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Franklin Spinney, American Committee for US-Russia Accord, July 30, 2024 [Re-posted]
Reprinted in The New Kontinent, 31 July 2024 (https://newkontinent.org/acura-exclusive-franklin-spinney-the-russo-ukrainian-war-speculative-impressions-of-russias-2024-offensive/ )
On July 28, the New York Times carried a report by Constant Méheut, entitled “Russia Punches Through Weakened Lines in Eastern Ukraine.” This report is revealing, because its substantive parts are based on Ukrainian and European sources sympathetic to Ukraine.
Yet for readers who have been following this war in the alternative media, Méheut’s description of the Russian operational art in Ukraine is hardly news. Perhaps this report is another example of the New York Times (or more broadly, the mainstream media) positioning itself to hedge against an emerging reality that is at odds with its irresponsible pro-Ukrainian propaganda.
With respect to the Russian operational art exhibited in its ongoing 2024 offensive: It has become popular to characterize Russian tactics in the Donbas as a simple bloody battle of “attrition,” as opposed to being one of “maneuver.” This particularly applies to the bloody, grinding battles in and around Bakhmut (3 July 2022 to 20 May 2023). But this is an oversimplification. As the distinguished historian, Colonel David Glantz, explains in this short video link in 2023, the area around Bakhmut is a natural fortress area defending the Donbas. It is horrible terrain for tanks. As I understand it, the Russians are now exiting this part of Donbas and the Ukrainians are being stretched thin while the Russians are moving into easier country.
It may oversimplify things to characterize the Russian effort in Ukraine as a simple war of attrition. All warfare embodies the effects of attrition and as well as the effects of maneuver, and these effects are embedded in a struggle that is an unfolding, menacing, interplay of moral, mental, and physical interactions.
At the mental level of conflict, the Russian operational art appears to be based on a Russian variation of infiltration tactics combined with numerical superiority — i.e., using heavy, widespread, methodical pressure along the entire front to identify and avoid crashing into strong Ukrainian defensive positions and to uncover or create and then penetrate gaps or relatively weak points that emerge in the Ukrainian defenses as Ukrainian forces struggle to adapt to the changing patterns of Russian pressure. .
This could be interpreted as a variation of Russia’s long-held “deep battle” doctrine, but it is tailored to the technical and geographic peculiarities of Russo-Ukrainian war and by a historically un-Russian desire to minimize Russian casualties, while inflicting heavy casualties on Ukrainian forces.
Moreover, the Russians are taking their time, because the Russians have always had escalation dominance in this war — which is another way of saying, even though the Ukrainians and NATO may “own” their CLOCKS, the Russians (like the Vietnamese in the 1950s against the French and in 1960s against the Americans) “own” the TIME — a distinction which shapes the moral, mental, and physical nature of the ongoing Russo-NATO Proxy War in a very fundamental way.
Thought of in this way, I think it can be argued Russia’s offensive strategy in 2024 is consistent with the deeply layered Russian defensive strategy in the summer of 2023 that decisively defeated the ballyhooed Ukrainian counter-offensive.
In 2023, the Russians coupled their superior surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to their superior long range artillery, rocket, and airborne firepower to break up the Ukrainian attacks and deny them any opportunities to find or create “gaps” in the Russian defenses that could be exploited with Ukraine’s follow-on forces.
Russia’s defensive posture in 2023 was clearly reminiscent of the defensive operational posture practiced by the Soviet Army 80 years earlier around the Kursk salient in 1943 — particularly in the way it absorbed, stretched out, and neutralized the widely telegraphed Ukrainian counter-offensive at a huge cost in Ukrainian lives in 2023. Ironically, the Ukrainian/NATO telegraphing operation in the protracted lead-up to the 2023 Ukrainian counter offensive was also reminiscent of the German “telegraphing” of its coming offensive into the Kursk salient. In 1943, the German’s obvious preparations and time delays alerted and bought the Soviets enough TIME to prepare for and inflict a decisive defeat of the German attack and ended the German capacity for any game-changing offensive operations on the Eastern Front in WWII.
It now appears something similar is happening to the Ukrainians and their NATO masters, notwithstanding NATO’s eerily reminiscent psychological dependence on game-changing Wunderwaffe.
