So what is happening on the southern front?
How is the operation, which Ukraine launched on August 29 in the Kherson region?
If you rely on the messages from the Russian side, everything is very understandable: the Ukrainians suffered heavy losses and the attack failed.
End of discussion.
But a) we all know the degree of credibility of the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, b) there are daily reports of the continued destruction of warehouses and bases, and c) in the current situation, special caution is required because in Kyiv they chose from the first day of the operation to be almost completely silent about it.
Ukrainian forces in Kherson district, photo: AP
Why?
First, to avoid developing far-reaching expectations (therefore note that the official speakers did not use the term "counterattack" but an offensive operation);
And secondly, and this is more significant - because at least according to the official insinuations, there is a comprehensive plan, which may be damaged by reports on the operations of the forces and their locations, while for reasons that are partly planned and partly forced, the plan (whatever its scope may be) is supposed to be carried out on the side of the thumb and at a slow pace.
"This is the method of a thousand cuts," said Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Zelensky, alluding to the slow execution method ("lingchi"), which was practiced in imperial China: the condemned was executed by making cuts until he bled to death.
In other words: don't expect a smash hit, at least not now.
Ok, what have the Ukrainians achieved now?
And how is it different from what they have done so far?
Besides the occupation of four settlements in Kherson province, the offensive operation brought the Russians to a frenetic movement throughout the province (transfer of troops and equipment, for example).
This revealed assets that were hidden from the eyes of the Ukrainians until now.
Revealed - and lost them.
"Our goal is to find out and damage, to find out and damage," said consultant Erstovich at the end of the week, "which is why the extent of the damage has increased greatly in recent days."
Also, the Southern Ukrainian Command announced last night that the Russians actually no longer have a safe option to transfer ammunition to the force concentrated in the West Bank (probably a little more than 20,000).
The shelling of a restaurant in Kharkiv, photo: AFP
And why don't we see a "classic" counterattack, with tanks rushing through the fields and the like?
Because the nature of the war, currently, does not allow this - due to manpower constraints, armor constraints, the dominance of artillery and the omnipresence of UAVs. The things are true for both sides, which creates difficulty for breakthroughs, but the trends are different. Let's go in order.
A combination of artillery with tactical aerial intelligence (such as UAVs) makes armored units easy prey and losses are completely unnecessary. According to Austrian military analyst Tom Cooper, every time Ukraine tried to collect tanks, the Russians found out and destroyed them. Kyiv was indeed able to compensate for the losses by taking over on Russian tanks and their repairs, as well as through Western aid (Poland sent more than 200 tanks) and today has more tanks than at the beginning of the war, but in view of the dominance of artillery, they have been kept in reserve. The Russians are also wary: Cooper described how the last time Russia tried to use In the tanks of the 1st Army for an attack in the Donetsk region, 90% of them were destroyed before they even reached the battlefield... not to mention that the Russians were badly burned in February-March by Ukraine's intensive use of American and British anti-tank weapons (Javelin, NLAW).
The shelling of Kharkiv, photo: AFP
So artillery "dominates", but where does it go from here?
The Russian advantage from the beginning was in the amount of shells, so as long as they have one, Ukraine has no ability and no point in launching concentrated attacks.
Why give the enemy a gift?
For a dramatic picture?
On the other hand, this Russian advantage is eroding: according to the calculations of Pavel Luzin, an expert on the Russian military from the FPRI, in six months of war the Putin army used 7 million shells (new or refurbished), some of which remained as an inheritance from the USSR. At the current pace of the war (between 24 thousand shells on a quiet day compared to 60 thousand on intense days), and taking into account the existing production capacities, by the end of this year Russia will suffer from a critical shortage of ammunition (his calculation also includes the destruction of warehouses by the Ukrainians). Add to this the erosion of the cannon barrels (which become dangerous for the crew after a certain number of launches), and the quality of the shells themselves (some of them are damaged or expired because they were removed from the warehouses), and it seems that the Russian ability to use artillery - its advantage so far - will diminish.
A Ukrainian policeman inspects the remains of a rocket, photo: AFP
Artillery is also used intensively on the Ukrainian side, but in a different way.
Since it is impossible to compete with the Russians in terms of quantity, the Ukrainian army benefits from the accuracy of the Western shells, from the distance to which they shoot (greater than the Soviet-Russian 152 mm shells), and from better air combat intelligence (as UAVs).
Ukrainian human intelligence also seems to be much better.
Thus a dynamic equality was created in the field of artillery (and the tanks, as mentioned, are left behind and wait for their time, if and when the need arises).
To this, of course, we need to add the Western rocket artillery, which is slowly flowing into Ukraine (HIMARS systems and similar) for which Russia has no answer.
The lack of a Ukrainian "assault" has another reason, which was expressed in Kyiv even before the operation in the Kherson region and is constantly repeated even now: the preservation of human life.
Both armies now lack trained and battle-experienced warriors.
I have written about the losses in the Russian regular army more than once (in some units it is losses of up to 70% of the staff), but in Ukraine it is not easy with infantry either.
According to one estimate, only one in four recruits has any combat experience.
Sending them to attack, which requires much more comprehensive training than defense, is a suicide mission, while Mazlansky and Matta all say: our goal is to bring as many fighters home safe and sound as possible.
Ukrainian firefighters on the ground after a Russian missile attack, photo: AP
Russia, on the other hand, has no such sentiment: just as quantity is the key word in artillery, quantity is also the key word in manpower: we will drown the defenders in our human rivers - and one is how many will be killed.
"The Russian females will give birth to more", as Marshal Zhukov, the hero of the Great Patriotic War, said.
Russia continues this method even now, when it no longer has (in the absence of general conscription) tens of thousands of soldiers available;
Even now, all kinds of homeless and prisoners who were released to be sent to the front, go through a week's training and are thrown into the campaign - without sufficient training, not always with appropriate equipment, certainly without the ability to coordinate.
So it's true, this is how they advance and seize the ruins of Kfar Vashem Giva here (which makes the consumers of Russian propaganda glow with happiness), but this is a classic case where the investment is not worth the gains, and the cumulative damage exceeds the immediate benefit.
By the way, it is likely that in the coming days the Russians will increase their attempts to do something effective in the Donbass: Putin gave an order to complete the occupation of the district by September 15.
But I doubt that their moves will obey a different logic than it has been so far.
They can't even recruit: out of 4 brigades of 15,000 soldiers, which Putin ordered to be organized back in April, only one was recruited - and according to Ukrainian intelligence, it also numbered only 10,000 people (who were scattered in various sections of the front, but mainly in the quieter sector of the Zaporizhzhya district God).
So what do we have, all in all?
For all the reasons listed above - the lack of sense at the moment to use tanks, temporary artillery parity, preservation of human life, and above all - the Ukrainian decision to act to kill with a thousand cuts - we need patience until the amount of small achievements is translated into quality, that is, an event that will become headlines - like the liberation of Harson , for example
It is not about days, it is much more likely that it will take several weeks (at least).
I will quote here Prof. Michael Clark from RUSI (the British Royal Military Institute): "It seems that the goal of the Ukrainians is to return Kherson without even fighting (in the sense of a frontal battle)".
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