The hard lessons from Ukraine’s summer offensive Analysis by Financial Times

Ukraine’s military is enjoying some success but it will be slow-going and requires allies to increase ammunition supplies, according to the article published by the Financial Times.

“Yes, people tend to want [results] immediately. This is understandable,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a conference in Kyiv last weekend, speaking about Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive. “But this is not like a feature movie, where everything happens in an hour and a half.”

The idea that Ukrainian forces, lacking any air cover, would storm through Russian lines was always going to be more of a Hollywood plotline than reality.
But three months into the counteroffensive, Zelenskyy and his government are dealing with the reality that it has not achieved the desired decisive breakthrough — and are girding themselves for a drawn-out war.

Ukraine’s armed forces have made slow but significant gains in the south of the country in recent weeks, including a first puncture in Russia’s formidable defensive line. But some officials in western capitals regret that Kyiv has failed to use the opportunity afforded by western weapons stockpiles and possibly peak political support.

Moreover, the meagre results have exposed divisions between Kyiv and some western officials over strategy.

Some US officials have complained privately to the media that Ukraine had failed during training to master modern operations that combine mechanised infantry, artillery and air defence and were too risk averse in their approach.

“Yes, people tend to want [results] immediately. This is understandable,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a conference in Kyiv last weekend, speaking about Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive. “But this is not like a feature movie, where everything happens in an hour and a half.”

The idea that Ukrainian forces, lacking any air cover, would storm through Russian lines was always going to be more of a Hollywood plotline than reality. But three months into the counteroffensive, Zelenskyy and his government are dealing with the reality that it has not achieved the desired decisive breakthrough — and are girding themselves for a drawn-out war.

Ukraine’s armed forces have made slow but significant gains in the south of the country in recent weeks, including a first puncture in Russia’s formidable defensive line. But some officials in western capitals regret that Kyiv has failed to use the opportunity afforded by western weapons stockpiles and possibly peak political support.

“A poor understanding of how Ukraine’s military fights, and of the operating environment writ large, may be leading to false expectations, misplaced advice and unfair criticism in western official circles,” say military analysts Michael Kofman and Rob Lee in a report on the counteroffensive.

But they, like other analysts, say it is imperative that Ukraine learns lessons from its counteroffensive so that it can continue to push Russian forces back along a 1,000km frontline, possibly well into next year and beyond. At the same time, they argue, Kyiv’s allies must acknowledge the shortcomings in their training and equipping of Ukraine’s forces that have contributed to the disappointing progress.

If US and European leaders are to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes, as they repeatedly profess, they will also need to be much more systematic in their provision of artillery, aviation and training.

General James Hockenhull, head of the British army’s Strategic Command, said on Tuesday he did not believe the Ukrainian offensive was a “one-off shot” but that it was imperative for Kyiv’s allies to “continue to provide ammunition, weapons and training” and “if we fail in that task there are significant risks”.

A turn towards attrition

Ukraine is counterattacking in multiple directions. Its main effort has been its southern push from Orikhiv, in the Zaporizhzhia region. It was on the battlefield there that the 47th mechanised brigade, serving as the tip of the spear in the counteroffensive, ran into trouble in the first weeks of the operation in early June.

Slowed by formidable minefields — in some areas up to five mines per square metre, military officials say — the Ukrainians came under attack from Russian helicopters and heavy artillery. Images emerged soon after of western-supplied equipment, including Leopard 2A6 tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, damaged and abandoned. Dozens of troops were reportedly killed or badly injured.

The losses amounted to nearly a fifth of the Nato kit provided for the counteroffensive in its opening days in May and June, according to Ukrainian and western officials, and forced Kyiv to pause its operation and rethink its strategy.

Ukraine has kept its focus on the same area but has changed tactics — from attempting to punch through Russia’s fortified defensive lines in a mechanised assault to focusing on a more attritional approach, using heavy artillery to pound enemy forces and clear a path for dismounted infantry to inch forward.

“Attrition makes for poor headlines, but it plays to Ukraine’s strengths, whereas attempting to scale offensive manoeuvres under such difficult conditions does not,” say Kofman and Lee.

Three months on from those early setbacks, Ukraine has the momentum there after piercing the first line of Russian defence at Robotyne in the south and is now trying to widen the breach, with expectations rising of taking Verbove before advancing on Tokmak — both towns in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Securing Tokmak would mark a significant step towards cutting Russia’s so-called land bridge, a crucial supply route connecting its southwestern Rostov region with occupied southern Ukraine and Crimea.

In their second effort, Ukraine’s troops are pushing south from Velyka Novosilka, where they are endeavouring to reach the Sea of Azov port city of Berdyansk. Despite managing to capture a handful of small villages, progress there has been slow and largely stalled since mid-August.

