Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
- 47
- 1
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I like a good blitzkreig as much as the next guy, but is this, like... actually a defensible salient? It doesn't really look like it, and throwing a bunch of guys into a new meatgrinder to attract some media attention seems not only morally reprehensible, but also (since I'm sure we're long past the point where that matters) pretty bad strategy for a country currently engaged in a war of attrition against an opponent with many more resources to attrit?
Kinda / sorta / it doesn't need to be to serve the purpose of overall defense. The issue isn't the specific-holdability of this specific terrain, but rather what the Russians would need to re-secure it, particularly since while they have 'more resources', they don't necessarily have more of the right kind of resources to counter a mobile defense without compromising the offense in other sectors.
In military doctrines, there are generally two main types of defense: positional defense, and mobile defense.
A positional defense is what you generally think of in the Ukraine War over the last 2.5 years- trench lines, artillery duels, relatively static air defense needs and placements. This has its advantages for the defender in increasing cost-ratio, but disadvantages in that the opponent gets to choose when and where exactly to the attack. Similarly, it has its disadvantages for the attacker, but it also has it's advantages in some respects. Because it's mutual trenchworks, counter-attacks face the same general disadvantage, even as the general attack can establish overlapping mitigation measures for things like counter-drone / anti-air / artillery / etc, which can let the participant move forces in 'relatively' safe conditions. Positional defenses are costly, but generally more one way in favor of the larger party.
This is what Russia has reorganized its military to fight over the last two years. Tanks are used to support attacks on specific positions, mass concentrations of artillery forces and depots to support suppressive fires on static positions, etc.
A mobile defense, on the other hand, is a far more aggressive form of counter-force defense which terrain is given up for time / opportunities to maneuver and strike where most advantageous, with the goal of targetting enemy forces so that they are unable to advance / must retreat and reconsolidate, preserving the defender's control of key territory further behind and having out-sized effects on forces. It is harder to pull off in both terms of contexts and skill level, but it also has the potential to be even more efficient in terms of cost-to-the-defender, as the defender can be fighting over ground that the other side doesn't already have prepared with the sort of over-lapping systems of artillery / AA / counter-drone EW that could mitigate the force effectiveness, as only the stuff that you can carry with you can move with you. The defender can thus be more proactive in choosing when and where to counter-attack, avoid fights over specific terrain that is unfavorable, and because the attacker has to press the advance- and thus leave the advantages of positional defenses- to pursue.
The issue with mobile defenses is that you need to give up terrain for time and space for when to counter-attack the enemy force. This could lead to retreating until the war is lost, or you have to go into positional defenses you can't abandon. It also requires the political capital for a leader to be willing to tell his nation 'no, we're not going to fight over all the terrain.'
But if- hypothetically- you could get a lot of the enemy's terrain to maneuver through, which you wouldn't pay a significant political cost to give up...
This is where we start hitting the defensive context of this offensive. It's not that the surprisingly rapid advance of Ukrainian forces means a new static front line to be defended in Russia. It's that the fact that Ukrainian forces were able to maneuver so quickly forward, also means they will be able to maneuver backwards, and laterally, and thus have the capacity for a mobile defense. And because this is so far from the Russian-Ukrainian front lines, the Russians have to leave their static position setups and try to maneuver- and in doing so, open themselves up for attacks that wouldn't be possible against forces under the defensive-position envelopes.
We've already seen some of this happen. There was reportedly a HIMARs attack in Kursk that destroyed a column of Russian forces in transit. This would simply not have been possible in a normal static defense, because (a) the units wouldn't have been consolidated, (b) would have likely been in defensive positions, and (c) the area would have been under various AA/missile-defense envelopes. Similarly, there were reports of Russian platoons surrendering after being flanked and enveloped. The point isn't that the Russians are in a catastrophic defeat- the point is that the same sort of expenditure of Ukrainian resources wouldn't have achieved these sort of results if just pushed into the positional defenses.
