The Obstacles to a Ukrainian Counteroffensive in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts?
Part II. Introduce the Spread Offense with Plenty of Misdirection
2. Solutions
The title of Part II uses an American gridiron football analogy, referring to the spread offense, which “spreads” out the defense in width as well as in depth, making it susceptible to misdirection, leaving the quarterback with the discretion to run or pass from a multitude of directions.
a. Dispersion
The prevailing trend of near instantaneous artillery fire that rains down on a concentration of vehicles or infantry after they have been spotted by a drone has forced both sides to disperse their forces both in width and in depth. This method reduces casualties but waters down the offensive punch of the attacker, who is unable to exploit a successful local attack with sufficient follow-on forces and supplies, because these can be spotted and hit by artillery or MLRS up to 80 kilometers behind the front lines. Moreover, dispersion creates difficulties for the command-and-control of large attacking forces, especially if they are expected to pass through friendly forces at the forward edge of the battle area and move towards objectives some distance in the enemy’s rear. Finally, long-range artillery support for an attack in depth needs to be arranged in advance. A free-wheeling attack dependent on the whim of a junior commander that goes off-script makes it more difficult to support with artillery.
The Ukrainians have attempted to solve this problem with the above-described creeping offensive, which they first developed in 2016 while engaged in local skirmishes with the DNR separatists in the Donbas. The fighting in the Donbas shows that the Russian army has adopted similar tactics and attempts to bite off small chunks of territory in its offensives, which it consolidates before moving on to the next objective. The only difference is that the Russians focus on a narrow front instead of a broad one and use overwhelming artillery fire to obliterate any urban structures that offer cover for their adversary. They then throw infantry forward, come what may. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians need to be more efficient with their dwindling supply of ammunition and more protective of their personnel. Hence, the creeping offensive on a broad front.
While modern war imposes dispersion upon an attacker as a matter of necessity, the depth of the defensive belt that must be breached before reaching Kherson and/or Melitopil counsels against the use of the creeping attack as the sole principle of offensive action, due to the duration during which the attacking force will be exposed to enemy artillery fire. After all, Melitopil is located 100 kilometers directly south of Vasylivka and will need to be captured in sequenced phases, instead of one fell swoop. (See map) Kherson, on the other hand, will probably require siege operations, which will force the Ukrainians to engage in static warfare, which will also expose them to concentrated artillery fire. Therefore, other preconditions need to be met before a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the South improves its prospects for success. Regardless, the Ukrainian General Staff will have to disperse its attacking columns along the entirety of the frontage of its offensives at regular intervals, with each column acting independently of each other, containing its own reserves and logistics that are spread out in depth behind the front line, if it hopes to sustain a deep offensive. In other words, dispersion in one form or another is a precondition of any offensive action in Ukraine.
b. Attrition and Misdirection on Multiple Fronts
Rather than simple dispersion on a single front, the answer to a successful attack into the enemy rear may be found at the operational level. After the enemy is worn down by attrition on several fronts by concurrent or successive offensives, the defender is forced to shift reserves and resources from a less threatened front to another that is under severe duress, before the decisive blow is delivered onto the weakened front. This is the operational method applied during the final months of WWI, where alternating Allied offensives in different sectors of the Western Front gradually overwhelmed the German ability to transport sufficient reserves over lateral rail lines to a threatened sector, causing Field Marshal Erik von Ludendorff to seek an armistice. Perhaps no better illustration of this method is found in the large, synchronized offensives of the Red Army in 1944, which attrited the German Army to such an extent, that it was unable to shift sufficient reserves from one threatened sector to another. In 1944 this process led to the destruction of Army Group Center and the eventual collapse of the German defense along the entire Eastern Front. A contemporary example of this operational principle may be found in Ukrainian defense operations in the Donbas. By defending obstinately in Luhansk oblast over the preceding months, the Ukrainian army forced the Russians to allocate the bulk of their forces to the assaults on Sevedonetsk and Lysychansk, instead of sending them to the South or towards Kharkiv. Unfortunately, that trend appears to be changing. Within the last week the Russian General Staff has begun to shift BTGs from the Donbas and newly created reserves from Russia to the south of Ukraine, to preserve its gains in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. The Ukrainians will have to adopt a more subtle approach to outwit their adversaries into weakening a front sufficiently for a Ukrainian offensive to penetrate the forward edge of the battlefield into the Russian rear.
