Vers une guerre de corsaires en Ukraine ?
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Towards a privateer's war in Ukraine?
In the 21 May update, I estimated that if the balance of power remained as it was and if they continued to "feed" the front with the same resources, the Russians should have taken the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk pair of cities by July and the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk pair by the end of August. The conquest of the Donbass, the offensive objective officially declared since 29 March, would then have been almost achieved. All that would be missing is the capture of the small town of Pokrovk, a road junction in the centre of what would remain under Ukrainian control in the province of Donetsk, in order to claim a complete victory.
If the first part of the hypothesis is correct, it is now infinitely unlikely that Russian forces will manage to take Sloviansk-Kramatorsk before the end of August, or even September. In the meantime, things have indeed changed and we are approaching the Omega point, the moment when the resources available in stock or in production are no longer sufficient to fuel the attacks. These attacks continue, of course, especially on the side of Bakhmut, the southern gateway to the Kramatorsk salient, or further south near the city of Donetsk, but the overall yield of all this fighting in km2 conquered over the past month is the lowest of the entire war. Things are no better on the Ukrainian side, where several advances had been made in the Kharkiv region, only to be halted and sometimes driven back. On the Kherson side, the other Ukrainian offensive front, the result of the division between the number of times the word "counter-offensive" has been uttered in the last two months and the number of square kilometres actually conquered is still increasing.
Even before the publication of maps showing the rapid reduction in the number of artillery strikes, the lifeblood of the positional war, there were signs of change. On 8 July, Vladimir Putin announced that "serious things had not yet begun in Ukraine". A few days later, his foreign minister promised a territorial extension of the conflict "beyond the Donbass", adding a little later that "Russia will necessarily help Ukraine to get rid of the 'anti-people' regime in Kiev". In general, when political leaders feel obliged to announce that they will not give up, it is because the ground is already being broken. All these declarations coincided with the least active period of the Russian forces since the beginning of the war, what has been called "operational pause", i.e. a phase of reconstitution/redistribution of forces that should normally lead to a new impulse. The same thing happened on the Ukrainian side, where after the shattering defeat in the Severodonetsk salient, they felt obliged to remobilise the forces by an internal purge and the new announcement of a major offensive in Kherson, while the wounds in the Donbass were being healed.
A war is a conjunction of two cost calculations at the margin. If one thinks that the sacrifices of the next day's battle can lead to some result, even if it is symbolic, one continues. This is how, through the accumulation of small decisions to continue, wars end up being long and horribly costly for everyone, contrary to what was almost always desired at the beginning. It is only when at least one of the two sides finally considers that there is no hope for it and that any sacrifice is now useless, that peace by submission can be considered. All this is obviously very subjective. The German strategic command considered in October 1918 that there was no longer any point in continuing the war, because there was no longer any possible scenario for victory. In 1945, the German strategic command continued the war until the capture of Berlin, because it still clung to the idea of a possible turnaround thanks to "miracle weapons" or the change of alliance of the Western Allies against the Soviet Union. Defeat means destroying all scenarios of victory for the enemy.
More exceptionally, it may happen that both sides simultaneously consider it useless to continue, because at least one acceptable objective has been achieved on both sides that reduces the usefulness of continuing. In this way, peace can be achieved by mutual agreement. In Ukraine, this would imply that, as in game theory, the Russians consider that they have achieved the minimum of achievable goals with what they have already conquered and the Ukrainians the maximum of what they could hope for given the initial balance of power. This is often an unstable point of balance and usually results in only a temporary peace.
However, this is not yet the case in Ukraine, as the two adversaries cannot yet be satisfied with the current situation and each of them still has victory scenarios. In these conditions, everything that can allow, even a little, to continue the conquest of the Donbass on the one hand and to push the Russians back towards the lines of 24 February on the other is considered useful and justifies continuing.
