Ukraine: breaking armies

By Richard North - October 5, 2022

At the top of its piece on Lyman the Guardian has published a picture of a Ukrainian soldier with an unidentified, wrecked armoured vehicle in the background.

Perhaps unintentionally, given the general media’s inability to identify armoured vehicles, the paper has illustrated the remains of a US-built M-113 armoured personnel carrier. This is one of the rare exceptions where the Ukrainian army is operating non-Russian equipment and it is possible, therefore, unequivocally to identify a Ukrainian casualty.

One of the problems in following the Ukrainian conflict from afar is that both sides largely use the same equipment, so it is often impossible to be certain what we are looking at when we see photographs of wrecked vehicles. For sure, the Russians often use their theatre markings, but these can easily be manipulated to convey the message desired.

For this and many other reasons, it has proved increasingly difficult to analyse effectively the torrent of information coming out of the war zones, especially as none of it is entirely reliable, irrespective of source. Both sides, and their supporters, are resorting to their own brands of propaganda, and it would be naïve to expect anything else.

Nevertheless, there cannot be any serious doubt about the nature of recent developments in Kherson oblast, where even the Russians are admitting that “numerically superior” Ukrainian tanks had “driven a deep wedge” south of Zolota Balka, a village that marked the previous front line on the Dnieper.

We are also informed that Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed leader in the Kherson region, has conceded that Ukrainian forces have broken through near Dudchany, a town on the northern bank of the Dnieper River about 20 miles south of the previous front line.

Saldo asserts that two Ukrainian battalions tried to push southeast to the Kakhovka hydroelectric station, about 40 miles east of Kherson, in the port city of Nova Kakhovka on the lower reaches of the Dnieper, potentially isolating Russian forces defending the city.

As always, in a fluid situation, accurate and up-to-date information is hard to get, and what may be the most recent is not necessarily the most accurate. The hardest details to obtain are reliable figures on casualties and equipment losses, and although the Russians have claimed about 130 Ukrainian troops killed in that fighting, we do not seem to have an equivalent figure for Russian losses, and there is no means of verifying any claims made.

Even at this stage, though, there are commentators who are confidently talking of a Russian “military collapse”, citing Ukrainian sources and sundry “experts” who argue that collapse of Russian lines around the city is indicative of Ukraine’s “increasing edge in firepower and trained troops”.

Even the Telegraph is publishing headlines about the “collapse” of the Russian front line, with Kremlin forces retreating in the face of what is described as one of the fastest Ukrainian advances of the war so far. A triumphal Forbes is crowing about Russian troops having to learn how to swim.

Zelensky himself has made an optimistic statement, saying that the Ukrainian army is carrying out a pretty fast and powerful advance in the south of the country as part of the current defensive operation. “Our warriors do not stop. And it’s only a matter of time before we oust the occupier from all our land”, he says.

In some respects, I should feel vindicated by such news. Prior to Putin’s invasion, I was writing multiple pieces about the “antiques road show” and the general inadequacies of the Russian forces, at a time when many of the “experts” were extolling their power and predicting a rapid victory, should they cross the border.

So convinced was I of their inadequacies, and of the insufficiency of numbers, that I was certain that Putin would not dare risk a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Arguably, that he was rash enough to do so has led to the current scenarios, where the force mix and numbers have proved insufficient to hold the territory occupied.

However, despite the very obvious shortcomings of the Russian forces – and the effectiveness of some of the Western weaponry supplied to Ukraine – it might be unwise to assume that the battle is won, and Putin’s ambitions have been thwarted. After all, advances do not necessarily win battles – otherwise we would have to put the battles of el Alamein and Kursk in the same category.

What one must also factor in is that the fighting season is coming to an end, as the onset of autumn brings the rains and the onset of Rasputitsa – discussed in an earlier post. Exploiting the current gains may prove difficult as the reduced mobility will, on balance, favour the defender.

And while the Ukrainian forces appear to be sweeping all before them, there is little word of the losses being experienced. According to The Times, though, the absence of verifiable information has led to wild claims on both sides.

Some pro-Ukrainian accounts, the paper records, say their army has broken through on three fronts, with the Russians disillusioned and running away. The informal network of pro-Russian accounts online, meanwhile, boasts of the offensive’s failure, with thousands of Ukrainian dead said to be left in its wake. “Cynical butchery”, one pro-Russian report termed it, without providing any visual evidence for its claims of huge Ukrainian losses.

Where the Ukrainians do experience losses, there is no indication that, as with the Russians, well-trained and fully-equipped formations are limited and hard to replace. Then there is the perennial problem of ammunition which Ukraine is depleting faster than its allies can resupply.

While the United States, the UK and others have been supplying Ukraine from their own war stocks, concern is now building that stocks have been so depleted that military readiness could be jeopardised. But, over the decades, manufacturing resources have also been run down, so there is no easy or quick way of rebuilding stocks.

One point that hasn’t been raised – in any source of which I am aware – is that modern, high calibre gun barrels are built to far more exacting standards than their predecessors, requiring ammunition produced to tighter tolerances than used to be the case. Modern production lines, therefore, require expensive, high-precision machinery. Setting up new facilities is neither quick nor cheap.

Unsurprisingly, according to the WSJ piece cited, the Pentagon has been reluctant to place massive new orders, doubtless because of the expense, while the Telegraph in the UK has been reporting that 155mm artillery shells are proving hard to source, given the high specifications to which they must be manufactured.

Just because these issues aren’t in the media every day, and are rarely on the front pages, doesn’t mean they have gone away; they may yet prove an important limiting factor in Ukraine’s ability to claw back occupied territories.

Then, ever-present as a looming spectre in the background is the real possibility that an erratic Putin, with his back against the wall and facing imminent defeat, could resort to tactical nuclear weapons to arrest an otherwise unstoppable Ukrainian advance.

In fact, I sometimes wonder whether the claimed rapid “retreat” of the Russian forces might be intended to put distance between them and the Ukrainians so as to allow the effective deployment of battlefield nukes.

Most Russian armoured vehicles are fitted with so-called NBC protection and are capable of limited operations in radioactive environments, so low-yield nuclear weapons need not impose significant operational constraints, should Putin authorise their use.

Looking on the bright side though, it could be that we really are seeing a breakthrough, with Ukrainian forces poised to expel the invader from their land, following which we can look forward to the possibility of a slow return to normality, especially if the shock of defeat leads to a new leader in the Kremlin.

On the other hand, by the spring, we could be looking at the Black Sea littoral converted into a smouldering, radioactive wasteland and the port city of Odessa in ruins, with the world on the brink of nuclear war.

With such issues at stake, it is hard to take the perturbations in Birmingham very seriously, especially when some newspapers are calling the situation “open warfare”. With real warfare going on at the other end of Europe, such hyperbole is somewhat less than convincing – unless, of course, a breakaway Tory faction is thinking about nuking No. 10.