Tension is building in Ukraine. Russia’s winter offensive has been defeated and although the battle for Bakhmut continues the real action is elsewhere, as the world looks for signs of Ukraine’s spring offensive. The ground is starting to dry out; and there are a range of indications that an offensive may start soon. Some are small and almost un-reported; others are large and well-publicised. Regardless, there is an air of expectation; a sense that something is coming and that it will be big. A clever Ukrainian information operation? Or; are we seeing signs that Ukraine is getting ready to punch back? And; would a successful Ukrainian attack be enough to stop the war?
Recently, several key indicators of a Ukrainian offensive have been observed, starting with reports two weeks ago that the number of Russian electronic surveillance and radar systems destroyed by Ukraine is increasing. This is a good indication that something is in the wind. Any military relies on networks of electronic surveillance systems; radar sweeps the air and ground across any battlespace. Air-defence radars track planes moving over the battle, monitoring friendly aircraft and targeting enemy aircraft. On the ground, artillery locating radars spot enemy shells and missiles in the air and locate where they were fired from and ground surveillance radars sweep the frontlines monitoring the location of enemy vehicles and foot soldiers.
The remainder of the electromagnetic spectrum is monitored; signals intelligence units listening to enemy radio and digital transmissions gathering information and locating where the transmission comes from. Electronic surveillance gives good information about enemy force locations and intentions. Disrupting or destroying these assets makes any operation easier.
In August 2022, the United States confirmed that it supplied AGM – 88 High Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM) to Ukraine. So, Ukraine certainly has the capability to target Russia’s electronic warfare network, and if the increase in destroyed Russian equipment reported by Ukraine is real it could be part of a preparatory operation.
Last week, we also started to see plenty of carefully scripted social media posts showing movements of Ukrainian troops and equipment. Carefully, curated to demonstrate Ukrainian strength but to provide little or no indication of their location. An indication that these images are more than a bluff is that ‘tac signs;’ simple logos like Russia’s ‘Z’ are painted on the vehicles. Tac signs provide an easy way to identify friendly vehicles and are normally painted shortly before an operation. Further, this week Germany and Poland signed maintenance agreements with Ukraine for Leopard tanks establishing a logistics pipeline for repairing and supporting these tanks.
Then in recent days there are reports of increased Ukrainian reconnaissance activity in two key areas. In the north-east, around Kremina and Svatove; and unsurprisingly along the Zaporizhian frontlines. This activity is another indicator consistent with an imminent offensive, Ukraine testing Russian defences and looking for weak points. Reports of Ukrainian villages being forcibly evacuated in the area north of Melitopol are also circulating, another action consistent with both sides preparing for battle. The Russians removing potential partisans and spies from the area.
And; on 21 April at NATO’s Ramstein conference Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was asked about Ukraine’s potential for success and said “I’m confident that they will now be in a position to be able to liberate even more land. One of the main issues here today has been to go through all the different capabilities, systems, supplies that the Ukrainians need to be able to retake more land”.
Unfortunately, this activity does not confirm that an attack is imminent; or provide an indication of exactly where the blow will fall. However, I think that we can safely say that an attack is coming. In previous articles I have stated that the main effort of the offensive will be to split the Crimean Land Bridge. It may start with a feint elsewhere, but a successful push south from Zaporizhia to the sea isolating Crimea provides Ukraine with its best opportunity to finish the war. It is a fact that wars seldom end with the total defeat of one side. In most cases wars finish because the cost of continuing the conflict is too great and the protagonists agree to negotiate. The truth about this offensive is that is not about destroying Russia’s army and finishing the war, but rather about creating the conditions for a negotiated peace.
In this case, Russia has continued past the point of sensible negotiation. Prigozhin is right, if Russia wants to salvage anything from this conflict, it needs to stop throwing resources away trying to attack and get ready to hold what they have taken. In fact, there are several points in the war that they could have taken this option and retained more territory. Imagine if Russia had started negotiations in August 2022, before the Kharkiv offensive. The Russia could potentially have stalled Ukraine’s capability build-up, absorbed its newly mobilised conscripts and planned an effective offensive.
Instead, military logic ‘flew out the window’ and campaign decisions were driven by Putin’s ‘personal good’ rather than by Russia’s ‘public good.’ Putin needs a victory; and is a gambler so he will keep on ‘throwing the dice’ until someone stops him. And; this consideration is at the heart of Ukrainian strategy and likely drives this offensive’s objectives. The offensive doesn’t need to remove every Russian soldier from Ukraine to defeat Putin. It only needs to demonstrate to the people around Putin that Ukraine has the capability to inflict a catastrophic defeat on Russia.
