 "Ukraine war: West in dilemma as Russia prepares for summer offensive")
Russia has now started the early phases of its anticipated summer offensive with renewed attacks in the region of Kharkiv. Over the past few weeks, Russian troops have crossed the Ukrainian border, occupying a number of villages. Though Ukraine has spent several months fortifying Kharkiv, the Russians seem to have compounded their advantages over the Ukrainian Army, whom they now intend to degrade, though it seems unlikely that they will try and enter Kharkiv.
This summer, things are heating up, and expectedly, President Volodymyr Zelensky is looking towards the West for assistance and more so for permission to cross certain red lines—permitting Ukraine to use Western arms against military sites in Russia that target Ukraine.
But at the same time, while the West is ready to supply more weapons and sanction aid, there are now voices across the globe that are becoming increasingly audible, pointing out a grim reality: Ukraine is unlikely to be in a position to reclaim lost territory, and hence negotiation with Russia seems to be the only solution.
Russian Pressure
As per RUSI, the Russian forces attacking Ukraine have now increased to 510,000 troops. This means that Russia has established significant numerical superiority over the Ukrainian Armed Forces. However, the Russians have been conducting platoon and company attacks at a number of places rather than brigade or divisional operations at a few places, though they rarely decisively overmatch Ukrainian defenders at any one location. With a huge numerical superiority, they have now stretched the Ukrainian forces across the front line and are turning a limitation into an advantage.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe front in Ukraine spans almost 1,200 km. Along Ukraine’s northern border, near Chernihiv, Russian troops continually probe Ukrainian positions. A large concentration of troops near Belgorod, meanwhile, is threatening to push towards Sumy or Kharkiv and has made its presence felt with fire assaults.
The main focus of Russian efforts has been in Donbas, but in the south, Russian troops have also been involved in skirmishes along the Zaporizhzhia front and have even conducted amphibious raids across the Dnipro River. The breadth of their attacks has fixed Ukrainian troops on the line of contact and forced Ukraine to spread out its artillery, expending munitions to break up successive Russian attacks.
In fact, Ukraine’s defensive lines are thin to absent. At Vovchansk, less than 40 miles north-west of Kharkiv, “the first line of fortifications and mines just didn’t exist," as per Denys Yaroslavsky, a Ukrainian commander.
Having stretched the Ukrainians, the contours of the Russian summer offensive are now easier to discern. Russian forces are likely to pursue an offensive in Ukraine with the aim of stretching the Ukrainian forces across a wide frontline and maintaining pressure to attempt to weaken the Ukrainian defensive line.
The focus seems to be on the Chasiv Yar area, where the prospects for an operationally significant advance exist, and the west front of Avdiivka, where Russian forces have been able to achieve tactically significant gains in recent weeks. There will also be a push against Kharkiv, forcing Ukraine to commit troops to defend its second-largest city. Given the size of the Russian forces in the area, these will draw in critical reserves. Russia will also apply pressure on the other end of the line, threatening Zaporizhzhia. To blunt these attacks, Ukraine will require the commitment of reserves, which in turn will deplete its offensive capability.
Once Ukraine commits its reserves in these directions, the main effort will be the expansion of the Russian push in Donbas. This axis is already making slow but steady progress. The objective is clear: to cut Ukrainian supply lines connecting Kostiantynivka and Kramatorsk. The Russians hope that once Ukraine loses these roads that give the Ukrainians the advantage of interior lines of communication, they will be able to push north and south, dividing Ukrainian artillery on one axis or the other. Russia’s aim will be to keep up the pressure and advance, albeit slowly along the front.
As per Oleksandr Lytvynenko, the Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council, “The Russian strategy right now is quite understandable. They’re trying to take as much territory as they can to annihilate our forces and find our weak points.”
Precision Strikes
Simultaneously, the persistence of Russia’s long-range strike campaign means that not only is the front being stretched laterally, but it is also being extended in its depth. Compounding the challenge for the Ukrainian military is the deterioration of its air defences. The depletion of Ukrainian tactical surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems has already allowed the Russian Aerospace Forces to deliver glide bombs against Ukrainian positions. Russia is using glide bombs, along with direct-attack munitions, in volume to overwhelm Ukrainian air defence.
As the Russians push closer in against a diminished air threat, the accuracy and therefore the lethality of these strikes will increase. Able to strike behind Ukrainian lines, the Russians are using them to bomb and force evictions from Ukrainian towns. More than 200 of them were reportedly used in just a week to pound Ukraine’s northern town of Vovchansk during Russia’s current advance near Kharkiv.
The diminishing Ukrainian SAM coverage has had another consequence. Prior to the full-scale invasion, Russian forces had envisaged reconnaissance and strikes allowing their troops to accurately detect and destroy targets behind the front lines. This had earlier been curtailed by the Ukrainian air defences. Now, however, Ukraine is having to save its SAMs to deter Russian aircraft. The result is that Russian UAVs are now seen far and wide over the front lines and are routinely flying over both Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia.
