Ukraine: underestimating the enemy

By Richard North - May 22, 2024

While my writing on this blog has been devoted to other matters over the last two days, that hasn’t saved the daily labour of monitoring the situation in Ukraine where, if anything, the situation is even more complex and dangerous.

The monitoring task is necessary because I have long given up on the idea of the legacy media providing sensible coverage of the fighting. That notwithstanding, it is still necessary to keep an eye on what they are saying but, even with my low expectations, I have to say that the piece by David Axe in the Telegraph marked a new low in the standard of reporting.

Headed: “Putin’s poorly prepared assault on Kharkiv has achieved nothing but record Russian casualties”, Axe starts with the supposition that “everyone” expected Russia to launch a new offensive on 9 May, celebrated as Victory Day in Russia, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War by the Soviet Union.

Well, there was some chatter before that date about Putin ordering his forces to take Chasiv Yar to coincide with Victory Day, but I don’t recall any specifics about a planned offensive for that day. In fact, when it happened, it was on the following day and seems to have caught the Ukrainians by surprise.

Clearly, therefore, not everyone was expecting an offensive to start on 9 May and the general consensus at the time was that, while an offensive was anticipated, the Russians weren’t expected to move for another fortnight.

As to Axe’s “Victory Day offensive”, he dismisses it as a “farce” on the basis that, “less than two weeks after the first Russian platoons marched across Ukraine’s northern border with Russia, just north of Kharkiv, the Russian operation has ground to a halt after just a few miles”.

And yet, from my own evaluation, it is clear that the primary aim of this offensive may not be to occupy territory. Rather, some aver that the intention was to create a buffer zone, while others advanced the theory that the aim was to pull in Ukrainian reserves and deplete the forces on other fronts.

In my follow-up piece, I suggested that there was also the possibility that the Russians were setting a trap, pulling Ukrainian reserves into yet another “grinding machine” where they could be destroyed in detail, bleeding dry the already perilously limited manpower resource.

Whether or not that was the primary intention, it is certainly one of the effects of the fighting, with some indications that the Ukrainians have suffered heavy losses. Yet Axe chooses to believe that the Russians have sustained “catastrophically high” casualties, citing the Ukrainian defence ministry as a source for a “record” 1,740 Russian casualties on 12 May.

Casualty figures, as any military historian will know, are notoriously difficult to establish accurately, and the tendency of opposing sides to inflate their enemies’ losses has long been a feature of the propaganda wars which run alongside shooting wars.

For Axe to rely, therefore, on that single source, is risible – especially as reliable Ukrainian sources are complaining about the “increasingly unrealistic updates from the battlefield” from Ukrainian sources.

To embellish his narrative though, Axe also asserts that the Russians have failed to gain control over any important terrain, notwithstanding that, in a matter of days, the Kremlin’s forces occupied more territory than the entire area captured by the Ukrainians in the whole of last year’s abortive counter-offensive.

On top of this, the Russians have officially claimed the recapture of Robotyne, the village which marked the high water mark of last year’s offensive.

Eventually, Axe brings his narrative to a halt, dismissing the offensive as “political theatre”, suggesting that all Putin has to do to make his theatrical offensive successful is for him to redefine what “successful” means, and declare victory.

And yet, as it stands, many observers are taking the view that the Russian domination of the battlefield is real while the situation on the Kharkiv front is far from static.

In addition to occupying much of the northern part of the embattled town of Vovchansk, with the southern part under heavy bombardment, Russian forces have extended the front to the east of the town, with a fresh border incursion which extends the battle area by another 20km or so, while another incursion into the Sumy Oblast is expected.

Furthermore, if the Russian aim was to deplete the defences on the Donbass fronts, it seems to have succeeded. Intensive fighting in multiple areas continues to yield small but significant gains, described by the Russian Defence Ministry briefing as “improving the tactical situation”.

Even the Ukrainian General Staff acknowledge that fighting is intense, with 94 combat clashes recorded yesterday. Of course, every Russian attack is successfully repelled, and the situation is always under control until we start seeing video footage of Ukrainian attacks on areas they have previously claimed to hold.

Some indication of the spread of fighting is given by a map published by The Times. Unfortunately, this paper offers no detail in its narrative, preferring instead a “derring-do” tale of the deeds of Ukrainian special forces.

As a boy, I used to soak up such tales with great enthusiasm but the grown-up me prefers the “Boys Own” action to be supplemented by a more measured account of the operational position, allowing the current situation to be understood.

What does come over from The Times piece, though, is the slowness in appreciating the extent to which the Russians have adapted their tactics to meet the realities of the current battlefields, as the paper talks of the Ukrainians expecting “a typical head-on attack by Moscow with armoured vehicles” yet being caught by surprise by “new small-groups tactics”.

However, we have seen precisely those tactics being adopted up and down the Donbass front. Far from being “new”, they seem to have been standard operating procedure for some time. We see, for instance, an analysis from June last year which describes how Russian tactics have evolved.

The capacity to detect and strike targets at ever-greater distances and with ever-growing precision increases the vulnerability of dense troop concentrations, and therefore limits the ability to conduct large-scale sequenced and concentrated operations, writer Randy Noorman observes.

As such, in order to enhance survivability, he states, current battlefield conditions are forcing military units to disperse into smaller formations, dig in, or both, unless these conditions are effectively countered. As a result, the battlefield tends to become more fragmented, offering more independent action to lower tactical formations as the depth of the front is expanding to a considerable extent.

Currently, we are told, troop density and intensity of the fighting varies considerably along the front. This results in open flanks that need to be secured by other means. Meanwhile, the Russian army is adapting, and its reconnaissance-fire complex continues to evolve, becoming highly responsive and with its artillery less vulnerable to counterbattery fire.

Russian forces are also increasingly relying on loitering munitions for counterbattery fire and effectively using electronic warfare to counter Ukrainian UAVs. Ukrainian HIMARS strikes are even partially countered by Russian air defences, while Russian command-and-control infrastructure has become much more resilient.

Furthermore, it seems, Russian forces also rarely employ armour and infantry in concentrated assaults and in the defence occupy dispersed positions, while increasingly drawing on artillery to blunt Ukrainian attacks.

That now dates from nearly a year ago, and there are multiple other studies on the evolution of Russian tactics, each with their own conclusions. The keen observer can also watch Russians in action in any number of recent video feeds.

Whatever one’s views of the Russians might be, it is extremely unwise for Western observers and commentators to underestimate their battlefield proficiency, and their ability to adapt to new conditions, as well as bringing new weapons and technologies into play.

Yet, through the likes of David Axe, and much else produced by the legacy media, we are in danger of being misled into doing precisely that.