As Russia Falters, Ukraine Prepares to Seize the Initiative

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, May 03, 2023

 

At some point, critics of the West’s material support for Ukraine’s defense against a Russian onslaught on the grounds that “Ukraine is losing” are going to need a Russian victory to substantiate their claims. If they anticipated that at least one would follow Russia’s monthslong assault on Ukrainian lines this winter, Moscow’s inability to live up to their expectations has probably proven frustrating.

 

On Monday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby revealed that the United States estimates that Russia has “suffered more than 100,000 casualties, including 20,000 killed in action” in and around the Donbas region in recent weeks. Throughout the winter and early spring, Russia sent wave after wave of regular soldiers and mercenaries at Ukrainian positions, but those positions held — often to the consternation of Western officials, who complained of Kyiv’s unwillingness to retrench.

 

Russia’s effort to break through Ukraine’s lines and secure enough territorial depth to blunt a long-expected counteroffensive later this spring has failed. In the coming weeks, all eyes will be trained on Kyiv to see what capabilities it has retained during its costly defense against the Russian onslaught. Consumers of U.S. intelligence purportedly compiled over the winter and leaked through the gaming platform Discord don’t suggest that Ukraine will achieve much when it attempts to regain the momentum. In the intervening months, however, Ukraine’s Western patrons have sought to shore up what those leaks identified as the most worrisome shortcomings constraining Kyiv’s capacity to project force. And today, American military officials sound more optimistic about the prospects for a counteroffensive.

 

“The Ukrainians right now have the capability to attack,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said this week of Ukraine’s “significantly enhanced” capability to “conduct offensive operations.” He added, however, that a “significant amount of planning and coordination” remains to be done before a counteroffensive begins. His assessment dovetails with that of retired lieutenant general Ben Hodges.

 

The influx of Western weapons platforms over the winter in combination with Ukrainian equipment and captured Russian vehicles, plus the time Ukraine has bought itself to train its personnel on that equipment, allowed Kyiv to support the development of nine new armored brigades. We won’t know when the counteroffensive will begin until it has begun, Hodges said, but “I expect that the General Staff is conducting a wide range of so-called shaping operations that help set the conditions ahead of the main attack.” He added that “these would include attacks by partisans and special forces to destroy/disrupt transportation networks, cause confusion in the Russian rear area, and gather intelligence.”

 

And sure enough, in the predawn hours of May 3, the skies over the Kremlin burst into flame when, according to Russia, Ukraine executed a two-stage drone strike on the seat of the Russian government in what Moscow claims was an assassination attempt targeting Vladimir Putin. You can watch the video of these strikes for yourself — they do not appear to the lay observer like a competent decapitation strike. They do, however, represent a psychologically unnerving demonstration of Ukraine’s ability to inflict damage as well as absorb it.

 

It’s prudent to regard Russia’s pronouncements with suspicion. Jim Geraghty has already explored the observation submitted by many Western observers, including American officials, that Russia might have authored this attack on itself. That cannot be ruled out. After all, Russia has miscalculated in the past. But it’s also hard to see what domestic advantage the Kremlin gains from fabricating this narrative.

 

The risks of admitting that either Ukrainian forces are active inside Russia or Ukrainian drones are so sophisticated that they can penetrate many layers of Russian air defense to reach the heart of the Russian capital are significant. They are not outweighed by the excuse that admission provides to up already-tight domestic-security protocols and an already-suffocating censorship regime. Likewise, what actions on the battlefield was Russia supposedly holding back until this escalation? Moscow’s campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing and the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets was brutal enough. Could this strike justify another Russian effort to target Zelensky for assassination as part of some backward interpretation of reciprocity? Maybe. But more attempts on Zelensky with fewer capabilities than Russia brought to bear in attempting his murder at the start of the war are unlikely to produce a more successful outcome.

 

What’s more, the strike on the Kremlin fits a pattern of similar strikes on targets inside occupied Ukraine and Russia proper. Few question the origins of a drone strike that occurred almost simultaneously as the attack on an oil depot in the Russian city of Krasnodar. It’s perfectly reasonable to attribute Saturday’s strike on a Russian fuel depot in the city of Sevastopol, which blackened the skies over Crimea, to Ukrainian operations. There is little dispute over which party to this conflict executed a drone strike on a gas-compressor station on the outskirts of Moscow last month. The Ukrainians have even taken responsibility for some strikes, like a March UAV attack on an observation tower in the city of Bryansk, a staging area for Russian assaults on Ukraine. No one has yet claimed credit for Monday’s attack on a freight-rail line in that pivotal city, but observers of the war can make an educated guess who was responsible.

 

These strikes inside Russia pale in comparison to the regular barrage of guided munitions and kamikaze drones targeting Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure on a regular basis. They are significant only insofar as they are a potential component of the “shaping operations” that will set the stage for Ukraine’s counteroffensive when the soggy spring ground firms up, though their value is more psychological than strategic.

 

“Undoubtedly Ukrainians are shaping the battlefield not only by attacking Crimea and Russia proper, but also through PSYOPS,” one regional defense analyst told Financial Times reporters this week. The analyst cited, among other evidence, the admission of Russian security services that they had disrupted a sophisticated smuggling network designed to “bring explosives into Russia from Bulgaria ‘disguised as electric stoves.’”

 

Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive is still likely weeks away. But Kyiv has proven adept at disrupting its adversary’s command-and-control capabilities and disabling key logistical channels that might help Russia repel a Ukrainian advance. This should compel Western observers for whom Ukraine’s defeat is forever just over the horizon to re-evaluate their assumptions. And the fact that it likely won’t have that effect should alter our understanding of their ability to be rational in evaluating the state of the conflict.