Please recall that the Ukrainian army is currently conducting not only the two creeping counteroffensives on both sides of the Dnieper River, but also pressing towards the Russian border north of Kharkiv. Furthermore, Ukrainian airborne and spetsnaz are engaged in a smaller counteroffensive in the forests west of Izyum. By pursuing counteroffensives along all four fronts simultaneously or staggering them for desired effect, in combination with a stubborn defense of the Siversk-Soledar-Bakhmut defensive line in the Donbas, the Ukrainian army may be able to force the Russians to siphon away enough BTGs and artillery from one front to make it susceptible to collapse.
The front that holds the greatest prospects for a strategic breakthrough is the one in Zaporozhzhia oblast. Although, Ukrainian forces are as close as 20 kilometers away from Kherson in places, the Russians are expected to put up a stiff fight for the city, as well as for the river crossing in nearby Nova Kakhovka. The closer the Ukrainians approach the Dnieper, the less room they will have for maneuver. Without room for maneuver, the Ukrainians will be forced into costly and lengthy siege operations before they can take Kherson, not unlike those conducted by the Russians in Mariupil earlier in the war. In the process, the Ukrainians may have to destroy the city to take it. Zaporizhzhia, on the other hand, offers infinitely more space for maneuver, especially, if the Russians are forced to siphon BTGs and artillery away from this area to reinforce the front around Kherson. A successful breakthrough of the forward edge of the battle area on multiple points would permit the Ukrainians to begin the second stage of the offensive towards the rail line between Volnovakha and Novobohdanivka. (See map) Once there, the Ukrainians would have to consolidate their gains against potential counterattacks from the east bank of the Dnieper, Crimea and Donetsk oblast, before beginning the third stage of the offensive towards Melitopil, Nova Kakhovka and Berdiansk. Melitopil is strategically the most influential transportation hub in southern Ukraine. It controls all major railroad and road arteries heading towards Kherson in the west and the isthmuses to Crimea in the south. Ukrainian control over Melitopil would sever the land bridge between Russia and Crimea.
Recent reports indicate that multiple columns of Russian armor and artillery were observed driving through Melitopil towards the Dnieper River and presumably on to Kherson. Apparently, the gradual pressure on Kherson is forcing the Russian General Staff to reinforce it at the expense of other fronts. It appears that some of these reinforcements were stripped from the Zaporizhzhia front. These are being replaced by refurbished second-rate BTGs from Russia, that were glued together from formations that were broken by previous fighting and then filled out by personnel recently enticed into Russian service on short-term contracts at higher pay. Additionally, battalions of conscripts from the DNR/LNR are also being rushed to the area. Of course, the Ukrainians would need to increase the pressure on Kherson to persuade the Russians to strip even more of their BTGs and artillery away from the Zaporizhzhia front and onto the west bank of the Dnieper. If the Ukrainian General Staff can relocate some of its better mechanized and air assault brigades to the Zaporizhzhia front and then disperse them in reserve of the breaching units, they may have the combat power to exploit the breakthrough of the weakened Russian defenses to an operational depth.
c. Synchronization and Sequencing from Above
It is easy to argue that, given the lethal nature of today’s transparent conventional battle, dispersion of forces should also reflect command structures which are decentralized, with initiative delegated to junior officers to adroitly respond to changing conditions. In fact, military pundits in the West have given the Ukrainian commanders at the junior and company level high marks for the decentralized style of command that they exhibited during the defensive battles against advancing Russian columns during the defense of Kyiv.[1] Nevertheless, these will have to be modified, if Ukraine is to launch a deep offensive to recapture Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in their article “Ukraine at War. Paving the Road from Survival to Victory,” describe their observations of the Ukrainian army during the early phase of the war. They found that the general mobilization of Ukrainian reserves for war brought together people from diverse social strata with a wide range of technical expertise. This phenomenon optimally democratized the army for effective mission command at the lower level.[2] For example, they describe a platoon planning a hasty counterattack through a “council of war” between the regular army junior lieutenant and platoon sergeant, on the one hand, and several respected enlisted with technical and management experience in civilian life, on the other. Such an approach resulted in a creative tactical solution that was highly effective because it was unconventional.[3]
Nonetheless, Watling and Reynolds have their doubts whether these tendencies will prove equally effective on offense. Such an approach may be effective in organizing quick local counterattacks up to company level while on defense. It may even pay dividends in planning a break-through of enemy positions at the forward edge of the battle area in positional war, where a local company commander is given the leeway to plan a breach of forward defenses based on a collaborative approach with his subordinates. But decentralized control detracts from an attack in depth that depends on the coordination of multiple layers of follow-on forces, logistics and supporting arms that are expected to gain the opponent’s rear. As a point of reference, Melitopil is located 100 kilometers south of Vasylivka. Thus, the timetable and movement of follow-on forces, their logistics and long-range artillery and tactical air support for a deep offensive need to be arranged in advance from above.