The problem, and to follow up on what was said above, is that these objectives require the conquest of ground, and this is increasingly difficult. Attacking a strong defensive position means gathering significant resources, and gathering significant resources in a heavily guarded environment means being seen and hit. One can try to camouflage oneself, to gather forces at the last moment, to counter-attack the enemy artillery beforehand, to surround oneself with a solid anti-aircraft bubble, to neutralise the defences by indirect fire and then to carry out the assault, but all this requires considerable effort to win a village or at best a few kilometres. This is possible but expensive as resources decline.
The defensive counterpart of this zero-sum game, i.e. slowing down the other side from achieving its objective, is easier, either statically with field fortifications which, provided they are worked on, become more and more resistant with time, or more dynamically by in-depth strikes on the command or logistics network. This is why the media tend to comment more on artillery strikes than on battles.
The question is whether we are witnessing a new phase of combat after the "war" of movement, the war of conquest of positions, which could be called "privateers' war", to use a term used during the Indochina war and give a somewhat romantic name to what is in reality only a war of attrition. The idea is that it is 'unaffordable' in the present state of forces to conquer and hold large areas of land, and that it is therefore necessary to be content with attacking the enemy in a punctual manner through raids and strikes. This can be used to support a long negotiation process as in Korea from 1951 to 1953. It can sometimes, through the accumulation of small independent actions, bring out a strategic effect as in the 2008 American siege of Sadr City or even in the regular clashes between Israel and Hamas or very recently Islamic Jihad in Gaza. It can also be used to show that something is being done and to keep everyone motivated, the army, the population and the Allies, by multiplying small victories, while at the same time transforming the army. This was the French strategy from the summer of 1917 to the spring of 1918 against the Germans. It was Egypt's strategy during the war of attrition from 1969 to 1970. It is perhaps what is happening in Ukraine.
The war of attrition therefore means striking with the means at your disposal but, except in very specific cases, without occupying the ground. In the last example cited before Ukraine, the Egyptians used their powerful artillery and then increasing numbers of commando units to harass Israeli posts along the Suez Canal or attack the port of Eilat. The Israelis in turn retaliated with spectacular commando raids, including on Egyptian territory, artillery strikes on towns near the canal and, above all, a campaign of air raids in Egypt. The surprise intervention of a Soviet air defence division, a fine example of a 'reckless pedestrian' strategy, ended the war of attrition. The Soviets were tactically defeated but their escalation caused fears of a widening conflict, which calmed all ardour. As is often the case in such confrontations, both sides can claim victory, which in the Egyptian case was psychologically invaluable after the disaster of the Six Day War in 1967.
The war in Ukraine is indeed beginning to take this form. The Russian operational pause officially ended on 16 July. Since then, there has been a rapid decline in Russian artillery action, for various reasons, but above all because of the logistical difficulties of the shells hit by Ukrainian fire or the depletion of stocks. However, in the war of positions "the artillery conquers and the infantry occupies", with fewer shells, there are necessarily fewer attacks. These are limited to a few small actions in the Donbass without much result, except perhaps on the side of Bakhmut, which is meagre compared to the overall power of the Russian army deployed in Ukraine and its allies. There is also the deployment of a large Russian army in the southern Dnieper area, probably for defensive purposes, which, if confirmed, would indicate the new orientation.
Above all, since the end of the Russian pause, there has been an increase in the number of ballistic and cruise missiles fired at numerous Ukrainian cities. This ability to carry out this long campaign of strikes testifies to material resources that had been underestimated (while overestimating their technical reliability), but the Russians manage to maintain missile strikes, even if it means using old, decommissioned KH-22 Kitchen anti-ship missiles or even S-300 anti-aircraft missiles striking on land. They still powerfully employ their formidable multiple rocket launcher force, which is far less accurate than the US HIMARS batteries but far more voluminous, and which can still hit the Ukrainian rear as well as Russian attack aircraft and helicopters.
