Russia Counterattacks As Mud Season Starts

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Written by Pietro Pinter, a Doctor in International Relations, author of italian-language geopolitics blog inimicizie.com

In the south of Ukraine the rainy season is beginning, soon the rasputitsa – the transformation of the soil into mud typical of the region – will make large-scale manoeuvres impracticable in the predominantly agricultural landscape of the Zhaporozhye areas, where the failed Ukrainian summer offensive has concentrated its forces. Tactical successes will still be possible, but strategic objectives will have to be postponed until winter or late spring.

This does not mean, however, that fighting will stop in the rest of the frontline during the autumn.

With the de-escalation of the Ukrainian offensive, Russia launched its own counteroffensive with rather modest objectives: to marginally improve positions from the junction between Donetsk and Zhaporozhye to the pre-war Russian border with the Kharkov oblast.

The focal points of this counteroffensive are two.

The first is to reach the Oskol River in the Kharkov oblast, from whose bank the Russians had to withdraw after the Ukrainian offensive that brought Izyum and Lyman back under Kiev’s control and prompted the Kremlin to declare partial mobilisation. In particular the city of Kupyansk, in the far north of the front.

The second is to ‘tighten the noose’ around the town of Avdeevka, a settlement of 30,000 inhabitants (pre-2022) a few kilometres from Donetsk. Avdeevka is a Ukrainian stronghold with a strong military and symbolic value: it is here that in 2017 the Ukrainian ‘year of the attack’ solemnly announced by US Senator Linsday Graham began. After the Rada had established by decree in January the need to militarily reconquer the territories under separatist control, the Ukrainians launched a limited offensive on a totally frozen front, aimed at taking control of the grey zone, allowing the AFU to control the lines of communication around the city of Donetsk. It is here that the Minsk agreements signed two years earlier effectively died: in April, in fact, Kiev will put an end to the Anti-Terrorist Operation in the Donbas to replace it with a military task force with the precise mandate of reconquering the territories; while in the same month, the US delivers the first javelin systems to the Ukrainian armed forces.

After the battle in early 2017 – which ended in a deadlock, probably thanks to direct intervention by elements of the Russian armed forces – Avdeevka was heavily fortified, and transformed into the maze of trenches, concrete defensive positions, cameras and mines that it is today. The front line barely moved in the year and a half of large-scale warfare – as was the case with most highly fortified areas after 2014 – and the city remains a useful stronghold of the Ukrainian armed forces, from which Russian logistical lines near Donetsk as well as the oblast capital itself can be regularly hit, undermining its chances of becoming the economic and political epicentre of the new Russian territories.

Here, the counteroffensive has already achieved limited successes – not without losses – by reaching (or depending on the source, going over) the railway line north of the city – which until a few days ago was still being used by the AFU to supply the city – and a second road from the south connecting the city to the Ukrainian rear. The Ukrainians are left with only one asphalted road – through Orlivka to the north-west of the town – to supply the town: going through the muddy fields in the autumn may prove impracticable or extremely expensive in terms of vehicles.

For the Ukrainians, there is a risk of repeating a condition of partial encirclement that has been fatal in many battles since 2014, such as Donetsk Airport, Ilovaisk, Debaltsevo and most recently Bakhmut. The symbolic value of the objective – in this case highlighted by Zaluzhny’s recent visit – makes it politically difficult to retreat, but the presence of only one supply route under the control of Russian fire from 2/3 sides – think of Bakhmut’s ‘road of death’ – makes it militarily burdensome to stay, causing losses even higher than the attacker’s in some cases. Without the guarantee that the endevour will not turn into a retreat anyways, weeks or months later.

It should be emphasised that the AFU is not yet in this position, and has the opportunity to avoid this dilemma. The margin for error, however, is minimal: the Russians are one village away from effectively controlling the city.

That said, it is not entirely true that Ukraine’s offensive possibilities are exhausted with the Zhaporozhye offensive. Kiev also seems to have refocused on more modest objectives: operations are intensifying in the maze of rivers, islands, marshes, bridges and peninsulas that is the Dnipro delta. Here the AFU aims to strengthen its position under the Antonov bridge, and possibly establish new bridgeheads on the Russian-controlled bank, take control of river islands currently within the ‘grey zone’.

For several weeks now, the river front has become active again, with Ukrainian raids and massive Russian bombardments against troop concentrations on the right bank: the new morphology of the territory – after the undermining of the Nova Khakovka dam swept away many Russian position – offers new opportunities for the Ukrainian command, without the need to employ large armoured manoeuvres, made impossible by this summer’s losses, possibly for the rest of the war.

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