A free-wheeling attack that is dependent on the whim of a junior commander in the second phase of an offensive that goes off-script makes it very difficult to support with artillery and supplies and eventually results in friction that brings the offensive to a halt. This is the domain of an experienced and smooth functioning staff, that needs to synchronize the movement and support of units in the attack. According to Watling and Reynolds, such staff work will have to impose its will at battalion level and above. Unfortunately, only a few of the better Ukrainian brigades possess such experience. Watling and Reynolds had the opportunity to observe the brigade staff of the 95th air assault brigade in action during defensive operations west of Kyiv, where not only regular battalions but newly raised battalions of the territorial defense were subordinated to its command. Alas, only a handful of Ukrainian brigade staffs meet this standard of excellence. More such staffs will have to be trained, if a large Ukrainian offensive is to exploit the initial breakthrough of the forward edge of the battle area. It is a significant setback for the Ukrainians that on July 23 the command component of the 28th mechanized brigade was killed by a rocket strike, including the brigade commander, colonel Vitaliy Huliayev. Such experience is difficult to replace and will result in a diminished competency in commanding the offensive towards Kherson.
In conclusion, while the Ukrainians have proved to be masterful counterpunchers on defense, time will tell whether they can reach similar levels of competence on offense. It is true that they have achieved modest success using creeping offensives towards Kherson, along the Zaporizhzhia front and during their offensive north of Kharkiv towards the Russian border. However, success in the South will depend on the synchronization and sequencing of movement and fire through operational plans disseminated from above at the operational group level (division sized) and the operational-strategic group level (corps level).
It is unclear whether the Ukrainian army will be able to impose the necessary institutional structure or absorb the habits and procedures that will enable a multi-phased offensive into the depth of the Russian rear on either the Kherson or Zaporizhzhia fronts. During the previously mentioned podcast with Dmitri Alperovitch and Michael Kofman, colonel Serhii Hrabsky mentioned that the Ukrainian army never rehearsed such large, combined arms operations prior to the war. But if the Ukrainians are to bring this war to a satisfactory strategic conclusion before Putin coerces the world to impose a peace that leaves Ukraine a rump state, they must succeed.
d. Local Artillery Superiority in Both the Close and Deep Battle
One of the most important consequences of a successful misdirection on one front at the expense of another is to force the Russians to shift not only infantry and tank BTGs but also artillery batteries. It is essential that the Ukrainians achieve superiority in firepower over those areas of the forward edge of the battle area that are intended for breaching operations. This not only means that Russian artillery must be removed beyond its maximum range but also that superior numbers of Ukrainian artillery be moved within range. Superiority need not be achieved solely through the number of gun barrels or rocket tubes, but also through indirect methods, like the destruction of supply dumps and the electronic disruption of Russian communications between observation drones and fire control centers. Good intelligence combined with competent staff work are prerequisites to achieving this end.
