Neuf mois et après
Nine months and counting
16 August 2023 michel goya
In modern warfare, the success of a conquest operation is measured by the major cities in which flags are planted. However, whether we are talking about the Russian winter offensive or the Ukrainian summer offensive, no town names have appeared on the strategic landscape since the liberation of Kherson last November, with the exception of Bakhmut, a town the size of Asnières-sur-Seine taken after ten months of fighting.
In reality, we only talk about villages, or even localities or high points, considering that their capture or defence constitutes a victory. On the microtactical horizon, that of men under fire with emotions heightened by the presence of death, this is true. A street defended for days can be the event of a lifetime. On the strategic level, that of nations at war, however, a village cannot in itself be considered a victory.
Arm wrestling
We can therefore welcome the Ukrainians' capture of the village of Urozhaine in the Velika Novosilka sector and, no doubt, the forthcoming capture of Robotyne in the Orikhiv sector, but these are still not strategic victories. The Ukrainian forces are still in the zone of cover of a Russian defence system that remains solid.
So we are still well below the norm of 50 km2/day which, roughly speaking, indicates whether or not an offensive operation is succeeding according to the terrain criterion. We should add that in the peripheral Ukrainian operations - the encirclement of Bakhmut, the guerrilla warfare in the Belgorod region and the fighting on the east bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region - things are also progressing very little.
The advance around Bakhmut even seemed to be halted by the Russian defence on the spot, but also perhaps by the Ukrainian need to reinforce the area from Kupiansk to Kerminna where the 6th, 20th and 41st Russian armies, reinforced by the 2nd LNR army corps, were exerting strong pressure, with even a small advance towards Kupiansk. In fact, the transfer of forces from the Bakhmut sector to the threatened sectors further north seems to be the only real result achieved by the Russian reversal operation. As it is hard to see how the Russian army could have suddenly moved up a gear, it is equally hard to see how it could now achieve the major offensive success that has eluded it since July 2022.
So it's still an arm-wrestling match where the hands of the two adversaries move very little, but what matters in an arm-wrestling match is not visible. At this stage, the optimistic assumption for the Ukrainians is that the Russian muscles will lose strength faster than theirs and things will suddenly change. However, the figures for material losses recorded neutrally (Oryx and War Spotter) still do not give a clear picture of which side is winning the battle.
From 7 June to 15 August, the Russians lost or damaged 10 major Russian combat vehicles (tanks + AFC + IFV + ACP) every day, compared with 4 or 5 for the Ukrainians. The important thing to remember is that the Ukrainians lost the equivalent of one melee battalion (battle tanks-infantry) a day out of the 400 they had to conquer 7 km2.
The Russians are probably also losing one battalion a day, but more than the Ukrainians. The trend over the last two weeks has been more favourable to the Ukrainians, but this cannot be considered a decisive difference.
The second battle is that of firepower: with 231 Russian guns destroyed or damaged, the ratio has been 2.3 guns per day since 8 May, down from 2.6 a fortnight ago, compared with 0.7 Ukrainian guns.
The battle of the counter-battery seems to be clearly in the Ukrainians' favour, and rather more so than a fortnight ago, but the intensity of the Russian fire seems to have been little affected according to the Lookerstudio website, which is very favourable to the Ukrainians, since the average number of shots fired daily has not decreased, at least in the multiple rocket launcher category. The same applies to Russian air strikes and helicopter attacks, which are as formidable as ever.
Apart from a few spectacular images of deep strikes, which undoubtedly disrupt logistical networks (fuel and shells) and command networks, there is no obvious sign of a rapid reduction in Russian firepower. The introduction of American cluster munition shells, apparently already used in the capture of Urozhaine by Ukrainian marine infantry brigades, could perhaps change the situation a little if they arrive en masse, but the same applies if the Russians manage to compensate for the "shell famine" with external aid.
Since February 2022, offensive operations on either side have never lasted more than four months, and they have been extensive, due to wear and tear on men, machines and logistical resources, as well as the weather and, above all, the reaction of the defending enemy. We can roughly estimate that there is still a month and a half to go before the "arm wrestling" hypothesis, or the "breaching of the dike" as Guillaume Ancel puts it, comes true. The more time passes, the lower the probability that the arm wrestling hypothesis will prevail.