What this means for the Russians is that they need to bring in maneuver forces of sufficient capacity / protective capabilities to push back the Ukrainians, and that this requirement increases with time. The more the Ukrainians are able to advance, the more terrain they have with which to maneuver and trade away- and the more they have, the more Russian resources are required to contain the pocket.
The issue for the Russians is that they don't have the extra army to spare. If it did, we wouldn't be discussing the Ukrainians advancing over a relatively under-defended Russian border, but the Russians advancing the other way across the relatively under-defended Ukrainian border. Unlike the Ukrainians, who built up the resources for this offensive rather than put it into the front lines, the Russians have been prioritizing beefing up the front lines over additional fronts- as seen with the recent Kharkiv offensive, which could be the analog here, but which was apparently under-resourced as a light-infantry push without significant technical/mechanized support.
Which will likely mean that Russia will need to take forces from the front lines. This likely means the reserves, not literal front line troops, but front line offensives won't be conducted with the same level if there's no reserve force to sustain the losses / exploit a success.
And in the process, those reserves are being exposed to much greater risk. This is why that HIMARs-convoy destruction is notable- the Russian maneuver warfare capability has sharply degraded over the last few years as the Russians have reverted from a post-Soviet era to a Soviet-era army, and maneuver warfare is one of the contexts where technological differentials matters more and more. The Russians are able to mitigate some of the risks of modern western capabilities when they have nested EW/AA capabilities, but when you take Russian forces out of it, you're getting back to the technology differentials of the Desert Shield era.
Which is how this serves as a strategic-level defense even if no territory or town is fought over street-by-street. Even if this offensive 'only' takes a month for the Russians to roll back to the border, that's a month of disruption to the Russian offensives elsewhere, at higher system vulnerability than in the positional defense paradigm. The Ukrainians could blunder this, of course... but even if the Russians tried to follow them right across the border, that would be a relative Ukrainian win, as there was a reason that the Russians weren't attacking that border anyway, and forces the Russians commit there aren't fueling the advances elsewhere.
And this is without the other anciliary costs and benefits. Aside from the propaganda value, including the value of Ukraine having a high-profile success near the end of the American election cycle (good news encourages continued support, when the Russian strategy has been hoping for a negative narrative to encourage American withdrawal of support), there's also the matter of western aid policy. The Ukrainians have been faced with real significant limitations on how some weapons can be used from Ukraine into Russia, such as what would allow them to go after Russian airfields. (Or- more recently- how the Kharkiv offensive was allowed to build up strength because the Ukrainians weren't allowed to fire into the clearly massing forces.) The Ukrainian offensive- in which various systems are now being used from within Russia in Russia- has had such a muted response, that this will very likely lead to relaxed restrictions in the future. If it does so, then Ukrainian gains in better utilizing western aid will further increase their overall defensive effectiveness against the Russians, and mitigate some of Russia's main enduring advantages (such as military airfields for the glide bomb campaign.)
Put all together, and I think your question of 'is this a defensible salient' is a qualified yes on an operational level (maneuver defense is a form of defense), but a much stronger yes on a campaign level (undercutting offenses in other regions by requiring commitment of Russian reserves), and especially at a strategic level (shaping western weapons restriction policy, information/vibes impact of the US election season).
But it's not necessarily the right question. It's not whether any square kilometer of the salient will be held- it's that by putting the Russians in the position of having to take it back in the first place, multiple defensive interests have likely been advanced.
Hope that helps.
Great answer, thanks!
More options
Context Copy link
Don't you mean kharkiv rather than kherson?
Indeed I did. Thank you, and corrected.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It sort of maybe does to me? There is some sort of a river going through Sudzha, which sounds by default nicer to defend than the original state border. I was pessimistic at the start, thinking there was no way UA wouldn’t stall out before reaching the river bank, and now optimistic again since they did. (Well, in Google street view the river looks very puny so this might be wishful thinking)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link