One of the surprises of this conflict is the discretion of the Russian commando units. Yet the Russians have built a veritable army of ghost soldiers from the 45th Special Brigade to the Spetsnaz brigades of the various armies and a raiding force with four divisions and four airborne/air assault brigades. The failure of the initial airmobile raids in Kiev may have dampened the Russian command's daring, and the 45th Brigade and the air assault units were mostly committed as infantry units. The Spetsnaz are also sometimes employed as good infantry units, notably in Kherson, but they are also undoubtedly used to provide targeting intelligence in depth or conversely to counter Ukrainian Special Forces infiltration, notably near the Belgorod-Donbass logistics axis. For all that, we cannot put any spectacular action - in the sense of daring and media coverage - to their credit, which is nevertheless, paradoxically enough, one of their interests for 'men of the shadows'. A dangerous sky does not lend itself well to infiltration by air, but coups de main remain possible on the front.
On the other side, things are more ambiguous politically, because if the Ukrainian forces can obviously act without restraint other than the preservation of the population in the zones occupied by the Russians or the separatist republics, it is much more delicate for them to attack Russia for fear of provoking an escalation until Russia officially enters the war and a mobilisation of means that would go beyond the current "soft mobilisation".
The Ukrainians have fewer means at their disposal, but they are more varied and their use is undoubtedly more imaginative. They also have more intelligence in the enemy's depths than the Russians thanks to the technical support of the United States, but also and perhaps above all thanks to the link they still maintain with the population of the occupied zones. They were able to carry out fewer deep strikes, but all the more spectacular because they sometimes took place, without being claimed, on Russian territory. We thus remember the missile strikes on the Russian air base of Millerovo as early as 25 February, on the landing ships in the port of Berdiansk or probably on 9 August on the air base of Saki in Crimea. There was also an air-mobile raid on Belgorod on 1 April and destruction of railway bridges in Russia. The delivery of "modern" artillery (in reality it often dates back a little) from the West, such as Caesar pieces and above all the HIMARS or M-270 high-precision multiple rocket launchers, which, provided they are carefully monitored, offer new prospects for artillery guerrilla warfare, with a campaign of strikes on Russian shell dumps over the past several weeks.
The most spectacular actions took place at sea, which is normal for a privateering war, with of course the destruction of the cruiser Moskva on 14 April by a combination of a drone raid and an anti-ship missile strike. There were also several drone, fighter and artillery strikes on the Snake Island taken and occupied by the Russians at the outset of the war which resulted, in a rare example of what a strategy of blows can achieve, in its abandonment by the Russians on 30 June and a Ukrainian flag planting a little later. The sea offers some possibilities for guerrilla warfare on the coasts on both sides. One can imagine what the Ukrainians could do with the small Mark VI Patrol Boats ordered before the war and deliverable via European rivers, once armed with light Sea Griffin missiles or Switchblade 600-type prowler drones, or even anti-submarine rockets.
As with the Russians, we are still waiting for spectacular commando raids, but here again perhaps the current circumstances prevent them. Above all, we are waiting for the establishment of a real network of supporters on the scale of the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement in Iraq against the Americans from the summer of 2003. This would be a real threat to the Russian forces and a great Ukrainian asset. But for the moment, for fear of suffering the fate of the Chechens, for lack of means, for disinterest or even for Russian support, this guerrilla warfare is limited to a few sabotages, assassinations of Russian collaborators, intelligence and leaflets. The capacity to build or not this guerrilla war is a major stake for Ukraine.
Of course, this privateers' war is being waged in all areas, including civil ones, and in this respect it is similar to the West-Russia confrontation. From cyberattacks to influencing supporters in order to influence state policy, and including all instruments of economic pressure, everything can be used to undermine the strength of the other. All this is well known by now.
Now, as has been said, all this is rarely decisive. One can carry out raids and attacks for months, even years, without changing the strategic situation, as in the Sinai. Unless both sides reduce their objectives, this type of war can only really be conceived as a temporary accompaniment or substitute for a new campaign where flags are planted on a map. For this, there is no other solution than to transform the current armies so that they are once again capable of breaking through or at least hammering the front more effectively. Presumably, this is a process that has already begun on both sides. It is not just a question of the volume of forces. It is a profound transformation that is needed, which would take years in an army at peace but will have to take place in a few months in the heart of the war. The first to combine overwhelming firepower again, wherever it comes from, with real and numerous position-attacking divisions will plant the flags first.
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