What's more, the more time passes, the smaller the potential victory after a breakthrough or strong pressure will be. Before the Ukrainian offensive, Melitopol or Berdiansk were mentioned as objectives whose attainment could be considered as strategic victories.
The more time passes, the more we tend to consider the capture of Tokmak on the Orikhiv axis or Bilmak on the Veliky Novosilky axis as substitute victories, before the operation is exhausted. But even so, and considering the possibility of relaunching a new operation in the autumn-winter, we would still be a long way from the goal of total liberation of Ukrainian territory.
What comes next?
If the hypothesis of a permanent tug-of-war is confirmed, i.e. if it proves impossible with the resources available to move the front significantly, then we will have to admit that losing a battalion to liberate 7 km2 is not viable. You don't have to attack everywhere, all the time, if it doesn't do much good and costs a lot of money.
General Pétain took command of the French forces in May 1917 after the failure of the great offensive organised by Nivelle against the Hindenburg Line. His first instinct was to pull out all the stops and issue a series of directives, not to organise yet another decisive breakthrough, but to transform the French army so that it could finally win the war, not within a year, as military leaders had been urged to do until then, but a year or two later.
His Directive No. 1, which expressed his general vision, was summed up in the phrase "I'm waiting for the Americans and the tanks". It wasn't easy, given that the prospect of having to fight a long war could frighten a nation that had been suffering for years and an army half of whose divisions had just gone on strike, but there was no other solution and it proved to be the right one.
It is assumed that the Ukrainian war committee already has its Directive No. 1 in case the current offensive fails. This would involve replacing offensive operations for a time with a general defensive posture and "blows" in order to continue to have victories so as to maintain the morale of the troops, the nation and external support while weakening that of the Russians, always with the secret hope that these blows can cumulatively bring down the Russian regime.
In 1917, Pétain organised "sure-fire" victories by bringing together overwhelming firepower against limited targets at Verdun in August and Malmaison in October, and for the rest organised a great "commando" war along the front.
France played little part in this, but the British and Germans also engaged in the battle of the commons at the time, in order to strike directly at the economic and moral forces of the nation, with raids by bombers, zeppelins or giant artillery pieces on capitals or industrial centres, or by naval blockades.
In today's war, air raids by inanimate machines, missiles, rockets and drones still have a bright future ahead of them. We can even see a growing balance forming, with the Russians now only firing what they produce in 1st category missiles and supplementing this with everything else, and the Ukrainians developing their own long-range strike force.
All this does not have the critical mass to achieve strategic effects through the damage caused - combat aircraft would have to be able to be engaged for that - but it keeps people's minds, including our own, in the war. It's much the same on the water, where naval missiles and drones currently dominate. There are still plenty of blows to be struck and amphibious raids to be carried out. We may also see cyber-battles, which have been rather absent since the early days of the conflict, and the trolls will undoubtedly be trying to convince Western opinion that we should stop helping Ukraine for X number of reasons, the most hypocritical of which is "peace at any price".
And behind all this agitation, it will be necessary to work and innovate more than the enemy. In the last six months of 1917, French industry, finally organised as a "war economy", produced as much military equipment as it had since the beginning of the war. The French army, which suffered the fewest casualties of the entire war in 1917, took advantage of this to transform itself into a motorised army, the first in the world.
It was this mobility that made it possible to deal with the German offensives in the spring of 1918 and then to take the initiative from the summer onwards. I'm not sure how the Ukrainian army will transform itself, but it will have to, to increase its operational and tactical firepower and assault techniques three or fourfold. As with Operation Storm in Croatia in August 1995, only then will it be possible to suddenly resume the offensive and liberate all Ukrainian territory.
Vladimir Putin and his followers are trying to pretend that time is on their side, but nothing could be further from the truth. Ukraine and its Eastern European allies are the fastest-growing and militarily transforming region in the world. When you believe yourself to be a power and want to participate in world affairs like France, that's undoubtedly the place to be.
