Ukraine – 7/28 Sitrep
By: Robert Homans
Twitter: @rhomansjr
July 28, 2022
My Kyiv Collaborator is taking a well-earned day off, so I will try to fill in.
Kherson
The conventional wisdom is that Ukraine is beginning a counteroffensive in the South, the objective of which is to re-take Kherson City, Kherson Oblast, the part of Mykolaiv Oblast now controlled by Russia, and points east including Melitopol, where there has been continual partisan activity since the start of the war. There may also be a possibility, as part of this counteroffensive, of re-taking the nuclear complex at Enohodar, located on the south side of the large reservoir located behind the dam across the Dnieper at Nova Kahovka, upstream from Kherson City.
What Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Might Look Like – Don’t expect Ukraine to launch a repeat of the Russian offensive in Donbas, consisting of massed artillery and slow-moving advances behind the artillery. Ukraine doesn’t have either the number of troops or the artillery. Based on my travels through this area, roughly between Kherson and Mykolaiv, it is not the kind of territory that is favorable to a combined arms offensive, especially undertaken by an attacking force that is likely undermanned. As Lawrence Freedman points out below, Ukraine cannot overcommit to Kherson, at the risk of a Russian breakthrough in either Donbas or around Kharkiv.
Instead, what is likely is a continuation of what Ukraine has just begun, with the recent destruction of two major bridges across the Dnieper near Kherson, one a highway bridge and the other a railroad bridge, plus destruction of a bridge across the Inhulets River. With the destruction of these 3 bridges, Russian-held territory on the Right Bank of the Dnieper River is not only cut off from Russian-held territory on the Left Bank, but Russian-held territory on the Right Bank has now been split in two. The bridge at Nova Kahovka remains intact, largely because it is part of a dam complex that Ukraine cannot destroy without causing massive flooding in Kherson City, but as long as the bridge across the Inhulets River remains destroyed, Russia cannot re-supply its forces around Kherson City by using the bridge at Nova Kahovka.
I believe Ukraine is hoping that by cutting off Russian forces on the Right Bank, at least those around Kherson City, that they can degrade Russian fighting capacity through use of their long-range artillery, and even air strikes, with the result that Russia will either withdraw from Kherson City and its surroundings, or surrender. Ukraine engaged in urban warfare in Donbas, especially in Sievierodonetsk, but the objective there was to degrade Russian offensive capabilities by inflicting casualties and forcing Russia to use up its ammunition (that has continued with the destruction of approximately 50 ammunition dumps primarily by using HIMARS rockets). Judging from the limited Russian advances in Donbas since losing the twin cities of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk, except for the area around Bakhmut where Russia is making some progress, Ukraine largely achieved their objective. Ukraine won’t repeat the tactics they used in Donbas, to re-take Kherson.
The Territory – I have traveled between Kherson and Mykolaiv by car, as I have between Kherson and Crimea. The area between Kherson and Mykolaiv is flat open country. Much of Ukraine’s watermelons and tomatoes are produced here. In fact, the purpose of my visit was to visit tomato growers who were supplying tomatoes to a big processor called “Chumak.”
With my limited knowledge (I am, after all, a “Former Naval Person”), I don’t see much advantage for Ukraine to launch combined arms offensive across this kind of territory. If Russian troops on the Right Bank stay cut off, their ability to conduct artillery strikes substantially limited, and their infantry degraded, I don’t see a compelling reason to do so. What is surprising to me given the relatively short distance to Russian air bases in Crimea, Ukraine has been able to launch air strikes in and around Kherson, using both fixed and rotary wing aircraft, and do so without much Russian opposition.
I think Ukraine will succeed re-taking Kherson, by continuing with the strategy that they appear to be starting with the destruction of the bridges. Then the question becomes how far Ukraine can sustain their offensive, to Melitopol and beyond.
What the Experts are Saying –
· The Latest Denys – He spends much of his latest report on Kherson, particularly the impact on Russia from the loss of the bridges. He also discusses recent Russian successes around Bakhmut, in Donbas.
· Times Radio - Interview with Retired General Jack Keane, the Head of the Institute of the Study of War (ISW).
· Lawrence Freedman – “The Battle for Kherson & Why it Matters – Freedman devotes a significant portion of his article in the broader implications of the Kherson counteroffensive. If Ukraine succeeds with the help of Western arms, Ukraine’s Western Partners will likely react by giving Ukraine more weapons and support.
· Illia Ponomarenko – What Would a Ukrainian Counteroffensive in Kherson Look Like? Ponomarenko is an excellent and well-informed reporter covering the war. His article, in the “Kyiv Independent,” comes with a map. He mentions the possibility that Russian units in the Kherson Region may be depleted and with reduced artillery support. Ukrainians are conducting probing attacks, and it may be that what Ponamarenko believes to the be the case, that Russian forces are depleted, then it may be that Russian forces won’t want to fight which was the case around Kyiv, earlier in the war.
It’s important for supporters of Ukraine to understand the following:
· A Ukrainian defeat will be seen as a NATO defeat, with all that implies.
· Ukraine will keep fighting, regardless of any kind of ceasefire that includes the loss of Ukrainian territory. The consequence will be that NATO will have a very nasty guerrilla war on its hands along its eastern border, a conflict that neither NATO nor Russia would be powerless to stop.
Why Ukraine Will Win
The reasons why Ukraine will win go beyond the battlefield, to what Ukraine is fighting for, and how the structure of Ukrainian society, going back hundreds of years, contributes to its successes on the battlefield.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces and Ukrainian society, especially civil society, are joined at the hip. The Ukrainian Armed Forces, as they have been constituted since 2014 at the end of the Revolution of Dignity, is a creation of the civil society groups that formed the backbone of the protests during the Revolution of Dignity, that ended with the removal of former President Viktor Yanukovich. While Western support, going back to the Yavoriv training that started not long after the end of the Revolution of Dignity, to the arrival of Western weapons, has been a sufficient condition for Ukraine’s success and why Ukraine will win, Ukraine’s success would not have happened without the necessary condition of the underlying structure of Ukraine’s society.
Timothy Snyder, a History Professor at Yale and author of “Bloodlands – Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,” has been writing a series of articles about why Ukraine will win. This is his latest, mostly about the military aspect.
“Ukraine’s Open-Source War”/Financial Times –
This article, which is attached, goes far to explain why several Ukrainians have achieved success in Silicon Valley, starting with Jan Koum the Founder of WhatsApp. As the article states, “One way to frame the war between Russia and Ukraine is as a contest between lateral networks and vertical hierarchies. Just as tiny Silicon Valley startups can disrupt legacy companies by using agility, speed and bottom-up innovation, the Ukrainian Army is trying to compensate for its inferior size (and initially firepower) with an entrepreneurial spirit and engineers steeped in coding, hacking and video games.”
Garry Kasparov said, “What Ukrainians have done with networks is striking, but that approach is completely antithetical to how someone like Putin operates.” Google CEO Eric Schmidt added, “Russia is playing a hierarchical war – top-down generals are planning the usual stuff (many of whom have been killed by doing so). But Ukraine is playing a networked war.”
What this article doesn’t mention is that Ukraine’s success in this “networked war” goes back centuries to Ukraine’s origin as a society, distinctly different from Russia’s.
The “end of the beginning” may now be coming into focus