As SAM coverage shrinks, the Ukrainian military faces a trade-off. It can continue to group air defences around critical national infrastructure, such as power stations, or it can move them forward to protect the front. The persistence of Russia’s long-range strike campaign means that not only is the front being stretched laterally, but it is also being extended in its depth.
Ukraine Needs ‘Allies’
The quicker that both SAMs and artillery ammunition reach Ukraine, the more difficult it will be for Russians to progress operations. At present, there is a direct correlation between the speed of supply from Ukraine’s international partners of artillery ammunition and air defence interceptors and the speed of deterioration at the front. If the Ukrainian front-line troops lack sufficient means to blunt Russian attacks, Russia will be able to force Ukraine to commit reserves and then exploit the axes where troops and equipment have been thinned out. In other words, so long as Ukraine lacks resources, Russia will begin to compound its advantages.
If the West are able to quickly replenish Ukrainian munitions stockpiles, help establish a robust training pipeline, and provide the necessary war waging equipment, then Russia’s summer offensive can be slowed down and stopped.
In the medium term, however, turning the present dynamic around is up to Ukraine and cannot be resolved by its allies. Unless the Ukrainian Armed Forces expand in size they will continue to be overstretched. They need to not only replenish losses in their existing units, but also raise enough units to manage their rotations giving rest to troops who have been continually involved in combat. This will allow them to recreate reserves. Mobilising personnel for these newly raised units and ensuring that they are adequately trained is the responsibility of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. It is therefore not surprising that a new mobilisation policy has recently been announced lowering the age for conscription from 27 to 25 years.
There is, nonetheless, an area where the assistance from Ukraine’s supporters is critical. If Ukrainian forces lack enough key enabler, artillery, air defences, electronic warfare complexes, and engineering vehicles, then the units and formations that hold the limited assets available will be fixed on the front. They cannot be rotated. Ensuring, therefore, that the Ukrainian Armed Forces can equip and train units to fight as a Brigade means that additionally mobilised personnel can be put to best use. This is an area where commitment from Ukraine’s partners will be crucial.
The Advisor to the Ukrainian President’s Office Mykhaylo Podolyak has stated that US-provided military aid has started arriving on the frontline but that it will take “weeks” for the gradual increase in US-provided military aid to reach “critical volumes. He said the Russian forces currently have the “absolute advantage” in shells and missiles and that Russian forces will continue to try to advance along the frontline presumably to take advantage of the time before US military assistance arrives in sufficient quantities at the front.
Western Dilemma
The question is whether Ukraine should be allowed to use its allies’ weapons to “neutralise” Russian military bases used to fire missiles into Ukraine. France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, while discussing this issue said; “We should not allow them to touch other targets in Russia, and obviously civilian capacities.”
“How can we explain to Ukraine that they need to protect their cities . . . but that they don’t have the right to attack where the missiles are coming from? It’s as if we were telling them we’re giving you arms but you cannot use them to defend yourself,” President Macron said during a press conference in Meseberg, Germany.
Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, appeared to back Ukraine on the matter as well – saying he agreed with the French President as long as the Ukrainians respected the conditions of the weapons’ suppliers, however Germany has refused to supply Taurus cruise missiles which are capable of powerful strikes on Russian positions inside Ukraine and deep into Russia.
NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, has also been quoted in the Economist stating that alliance members should let Ukraine strike deep into Russia with Western weapons. On 27 May the NATO Parliamentary Assembly adopted a declaration calling for NATO states to support Ukraine’s “international right” to defend itself by lifting “some restrictions” on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons to strike Russian territory. But the White House has ruled out such a possibility for US-supplied weapons. “There’s no change to our policy at this point. We don’t encourage or enable the use of US-supplied weapons to strike inside Russia,” said John Kirby, National Security Council spokesperson.
At the same time President Vladimir Putin warned of “serious consequences” if Russia is struck with Western weapons. The Kremlin also touched upon persisting differences in the West as per a statement by their spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to the Russian daily Izvestia – “we see that there is no consensus on this issue”.
Conclusion
The outlook in Ukraine is bleak. Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself depends largely upon decisions taken by its Western allies. The $61 billion package of military assistance approved by the US Congress last month after months of delays has yet to stabilize Ukraine’s battlefield vulnerability, though it is hoped that it will correct the disparities, will provide Ukrainians a psychological boost and will give them the confidence that they have not been abandoned by their most important ally.
However, if Kyiv’s allies do not replenish Ukrainian munitions stockpiles, help to establish a robust training pipeline, and provide the requisite wherewithal in a faster time frame, then Russia’s summer offensive will be difficult to blunt. The question of engaging targets on Russian soil with Western supplied weapons is of course compounding the complexities of conflict. Hopes in the earlier years of fighting that Russia could be driven back have turned into a grim struggle to stop its forces advancing deeper into the country.
Unfortunately, in the war’s third year, no end is in sight as both Russia and Ukraine keep fighting with the same goals.
The author is a retired Major General of the Indian Army. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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