The Atlantic offers an analysis of how Ukraine pulled off its stunning counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region, written by Phillips Payson O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. It’s well worth reading for those who have followed the war closely.
O’Brien begins by noting that Ukraine has in a few days “liberated about as much territory as Russia had captured in a few months” and “appears to have changed the whole complexion of the war.”
O’Brien then concisely sums up how this victory was achieved:
This stunning Ukrainian advance was anything but sudden. It resulted from a patient military buildup, excellent operational security, and, maybe most important, the diversion of some of the Russian army’s most powerful units from Kharkiv Oblast itself. The overall planning by the Ukrainian government and armed forces worked well on so many levels that it produced one of the greatest military-strategy successes since 1945.”
O’Brien details the masterful deception pulled off by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his senior aides. For months, they had publicly proclaimed that their most important goal was liberating the politically and strategically important city of Kherson in the south.
But Ukrainian leaders didn’t only talk about recapturing Kherson, they took “all the necessary preparatory steps” for mounting a counter-offensive in the south, O’Brien said. They deployed U.S.-supplied HIMARS missile systems and other long-range weapons to destroy bridges, ammunition depots, and other strategic targets throughout the Kherson region.
In response, O’Brien observed, Russian President Vladimir Putin did exactly what the Ukrainians wanted him to do: He rushed forces to the south, redeploying some well-equipped Russian units from the eastern Donbas region.
On Aug. 29, the Ukrainians increased their attacks around Kherson and made some incremental gains. Stories started circulating that the Ukrainians were being cautious in their plans, and that U.S. officials had dissuaded them from a bolder counter-attack.
O’Brien writes:
Ukraine’s restraint in Kherson now looks like a tactical decision. As Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov admitted Saturday, Ukraine’s generals had been planning to launch two campaigns simultaneously. If the Kherson offensive was designed to grind down Russian forces by drawing them in and then confronting them head-on, the Kharkiv Oblast offensive had greater territorial ambitions. Ukraine hoped to retake the city of Kupyansk. The Russians were using this road-and-rail hub to get supplies to Izium, a base for their operations in the Donbas.
O’Brien writes that “both offensives were possible only because of a ghastly summer of attritional warfare” in the Kherson region. Ukrainian forces “suffered horrifying losses” but “inflicted even larger ones on the enemy.”
Ukraine had used conscription since the war began to build an army larger than Russian’s invasion force, O’Brien observed. But Russian officials were “terrified of upsetting their populace” and avoided a mass mobilization. Instead, Russia was reduced to using mercenaries and recruiting soldiers from prisons.
Despite a shrinking army, Russia “moved forces away from the area that Ukraine wanted to attack toward an area where Ukraine was waging a war of attrition,” O’Brien observed.
The Ukrainians wrote a script, and the Russians played their assigned role. Unlike Kherson, where the invaders had massed forces and set up a multilayered defense, Kharkiv Oblast was thinly protected by the Russian forces. The Ukrainians were thus easily able to break Russian lines, which seem to have been held by poorly motivated and trained forces, and streak deep behind them.
O’Brien also noted that the Ukrainians had “built up a substantial, fast-moving strike force” for the Kharkiv counter-offensive, using specialized combat brigades with lighter, faster wheeled vehicles that gave them “a crucial mobility advantage” over the Russians.
O’Brien concluded:
Though the war is far from over and Russia can find new ways to punish Ukraine, collapsing Russian forces have not only been pushed back; in abandoning their former headquarters in Izium, they also left behind large stores of equipment and ammunition that the Ukrainians can now use against them. ... Building on months of careful efforts to both prepare Ukrainian forces and waste Russian ones, Ukraine has achieved a strategic masterstroke that military scholars will study for decades to come.