Can Russia mount the combat power for new offensive?
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Russian forces likely lack the combat power necessary to sustain more than one major offensive operation while fixing Ukrainian forces in western Donetsk and eastern Zaporizhia oblasts. There is no open-source evidence to suggest that Russian forces have regenerated sufficient combat power from their losses in the early phases of the war to enable Russian forces to conduct simultaneous large-scale mechanized offensives in the next several months. The Russian military has not demonstrated the capability to conduct simultaneous combined arms offensive operations since early 2022. Russia’s most recent gains around Bakhmut relied on months of human wave attacks to secure territorial gains around Bakhmut by brute force at tremendous human costs. Russia’s earlier capture of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in summer 2022 also did not utilize combined arms but instead relied on large-scale rolling artillery barrages to methodically destroy Ukrainian positions. Russian forces are experiencing growing artillery ammunition shortages that would prevent them from repeating these tactics.[10] It is unlikely, moreover, that the conventional Russian military will be willing to take the kinds of horrific losses the human wave tactic has inflicted on Wagner’s convicts. The Russians’ ability to execute large-scale rapid offensives on multiple axes this winter and spring is thus very questionable.
The conventional Russian military still must undergo significant reconstitution before regaining the ability to conduct effective maneuver warfare. The Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) plans to significantly increase the size of Russia’s military with 12 new maneuver divisions will take at least until 2026, if this effort succeeds at all.[11] Western intelligence and defense officials have not issued any indications that Russia’s effective mechanized warfare combat power has recently increased, and ISW has not observed any indicators along those lines.
The Russian military leadership may once again be planning an offensive operation based on erroneous assumptions about the Russian military’s capabilities, however. Russia's military failures in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson oblasts have demonstrated time and again that Russian military leadership overestimates the Russian military‘s own capabilities. The degraded Eastern Military District naval infantry elements that are currently attacking Vuhledar will likely culminate even if they succeed in capturing the settlement.[12] The Ukrainian loss of Vuhledar, if it occurs, would not likely portend an immediate Russian breakthrough on multiple lines of advance in Donetsk or in the theater in general, therefore. Ukraine‘s spring rain season (which normally occurs around April) will degrade the terrain’s suitability for maneuver warfare. If Russian forces attempt simultaneous mechanized offensives in the next two months they would likely disrupt Ukrainian efforts to conduct a counteroffensive in the short term, but such a Russian offensive would likely prematurely culminate during the spring rain season (if not before) before achieving operationally significant effects. Russian forces’ culmination would then generate favorable conditions for Ukrainian forces to exploit in their own late spring or summer 2023 counteroffensive. Ukraine would additionally be seeing growing benefits from the incorporation of Western tank deliveries that have only just been pledged.
The Russians are thus very unlikely to achieve operationally decisive successes in their current and likely upcoming offensive operations, although they are likely to make tactically and possibly even operationally significant gains. Ukraine will very likely find itself in a good position from which to conduct successful counteroffensive operations following the culmination of Russian offensives before or during the spring rainy season—always assuming that the Ukrainians do not preempt or disrupt the Russian offensives with a counter-offensive of their own.
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Some Russians continue limited efforts to sabotage Russian force generation efforts. Independent Russian media outlets OVD-Info and Mediazona reported on January 27 that the Bryansk district court sent Dmitry Prokhorenko, a resident of Surazh, Bryansk Oblast, to a pre-trial detention center for two months.[55] The man’s case file states that he set fire to a Russian railroad relay box in order to “undermine the economic security and defense capability” of Russia.[56] Another Russian news source claimed that Russian authorities further suspect that Prokhorenko attacked an oil depot in Surazh using drones in December 2022.[57] Russian opposition news source Ostorozhno Novosti reported on January 7 that Russian authorities also sent four Russian teenagers from Krasnoyarsk to a pre-trial detention center for setting fire to a railway transformer box in Ovinny, Krasnoyarsk Krai.[58] Sabotage acts targeting Russian infrastructure committed by Russian residents are particularly notable as Russian authorities normally depict sabotage acts as the work of foreign agents and terrorists, as ISW has previously reported.[59]
Russian soldiers and their relatives continue to express frustration over poor conditions, commander callousness, and information blocks....
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I think Russia will have difficulty mounting a new offensive with its current troops and equipment. Its current operations are mostly a meat grinder because of its combat losses of equipment and its difficulty in producing more because of sanctions restricting the supply of critical parts. The anti-war operations within Russia could become a threat to its force generation effort. Putin's callous response to casualties could also become a problem for force generation. This could also be evidence of a lack of equipment than a traditional ruse:
Ukraine says Russia's putting inflatable tanks on the battlefield — but the decoys deflated
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Inflatable tanks are a staple of Russia's deception doctrine known as maskirovka, or masking. The country's approach to psychological warfare relies on an arsenal of inflatable tanks and launchers, decoy vehicles and soldiers, and other operations of deceit to boost stealth tactics and sow confusion.
Russia has utilized elements of maskirovka in conflicts going back decades, but their most recent efforts in Ukraine apparently fizzled, Ukraine claims.
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See, also:
The worst has already passed for Ukraine. How will events develop in the war?
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Keep in mind that any plans and programs that Russia has are operating at no more than 30-40% capacity. The rest of the funds are either not targeted spending, or they end up being stolen. Therefore, their efforts to increase the size of their army to 1.5–2 million personnel, and to transition their economy and industry to a full military foot-ing, will not be fully realized.
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