4.21.22
After suffering a string of setbacks in its invasion of Ukraine, beating a retreat from its attempt to capture Kyiv, and losing as many as 20,000 soldiers in the process, the Russian military is now shifting gears to a less ambitious goal of grabbing and occupying Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas. The key questions are whether, eight weeks into this war, the Russians have learned any lessons from their disastrous first phase and whether the terrain of the new campaign—open fields just across their own border—will give them an advantage in the fight. Either way, this next stage of the conflict is likely to be even bloodier than the first—a long war of attrition, including tank-on-tank battles, the likes of which haven’t been fought in Europe since World War II. For weeks now, Russian tank battalions have been lining up all across the 300-mile border with Ukraine, with the goal—once the fighting begins in full force—of breaking through the defenses, then enveloping the Ukrainian soldiers from all sides. This tactic works both ways: The Ukrainians will try to punch a hole in the offensive line, then envelop the Russian soldiers—and, at the same time, cut off Russian supply lines. (Helpfully, Russia’s supply lines in the East are dependent on rail tracks, which Ukrainians have been adept at blowing up.)
President Biden and some European leaders are rushing not only more anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles but also “heavy weapons”—tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery, helicopters, many of which will arrive within days—to Ukrainian units. Biden and the others have relaxed their standards of acceptable risk and are doing more to improve the Ukrainian army’s ability not only to mount guerrilla-type attacks on Russian forces but also to wage conventional warfare. There is one other factor that should make Russian commanders pessimistic: Their troops are exhausted. This is why the offensive in Donbas is not yet fully underway. One of Russia’s seemingly clear advantages, the open terrain, may prove a bit of a drawback as well. The ground is muddy, which might force the Russian tanks to move in columns on the roads, where they would be vulnerable to anti-tank missiles and drones, or to stay in the fields but get bogged down. A retired U.S. Army four-star general, who asked that he not be identified, told me in an email that these facts, along with the Russians’ wide-ranging ineptitude so far, “should give us pause as to whether they achieve substantial breakthroughs” against Ukraine’s defenses.