A similar effect is necessary at the operational range beyond 80 kilometers. Timely satellite imagery from allies and prolific long range drone surveillance will need to be mustered in the sectors anticipating follow-on attacks to assure that Russian reserves are targeted by HIMARS and long-range artillery before they can concentrate to counterattack Ukrainian forces that are gaining the enemy rear. Similarly, deep concentrations of Russian logistics require constant attention, to further “corrode” the ability of the Russian army to respond to Ukrainian initiatives.
e. Anti-Air Defense Umbrella
The one branch of Ukrainian armed forces that has benefitted most from operations on the west bank of the Dnieper River has been the air force. With Ukrainian anti-air missile defense systems located further back from the front lines in the interior of Ukraine, yet still within range of the battle space, Ukrainian SU-25 attack planes have been able to conduct close air support missions over the Kherson front, without as much interference from Russian fighters or missiles as on other more contested fronts. However, if the Ukrainians are to launch a decisive offensive on the east bank of the Dnieper, more of the Ukrainian S-300 and Buk anti-air batteries shall have to concentrate along the Zaporizhia front, thereby exposing themselves to Russian air attack and long-range missiles. Regardless, the Ukrainians antiair systems will not only have to shield the sky against Russian airpower but also aid in the suppression of Russian drone overflights at altitude. Blinding Russian surveillance at both the tactical and operational levels shall be crucial to any Ukrainian exploitation of a breakthrough along the Zaporizhzia front.
f. Elite Mechanized and Air Assault Brigades in the Exploitation and Pursuit Stages
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a Ukrainian counteroffensive is the lack of well-trained mechanized forces that can be trusted to exploit a breakthrough of the Russian defense belts. The intensity of the fighting over the last five months has severely attritted the cadre of Ukraine’s pre-war regular brigades. Much depends on the training of 10,000 new Ukrainian recruits that were sent to Great Britain to benefit from world-class British instruction and the safe haven of training facilities far from the fighting.
At the outset of the war, the Ukrainian General Staff located some of its most experienced regular mechanized and armored brigades in the Donbas. These included the 24th and the 30th mechanized brigades and one battalion apiece from the 93d mechanized and 17th tank brigades. Ukrainian staff officers anticipated that the Russian army would make its main effort in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts and realized that only the most experienced troops would be able to withstand the expected onslaught of enemy armor with its intense artillery and air support. Moreover, the mechanized battalions were outfitted with the more modern BMP-2 armored fighting vehicles, which are designed to provide better armored protection from artillery shrapnel during the movement of infantry to the battle area. The battalions of the territorial defense and the national guard, which were sent to the Donbas to augment the regular brigades, were no more than glorified foot infantry in trucks or SUVs. Thus, it was understood that the brunt of enemy attacks was to be absorbed by the regular mechanized battalions, which could engage in counterattacks against enemy incursions at operational-tactical depth of up to ten kilometers, whereas mere foot infantry could only advance a kilometer or two.
Meanwhile the 92nd and 93rd mechanized brigades were tasked with defending Kharkiv, the 72nd mechanized brigade was responsible for Kyiv, the 28th mechanized brigade covered Odessa, the 128th mountain brigade was sent to Melitopil and the 14th mechanized brigade was assigned the border with Belarus. Chernihiv was screened by the 1st tank brigade and two battalions of the 17th tank brigade were held in central reserve.
In light of its pre-war dispositions, it must have come as a complete surprise to the Ukrainian high command when on the first day of the war the Russian General Staff decided to launch a heliborne coup-de-main[4] on Kyiv, followed by a mechanized attack through the Chernobyl restricted zone to reinforce the Russian airborne near the Ukrainian capitol. Nonetheless, the Russians attacked the Donbas, as anticipated, but as a secondary front in the war. When in mid-April the Russian General Staff decided to refocus its primary effort from Kyiv to Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the operations in the Donbas intensified. As a result, Ukrainian forces in this sector were subjected to increased artillery and air bombardment. Consequently, the mechanized brigades in the Donbas received no respite. The 24th mechanized brigade was in constant action from February 28 to June 19, when it had to break out of encirclement near Popasna. Only then was it allowed to move to the rear to rest, regroup and refit. The 30th mechanized brigade had it even worse. It defended the area near Svitlodarsk until late July, when it too had to break out of encirclement and finally received permission to withdraw. Although, not engaged for as long as the 24th or 30th brigades, a battalion of the 128th mountain brigade was heavily engaged at Rubizhne and at Siversk, before it was rotated out of the line. At some point, the mechanized battalion of the 17th tank brigade also rotated out to catch its breath, after heavy fighting in the vicinity of Severdonetsk. These brigades were replaced in the line by newly raised battalions of the territorial defense, foreign volunteer battalions and a few regular brigades, like the 10th mountain and part of the 72nd mechanized brigades, as well as the newly raised reserve 15th mechanized brigade.
