Up until 1 month ago, my position was that the Ukrainian Spring Offensive would be headed for Zaporizhzhia Oblast, with Melitopol as the main objective. With the developments of the past month (including information from the Pentagon Leak papers), I’m considerably less confident.
Currently, there are two directions that most military experts consider most likely as the directions of the Ukrainian counteroffensive
- North in Luhansk Oblast towards Svatove/Starobilsk
- South in Zaporizhzhia Oblast toward Tokmak/Melitopol
The main benefits of a Northern Offensive would be that capturing Starobilsk would shut down the larger bulk of Russia’s ability to supply the Eastern front. There are 2 primary rail routes that can supply the Eastern front.
Currently, Russia places its supply centers in Russia’s Belogorod Oblast , then the rail lines southward through Starobilsk and via Luhansk supplies the Eastern Front of the Russian army—its offensives in Bakhmut, the outskirts of Donetsk, Vuhledar, etc.
There’s a secondary supply route that heads through Russia’s Rostov Oblast, but losing Starobilsk would force Russia to entirely realign its supply routes, and to rely on a smaller network of railways through Rostov, reducing its supply capacity.
It would likely also liberate much of the northeastern corner of Ukraine, a vast amount of territory, if not population due to its rural nature.
The benefits of a successful Southern Offensive would be greater. Capturing Melitopol would open a route of advance towards Crimea. Driving southwest, Ukraine could cut off occupied Kherson Oblast from its supply routes from Crimea, and potentially bring southwestern Zaporizhzhia Olbast and the rest of occupied Kherson Oblast back under Ukrainian control.
It could potentially begin operations on retaking Crimea. Capturing Kyrylivka would bring the Kerch bridge within GLSDB (Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs—long range HIMARS glide bombs) range.
If dozens, or hundreds of GLSDB attacks could be launched at the Kerch Bridge every month, even if the bombs could not bring down the bridge, they could cause enough damage to bring rail and truck deliveries to a near standstill, leaving Russia unable to supply Crimea.
It would also bring Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant back under Ukrainian control.
Furthermore, the natural terrain strongly favors a Southern Offensive. The terrain in the North is heavily forested and hilly.
While southwestern Zaporizhzhia Oblast is remarkably flat plains and farmland, giving unrestricted visibility to the horizon.
There’s a misconception that broad and wide-open spaces favor the defender. This does not hold true in modern combat. Western tanks are best when they can make full use of their superior range. Hills and forests reduce combat ranges and visibility, forcing tanks (which can only fire flat trajectory shells) to engage at much closer distances.
Leopard 2s and Challenger 2s could dominate a flat and unrestricted plain, while mountainous or forested areas provide better chances for inferior tanks or infantry armed with ATGMs (Anti-Tank Guided Missiles) to ambush tanks.
Furthermore, the rivers in Zaporizhzhia Oblast provide an ideal shield to the flank of a hypothetical Ukrainian advance towards Melitopol.
For example, it’s not difficult to think of an operation that uses the Konka and Molochna rivers to shield the left flank of a southward Ukrainian advance to capture Tokmak and surround Melitopol.
As this area between Zaporizhzhia city and Melitopol being the primary axis of advance seems blindingly obvious, Russia has prepared numerous defenses aimed that stopping exactly such an advance.
In particular, a closer look at the southern front shows 2 primary layers of defenses behind the current front line, and numerous defenses set up along the primary roads. A third and 4th line of defenses are prepared further south leading up to the defensive line at the “neck” of Crimea.
By way of contrast, essentially only a single line of defenses exists in Luhansk, connecting Svatove and Kreminna. No defensive line exists as a backup all the way to Starobilsk.
Based on this information, I previously asserted that the Ukrainian Army’s best choice was a showdown with Russia’s main army defending Melitopol, based on the assumption that
- Ukraine is now ready and trained for launching breach operations on Russian defenses.
- Ukraine has the equipment to conduct such attacks.
However, in the past month, further information has arisen that has led me to question this conclusion.
Pentagon Leak: Relevant Facts
There were two pieces of information on the Ukrainian Army among the Pentagon Leak papers that potentially impacted how Ukraine might launch a counter offensive.
- As of February, Ukraine was suffering from force generation problems, and was having trouble getting enough troops from the draft.
- As of February, US intelligence believed that Ukraine’s troops were behind schedule in their training and were not progressing as well as had been hoped.
As to the first point, I’m not sure if this impacts the Spring offensive much directly. Ukraine’s training schedule is generally 6-8 months for regular army troops, at least 4 months for Territorial Defense Forces put to the offensive. Any troops that were planned to be deployed for an offensive in April or May were likely drafted in November at the latest, more likely September or August of ‘22 for the regular army.
