Ukraine Military Situation: 28/29 April 2022 [Expert View]
We publish an expert view of Michael Clarke, who agreed to present us his assessment of the situation of the war in Ukraine. The text will be published in Molfar's daily military analytics on our Medium channel. The text of the author is published without changes.
Ukraine Military Situation: 28/29 April 2022
The Donbas Offensive – As of April 29th
Russian intentions are clearly to try to surround Ukraine’s Joint Forces Operation, deployed in the Donbas, and consisting now of around 60,000 troops – about 45% of Ukraine’s total ground forces and the most experienced of its ground forces.
To do this, Russia’s commander, General Aleksandr Dvornikov, is trying to draw a military line south from Kharkiv and north from Mariupol, joining up to isolate the salient to the east in which the JFO have been powerfully dug in since 2014. This line however, is very challenging. More immediately, Russian forces are concerned to draw a shorter line further east across the salient, south from Izium and north from Donetsk to achieve the first part of that encirclement. Key objectives within the salient – and key to control of the Donbas east of that line – are the cities of Kramatorsk and Slavyansk. Russian forces are trying to push north and south, and also pushing westwards from their existing lines against these two key objectives.
So far, no major Russian progress has been made in this encirclement. They are estimated to be advancing at a rate of no more than 2 km per day, seizing many villages but nothing else of strategic value so far. There are several reasons for this:
· The offensive, probably pushed from the Kremlin, got off to a ‘rolling start’ before all the re-deployed Russian troops and equipment were in place. So Russian power will probably increase as the offensive goes on, but the slower opening gives the JFO more time to be re-supplied.
· Russian numbers in the offensive are calculated at 76 Battalion Tactical Groups with another 22 BTGs eventually joining them in the region as a whole. BTG size varies, but that would give Russia a total of between 77,000 and a maximum of 99,000 troops available, as against the 40,000 of the original JFO, now augmented (it is estimated) by another 20,000 released from the Kiev area. So, Russia is well short of the 3:1 force ratio generally regarded as necessary for successful offensives against an enemy properly dug into defensive positions.
· The continued lack of air superiority for Russian forces in the battle area, which leaves its ground forces vulnerable, coupled with Russia’s inability to ‘find-and-fix’ moving targets for its missile or aircraft strikes. Russia’s missile strikes are almost exclusively on fixed targets, whereas Ukraine (with extensive western intelligence help) has been successful against many moving Russian targets of strategic value. Lack of air superiority is a key weakness in Russia’s offensive so far.
· Ukrainian forces can use the time they now have, holding the Russian offensive back for some more days, to receive far more heavy weaponry from Western donors. Ukraine now has more T-72 tanks in the operational area than Russia presently does. It is receiving considerably more artillery than previously – with longer range NATO standard (155mm) guns plus counter-battery radars – that will allow them to hold at longer range Russia’s own (152mm) artillery on which Russia relies so heavily. The supply of MLRS rocket artillery (particularly the US’s M142 systems) would allow Ukraine to match, if not negate, the 60km range of MLRS systems – again holding Russia’s Grad and Smersh MLRS systems at longer ranges. Above all, continuing to deny Russia air superiority through the supply of more aircraft, modern anti-aircraft artillery, drones and radars, from western countries will be one of the key determinants of the outcome of this battle. The critical question revolves around the amount of heavy equipment and air-related kit the Ukrainians can receive and bring to bear before the Russian offensive reaches its maximum military capacity. That window of opportunity for the JFO can be measured at perhaps 2 or 3 weeks but probably not longer than that.
· Other relevant factors involve the spring weather in SE Ukraine which leaves the ground soft for the passage of armoured vehicles and pushes them onto roads, as opposed to being able to fan out over a wide area (a problem for both sides, but more so for Russian forces who need to manoeuvre quickly around fixed Ukrainian defensive positions); the fact that Russian forces that were clearly beaten in Kiev are now being re-deployed immediately into an even tougher battle area in the Donbas; that they have had little time to rest and re-equip and must now fight a different sort of mobile battle with no evident improvement in their ability to operate as ‘combined arms’ units. Ukrainian forces, by contrast, have high morale and have demonstrated, and are now refining, their combined arms abilities. Not least, very poor Russian logistics and supply lines (even of food) constrain the speed and distance any Russian offensive can achieve as it pushes forward. Around Kiev, both the length and inefficiency of Russian communication and supply lines was a critical factor in Russia’s failure. In the Donbas, the length of these lines is less of an issue for Russia, but their inefficiency is a deeper structural problem that will not be addressed merely with some reorganisation.
The judgement that is suggested by this outline is that the Donbas battle is likely to become a stalemate with some Russian gains, as their force levels build up, but no major breakthroughs that would create a genuine encirclement of Ukraine’s JFO.