If Ukraine breaks the Crimean Land Bridge and isolates Crimea, then land resupply will be impossible; and worse the Kerch Bridge will be within missile range. Crimea will become an island isolated; able to be slowly starved into submission by Ukraine. At that point, the silovaki (strong men) who support Putin within Russia; and China will need to decide: Are they willing to escalate into a nuclear war to fight for Crimea? Or; is it more sensible to negotiate and try to hold Crimea in a negotiated peace?
The offensive is likely to start slowly, like we saw in August last year when Ukraine started probing and advancing slowly east of the Dnipro advancing on Kherson. The Ukrainians slowly felt out the Russian defences, cut off their supply lines and eventually isolated Kherson forcing a withdrawal. Then as attention was focussed on Kherson, they switched and attacked from Kharkiv. It is likely that this is how Ukraine’s current offensive will start because Ukraine does not have an air and artillery firepower advantage; so it can’t overwhelm the Russian’s defences with sheer firepower. Instead, we are likely to see precision guided depth fire. HIMARS knocking out supply hubs and concentrations of reserves. Ukraine also lacks numbers so it can’t afford to risk resources in poorly planned attacks. Expect widespread and persistent reconnaissance that’s tempo builds over time probably culminating in an axis of attack that is unexpected. Finally, the south is now well-fortified so progress is likely to be careful and slow as Ukraine uses combined arms war fighting techniques to breech Russia’s defensive lines.
Overall, expect a slow and steady offensive the Ukrainian’s protecting their assets and manpower. This caution will lead to a slowly developing battle and the following four scenarios may develop:
- Russian defences hold. Russian soldiers on the frontline repel the Ukrainian offensive and there is no significant territorial change.
- Ukraine’s gains are limited. Perhaps they push forwards 10-20 km on a frontage of 25-50km, capture some villages or small towns but fail to reach the coast in the south or capture Starobilsk, about 60 km west of their current line in the north.
- The Russians suffer a significant defeat in an area. Ukraine breeches Russian defences either in the south or in the north. A significant defeat for Russia would be Ukraine reaching the coast in the south, or capturing Starobilsk in the north, or a major town in the east. A sudden advance of 60-80km on a frontage of 25-50km.
- Russian collapse. After Ukraine breeches the Russian defensive lines their morale collapses and there is a large retreat. For instance, the Russians located on the Black Sea coast fail and withdraw east to Donetsk and south to Crimea. Or in the north, they vacate Luhansk withdrawing north and east into Russia and south into Donetsk.
I weigh training and morale higher than numbers and believe in the superiority of NATO equipment. Leopard tanks handled by motivated crews will inflict significant casualties on Russia’s un-motivated tankers. And; Ukraine has also received approximately 1500 NATO mechanised infantry combat vehicles Marders, Bradleys and others and these vehicles are much more effective than their Russian equivalents. Currently, in Bakhmut Ukraine is inflicting five casualties on Russia for every Ukrainian killed. This is during an infantry battle that does not include the significant advantages that come with modern NATO tanks and combat vehicles, that are a generation or two ahead of their enemy’s. When this is factored into combat situation it likely that we will seem much higher ratios. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that Russia’s defences will hold.
Instead, it seems more likely that Ukraine will be able to breech Russia’s defensive lines. And; this is where Ukraine’s reserves and local ‘over match’ comes into play. In very simplistic terms; if Ukraine has 70-100,000 soldiers that can be deployed in the offensive; and they attack one axis it is likely to be an overwhelming force. Russia may have 400,000 men in Ukraine but they are covering a frontline that is about 650km long. This is 615 soldiers per kilometre of frontline, so if the Ukrainians concentrate and attack on a divisional frontage of 25-50 kilometres then in that section of front, they would meet 15-30,000 Russians; or have an advantage of three to one. The traditional ratio required for a successful attack. Of course, this is a vast over simplification of the actual intricacies of the offensive phase of war but hopefully demonstrates how reserves can be used to achieve local over match even when an attacking forces overall strength is less than its enemy’s.
The breech will take time to develop; and the crucial information is how many losses the Russians can inflict during this phase. If Ukraine applies the principles of combined arms operations effectively and limits its losses then the next phase will be exciting. The Ukrainians now free to advance quickly behind Russia’s frontline seeking to gain as much territory as possible before Russian reserves arrive and contain the offensive. If the breeching operation is punishing and Ukraine takes lots of casualties it will not be able to exploit its position and the offensive will culminate in the second option, a limited success.
However, my assessment is that there is a good chance that Ukraine has learnt the lessons of combined arms war and will breech the frontline with relatively limited losses. This will open the opportunity for a fast-moving advance and for Ukraine to achieve a significant success. If the front line is breeched; Russia faces two problems that require capabilities that to-date they have not demonstrated. First, they need frontline junior leadership able to rally their forces and quickly re-organise new defensive lines. Secondly, they need massive logistics capability to move reserves to the area and limit Ukrainian success.