It makes me more concerned for Ukraine’s manpower in say, August/Sept ‘23 or so, but Ukraine’s tightened up their draft laws (such as permitting draft papers to be delivered at workplaces rather than just at home).
The second point—that Ukraine’s training was behind schedule—is significantly more concerning to me.
I previously described the complex choreography that’s necessary to conduct a “combined arms breach” operation. Infantry, Tanks, Artillery, Combat engineers all must move in precise and rapid synchronized actions to breach an enemy defense and move past it (not to mention antiair defenses, drones, and many others).
The way that Russian Defensive Doctrine stresses mobility of reserves, breaching operations are a race against time, as Ukraine’s offensive aims to overrun a defensive position before the Russians can reinforce it.
The right equipment will only take you so far—training is key to ensuring that each step in the complex sequence goes off without a hitch, and Ukrainian tanks and APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers) are overrunning a Russian trenchline before Russian reserves can even gather to send assistance.
Conversely, bad coordination and training could lead to tanks being exposed to enemy ATGM fire. valuable combat engineering breach equipment being exposed to enemy fire, or infantry aboard APCs being isolated and attacked by Russian tanks arriving to reinforce the position.
On the other hand, another interesting piece of information was Russia’s dismal equipment situation indicating they had only a little more than 400 operational tanks left in all of Ukraine, and only about 500 operational tanks left in reserve or deployed to other areas. This would put Russia at below ¼ its invasion force strength, not to even get to the qualitative decline as Russia replaces pre-war T-80s and T-90s with 50-60 year old T-62s and T-55 tanks.’
Many of the undeployed tanks may not be easily deployable to Ukraine either, as Russia maintains an occupation force in Georgia, as well as a peacekeeping force in Armenia and is maintaining at least a skeleton force on its NATO border. It’s unlikely that Russia can take the number of tanks in those sectors to “zero.”
Ukraine goes all in on Drones
The other big development is Ukraine’s announcement that it is spending an eye popping $860M just on FPV (First person View) suicide drones. A fairly conservative estimate would be that this would buy 100,000 or more drones, and subsequent stories detailing the capabilities of some of these drones only makes the way in which Ukraine views these weapons as being a potential strategic level game changer only make more sense.
An FPV Drone is a small, fast and highly maneuverable drone that can carry a small payload, usually used for suicide missions. They are not well suited for hovering or surveillance, but the way in which the operator can put on VR-goggle type glasses and see from the perspective of the drone makes flying the drone into objects easier.
For example, a UK-based FPV drone developer called “One Way Aerospace” noted that it produced a $1000 per unit drone called the Scalpel with the following capabilities.
- 2.5kg payload (allowing it to carry an antitank warhead or an antipersonnel warhead with a 7m kill radius)
- 100kmh speed with a 10km+ range
- Terminal self homing ability, allowing it to self steer into the selected target and detonate if armed, so if its communications are jammed on its final approach, it can fly on and detonate.
I think most anyone can understand how deadly even a hundred of these units armed with antipersonnel warheads swooping into a stretch of Russian trenches would be to infantry.
However, Russia is not entirely defenseless—far from it.
Since early in the war, Russia has probably spent the most institutional energy on trying to keep pace with Ukrainian advances in drone technology. Russia has 2 types of antidrone weaponry that have proven the most resistant to Ukrainian drone attacks.
First, there are area based broad spectrum jammers like the P340 Pole 21 system.
The Pole 21 System emits an electronic suppression signal that is powerful enough to knock out a broad range of electronic communication systems for a 20 to 50km radius (depending on terrain and other features). It knocks out unprotected wifi, radio, and even GPS signals, rendering networked wifi connections, cell phones, radio communications and many electronics inoperable.
These jamming signals are not all powerful—electronic signals can be protected and “filtered” which allows it to bypass jamming attempts. For example, US GPS based weapons like the GMLRS rocket for the HIMARS missile launcher, or the Excalibur 155mm artillery round have powerful electronic filters that allow it to bypass GPS jamming—Pole 21 systems have been ineffective at stopping US manufactured GPS guided weaponry. Most high grade military radios also are electronically filtered, and can bypass jamming.
However, the Pole 21 has been an effective weapon against Ukraine’s reliance particularly on civilian manufactured surveillance drones. These systems have been widely deployed by Russian in key areas of heavy combat, and activated suddenly to knock out cheaper Ukrainian surveillance drones that cannot overcome jamming. For example, higher end US manufactured surveillance drones are not only more resistant to jamming, they also have AI piloting features that will guide the drone back to its starting location for recovery if jammed.
Obviously, Russian jamming attempts would be a problem for suicide drones as well, if they are activated before the drones can enter their final approaches (when terminal homing AI can take over).
The fact that Ukraine prioritizes targeting Pole 21 systems for discovery and destruction by HIMARS or Excalibur artillery should indicate how valuable these systems are for Russian drone defense.
