A Turning Point In Ukraine?

There are two must read, complementary articles out today that deal with what looks like the beginning of the major Russian offensive the world has been waiting for. One is by Big Serge:

Russo-Ukrainian War: The World Blood Pump

Gradually, and then Suddenly

The title is one of those insider things—you have to read the article to understand that Big Serge is drawing a comparison between the Bakhmut battle and the WWI Battle of Verdun. At Verdun the German goal was force the French to feed their strategic reserve into a “meat grinder”, much as the Russians have been accomplishing at Bakhmut. The subtitle is a bit more obvious. The attrition process has seemed gradual, although in reality Ukrainian casualties have been accumulating at an “alarming” rate (per the German BND). However, at a certain point, which is rapidly approaching, the turning of the tables will appear to happen “suddenly.”

The second article is at Moon of Alabama, and the title is more transparent:

Ukraine - Russian Army Activates Southern Front

The long expected Russian offensive in Ukraine has begun.

The Southern Front is the Zaporozhya front in South Central Ukraine, and especially abutting the Dnieper River near the major industrial city of Zaporozhya. The associated enormous nuclear power plant of the same name has long been in Russian hands. The likelihood of this offensive is one we—following Douglas Macgregor—have discussed repeatedly in the past.

What’s driving events at this point is that Russia has been destroying the third Ukrainian army at Bakhmut—fully half of Ukrainian forces, including by far the best equipped and most combat ready units—have been fed into the Bakhmut battle. There, Russia, with its 9:1 advantage in artillery of all sorts, is methodically destroying the Ukrainian forces and has now reduced Bakhmut to “operational encirclement”. In other words, Russian artillery is now in a position to target all attempts at either resupply or evacuation of the Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut. You can see this from this map:

If the map doesn’t expand for you, note the two blue lines that enclose Bakhmut from the north and the south. Each one of those lines is about 3-1/2 miles—easy range for all manner of Russian weapons systems.

The problem facing Ukraine is that it has stripped both the northern and southern sectors—near Kharkov and Zaporozhya respectively—of men and equipment. In the past several days Russian forces have advanced fairly rapidly in the south, meeting little resistance so far. The dire situation facing Ukraine in that sector is described by MoA:

The Military Land Deployment map, sympathetic to the Ukrainian side, shows just three Territorial Defense brigades covering a 100 kilometer long southern defense line. These brigades are infantry rich but not mobile. They have only little heavy equipment. The Ukrainian 65th Mechanized Brigade is the only capable force in the area. It is screening Zaporizhzhia city but has been heavily bleeding it its position for quite a while.

One Motorized Infantry brigade, the 56th, was added to the southern front some six days ago. Back in August this brigade had been severely mauled in its defense of Peski at the eastern front. It has since been reconstituted with new conscripts and a smorgasbord of 'western' delivered equipment. It can not be regarded as a fully capable unit.

There is no Ukrainian artillery brigade in the sector. There are thereby no counter-artillery capabilities available.

The attacking Russian force is the 58th army of the Russian Federation. These are not lightly armored, air deployable VDV forces like those who fought around the Hostomel Airport airport near Kiev. These are not militia of the Donbas republics seen on the eastern front. These are not Chechen forces storming Mariupol. These are not the Wagner mercenaries surrounding Bakhmut.

This is the real Russian army, the Red one, with all its heavy resources and capabilities to wage combined arms warfare.

The expectation of most observers is that the Russian army will not be immediately targeting the city of Zaporozhya. Instead it will most likely be looking to cut off all supply lines toward the bulk of Ukrainian forces that are now pinned down in the east, in the regions around Bakhmut. That will likely mean targeting Pavlograd. If a second Russian offensive comes down from the north, as many expect, again bypassing for the time major cities, a major encirclement of the bulk of the Ukrainian army and its foreign components will result.

Big Serge has developed some excellent maps that allow readers to assimilate these concepts at a glance. First is his map showing the four defensive lines which NATO and Ukraine constructed in the Donbas over the eight years 2014 - 2022. These fortified lines were to serve as a possible springboard for invading the breakaway Donbas republics or, alternatively, stopping any Russian advance. The idea was to force Russia into incurring massive casualties. In the event, exactly the opposite has happened:

The imminent fall of Bakhmut in the middle of the 3rd fortified line will place all other Ukrainian positions at risk of encirclement because the Ukrainians will not be in a position to maneuver in the more open country that lies behind the 3rd line. Here are Big Serge’s expectations for the next several months:

I am currently anticipating that Russia will clear the Bakhmut-Siversk defensive line by late March. Meanwhile, the denuding of Ukrainian forces on other axes raises the prospect of decisive Russian offensives elsewhere.

At the moment, the front roughly consists of four main axes (the plural of axis, not the bladed implement), with substantial agglomerations of Ukrainian troops. These consist, from south to north, of the Zaporozhia, Donetsk, Bakhmut, and Svatove Axes (see map below). The effort to reinforce the Bakhmut sector has noticeably diluted Ukranian strength on these other sectors. On the Zaporozhia front, for example, there are potentially as few as five Ukrainian brigades on the line at the moment.

At the moment, the majority of Russian combat power is uncommitted, and both western and Ukrainian sources are (belatedly) becoming increasingly alarmed about the prospect for a Russian offensive in the coming weeks. Currently, the entire Ukrainian position in the east is vulnerable because it is, in effect, an enormous salient, vulnerable to attack from three directions.

Big Serge’s next map illustrates that last concept of an “enormous saliet” that is vulnerable to encirclement and reduction, i.e., annihilation:

As noted, the Russian move from the south appears to have begun within the past week, with little real defensive preparations having taken place on the Ukrainian side. Ukraine will probably attempt to reinforce that area—it has no other choice—but likely to little avail. All of this has been prepared by Russian counter battery warfare, as we’ve discussed previously. NATO is scrambling to try to re-equip Ukraine with artillery—a sure sign that Russia has largely destroyed what artillery Ukraine had previously received from the West. The US is even plundering stockpiles of artillery ammunition in Israel and South Korea to resupply Ukraine. It will take literally years to replenish those stocks. The armored vehicles that are being scrounged from around the West for shipment to Ukraine use incompatible ammunition and parts, and require specialized training to operate. This bodes ill for Ukraine. Armies run on logistics, and these logistics are simply a disaster. Attempting this tricky feat in the middle of a Russian offensive will lead to predictable results.

Lloyd Austin told the NATO assemblage at Ramstein that events were at a “turning point”. That was part of his pitch for more weapons for Ukraine, but more and more observers are coming to the realization that this will simply be more of the same old too little too late. My view is that there is no going back from this turning point. NATO will be dismantled as a military threat to Russia, and likely as a political force, as well.

Follow the links for more detail.