Why the Russians are suddenly advancing: They are using their advantages and Kiev’s mistakes

Russia’s “special military operation”, in fact an invasion of Ukrainian territory, began in the spring of 2022 with the lightning advance of Russian troops and then their distinct but only partial defeat.

The Kremlin leadership and the army command (to the extent that they were privy to the plan at all) fundamentally underestimated the adversary. The effort to advance quickly was relatively successful, especially in the south, but in the north it led to unsustainable losses even by Russian standards. This was followed by the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kiev, then Kharkiv. The Kremlin reassessed the goals and adapted them better to its possibilities.

The fighting has shifted to the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine and has changed. Instead of quick penetrations deep into enemy territory, they (with a few exceptions) turned into a debilitating “attrition” fight.

Since the end of spring 2022, Russian forces have begun pounding the Ukrainian defenses in the east of the country relentlessly. The goal (albeit apparently only partial) became the complete occupation of the territory of the two separatist “republics”, which were created with the support of the Russian secret services and the army on the territory of Ukraine, i.e. Donetsk and Luhansk.

In the first phase, the Russian command apparently did not emphasize this battlefield, because the chances of a quick breakthrough here were relatively small. The Ukrainians built a good, albeit not very deep, defense line in many places in the area.

The Russians, who in the spring and summer of 2022 had an overwhelming superiority in artillery and seemingly almost unlimited access to ammunition, did not manage to break through it for many months. And this despite the fact that by the end of 2022, according to estimates, they fired around 12 million pieces of artillery ammunition (source in PDF), i.e. roughly twice as much as in the entire year of 2023. At that time, Ukrainian artillery was apparently outgunned roughly tenfold, in some sections of the front even even more significantly.

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Finally, the first penetration into the Ukrainian defense took place in May 2022 near the village of Popasna in the Donetsk region. The Russians gradually expanded the breakthrough and within a few weeks were able to occupy large cities such as Lysyčansk and Severodoněck. The defenders of some sections simply did not have the strength to hold them, and the Ukrainian army then had to retreat relatively quickly and risky.

After two years of war, the situation on the front looks very similar in some ways to late spring 2022. The Russians have once again penetrated deeper into the Ukrainian defenses in the Donetsk region and are gradually expanding this penetration.

It all started around April 19 and 20 in the section around the village of Očeretyne. It lies on a small ridge that cuts through an otherwise flat area with a number of streams and rivers that create terrain favorable to the defenders. The landscape on the ridge around Očeretyne is more favorable and opens up the possibility of the best progress to the west.

The village was thus an important part of the Ukrainian defense and was well fortified – but not perfectly. Just before their attack, the Russians apparently found two places where minefields were not sufficiently built. For reasons that are not entirely clear, perhaps due to an error during the rotation of units, the fortifications in front of the village were not occupied as needed. Therefore, the Russians could even use one of the trenches as a covered approach to the entrance to Ocheretyne.

Between April 20 and 21, they used it all. They launched a sudden attack on the Ukrainian 115th mechanized brigade from Stepovy, advanced about four kilometers, seized the Ocheretyne railway station and pushed back the Ukrainian reserves.

Ocheretyne is located in a longer spur of Russian-controlled territory northwest of Avdijivka.

A narrow corridor was created that penetrated several kilometers into Ukrainian positions. The Russian command sent them more and more men – of which they have enough – to consolidate the positions and hold them against the expected counterattack. The occupiers managed to take advantage of their air force and artillery superiority and complicate the movement of Ukrainian reserves to the area.

When the Russians then maintained their positions in defense, they concentrated on trying to expand their sudden penetration – above all, they occupied several villages in the vicinity of Očeretyne, so they secured their flanks, and they are also advancing towards the west, to the village of Archandělske.

Even though the Ukrainian command has called additional reinforcements to the area, they have not been able to stop the Russian advance for the time being. Undoubtedly also because the Russians currently enjoy advantages in a number of sub-aspects of the war. Although the breakthrough itself was essentially “opportunistic”, and not the result of a long-term plan or pressure, it succeeded thanks to the fact that the Russians worked on increasing their combat capability for a long time (as can also be seen in the Russian state budget).

In what exactly do the Russians have the upper hand? Immediately in several important areas: artillery, air force and the team.

Let’s stop at the artillery first. This has been an essential weapon of this war since the beginning. And even if the importance of other weapons (for example, FPV drones) is growing, cannons still have a number of advantages: in particular, greater impact when hitting, and they can also react more quickly to the development of the situation. Sometimes it is literally a matter of seconds, because artillerymen can hit a target tens of kilometers away in a few minutes. Mortars, which have a shorter range and stand near the front, then react even faster.

The Russians consistently have a roughly 5:1 advantage, and in the areas they focus on, even reportedly as much as 10:1. Ukraine simply has too little ammunition, especially the heavy 155 and 152 mm calibers.

The Russian military also still maintains a crucial advantage in the use of rocket artillery. However, unlike the well-known HIMARS, Russian heavy rocket launchers are used for area attacks, i.e. they are supposed to cover a selected section of the front with a large amount of ammunition.

However, the Russian Air Force is increasingly active. According to incomplete information from the front, it seems likely that the number of glide bombs dropped by Russian aircraft is still rising. According to some soldiers, 100-150 bombs can fall on a single section of the front in a day.

Which may be an exaggerated figure, or a completely exceptional figure – however, Russian and Ukrainian sources agree that the daily number of strikes consistently exceeds a hundred. The weapons are not the most accurate, but they are highly effective against field fortifications.