Russians also rely on hand held “Antidrone rifles,” such as the LPD-802 antidrone rifle, pictured to the right.
Although it’s called a “rifle” and looks like a rifle, it doesn’t fire bullets. Instead, it fires highly targeted bursts of drone jamming electronic interference that sever the drone’s communications with its operator.
Russia also deploys these weapons in hot spots like Bakhmut, where antidrone warfare squads deploy these weapons frequently.
Forbes reported in December, how Russia had knocked out 90% of Ukraine’s military drone supply—jamming equipment and their effectiveness may be limiting how much use Ukraine can get out of each low cost drone.
This raises a number of unknowns, such as
- How many large scale antidrone warfare units like the Pole 21 does Russia have available? Where are they located?
- How many antidrone weapons does Russia have? How many are they manufacturing? Where are they?
- Are there any gaps in Russia’s anti-drone defenses? If so, where?
- Are the next generation of Ukraine’s suicide drones electronically filtered and/or jamming resistant?
None of these things are (as far as I know) publicly known, nor would I expect such information to be released publicly.
Putting it together
So, to put it mildly, there’s a lot to consider. I didn’t even go into considerations like “how easily can territory be defended after being captured against Russian counterattacks” or the political considerations, like Ukraine wanting to attack Crimea sooner than recapturing Donbas.
But I think a decision on whether to go “North” or “South” hinge on a few key factors.
- How prepared are Ukraine’s forces?
- If the troops are ready to drive into the teeth of the Russian defenses, a Melitopol offensive makes a ton of sense.
- If the troops are unready, it makes more sense to postpone an attack against the South till Summer 2024, and launch an attack in the North. Far fewer defenses and an element of surprise could go a long way towards a far easier successful offensive.
I considered the possibility of an attack further east to try to circumvent the Russain main defenses between Melitopol and Zaporizhzhia, but the terrain makes this approach difficult.
For example, relying again upon Brady Affick’s maps, you can see how Russian defenses east of Melitopol have hardly been neglected. An offensive towards Berdyansk would face many layers of Russian defenses.
Furthermore, the same rivers that could shield the flank of a Ukrainian advance directly towards Melitopol would be a defensive boon to Russians defending against a flanking attack from the East.
In fact, the defensive trench line Russians created between Tokmak and Melitopol appear to consider this very possibility.
Furthermore, the terrain of Zaporizhzhia Oblast east of Melitopol is more hilly and has more forests, making it better defensive terrain.
Unless there are unknown weaknesses in the defenses east of Melitopol, an offensive in this area appears less likely.
- Are there any weakness in Russian Drone Defenses?
This to me is the biggest “?”—if a wave of Ukrainian antipersonnel drones could blast a several mile wide hole in the Russian trench defenses, you would hardly need the type of narrow-front focused offensive that’s expected to be needed due to the limited breaching equipment (mobile armored bridges, antiobstacle bulldozers, mine-clearing equipment) that Ukraine has available.
If, for example, the Russians concentrated all their antidrone units north of Melitopol, perhaps you could launch a “drone wave” attack to breakthrough defenses to the east of hte main defensive line, sweep around the defenses, then strike at Melitopol simultaneously from the East and the North.
Or, if all of Russia’s antidrone units are in the south, maybe that’s an excellent reason to launch a massive offensive in the North if Ukraine could overrun the Svatove/Kremmina defensive line at minimal costs with an armored push.
This type of information is largely unknowable (as are exactly how many of these types of drones Ukraine really has stockpiled), which makes predictions very difficult.
To me, a South offensive towards Melitopol still seems to be the most likely route of action. Ukraine’s allies appear to have made a concentrated push to make as many combat engineering supplies available to Ukraine as possible.
Given the weaknesses of Russian armored forces, there are questions about how rapidly or effectively Russian reserve forces can react to a Ukrainian attack.
Even if Ukraine takes longer to break through a line of defenses than is ideal—in the plains of southern Zaporizhzhia, Leopard 2s and Challenger 2s should be able to dominate any reinforcements that Russia tries to redeploy to a threatened sector.
If Russia still had 1500 high quality tanks, a Southern offensive might be impractical, but given Russia’s weakened state, unless Ukrainian breach operation ability is disastrous, it seems the chances of success should be favorable.
The chances of success might be even overwhelmingly good, if Ukraine is confident about its electronic filtering abilities to withstand Russian jamming with suicide drones. It’s hard to see how Russia’s trench-reliant defensive system could handle waves of attacks by FPS suicide drones.
If Ukraine truly is not ready for this, I think a Northern Offensive is the most likely option that Ukraine takes. But given how quickly Ukraine has learned in this war—and how adaptable and able its soldiers and engineers have been—Ukraine’s most likely course of attack remains a head on assault towards Melitopol.