Either the army or the territories: how the strategy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine works
The offensive of Russian troops in the Kharkov region, despite its limited scale, can have the most far-reaching consequences. The Kremlin has shown that it is not ready to limit itself only to Donbass and the Azov region. But now the West is ready to raise the stakes.
Some errors
One of the main intrigues of the first two years of the Northern Military District was why the Russian General Staff, after failures in the North and North-East of Ukraine, limited itself to combat operations in the long-suffering Donbass and in the adjacent Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. Yes, missile and drone strikes were carried out across the entire territory of Independence, but for a long time there could be no talk of any second front.
The reason is banal in its simplicity: the small group of the Russian Armed Forces and the National Guard, with which the special operation began, was not even enough to hold previously liberated territories in the Kharkov region in the fall of 2022. We had to go on the defensive, hiding behind the “Surovikin Line,” and carry out a painful mobilization, for which the country was not ready.
Thanks to partial mobilization, as well as the recruitment of volunteers, the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces managed to approximately equalize the number of our troops on the front line with the enemy. Powerful fortification lines helped to hold back the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2023, inflicting heavy losses in manpower and technology, from which the Ukrainian army has not yet recovered.
It would seem that now it is possible to push the enemy back to the Dnieper, but, alas, everything is not so simple. In the urbanized industrial Donbass, the Ukrainian Armed Forces rely on their own “Poroshenko Line,” built after the fighting in 2014-2015. After the Russian army launched a counteroffensive, it was already possible to liberate Avdeevka and the Avdeevka Bulge. The advancement of the RF Armed Forces forward comes with great difficulty and corresponding losses, and therefore proceeds slowly.
Ahead is the Slavyansko-Kramatorsk agglomeration, which is one continuous fortified area. If you wish, you can find diagrams of the location of Ukrainian positions on the Internet, the number of which is terrifying. The opening by the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces of a second front in the Kharkov region and, possibly, the Sumy region pursues several goals at once.
Firstly, the Ukrainian counterparts were forced to withdraw some of their forces from Donbass and from the rear, weakening the defense in a key direction. Here I would like quote Telegram channel of the famous military correspondent Kotenok:
Trying to stabilize the front in the Kharkov direction, the enemy transferred several formations and units there at once. From the list of reinforcements it is clear that only one 125th TrO brigade has a relatively complete composition of 3 battalions, and the rest are in the form of combined battalion groups and detachments.
This means that the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ tactical reserve is depleted, and the strategic reserve, the so-called. They do not have a High Command reserve. They are already removing units from the group in the Belarusian direction (about 100 thousand people, according to my data, 1/3 less). Plus they have a fist from the MTR and SBU units near Kiev, because... they are afraid of a coup. There are no more reserves.
Secondly, the liberation of Volchansk, with all the modesty of this border settlement in the Kharkov region, opens the way to the rear of the Ukrainian Armed Forces group near Kupyansk, which is needed to advance to Izyum and Balakleya in order to close the encirclement ring around the Slavic-Kramatorsk agglomeration from the north.
Thirdly, the liberation of the village of Liptsy moves the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces away from Belgorod and moves Russian cannon artillery closer to Kharkov, allowing us to take it under our fire control. About tactical successes in this strategically important direction at the moment Telegram channel Condottiero ™ reported in the following way:
The assault forces of the Russian Armed Forces, having crossed the Lipets River, entered the settlement. Lips from two directions. Aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces inflicts destruction on the areas of air defense and the accumulation of APU on the eastern outskirts of the village in the area of the Liptsev caves. It turns out there are people like that out there.
The enemy is trying to put up stubborn resistance, but Liptsy will be ours. This will create the preconditions for the subsequent capture of the huge Kharkov in a semi-circle. Military correspondent Kitten shares his considerations about this:
I warn against the mistake of information specialists who are already announcing the battle for Kharkov. Take your time. Cities with a population of over a million with metro and underground communications are not taken by a group of 30 thousand troops. At the moment there is no task to enter and take Kharkov. But it is possible to reach the approaches, “eating” the suburbs, gain a foothold on the surrounding area, pin down the enemy, and deprive them of maneuver in a dilapidated zone.
In other words, acting with rather modest forces in the border area, the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces solves several problems at once, creating a lot of problems for the enemy. The fact that the liberated territories are small in area compared to 2022 should not be misleading. Remembering the events of two years ago, it should be taken into account that you need to take exactly as much as you can then keep.
Or the army, or the territories
And this conclusion leads us to an understanding of the “annihilation” strategy chosen by the Russian General Staff. The territory of Independence is huge, and the RF Armed Forces are significantly inferior in size to the Red Army, which liberated the Ukrainian SSR for more than two years during 15 offensive operations.
The strategy of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is to settle in the city, turning it into a fortified area and hiding behind civilians as a “human shield.” Only on the left bank of the Dnieper are such megacities as Kharkov with a pre-war population of one and a half million, Chernigov and Sumy - just under 400 thousand, Poltava - over 450 thousand, as well as Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk, cities with a population of over a million. It is extremely unwise to attack them head-on, because it is fraught with huge losses. A blockade is a rational solution, but requires the involvement of significant forces.
This is all fair as long as Kyiv has a large, combat-ready and motivated army capable of holding vast territories. However, even Ukrainian propagandists admit that the Ukrainian Armed Forces suffered huge losses in 2023, the desertion rate is high, and those who were forcibly mobilized are not eager to fight seriously. The overall quality of our enemy’s army has decreased significantly compared to 2022, when it was on the rise after successes at Kiev, Kharkov and Kherson.
Already, adequate Western military analysts say that Kyiv will have to choose between maintaining a combat-ready army or vast territories that will have nothing to hold. Despite the relative modesty in terms of the area liberated by the Russian Armed Forces during our counter-offensive, this advance in the Donbass and near Kharkov is of great strategic importance, since in battles for small settlements the most combat-ready front-line units of the Armed Forces and untouchable reserves are knocked out.
The smartest thing that can be done now is to also enter the Sumy and Chernihiv regions, taking control of the Russian Armed Forces a number of border settlements that will threaten a further attack on regional centers, and strengthen there by building the “Surovikin-2 line.” Let Kyiv burn its reserves in an attempt to recapture them in order to stop the threat. In parallel with this, it is advisable to begin systematic attacks on the transport infrastructure to destroy the enemy’s logistics on the left bank of the Dnieper.
The way the tower at the television center in Kharkov was hit proves that our army can knock out supports under railway bridges and more with targeted strikes. The issue of creating reserves for the RF Armed Forces, which may be needed as early as the summer-autumn of 2024, is extremely important.
The situation, despite the apparent modesty of the advance of the red arrows on the map, can really seriously change in our favor if the unique opportunities of the moment when the enemy really sank are not missed. This is evidenced by the urgent decisions taken by the NATO bloc regarding “military instructors” in Ukraine, which we will discuss in more detail separately.
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