The area around Bakhmut remains a focal point. Russian forces captured the city in May after a 10-month battle that reduced the city to rubble. But the fighting around it never ceased and the Ukrainians have clawed back territory on its northern and southern flanks metre by metre, advancing to the villages of Klishchiivka and Andriivka this week while securing crucial roads around the city.

Only in the Serebryansky forest to the north-east, which stretches east to the strategic town of Kreminna currently occupied by Moscow’s forces, have the Russians been on the offensive. That effort, Ukrainian officials and analysts say, is meant to try to draw Kyiv’s forces from its southern axis and push those in the area west, beyond the Oskil River, a natural defensive barrier and recapture territory in Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, where the Russians were dislodged during the sweeping Ukrainian counteroffensive a year ago.

In these tough battlefield conditions, Ukrainian forces found it impossible to follow Nato doctrine of combined arms warfare — co-ordinated actions by infantry, armour, artillery and air defence. Kofman and Lee say they are best at fighting in small highly manoeuvrable assault units. They struggle to run operations above the level of company (200 men) or even platoon (20-50). But if Ukrainian forces are to exploit any breach in Russia’s defences, they will need to co-ordinate larger forces and for that they need better training.

One of the main lessons of the counteroffensive so far, say analysts, is that western training of Ukrainian troops, typically of five weeks, is too short. It is not adapted to the way Ukraine fights best or to conditions on the ground, such as the impenetrable minefields or fortifications. And it takes place without the omnipresent drones hovering over the Ukrainian front lines.

“If I only did what [western militaries] taught me, I’d be dead,” says Suleman, a special forces commander in the 78th regiment. He says he had trained with American, British and Polish soldiers, all of whom offered “some good advice” but also “bad advice . . . like their way of clearing trenches. I told them: ‘Guys, this is going to get us killed.’”

With its trenches, artillery barrages and bloody infantry assaults, Russia’s war against Ukraine can often appear grimly reminiscent of the first world war. But it also features transformational new technology.

Underscoring that point, Mykhailo Fedorov, deputy prime minister in charge of technology and digitisation, recounts a recent ministerial meeting held over Zoom. He followed a live feed of the meeting on one side of his screen while at the same time streaming real-time drone footage of Ukrainian forces destroying a Russian air defence system on the other.

“Ukraine is writing new war history and the new drone doctrine,” Fedorov tells the FT.

The power of drones

This summer’s fighting has revealed the vital importance of drones to both sides, for reconnaissance and attack. The war is fundamentally different from previous conflicts because the prevalence of drones means that the battlefield is “totally visible in real time for both sides”, Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy head of military intelligence, told the YES conference. Manoeuvres with armour, in particular, are quickly exposed.

It can take as little as 10 minutes to destroy a column of tanks, he said — from the initial spot, to verifying its location, calling in artillery and striking.

Every Ukrainian unit goes to the frontline with drones of its own, often Chinese-made civilian reconnaissance drones costing a few hundred dollars or so-called first-person view racing drones [operated with a headset], that can carry a high-explosive charge. Ukrainian forces have been burning through drones in extraordinary numbers as they attack Russians lines and equipment and Kyiv is struggling to keep up with demand. Rusi estimates Ukraine is losing upwards of 10,000 drones a month.

Meanwhile, Russian forces have caught up with Ukraine in using commercially made drones and still have plenty of military-grade devices. Russia’s Lancet-3 kamikaze drone — which can track and swoop on its targets autonomously — has proved to be a particular menace, for which Ukraine has no match.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, former defence minister, says Ukraine is not building enough of its own drones, although it is trying to expand production. “We are in an arms race with a small time span,” he says. “Drones are making other weapons systems completely redundant.”

While Ukraine is developing its own drone capabilities it still relies on its allies for long-range strikes. Hopes are rising in Kyiv that Washington will soon agree to send ATACMS missiles, which have a range of 300km. This could unlock German approval for its Taurus cruise missile, since Berlin tends to wait for the US to move first on weapon decisions.

Next year, Ukraine is likely to take delivery of its first F-16 fighter jets. They will eventually help Ukraine contest the airspace, thereby pushing Russian aviation back from the front lines, but not necessarily give it air superiority, say Kofman and Lee.

Ultimately, the course of the war will be decided by how each side manages its reserves of manpower and equipment. “Our big problem is sustainability,” says a Ukrainian official. “It is a war of resources.”

“Ukraine and Russia are in a slugging match where neither side has a decisive advantage. It’s going to be a long war and Ukraine is now in the messy middle part that happens in every major conflict,” says one senior western official.

“Militaries very rarely deliver decisive outcomes, they win battles,” the official adds. In attritional conflicts such as this one, “it’s economies that win wars”.