Russia’s much-anticipated counter-offensive has been grinding through frozen mud and the blasted landscape of eastern Ukraine for some weeks now.
he timing, purpose and means by which the attack is being conducted speaks volumes about Russia’s ability – physically and intellectually – to sustain this war, and of a fear in the Kremlin that if they don’t dominate events, events will very quickly be dictated to them by Ukraine.
The cost has been horrific for both sides, but Russia, even without accounting for the poorly trained, equipped and led conscripts and mobilised men doing much of the fighting, has come off worst.
Western officials say Putin has lost around 40,000 dead and at least three times that figure wounded, missing or taken prisoner.
Attacking forces normally take the greater casualties; defenders that are well dug in and prepared are better able to withstand the violence of the contact battle.
Even so, it is estimated that one Russian dies for every three injured. The equivalent figure for Ukraine is thought to be one in 20, the difference explained by Kyiv’s much more efficient, professional and capable medical chain. To be a Russian infantryman in eastern Ukraine right now is to live a sad, terrifying and pitiless existence. It is likely to be brief.
The shell of the city that once went by the name of Bakhmut has cost Moscow thousands in terms of dead and injured. Russian forces still haven’t managed to completely encircle the last remaining Ukrainian troops that have drawn such a cost for every inch of strategically-worthless soil.
Further south, in Donetsk province, two top-notch Russian brigades were broken against the Ukrainian defence around the town of Vuhledar. The Kremlin insists the effort should continue, with conscripts and the recently mobilised. Predictably, these less capable and experienced forces are simply being chewed up by Ukrainian artillery.
To the north, in Luhansk province, Moscow’s troops fight towards Kupyansk, a rail hub, and Lyman, a small city, both liberated last autumn. Neither shows signs of falling anytime soon.
What is Russia’s aim now? To take Kyiv, to dominate the Donbas? To celebrate a pyrrhic victory over an irrelevant shell of a town?
The Kremlin is desperate for a breakthrough, for good news, for anything to justify the cost of this stalled, ridiculous, morally-bankrupt endeavour. That in itself has become the aim, but good military strategy is not born of poor political direction.
So they push on, fearful of questioning The Boss in Moscow, using tactics openly derided as “human wave” by Britain’s defence secretary and without a proper operational reserve – an uncommitted and well-rested force able to exploit any success or plug the gaps if the enemy breaks through.
Ukraine is hurting, of course, and continues to hold on. But why has Russia reverted, in the third decade of the 21st century, to tactics Stalin would recognise from battles over this same ground 80 years ago?
Because the military and political leaderships in Kyiv and Moscow know Ukraine is – probably – winning the race right now.
Can Russia mobilise enough men and drag enough tired and rusty T-62 tanks and Cold War-era D-30 howitzers out of retirement to keep grinding west, before Ukrainian troops arrive on the battlefield, schooled by Nato and other supporters in “combined arms” warfare – where tanks, infantry, artillery, engineers and all the other component parts of a modern military force work together?
The frozen winter ground is about to thaw, giving way to the cloying mud of the biannual rasputitsa – a rainy early spring – which will bring to a halt all but the most determined cross-country transit.
Once that is over and the mud bakes under the summer sun, Ukraine hopes to be able to free the German Leopard tanks, the American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and the French Caesar self-propelled artillery systems, alongside other heavy metal Western gifts.
I was once told by a commander that if the word “hope” enters your plan at all, you haven’t planned enough.
That’s probably correct. But Ukraine has planned; thousands of men and women are in uniform and being trained on these new systems as you read these words. Russia does not have the equipment to do likewise, hence looking to China for help. Xi Jinping, embarrassed by the poor performance of his neighbour in what he had been promised would be a short, sharp “special” military operation, is reluctant to ride to the rescue.
Putin knows this, so continues to insist his men are driven forwards, for ground of questionable military significance and likely at the cost of their lives.
He won’t care. All his forces are capable of doing is grinding on, hoping to grab something of value before the Ukrainian-operated, Western-donated armour arrives to drive what is left of his force, and his imperialist ambition, into the ground.