By deciding to stake the defense of the Donbas on the resilience of its best mechanized brigades, the Ukrainian General Staff predestined them to severe attrition. The Ukrainian command has been very tight lipped about its own casualties, but we must assume that the regular brigades must have suffered losses of at least 30%. For example, when the 1st mechanized battalion of the 24th brigade broke out near Popasna, it numbered 400 infantry. That is down from the 555 in a peacetime strength mechanized battalion. Moreover, some of these were replacements that made it to the front during the fighting. Actual casualties in dead, wounded and missing must have been higher. Additionally, according to brigadier-general Volodymyr Karpenko, chief of the Ukrainian army’s logistics, as of June 17 losses in heavy equipment reached 50%, particularly in personnel carriers.[5]
Despite its best intentions, the Ukrainian General Staff has been unable to prevent the degradation of the fighting power of its forces in the Donbas, particularly the better mechanized brigades. Given the intense nature of the fighting in this sector, that was to be expected. However, success in any exploitation of a breakthrough of the forward edge of the battle area in the South will depend on the cadres of the older mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian army. Only these have enough experience, corporate knowledge and professional culture to maneuver and communicate laterally during a major offensive, when the Ukrainians have to tackle the second and third line of the Russian defense belts. The 92nd and 93rd mechanized brigades are heavily engaged near Kharkiv and Izyum. So, they are not expected to be available for a counteroffensive in the South. Meanwhile, the 14th and 28th mechanized brigades are already engaged near Kherson. Hence, they are part of the existing array of Ukrainian forces in this sector. The Kherson and Zaporizhzhia front each require a minimum of six refitted mechanized battalions drawn from the 24th, 30th, 72nd mechanized and 128th mountain brigades for a Ukrainian counteroffensive to have any chance of success. That amounts to 12,000 infantry. It is hoped that the 10,000 Ukrainian recruits who are currently being trained in Great Britain will be available to flesh out these brigades. Moreover, the mechanized brigades will have to be resupplied by personnel carriers before they can traverse Russian forward defenses into the enemy rear. These will have to come from Western partners. Ukraine has few remaining Soviet era BMP-1 and BMP-2 armored fighting vehicles.
A similar narrative applies to the elite Ukrainian air-assault brigades. These were placed in reserve on many fronts at the beginning of the war and were forced to act as fire brigades to put out fires when the units on the front line were forced to give way. The 122nd battalion of the 81st air assault brigade has been fighting non-stop south of Izyum since March. Similarly, the 13th battalion of the 95th air assault brigade has fought north of Slovyansk and in the wooded terrain near Bohorodychne and Raihorodok for the last four months. Other elements of the 95th appear to be stationed at Slovyansk and may be expected to defend the city if the Russians reach its outskirts. Similarly, the 1st battalion of the 79th air assault brigade fought on the east bank of the Northern Donetsk River at Lyman and continues to hold the western bank of the river near Yampil. The 1st battalion of the 80th air-assault brigade was instrumental in stopping the Russian assault on Mykolaiv during March but was then relocated to the Donbas to plug holes in the defense of Popasna. It is currently ensconced east of Soledar. At least one more battalion of the 80th brigade has been sent to reinforce the companies of the 81st and 95th brigades near Slovyansk.
If the dual Ukrainian counteroffensives are to exploit a breakthrough of the Russian defense belts arrayed to stop them, they will need to deploy at least six battalions of the above-mentioned air-assault brigades to conduct deep attacks and raids into the enemy rear. Although each air-assault brigade is required to field three battalions under peace-time conditions, it is unclear how many of these have been attrited by the fighting in the Donbas. There may be as many as seven air assault battalions in the Slovyansk area alone. Obviously, most of these are not leaving the front lines anytime soon. The wooded terrain in that sector requires elite infantry to defend against potential crossings of the Northern Donetsk River or attacks along the northeastern approaches to Slovyansk. One is encouraged by the recent video of a newly trained battalion of the 95th air assault brigade taking their oath of service, before shipping off to the front. Moreover, not much has been heard of the 25th airborne brigade over the course of the last several months. There have been reports that a battalion defended Avdiivka earlier in the war and that another battalion may be involved in the fighting in the forests west of Izyum near the river crossing of Protopapivka. However, recently the paratroopers of the 25th brigade do not appear to have been involved in heavy fighting. Thus, one can hope that at least two battalions of of the 25th brigade are available for a counteroffensive.
