offensive thrusts within Zaporizhia oblast itself rather than focusing on only one.
No one in the American military today has designed large-scale mechanized operations against a serious and capable enemy that is employing a comprehensive defence. The last time was the Metz campaign in France in 1944, led by Gen. George S. Patton. The mass attack toward Melitopol that some are demanding is the most obvious thing Ukraine could do and would concentrate Ukraine’s offensive combat power on a drive down the shortest road to the sea. This approach seems appealing and militarily sound.
The trouble is that the Russians also had the same thought. They deployed the strongest of their remaining defending forces on this axis. They dug deep, extensive trench lines and covered the earth in mines. Their best pilots flying their most advanced attack helicopters are situated in this area ready for the Ukrainian attack. They’ve been fortifying Melitopol and the next town to the north, Tokmak, for a year. This shortest road to the sea is also the best-prepared part of the Russian defences in the theatre.
The Ukrainians have actually made a priority of this route and have recently made important gains. But they have also been attacking further east in Zaporizhia oblast and have made gains there as well. The effort that seems to aggravate American officials most of all, however, has been the Ukrainian push to recapture the city of Bakhmut, which the Wagner Group seized at tremendous cost this spring. U.S. military experts appear to want the Ukrainians to hold on all other fronts and focus on a single thrust toward Melitopol.
Such advice is military malpractice. Well-designed mechanized campaigns almost always advance on multiple axes rather than one. That is what American-led coalitions did against Iraq in 1991 and 2003. It’s how the Americans, Germans and Soviets fought in World War II. The reason is simple: Advancing along a single axis allows the defender to concentrate fully on stopping that one advance. In this case, the Russians would almost certainly have moved forces from other parts of the theatre as rapidly as they could to stop the Ukrainian drive on Melitopol.
The Russians have redeployed forces to Zaporizhia. They haven’t sent more reinforcements, in part because Ukrainian attacks have pinned them all along the line. The much-condemned Ukrainian counteroffensive around Bakhmut has drawn elements of multiple Russian airborne divisions and separate brigades to hold the line there. Those units had been fighting in Luhansk and Kharkiv oblasts and would have been available to reinforce the Melitopol axis.
Now they are being ground down around Bakhmut because the Ukrainians keep pushing on a city that the Russians aren’t prepared to lose. The Ukrainian attack further east in Zaporizhia has also pinned Russian forces on that sector that could otherwise have shifted to the west. Similar smaller-scale Ukrainian attacks elsewhere along the line have had the same effect. Ukrainian pressure along the line has deprived the Russians of almost any meaningful reserve with which to contest a major Ukrainian breakthrough.
The seizure of Melitopol on its own can’t win the war for Ukraine. The demands that Ukraine focus everything on that drive, combined with warnings that the West won’t restock Ukraine for future operations, suggest that at least some of those criticizing the Ukrainian offensive aren’t serious about helping Ukraine liberate all its territory. If that is the case, and if the Pentagon’s position is that it doesn’t expect Ukraine to liberate its people, it would be better to say so clearly than to make oblique and inaccurate attacks on the way Ukraine is fighting.
It is a vital national-security interest for the U.S. that Ukraine liberate its land and its people from Russian aggression. America should stop the criticism about what Ukraine is doing and focus instead on helping Ukraine achieve our common aims as rapidly as possible. That would be a sound strategy.
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