Another, and at the moment, crucial Russian advantage, is the greater number of men. The Russians are constantly pouring new and new detachments into the area around Avdijivka.

Although sometimes referred to as “human wave” attacks, this is probably not an entirely accurate description. In fact, the Russians usually use the tactics of attacking small units that look for gaps in the defense, most often in confusing terrain. Attacks are often essentially suicidal, but in exposed parts of the front they are repeated again and again, even if in a slightly different place.

If they reach the Ukrainian positions, these small detachments do not have the strength to make a breakthrough. Their task is only to secure the conquered position. The whole process is then repeated from it, if local conditions allow it.

Even according to the published footage, a number of Russian units suffer drastic losses in such attacks, but the Kremlin has more in reserve and does not spare them. So Russia still has in the area https://twitter.com/konrad_muzyka/status/1783763243611115796 and its numerical advantage, despite high losses, is likely to be minimally maintained, if not even further increased.

But for example, the number of Russian attacks reported by the Ukrainian side is also increasing, which in recent days is the highest since March 2022. This is shown by the statistics kept by Polish military analyst Konrad Muzyka:

Mobilization in Russia takes place at the rate of 20-30 thousand men per month. At the same time, most of the soldiers are apparently volunteers who come to Ukraine simply for the money, and other factors seem to play a rather secondary role. Therefore, as long as Russian losses do not reach about 1000 men per day, the numbers of the aggressor’s army do not decrease, or even increase.

However, Russian superiority is not absolute. In recent days, for example, there appears to have been a slowdown in operations near the town of Khasiv Yar on the Bakhmut front, where the Russians have been preparing their position for months for a major assault on this important stronghold.

This could indicate that the Russian command does not have reserves for another major offensive, and quite possibly the men who were originally supposed to head for Bakhmut are now fighting at Ocheretyne. The Kremlin clearly has enough power to build a significant local advantage in the area it focuses on, but it is unclear at this point whether it can afford to attack equally in multiple locations at the same time.

Perhaps he is building forces for the next offensive, but in the course of the war so far, the Russian command has never tried to “spare” men in this way and deployed troops into battle as soon as they were ready (in critical situations, even to a large extent unprepared).

Moreover, Russian forces are clearly in a situation where they have a number of advantages on the battlefield at the moment. From this point of view, it is an opportune time to put all forces on the attack and try to exploit the opponent’s weakness – even before the Western aid promised in recent weeks, especially from the US, arrives on the battlefield.

Since the turn of the year, Ukrainian units in the area around Avdijivka have mirror problems: They lack material, i.e. mainly artillery ammunition, and few men.

A number of Ukrainian units are already undermanned, that is, fewer men than they should have – and sometimes quite significantly. Kiev has neglected to mobilize further, and sufficient troops will not be available for several months – because the whole process takes time, even if it were started immediately.

At the same time, the defenders cannot use one advantage of the well-built fortifications, on which the defense of Avdijivka mainly relied until the turn of this year.

In recent weeks, Kiev began to place a strong emphasis on building fortified positions, but neglected them for a long time. Thus, two lines of large fortifications are now being built in the Donetsk region, but they are still apparently not ready enough for the Ukrainians to retreat to these lines (see the Finnish analyst’s estimate https://twitter.com/Inkvisiit/status/1784666987899039759).

The rapid advance of the Russians at Ocheretyn means that the first of these projected lines may soon be within reach. So it may not be able to be completed at all, and another retreat awaits the Ukrainian army soon.

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Russian epaulettes and Ukrainian blood. Journalists of the Slidstvo.info investigative project have documented the Ukrainian identity of three generals, whose names they linked to the shelling of specific Ukrainian cities and the killing of people.

Why weren’t the fortifications built earlier? According to some, the reasons were political and strategic – as well as purely organizational. To put it very simply, there was no one in the structure of the Ukrainian army who would supervise the construction of defensive positions in the rear. Ukraine did not have special engineering units; all of them were part of individual brigades and thus devoted themselves to building fortified positions for front-line units. And unfortunately, they did not devote themselves to the construction of positions further in the rear.

In any case, the defenders cannot now rely on such sophisticated and reliable positions as those they used in this sector before. Losses in the defense of the areas opened by the occupation of Avdijivka or now Očeretyn are undoubtedly higher. One of the soldiers of the 47th Division, a unit that fought both at Avdijivka and Očeretyn, recently confirmed this for a reporter from El País. And this in a situation where Ukraine still has not resolved the issue of mobilization.

The parallels with May 2022 are definitely not perfect. Russia has solved the main problem that ended its offensive efforts in 2022, namely the lack of “manpower”.

It has created a mobilization system that has largely emptied Russian prisons, but has not yet exhausted itself. For guns, it will not have as much ammunition as it did in 2022 in the foreseeable future, and this year may not even reach the level of 2023. But the Russian air force is much more effective today than it was two years ago thanks to glide bombs and the lack of anti-aircraft missiles on the Ukrainian side, which the decrease in artillery fire in part compensates.

In some ways, the Ukrainian army has a similar material shortage as in 2022, but above all it lacks what it had quite a lot of two years ago: manpower. Undoubtedly, this is a mistake of the Kyiv government, the correction of which will take some time – and maybe it may not happen at all.

The difficult Ukrainian summer of 2022 ended with the deployment of Russian troops and the subsequent defeat of poorly occupied lines in the Kharkiv region. However, it may not work out this year anyway.