The next weeks will reveal which elite air assault and airborne battalions the Ukrainian General Staff has been saving for its counteroffensive. The availability of these elite troops is also conditioned by the availability of sufficient armored personnel carriers, to provide them with mobile protection during the maneuver through enemy defenses. The Ukrainian air-assault brigades have been equipped with up-armored HUMVEEs from the U.S. Hopefully, enough of these remain to provide the necessary mobility and protection.
g. Destroyed Bridges, “Poison” Bridges and “Golden” Bridges.
Ukrainian strategy in this war has focused on attacking one of Russia’s major weaknesses, logistics. Russian logistics are overly dependent on railroad lines, which are vulnerable to disruption, particularly if these must pass over strategic bridges. Moreover, the Russian overreliance on massed artillery as a cutting edge at the tactical level is sensitive to the interdiction of the supply of ammunition, which, after all, must arrive to the front by rail. From the very beginning of the war, the Ukrainians have tried to force the Russians to elongate their supply lines, making them susceptible to attack from the flanks. Furthermore, they have taken advantage of the recently supplied long range HIMARS multiple launch rocket system to destroy railroad bridges and supply dumps, to degrade the volume of Russian artillery fire. This has forced the Russians to move their railroad heads further back, further complicating the delivery of ammunition to the front-line by truck, which the Russians have in short supply. Australian major-general Mick Ryan perceptively labeled the Ukrainian effort to paralyze the Russian army through an attack on its logistics as the “strategy of corrosion.”[6]
In pursuit of their strategy on the Kherson front the Ukrainians have been relying on the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system to degrade Russian logistics by striking the strategic bridges over the Dnieper River. They have also taken advantage of the superior range of the HIMARS system (up to 80 kilometers) to hit Russian command centers and supply nodes to stifle Russian command-and-control and to slacken artillery fire in the area. On July 27 HIMARS rockets rendered the Antonivsky bridge across the Dnieper near Kherson unusable by heavy vehicles. They also struck the railroad bridge in the vicinity of the Antonivsky bridge, making it unstable. These attacks forced the Russians to take a circuitous route upstream of an additional 120 kilometers to bring artillery ammunition to Kherson via the bridge and dam further northeast at Nova Kakhovka. However, the bridge at Nova Kakhovka was also hit by HIMARS fire, putting it temporarily out of commission. Similarly, the bridge at Dariivka over the Inhulets has been shelled, partially impeding access to Kherson from the east. The Russians are now relying on ferries and pontoon bridges for resupply, while they attempt to repair the bridges. But the width of the river and the current in this area are presenting challenges.
So far, none of the bridges have been fully destroyed, only made unusable for heavy armor and trucks. There is every expectation that HIMARS is capable of fully destroying the bridges, but the Ukrainians decided not to do so. This begs the question - why? Perhaps these are intended to be “poison” bridges, to entice Russian reinforcements over to the west bank of the Dnieper River, only to be cut off from egress by their later destruction by HIMARS. After all, it has always been the dream of military commanders to cut off a large body of enemy troops on the wrong side of a water obstacle. Whether it was Hannibal trapping the Romans at the Battles of the River Trebia or Lake Trasimene, Helmut von Moltke maneuvering the French army onto the wrong side of the Meuse River at Sedan in 1870 or Arik Sharon cutting off the Egyptian army on the east side of the Suez Canal in 1973, there are many examples from history for contemporary commanders to emulate.
Nonetheless, the Russians are aware of the risk. They too read their military history. Russian calculations must lead them to believe that the 25,000 men on the west bank of the Dnieper will mount an adequate defense of Kherson and Nova Kakhovka. Moreover, they must think that they will be able to resupply these troops, notwithstanding the fire from the HIMARS. Perhaps, they hope to eventually renew their offensive towards Mykolaiv and ultimately, Odessa. In any case, the Russians must be convinced that their artillery on the opposite bank of the Dnieper will be able to attrit Ukrainian forces attacking Kherson, without worrying about interdicted supply lines. Furthermore, the Russian General Staff is concentrating troops on the east bank of the Dnieper south of Zaporizhzhia to counterattack a Ukrainian offensive towards Melitopil.
