Russia's Ukraine mistake

 Charles Lipson:

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Russia’s blitzkrieg evoked near-universal political opposition among Ukrainians, including those who spoke Russian. The unprovoked attack breathed new life into the Ukrainian nation and demolished Putin’s notion that his neighbor was never a real nation, had always been part of the Fatherland, and would welcome the invasion to remove “fascist rulers.” Ukrainians considered that propaganda insulting and ludicrous.

Russia’s abject political failure has two important consequences for the ongoing war. First, it means that no puppet regime could survive without a large Russian garrison permanently on Ukrainian soil. The Kremlin simply doesn’t have the troops for that mission, even if it managed to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Second, it means resistance fighters riddle any territory Russia holds.

These partisan fighters are proving their value in the third phase of the war as they assassinate Russian commanders and local collaborators in Kherson and identify the enemy’s command centers, arms depots, river crossings, and railheads for missile attack. The Ukrainian army has used that information, plus signals intelligence from drones and US satellites, to target key sites in eastern and southern Ukraine, using artillery for nearby locations and mobile missiles (HIMARS) for those further back.

Russian sites farther from the front lines are still relatively safe since the US has refused to supply Ukraine with longer-range missiles, fearing their use might lead to a NATO confrontation with Russia. Even if Ukrainian arms can’t reach those distant locations, their precision strikes on closer targets have forced Russia to store its ammunition, food, and fuel well away from the fighting. Their distance poses serious logistical challenges for a military that routinely fails at that task. The Russians are forced to use trucks for long, slow, dangerous journeys to supply frontline fighters — and still can’t make it across the river crossings.

Cutting off those crossings traps the troops on the “wrong” side, much like a medieval siege. Doing that is the essence of Ukraine’s strategy to take Kherson. Cut them off, blow up their command centers, airports, and weapons depots with precise weapons, sever Crimea’s water supplies (which come from Kherson), and kill the enemy’s troops without any frontal assaults on entrenched positions.

Kyiv needed to move to this new phase of the war because the fight for eastern Ukraine (Phase 2, which is continuing at a slower pace) played to Russia’s strengths and Ukraine’s weakness. Russia’s strategy was to use its overwhelming firepower and manpower to complete its conquest of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts (the Donbas provinces), which began in 2014 but was never completed. Once Russia fully controlled that terrain, it would have a “land bridge” from Russian territory to Crimea and could drive west from the Donbas into central and western Ukraine. That fight had already stalled, and Russia has now been forced to pull troops away from it to reinforce those in Kherson.

The fight for Kherson is not only a fight for that province. It is, at least indirectly, a fight for Crimea. Russia seized that peninsula in 2014 but can reach it only by two long, parallel bridges, one for trains, one for cars, trucks, and tanks. Those bridges over the Kerch Strait are beyond the reach of Ukraine’s current arsenal and are being used to bring Russian supplies over to the battle for Kherson. If Ukraine manages to retake Kherson, Crimea will be cut off from the war and militarily useless. Its major port of Sevastapol, previously the home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, is already so vulnerable that Moscow has moved many of its vessels back to Russia.

River crossings are the key to Ukraine’s strategy in Kherson. Cut them off and the Russian army is cut off from resupply. The oblast is bisected, north-south, by the country’s largest river, the Dnieper. The provincial capital, Kherson City, lies on its north bank. A smaller river, the Inhulets, divides the eastern and western portions of the oblast.

Russia must be able to cross those two rivers with large numbers of tanks and trucks to resupply its troops. Preventing those crossings is the essence of Ukraine’s strategy in Phase 3 of the war — and they are succeeding. The idea is to isolate Russian forces north of the Dnieper, exhaust their fuel, food, and ammunition, and then kill the weakened army or force its surrender.

Ukrainian strategists know it is vital to do that without conducting frontal assaults on entrenched positions and with as little urban fighting as possible. Frontal assaults and urban fighting are extremely dangerous and require overwhelming numbers for the attacker. Ukraine doesn’t have those numbers and can’t afford to lose those troops. That’s why its strategy concentrates on severing all the river crossings, probing for weak points, and avoiding any effort to retake Kherson City. Better to let the Russians exhaust their supplies and let the enemy troops see the hopelessness of their position.
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Lipson makes a good case for how the geography shapes the Ukraine battle strategy.  He also points out the Russian vulnerability with respect to Crimea.  In fact, that vulnerability was probably one reason why the Russians attacked in the first place.  One of Russia's biggest mistakes was underestimating not only the will of the Ukraine government but also that of the people of Ukraine.

The Ukraine war has exposed the weakness of post-Soviet Russia's military.  Its weapons and its army have been exposed.  It was much weaker than US analysts thought.  Joint Chief chairman Gen. Milley expected the Russian conquest of Ukraine would take a matter of a few days.  Russia is also seeing an exit of thousands of young people as a result of the war.