In summary, Ukraine doesn’t need to take Crimea to win. Instead, it needs to demonstrate sufficient success that Russia’s elite and foreign supporters can see the country is progressing towards a potentially catastrophic defeat. A defeat that is intolerable and requires them to manage Putin; and force a change of strategy. And; Ukraine’s training, motivation and new NATO equipment completely outclass their opposition so we should be hopeful of a significant victory.
Ben Morgan is a bored Gen Xer and TDBs military blogger
Thanks Ben!
If I was the praying sort, I would be praying for a quick defeat of Russia.
Also hoping that this offensive is a success for the Ukrainians and this war can end asap for everyone’s sake.
Cut off the land bridge and the sea bridge and wait for their surrender.
Retain the Kerch sea bridge there so they can leave. They’ll want to leave on account of all the Ukrainians pissing in their drinking water supply.
Yes bridges are incredibly hard to drop when defended.
Same here.
Interesting motivation test for Russia. Will their enlisted succumb to Ukraines? We shall see.
Pure fantasy, meanwhile people die.
Hi Ivan
Ted Heath, wasn’t t he a kiddy fiddler?
Don’t invade Ukraine then.
That’s quite an anti-Russia circlejerk above in the coments. Does it cause blindness?
Some people seem to have a one eyed blindness to Putin’s imperialist and colonialist ambitions.
https://sofrep.com/news/russian-military-expands-in-africa-by-building-bases-in-six-countries/
Correction Seer, most here are not anti-Russia, they are anti-Putin and his siloviki. I am pro-Russia like Navalny,Khodorkovsky, Kasparov. We just want a better Russia – without Putin and his cronies.
Yous want a Russia split up, emasculated and sold off.
80% of Russians support Putin and his “siloviki” – suck on that Gadfly.
80% of Russians do not support Putin. Because Russia does not have free speech, political polls mean very little. You really are so gullible Seer and shame on you for supporting a totalitarian regime which crushes its opposition.
the truth is ben you and the TDB armchair generals know nothing about the reality of the situation just the propaganda both sides spew, then you choose the tidbits that suit your ‘position’
The reality of the situation is beyond you Ivan, the Ukrainians are going fight till they get their territory back.
ohhh ivan, I’m cut to the quick by your rapier like wit teddy boy..can I call you a nazi now…is that the rules we’re playing?
oh yea and as a side bar point out how I;m wrong about the TDB gravey SEALS?
It seems a realistic analysis to me. Within two months we will likely have a strong idea on which of the four outlined scenarios was most realistic. The Putin apologists on the net are stronger there than the Russian army and their proxies are on the ground with their high cost minimal successes of late. These freedom haters will be really pissed to have a strong freedom loving European oriented, free market Ukraine on their doorstep in a few years time that is part of NATO. One question I have for them is why the former USSR “states” and countries that were once occupied by the soviets are so staunchly opposed to returning to Russian domination? (If they had experienced good things under the Soviets they would not be so so resistant to a return to the old ways of Soviet rule)
Fair comment Trev. The Baltic states requested to join NATO as have Moldova and Ukraine following all of the Warsaw Pact nations. And why is that? Because the embrace of the bear is toxic especially when Putin is in power.
and didn’t the TDB blog ‘experts’ say the russkies were running out of tanks 3 months ago, and before you say it the ukrainians are mobilising old tanks too.
I was thinking about a couple of Ukraine things ……
Boots on the ground’ is Backwards Bollocks ….. a grunt on the ground is worth bugger all ….. A Vital part of modern warfare is done sitting down,,,
And the number of NATO Bums on Seats involved in fighting Russia ,,, makes a mockery of ”we are not involved”,, based on where some boots are plonked –
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/all-seeing-eye-can-russia-break-through?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
“The totality of the NATO and ‘Five Eyes’ infrastructure is being utilized 24/7 as a sort of vast rear-end cloud-service and mega-processing/computational-cycle capacity for Ukraine’s frontline forces. Hundreds of satellites, including dozens of imaging ones with 5cm/pixel resolution, skim every inch and quarter of Russian territory, searching for actionable hidden targets.” ,,,,,,,
”We’ve got a glimpse of this months ago when documents were leaked which demonstrated the exact work-flow by which this NATO/Five Eyes superstructure identifies and transmits the positions of every imaginable Russian unit, down to the barest granularity. It showed papers typed up by the army of analysts poring over the satellite cluster footage, which have endless lists of high-value Russian targets, catalogued, categorized, etc., with their exact coordinates and associated reference photos. “
“And of course this is not to even mention the fleet of AWACs that collect radar data around the clock from the Polish and Romanian airspace, RQ-4 Global Hawks, with their SAR radars that photograph Crimea daily from the Black Sea, the OTH shortwave radars likely doing early warning detection on Russia’s airforce flights from thousands of kilometers away, and more” ,,,,,
,,,,”This CNN report also featured NATO personnel admitting that target data from their AWACs is passed immediately to the AFU: https://www.bitchute.com/video/hhUUBaCbuFCm/”.
