Russia took an operational pause to regroup after taking Luhansk province at the price of heavy casualties.* Resumed their offensive after briefly slowing down. And quickly discovered the pause had achieved nothing.
What was the Russian leadership thinking when it announced their operational pause was over?
Russia's military is likely to start an operational pause of some kind in Ukraine in the coming weeks, giving Kyiv a key opportunity to strike back, Britain's spy chief said on Thursday.
Richard Moore, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) known as MI6, also estimated that about 15,000 Russian troops had been killed so far in its war in Ukraine, adding that was "probably a conservative estimate."
"I think they're about to run out of steam," Moore said, addressing the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, adding that the Russian military would increasingly find it difficult to supply manpower and materiel over the next few weeks.
"They will have to pause in some way, and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to strike back."
Perhaps the Russians believed that "reset" button Hillary Clinton gave Lavrov really worked.
Russian firepower has enabled the grinding offensive that got it Luhansk. But that display of killing power conceals real problems in the Russian ground forces:
Russian forces have reverted to World War II tactics of indiscriminate mass attacks with tube and rocket artillery to grind down Ukrainian defenses. But huge losses have demoralized Russian infantry and weakened armored units. This and the risk of opposition to a military draft may have deterred Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his May 9 Victory Day speech, from calling for large-scale war mobilization. Instead, Russia's military is struggling to regenerate fighting units that have suffered heavy casualties. Some units are receiving ancient T-62 tanks.
Despite incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, a Russian military collapse is possible. Russian forces could suffer catastrophic defeat akin to that of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's army in the 1967 Six-Day War, when more than 80 percent of its military materiel was lost.
Is such a defeat possible? Military history is replete with breakdowns. Last summer, the Afghan armed forces collapsed amid weak governance and extreme corruption. So have other large or well-equipped armies—the demoralized Russian army in 1917, the outmaneuvered French army in 1940 and British army in Singapore in 1942, and the weakened South Vietnamese army in 1975 and Iraqi army in Mosul in 2014.
Central to these fiascos was a lack of cohesion in military institutions, poor governance and corruption, and popular unwillingness to defend the state. Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz's emphasis on sound relationships between the army (PDF), government, and society appears valid.
Or the Italian army inside Egypt in 1940, if you want another example of collapse. If Ukraine can launch a counteroffensive and push the Russians over, of course. That remains unclear despite Ukraine's telegraphing an offensive on the Kherson front. Remember that the French army cracked in 1917 but the Germans didn't know it. The French army had time to recover.
While it seems like a tilt back to Ukraine, Russia still has a lot of Ukrainian territory. Unless Ukraine rolls that conquest back at least in part the tilt won't matter. And will go away.
Meanwhile on the Kherson front, "Ukrainian forces have struck and seriously damaged a bridge that is key for supplying Russian troops in southern Ukraine, a regional official said Wednesday." And there are tentative indications that Ukraine is moving:
Ukrainian forces are likely preparing to launch or have launched a counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast as of July 23, but open-source visibility on the progress and tempo of the counteroffensive will likely be limited and lag behind events.
Yesterday, the Ukrainians leaned forward on the idea that they are on the offense there. I have no idea of the scale, however. Is this a counter-offensive right now? Or more and bigger local counter-attacks searching for weak points to exploit?
So no more than a bit of tilt back, I'll say.
*I must admit I'm surprised that Russia's people have accepted the heavy troop casualties the war has created. Although perhaps the Russian people just don't know. Or won't admit they know. Could a broken Russian army reveal what Putin has deemed impermissible knowledge? Putin's unwillingness to draft replacements and instead rely on stealth mobilization indicates that casualties are a weakness, however.
UPDATE (Thursday): Is the Ukrainian counteroffensive "gathering momentum? And how will Russia's reaction affect that if true?
And how do 75,000 total Russian casualties--killed and wounded (and missing/captured?)--affect Russia's capacity to hold their gains?ISW updates continue here.
