Ukraine’s counter-offensive against Russia: what you need to know

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By Webdesk


Kyiv, Ukraine – As spring kicks off in Ukraine, there is an ominous lull in battlefield hostilities in the war Russia started last year.

Moscow’s winter offensive never quite materialized despite the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of mostly untrained men. Many were shipped straight to the front lines to be killed in what survivors called “cannon fodder storms.”

With the imprisonment of critics and an American journalist, the Kremlin appears to have won more victories against dissent and fractured domestic opposition than in Ukraine, while Russian troops made little progress in the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut.

At the same time, Ukraine has not gained ground in the southern Kherson region or the eastern Kharkov region in the months since Russia withdrew from key areas there.

As the spring rains turn the soil into mud impassable to troops and heavy weapons, Ukraine is gathering fresh troops trained to use new Western weapons, and the long-promised counter-offensive seems imminent.

“We are confident that the counter-offensive will take place in the near future,” Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said last week. “The US absolutely supports us.”

But where and how will it start?

A Western military analyst said he thinks Ukraine has enough manpower and equipment to pull the strings.

“Whenever they choose to launch their counteroffensive, they will have enough trained and equipped manpower,” retired US Army Major General Gordon Skip Davis told Al Jazeera.

Kiev’s one major drawback, a dire shortage of air forces, could be offset by improved air defense capabilities, he said, and US-made Patriot air defense systems arrived in Ukraine on Wednesday.

‘The counter-offensive will be a boost’

What is much more important is that Kiev can exploit the low morale of the Russian armed forces and their shortage of weapons and ammunition.

“They have a pretty good sense of Russia’s concerns and are likely to cast their fears in their favor,” said Davis, who visited Ukraine regularly from 2014 to 2019 and met with its leaders and top executives.

Ukraine also needs a triumph or two to secure the continued supply of Western military and financial aid as Western public support for its cause wanes.

“The counter-offensive will be a boost to all political leaders who support Ukraine and say this is the sacrifice we must make to keep Ukraine free,” Davis said.

The current crescent-shaped front line stretching from eastern to southern Ukraine is hundreds of kilometers long, so Kiev will have to choose carefully where to counterattack first.

“I don’t think they’re going to use two lines of attack,” Davis said. “They will only use one large concentrated area.”INTERACTIVE - WHO CONTROLS WHAT IN UKRAINE

One of the most viable options for Ukraine is to dissect the land bridge Russia made to the Crimean peninsula when it conquered large parts of southeastern Ukraine at the beginning of the war. This land bridge spans separatist-controlled parts of the eastern region of Donbas, as well as Mariupol and Berdiansk, both cities on the Sea of ​​Azov.

But a threat to Crimea could lead to further escalation, as Putin views the annexed peninsula as a jewel in his crown.

Another option is attacking separatist-held areas in the east that are “least prepared in terms of defense and depth,” Davis said.

However, many of those who remain there have staunchly opposed Kiev since 2014, thanks in large part to the dominance of Russia’s state-controlled media and economic isolation that has left poor separatist states completely dependent on Moscow, he said.

According to another analyst, the most publicly anticipated attack is one southwards, towards the Russian-occupied cities of Mariupol and Berdiansk and the Crimean isthmus. It could start in early May.

“It seems to be the shortest and surest way to a successful offensive operation,” Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany’s University of Bremen told Al Jazeera.

To divert attention from Moscow and disperse Russian reserves, Kiev has indicated its willingness to attack in other directions.

One of these signals is the decision by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in mid-April to appoint new heads of government in the Russian-occupied cities in the Luhansk region.

However, the map is full of hotspots where counterattacks are widely expected, Mitrokhin said.

They include the eastern cities of Svatovo and Kreminna, any location in the southern region of Zaporizhia, and the delta of the Dnipro River (called the Dnieper River in Russia) south of the city of Kherson.

“But of all, strategic objectives can only be achieved by the [eastern] Lysychansk-Severodonetsk conurbation, an attack on the Zaporizhia front towards Mariupol and the crossing of the Dnieper as a supporting blow,” Mitrokhin said.

“Ukraine must break up southern positions of Russia”

Ukraine’s chief war analyst says an attack between the eastern cities of Severodonetsk and Kreminna could be crucial in reversing the Russian push to seize the entire Donbas region.

“If we act there, the enemy should leave Bakhmut,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of the Ukrainian army’s general staff, told Al Jazeera.

A push south could be more difficult, but could herald the gradual liberation of Crimea, he said.

Russia’s positions in the south “have been strengthened and Ukraine needs to break them up to reach the Crimean peninsula and turn it into an island in terms of logistical supply,” Romanenko said.

In recent months, Kiev has intensified its drone and artillery attacks on Russia’s western regions bordering Ukraine.

An invasion of these regions, especially Bryansk, could distract much of Russia’s armed forces and create panic among average Russians, Romanenko said.

But the West objects to such a bold move.

“It would be rational, but there is a military-political aspect,” Romanenko said.

Western allies do not want Kiev to enter Russia proper to prevent further escalation and prevent Moscow’s use of nuclear weapons.

Ukraine is too dependent on Western supplies to ignore these fears, he said.

Meanwhile, Moscow’s current goals differ radically from initial calculations.

The Kremlin failed to realize its plans to take Kiev and overthrow Zelensky’s government within days of launching the invasion.

It learned the hard way how poor its decision-making was based on outdated Soviet-era stratagems, supply logistics, and battlefield coordination.

Today, the Kremlin wants nothing more than to buy time.

“For Russia, it is important to freeze the conflict, get a better grip on the occupied territories, rebuild the economy,” as Iran has adjusted its economy under Western sanctions, Kiev-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera .

Moscow wants to “bleed Ukraine dry with the risk of a resumption of war that would scare off investors and drive people to flee. And then to attack again,” he said.



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