“Boots on the Ground” is actually the LAST and least important step in NATOs involvement, fighting this war against Russia ,,,, all it would change is the personnel/human resources using NATO weapons against NATO supplied targets.,,,, and without the latter two you’ve got just about nothing.
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The other Ukraine thing on my mind relates to the saying,,,,, ‘you get the face you deserve (and body) when you hit 50years or over,,,,,, and Victoria Nulands degeneration …..
Look at the state of her ,,,, https://d2v9ipibika81v.cloudfront.net/uploads/sites/138/auto-draft-19-1140×684.jpg ,,, That’s a Stephen King level scary Cookie Monster face, one that’d give Russian children nightmares,,, and me.
But I ask ,,,,, is her husband as angry as she must be ? ,,,,,
…. One morning after opening his eyes and grimacing, did he groan ,,,, ‘awww fuck it, some thing are worse than Nuclear war,,, lets be done with everything and attack Russia,,, ..?.
….. Or perhaps I could be totally wrong about him wanting to suicide by Nukes.,,, He might love Cookie because her face is harder than a Russian shovel,,,,
and she knows he’s a genius with huge plans, that we’re following ,, https://assets3.thrillist.com/v1/image/1791937/1584×1056/crop;jpeg_quality=60;progressive.jpg
Cookie M Nuland and the Kagan Clown,,,, stars in the Ukraine Circus production since before 2014.
It’s always America with you Putinists. For the last time Maidan was not a US led coup! Keep deluding yourself B. Awakesky but the history books will prove otherwise.
It’s not America – it’s the US and more specifically, it’s the piece of shit neocons.
https://d2v9ipibika81v.cloudfront.net/uploads/sites/138/auto-draft-19-1140×684.jpg
Hi PhuD it’s always you Banderite neo Nazis… No? OK… It’s always you neocon US imperialists…
Go and read Timothy Snyder’s ‘The Road to Unfreedom’ where he has an excellent definition of what he calls: schizofascism. P. 148 ‘…a new variety of fascism, which could be called schizofascists: actual fascists calling their opponents fascists.
You Nick J are a schizofascist – an extremist.
You just defined yourself as an idiot PhuD. Good work, carry on.
And you are a moron Nick J.
“Boots on the ground’ is Backwards Bollocks ….. a grunt on the ground is worth bugger all”
Complete military ignorance on display there, and it is the exact ignorance displayed by Russia’s military and their bumbling disaster of an invasion. This is the exact reason their armour is getting picked off by man portable antitank missiles (and they still have no air superiority) – a complete inability to operate a combined arms system with mechanised infantry supporting the armour.
So at what point does Russia get fed up with fighting ukraine and nato with one hand tied behind their back? A tactical nuke or two would sort out those fancy weapons the us is giving them, then things get real scary. Bad craziness.
it’s boots on the ground that bring pollies to the conference table…taking ground is piss easy holding it is the problem
This commentary is just so typical of what is being present in the name of “analysis” these days. These “analyses,” on all sides, seem to rely on wishful thinking, biased narratives and motivated propaganda. Morgans’ statement ” Imagine if Russia had started negotiations in August 2022, before the Kharkiv offensive” is an example. It ignores completely the fact of earlier negotiations which were torpedoed by NATO pressure and then subsequent Ukrainian refusal to negotiate.
It is so hard to get proper information on this war. But a source I can recommend is Dmitri’s Military Summary Youtube channel – https://www.youtube.com/@militarysummary
He reports twice daily at the moment. His reports are the best I have seen, although he, like others, is prone to make predictions which don’t always happen. His reports are always more detailed than similar channels.
In case you didn’t notice Ken, Ben is trying to analyse a war. The fog of war applies – no one can be totally accurate. Be realistic.
Bit afraid of the psychology of Russia these days. If the Americans can half destroy their country over psychology and Germany could destroy their country over it it’s a danger. To rely on the deeply regressive state of mind of Russia for the future of the world is nothing I’d do.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/300865236/whisper-it-but-ukraine-may-no-longer-be-winning
The article was originally published in the Telegraph and I guess the writer is the UK former Colonel that comes up when searching his name.
If Hitler had nuclear weaponry –the prob with dictators –he would have sent it. This prick has no reason to disassociate between hisself and Russia. Twenty years of blandishing himself.