Implications of this are that:
· Western powers have therefore committed themselves to giving Ukraine unprecedented political, economic and military support, given their judgement that Ukraine is not inevitably destined to be overwhelmed by Russia’s attack, is capable of fighting Russian forces to a standstill, and may even be capable of repulsing Russian forces from their positions since 24 February when the invasion began, and even perhaps from some of the territory seized by Russia in 2014.
· The US has put around $4 billion into military aid to Kiev since 2014, some $3.2 billion of it during 2022. On 28 February President Biden announced he would ask Congress to authorise $33 billion of extra support for Ukraine ‘the bulk of it’ in further military aid. There will be many practical issues arising from allocating such a large amount over a brief period, but the announcement, and the considerable amount involved, indicates;
o That the US is determined to offer a clear lead over the war to other western nations;
o That the US has decided the war will last some time and is indicating that it is prepared to support Ukraine over the long term;
o A signal to the 40 member states in the UN General Assembly who voted against condemning Russian action (5) or who abstained (35) – collectively representing more than 50% of the global population – that the US is strongly committed to countering Russian aggression: the ‘abstainers’ should make a judgement over which countries will ultimately prevail in this war;
o That the US is prepared to move towards ‘escalation dominance’ over the Kremlin – avoiding charges that the US and its allies have been purely reactive whilst Russia has set the agenda so far;
o That the US is prepared to outface Russian threats that such announcements may provoke responses against NATO forces either in, or very close to, NATO territory.
o That the US sees realistic prospects the Ukrainians can ‘prevail on the battlefield’ if they are given the right mix of heavy weapons and appropriate long-range systems; any apparent distinction between ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ weapons systems is irrelevant
In short, Biden’s announcement of 28 February is the most significant statement of support the US has offered since the intelligence picture of a Russian invasion emerged in October 2021.
· President Putin’s political rhetoric has become more extensive even as his military objectives have contracted. Unable to countenance a humiliating military failure, he has clearly re-interpreted this war not as a defensive operation against Ukraine, so much as the first priority in a more general struggle against West European ‘Nazis’, who are being manipulated by US ‘Imperialists’, both of whom have taken control of the Ukrainian government since 2014. For the Kremlin, the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine is now presented as the first stage in the ‘Great Patriotic War 2.0’ to defend Russia itself from its natural enemies. This struggle will have to be played out under 21st Century conditions.
· It is highly likely, given Russia’s chronic shortage of ready forces, that some sort of ‘national mobilisation’ will be declared soon, under the guise of this ‘Great Patriotic War 2.0’. Russia may have sufficient forces (if commanded and used much more effectively than so far) to conquer the Donbas and perhaps eventually to push west to the Moldovan border in order to landlock Ukraine.
· But Russia’s army is too small, even mobilised, to conquer the whole of an unwilling Ukraine and then supress it. (A minimum assumption (ie. 20 troops per 1,000 population – as in Northern Ireland at its peak) suggests a requirement for 800,000 troops permanently operating in such a large country of 45 million – which would require almost a doubling of the standing army of Russia (900,000 effective establishment) to allow for rotation and other roles elsewhere. A maximum assumption, based on force ratios that were actually required in Chechnya (ie. 130 troops per 1,000 population) would require a ground force of 6 million, without any rotation or ability to perform other roles elsewhere. Only brutal suppression over a number of years could reduce these force requirements. ‘Pacification’ would be an impossibility except over the very long term.
· Splitting Ukraine along the line of the River Dnipre, to absorb the eastern third and create a puppet state in the western two thirds, similar to Belarus, looks scarcely more plausible. The eastern third contains some 15 million people who - though 50%-75% Russian speakers and almost 50% of Russian ethnicity – have shown themselves devoted to an independent Ukraine. There is little prospect that even this part of Ukraine could be pacified. And to be even minimally effective such a geographical split in the country would depend on a highly passive client government in Kiev – which could only be achieved through more brutal oppression in the most populous Oblast in the country.
The outcome to date is that Russia is failing to win, and may be actively losing, its re-calibrated military operation in one part of Ukraine. Both Ukrainian and Western policy have – so far – ruled out any prospect of accepting Russian territorial gains made since February 24th. The overall conquest of Ukraine by Russia appears simply impossible. There is now also little prospect that Putin could escape from the war with some ‘respectable’ territorial gains to show his domestic constituency. Putin’s only option is to keep pushing his war aims forward.
The judgement is therefore that this war is reaching a very dangerous moment, where Putin will escalate the stakes for which it is being fought, and western countries now clearly interpret this as a war that will define our current age – a stark choice whether to appease a manifest aggressor or shoulder the burdens and political risks of upholding the international system under the rule of law.
If stalemate ensues on the battlefield, and wider European security risks seem to escalate, the current western resolve may weaken and Kiev might be put under pressure to sacrifice some territory for the sake of stopping the war. That, certainly, might be one Kremlin expectation. But western reactions, and public opinion, are moving against that prospect at the moment. Western opinion in general is hardening against any compromise with Putin’s Russia.