Did Putin miss his best chance to win the war this year? Will Ukraine wrest the initiative and conduct a big counteroffensive in 2025? But what about taking significant action this year on a smaller scale?
Russia may have lost its opening for a big offensive this year that might have broken Ukraine's army. And Ukraine seems unlikely to do more than blunt and erode Russia's initiative this year.
[Russian forces] may soon intensify attacks in this area if the Russian command identifies the coming weeks as an advantageous time to push in these areas before Ukrainian forces re-allocate reserves back to Donetsk Oblast.
While eyes shift to 2025 for better times for Ukraine's offensive options, I would like to see Ukraine this year at least execute a significant counter-attack against Russia's attacks to improve their defensive situation and gain a ground propaganda victory. The front northwest of Avdiivka seems as good a spot as any.
The Russians keep pushing there:
“The area has seen heavy fighting throughout 2024 and Russia has been gradually advancing since capturing Avdiivka in February 2024,” the MoD wrote in its daily social media update.
“Russian forces have likely taken control of the village of Novooleksandrivka, located approximately 20km north of Avdiivka, Donetsk oblast.
“By taking control of Novooleksandrivka, Russia moves closer to threatening the T0504 road, one of the main supply routes for Ukrainian forces further east.”
But Russia's salient offers an opportunity to pinch it off and gain a significant battlefield victory. Please tell me Ukraine has some brigades in reserve that it could put into a big but limited counter-attack to cut off the Russian spearheads and inflict losses on the Russians. The result would be to push the Russians back from that supply route and shorten Ukraine's lines.
For the long run, Ukraine seems to be shaping the battlefield to prepare for seizing the initiative by striking Russia's air defense system in Crimea:
The strikes were part of a meticulously planned and systematic campaign designed to break apart Russia’s air defence network and render Crimea untenable as a staging ground for Moscow’s forces.
Even if the Russian systems are as good as Russia claims, the crews may not be able to exploit their capabilities. Either way, Ukraine is destroying Russian air defense systems. As I observed a few decades ago:
The critical advantages provided by highly trained soldiers with good morale are not easily quantifiable in peacetime. The lack of quality becomes quantifiable, indirectly, when one counts the burned-out armored vehicles of an army whose troops did not know how to use their equipment and who lacked the will to fight on in adversity.Or burned out air defense systems, in this case.
And I'd really like to avoid telegraphing the site of the counteroffensive if at all possible, unlike the 2023 summer Big Push that wasn't.
Although I know where I'd like to see it. It would take a lot of preparations to carry this out. Is that happening? And if not there, where would Ukraine strike back?
On that issue, what about all that land emerging and drying out in the former Kakhovka Reservoir after Russia destroyed the dam that formed it? A new forest has emerged rapidly:
The forest’s growth rate is phenomenal. It’s hard to imagine that just a year ago, this place was bare ground, and now, in May, there are trees almost five meters tall.
Is the ground solid enough for vehicles? Could roads be pushed through there to open up a new avenue for Ukraine to launch a counter-offensive?
If Ukraine is to inflict a defeat on Russia to liberate territory and push Russia to agree to withdraw, Ukraine has to attack somewhere. Going into the teeth of prepared Russian defenses didn't work in 2023. If the Russian army was fragile, Ukraine didn't have the power to push it over the edge with Russian minefields, fortifications, massive fire support, and enough reserves to counter-attack Ukrainian advances.
To me, somewhere in the most western portion of the relatively quiet western part of the front seems most promising. If Ukraine can build up the capabilities to go big there. Until then, Ukraine could go small at the Avdiivka salient to see how well their forces can fight in a bigger counter-attack.
UPDATE (Tuesday): Western aid is beginning to flow but it isn't fully reaching the front yet:
Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov stated that Western military assistance is arriving in Ukraine, but that it will likely not arrive at a scale that will significantly impact the frontline situation until at least mid to late July 2024.
I thought that Ukraine could open up its ammo stocks in anticipation of Western ammunition arriving. Apparently not.
UPDATE (Wednesday): Gas! Gas! Gas!
Russia has used lethal poison gas against Ukraine for the entire 2022 war, sometimes including the Novichok nerve gas.
It's been sporadic
since Mariupol but constant since April at over 100 attacks per month, using small drones to deliver it. I'd heard
of tear gas use. But not poison gas. But the post says our State
Department admitted Russia is using poison gas. How have I possibly missed that in my krill flow of news? That should be a big deal.
Effing Russian bastards. Putin needs to hang from the neck until dead.
UPDATE (Thursday): I don't disagree with this:
[They] really cannot do major operations along the Dnipro River from Kherson up to the Kakhovka Reservoir. There was, in the best of times only three bridges across this river, and I gather that number is three less now. This creates supply issues and with all the drones, missiles and air support, hard to see how this is corrected. No one has yet to do any major military operations across the Kakhovka Reservoir.
But I just don't like asserting that the Ardennes is impassable Dnipro is uncrossable, assuming that no amount of preparations can overcome the obstacle.
But of course, a lot needs to be done to overcome the real handicaps for conducting a major operation on that part of the front.
Apart from the river problem, Russia has more problems supplying forces there and Ukraine has a better chance of at least nullifying air power with its aerial Crimea campaign to wreck Russian military assets there.
Where else could Ukraine potentially drive the Russians back, absent a general collapse of Russian troop morale on some section of the front?
UPDATE (Saturday): So far Ukraine is concentrating more on strategic bombing:
Ukrainian forces reportedly struck an oil depot in Russia on June 28 and reportedly struck a microelectronics plant and a military unit on the night of June 27 to 28.
Which is helpful. Eventually. And then perhaps not so much when Russia moves vital targets east of the Urals.
Eventually Ukraine has to win on the battlefield to keep its Western supporters interested in supplying Ukraine, as I recognized a year into the war.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.