I can’t stress enough how big today was for Ukraine. Conducting their first major counter-offensive and moving 75 km in a day is huge. Let’s get into why, and what are the next occurrences to watch for. I’d like to also give a shout out to Lawrence for accurately predicting the first big move in Mykolaiv.
With defeats of Russians at Voznesensk and pushing them back past Posad-Pokrovskote, the Ukrainians have given themselves a giant morale booster, successfully tested the defensive capability of Russia, and are potentially cutting off Russian forces in Kryvyi Rih. I wish I knew the manner in which the push was achieved. Was it a straightforward push with Russian’s pulling back (or becoming a full rout) or did the Ukrainians bypass Russian forces and take Posad-Pokrovskote cutting off the Russians near Mykolaiv and capturing them?
Either way this is a defeat of what should have been the major Russian axis of advance in the south. A more competent Russian pincer would have used a minor diversionary assault in the East pinning Ukrainian forces in place while concentrating the majority of their forces on the Northern pincer from Belarus and the Southern pincer from Crimea. The Crimean pincer should have quickly focused on taking Kherson, Mykolaiv on to Odesa, then driving north to Kyiv. The port in Odesa would have been a major supply node for southern forces and is critically west of the Dnieper river. Odesa as a supply node would have meant less of the supply line occurring on land and more of it by ship on the Black Sea where the Russian Navy would have far less trouble protecting it than the hundreds of kilometers of spread out roads they have now. Even without taking the center of Kyiv, a Russian pincer where the North and South forces met would have cut off military supplies to the whole East. Russia would probably not have needed to control the whole Eastern half of Ukraine to force a favorable peace deal.
Instead, Ukraine is about to push the Russians out of Ukraine west of the Dnieper in the south. The bridges in the middle of the country over the Dnieper will continue to supply eastern Ukrainian forces and allow troop movement back and forth.
The morale advantage of a first major successful push is fairly obvious. What is less obvious but more important is the Ukrainian army learning that Russian forces don’t appear to defend any better than they attack. While that may seem par for the course from what we are learning about the state of the Russian Army, it’s not automatic. Slow advances can be an aggressor incrementally taking position after position, fortifying them against counter-attack and using it as a firebase for the next move. Even with a less methodical attack, it’s possible the Russians might have focused their conscripts’ limited training on setting up proper defensive positions while using better trained troops to lead the attacks. Now, the Ukrainian army can begin to calibrate the optimal force amounts needed to overcome a Russian position. It appears from first glance the Ukrainians may not need as many forces to crack Russian positions. This is important as while from a military perspective they shouldn’t rush, from a perspective of getting the Russians to stop killing civilians in the eastern cities, time is of the essence. The Ukrainians need to continue their solid military tactics, but they can now try attacks which previously seemed a little too risky. Overestimating your enemy can be as dangerous as underestimating them.
Finally, cutting off forces headed to Kryvyi Rih would be yet another blow to Russian numbers while consolidating Ukrainian positions. As I mentioned in a previous article, the Ukrainians have an ideal central position to defend from with short lines of communication. (And by communication, the military term refers to freedom for forces to move unmolested, not that they are laying down telephone wires as the modern usage of the word might imply). This means they can move their forces around more easily and concentrate them for critical battles to achieve local numerical superiority. Every time a Russian force can be cut off and eliminated, it frees up the local Ukrainian defending force to join the mobile force and make the next attack stronger.
The next big action to watch for will be around Kherson again. How the Russians prepare for the defense of it will indicate if we are headed towards a long static war or quick rout of Russia. If Russia is unable to hold the river crossing then they will most likely lose Crimea. If they can’t properly defend a river, I doubt they’ve had the foresight to set up proper defense at the isthmus. And there should be a counter-offensive around Kyiv to look out for. Hard to know when as it depends heavily on force information that’s hard to come by. But it’s just too important to leave unattended for too long. A successful rout of Russian forces around Kyiv could possibly force a pullback of all Russian troops to pre-2014 borders. At some point they would be risking the annihilation of a significant portion of the Russian Army.
Good fight today, Ukraine! Keep it up!
Friday, Mar 18, 2022 · 6:22:25 PM +00:00 · Peter Olandt
A few folks now have expressed concern that I am giving away ideas to the enemy. First, let me thank you for keeping an eye on that.
Second, what I have provided here on potential tactics is a cliff notes version of an attack plan with zero inside knowledge of forces, terrain, weather conditions and so forth. I’m not some savant coming up with a concept that would blow away top generals with amazing insight. It’s literally the first thing that should come to ANY military planner’s head and they ARE in trouble if they didn’t think of it. Because if they couldn’t devise it with copious planning time and information, some random guy posting a simple idea on an American website is not not going to suddenly make them any better.
So why DIDN’T they use it or a better one? Well, that is the big question. The most likely answer is the one already talked about by Kos and many others. Russia apparently focused on a quick victory and positioned troops to grab uncontested population centers with the assumption of no Ukrainian military resistance instead of defeating a highly competent defensive force with high motivation.
Third, as for giving them a new idea to try in the future; that ship has sailed. The Pentagon could give them detailed planning documents for the above and it wouldn’t help the Russians make it happen. As Kos correctly likes to point out, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. (Yes, I’m calling myself an amateur here.) The reason professionals talk logistics is that any tactic is utterly useless without good logistical planning. But logistics are sometimes hard to see on the news per se. The Ukrainians first holding and now advancing is them using a tactic their logistical success (and Russian failure) has now made possible. Russians no longer, and possibly never did, possess the logistical ability to make the pincer movement described above work. Their current forces are tied up all over Ukraine and could not be redeployed without great losses. Any new forces coming in would both be most likely of lower quality and seen coming miles away by the intelligence community. Ukraine has beaten Russia. We’re just waiting for the Russians to wake up to that and decide how gracefully they wish to take it.