In midsummer, the Ukrainian defense minister announces a counter-offensive to recapture the Russian-held areas in the south. Almost a month and a half later, it is still unclear what became of it. The Crimean explosions give a hint of what it might look like.
Even the announcement promised big things. In mid-July, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Resnikov said that Ukraine wanted to launch a major counter-offensive to recapture the areas in the south occupied by Russia. At the same time, in an interview with the British “Sunday Times”, he put the Ukrainian armed forces at one million men and women. Since then, people have been puzzled: When is the big offensive coming? And where is it already showing up?
The first signs came a few weeks later. A Ukrainian representative spoke of a major turning point on the battlefield in the battle for Kherson Oblast. At that time, the military expert Wolfgang Richter remained cautious in an interview with ntv.de. At that time, the fighting was mainly limited to tactical advances, which is why there is still no sign of a major turnaround, said the retired colonel from the Science and Politics Foundation. Because for a large-scale offensive it is important to use fire blasts for forward movement.
Almost four weeks later, little has changed: It’s still not about enormous space gains. There is no fighting for the provincial capital of Cherson, instead the Ukrainian armed forces are celebrating minor successes in the outskirts of the city. In the meantime, they have managed to noticeably impede the supply of Russian troops west of the Dnipro. The bridges that crossed the river before the war are practically non-existent. The Russian armed forces are now using a temporary pontoon bridge.
The military expert Markus Reisner also recently explained in an interview with ntv.de that he has not been able to observe any major offensive so far. According to the officer in the Austrian army, the terrain in the Cherson region poses problems for the Ukrainians: there were no wooded areas to hide tanks. Because the Russians kept discovering the positions, there were constant Ukrainian losses. Nevertheless, Reisner considers the cutting off of Russian supplies to be “an important preparatory measure for a possible offensive.”
Ukraine itself says that it had no intention of overrunning the occupied areas in the south with large numbers of soldiers. “Russia has taught everyone that a counter-offensive, like a mighty fist, needs a multitude of personnel and only goes in one direction,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhilo Podolyak told the British “Guardian”. A Ukrainian counter-offensive looks different. “We’re not going back to tactics from the 1960s and ’70s.” The strategy is to “destroy logistics, supply lines, weapons depots and other military infrastructure. This creates chaos within their [Russian] armed forces.”
According to Podolyak, this is intended to weaken the combat effectiveness of Russian troops, cut them off from their supplies and force them to fight as they did at the beginning of the war. At that time, the attackers did not manage to take the capital Kyiv within a few days. Also, the spokeswoman for the southern Ukrainian forces, Nataliya Gumenyuk, said that the offensive had already started. “If everyone expected to see troops rising and marching through the steppe of the Kherson region, I’m sorry,” she told the New Voice of Ukraine. Modern warfare is to exhaust the opposing troops.
What both allude to is, among other things, explosions far behind the front line – for example in Crimea. For Russia, the events on the peninsula are highly problematic from several perspectives. Crimea was militarily upgraded by Moscow after its illegal annexation in 2014, but the air defense system has obviously failed. The images also had a psychological effect: the clouds of smoke could be seen on the beach, which is why many Russian tourists turned their backs on Crimea. The effect is also strategic: According to experts, the explosions at the Crimean military base Saki could have decisively weakened the Russian air force in southern Ukraine. While Kyiv has not claimed responsibility, Podolyak said more such explosions are expected in the coming months.
Apparently, this Ukrainian strategy did not just emerge in the past few days and weeks. Australian ex-general Mick Ryan described it as a “strategy of corrosion”: the Ukrainians attacked the Russians where they were weak. At the strong points of the Kremlin troops, the defenders tried to delay the advance in order to frustrate the attackers – for example in Donbass. He, too, draws parallels with the attempted advance on Kyiv. Back then, Ukraine stalled the attackers by disrupting logistics behind the front line. The US HIMARS multiple rocket launcher is now also helping them.
But both the announcement by Podolyak and the strategy outlined by Ryan could indicate that Kyiv is currently unable to create a manpower majority in the south. And so the mere announcement of a major offensive could have a second effect. A few weeks ago, Ukrainian front-line soldier Volodymyr Demchenko wrote that he did not expect another major counter-offensive in the south. “It was probably a ploy to distract Russia from the Donbass and disperse the troops.”
Apparently that worked. Moscow has ordered its troops south on a grand scale. That probably didn’t stop Russian efforts in the Donbass, but it probably slowed them down. According to Colonel Reisner, this approach was already used when Ukraine launched a smaller counteroffensive in northern Kharkiv. At that time, the Russian armed forces in the Donbass were to be equalized.
For the south, this means that at some point these strikes far behind the front line will no longer be enough, and then the Ukrainian troops will also have to advance. If Gustav Gressel has his way, autumn would be the best time. The military expert from the European Council on Foreign Relations expects the balance of power to have shifted more in favor of Ukraine at the beginning of October. “Then it’s not only the Russian rotation period,” in which numerous soldiers’ contracts expire, “then many Ukrainian soldiers will also come back from the training program in Great Britain. And maybe the West will have delivered a little more by then.”