Perhaps the Ukrainians have other plans for the bridges across the Dnieper? During the 17th century wars of the so-called Age of Reason, there was mention of the concept of the “golden” bridge.[7] The commanders of that age were reluctant to maneuver an opponent into a trap where there was no avenue of escape. This would cause the adversary to fight with added ferocity, expecting no quarter. Conventional wisdom at the time expected a commander to leave his enemy a “golden” bridge to escape annihilation. This would avoid heavy losses on both sides. The preferred resolution of a war was to rely on diplomacy to exploit the commander’s advantageous strategic position as leverage in peace negotiations. Similarly, a Ukrainian counteroffensive towards Kherson and Nova Kakhovka, if pressed with sufficient force, may convince the Russian command to shift enough of their BTGs from the east bank of the Dnieper to the west bank, thereby weakening the Zaporizhzhia front. From there the elite brigades of the Ukrainian army may threaten to gain Melitopil and the isthmuses to Crimea. This would place the Russians in a dilemma. They could either defend Kherson and be cut off from retreat over the Dnieper or save their forces by abandoning Kherson and retreating back onto the opposite bank. After all, “golden” bridges can bear the weight of men and light vehicles but not armor and heavy artillery. The “golden” bridge can provide the Ukrainians an opportunity to rid themselves of the Russians from Kherson without having to fight for it street-by-street. The last thing that the Ukrainian government wants is to transform Kherson into another Mariupil. Better yet, a Russian retreat from Kherson that is negotiated as part of peace settlement after the Russian troops are threatened with encirclement, would humiliate Vladimir Putin even more, leaving the Ukrainian side with the moral advantage.
In summary, dual and mutually supporting Ukrainian counteroffensives on both sides of the Dnieper River, pursued with vigor and synchronized from above, can wait for the Russians to weaken their defenses on one bank sufficiently for the Ukrainians to achieve a breakthrough. The initial gains of the offensive can then be exploited by an advance towards either Kherson or Melitopil, depending on which front is more susceptible to collapse. Subsequently, it may be possible to threaten, if not capture, the Crimean isthmuses at Chonhar and Artiomsk. The Ukrainians may need the Russians to make a mistake for such a counteroffensive to succeed. But in a peer-on-peer war where time is of the essence, that may be the best the Ukrainians can hope for.
[1] Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds. “Ukraine at War: Paving the Road from Survival to Victory.” Special Report, pp. 15-17. RUSI, 4 July 2022.
[2] Mission command is a decentralized process where a superior gives subordinates general directives, allowing the lower officers to exercise initiative in accomplishing their mission. This empowers the junior officers with the flexibility to react to changing conditions at the front, instead of waiting for permission from the top.
[3] It is curious that such a collaborative approach at the tactical level is reflective of the Ukrainian cultural approach to combat during the period of the Revolution and Civil War in 1917-1921. Local bands of irregular “Free Cossacks” (vilni kozatsva) preferred to hold such councils of war in planning an attack. Obviously, such a free-wheeling approach did not endear them to officers of Simon Petliura’s regular Army of the Ukrainian National Republic, who found that the Ukrainian irregulars were selective regarding when to attack and when to abandon the battlefield, in disobedience of orders from the higher command. It is instructive that the successful anarchist commander Nestor Makhno did not tolerate such “discretionary initiative” in his Ukrainian Insurgent Army in 1919-1921. His personal guard, the Black Company (chorna sotnia), had the discretion to impose summary justice on-the-spot against unruly junior commanders to ensure that operational orders were followed.
[4] A French 17th century military term-of-art for an overwhelming surprise attack from all directions, traditionally without a preparatory bombardment.
[5] espresso.tv, 17 June 2022, https://espreso.tv/ukrainski-viyskovi-vpershe-rozpovili-pro-vtrati-tekhniki-u-viyni-z-rosiyeu
[6] Mick Ryan, 1 August 2022,
[7] The origins of the concept of the “golden” bridge can be traced to Sun Tsu’s chapter 7 in the classic The Art of War.