The war in Ukraine may be entering a new stage as long-range rocket systems supplied by the U.S. disrupt Russia’s grinding advance in the eastern Donbas region, and open the door for a possible counteroffensive.
More than 150 days into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, it remains far from clear if Ukraine can take advantage of the “opportunity” that Britain’s MI6 intelligence service chief Richard Moore last week said was emerging as Russian forces “run out of steam.”
But reasons for the leadership in Kyiv to attempt a larger assault are rising, both on and off the battlefield. Those include falling casualty rates, a recent hardening of Russia’s declared territorial claims, the need for economic recovery within Ukraine, and a global downturn that could see allied governments under pressure to end the war.
On Sunday, the Institute for the Study of War said in its daily report on the fighting that a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the southern Kherson region might already have begun.
The report by the Washington think tank also attributed a sharp reduction in Russian artillery barrages on the main Donbas front since July 15 to so-called HIMARS, multiple rocket launch systems with a range of 80 kilometers (50 miles) that have struck dozens of arms depots supplying the Russian front lines.
Ukrainian forces have damaged all bridges that connect Russian forces in Kherson to their supply lines on the eastern bank of the massive Dnipro river, the ISW said on Monday.
“We have a significant potential for the advance of our forces on the front, and for the infliction of significant new losses on the occupiers,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after a meeting with his security chiefs on Thursday.
Ukraine’s battlefield casualties have fallen to about 30 per day, from a high of 100-200 per day in May-June, Zelenskyy said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published on Friday. He again ruled out any cease-fire that leaves Russia in control of territory it has taken.
All of this indicates the war is entering another phase, according to Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In the first, Russian forces tried and failed to take Kyiv in a fast-moving operation. In the second, they withdrew east in a bid to pound a path to victory, using artillery.
“If the reduction in Russian fire power in the Donbas continues, then basically that front is frozen and the question becomes — can the Ukrainians push them back?” O’Brien said.
On Sunday, Moscow Calling, a Russian mid-size Telegram channel on the invasion, made the same breakdown of the war, saying the arrival of HIMARS had launched a third phase.
Ukraine’s commanders are likely to be cautious, because when they try to move forward against modern defensive weaponry their tanks, planes and soldiers will face the same vulnerabilities that have plagued the Russian troops, according to O’Brien.
And uncertainties abound, including the potential for Russian commanders to rebuild supply lines out of range of the HIMARS, or to galvanize an under-performing air force to destroy them. Either development could allow Russia to reinvigorate its operations and close any window of opportunity for Ukraine.
The capacity of Ukrainian forces to roll back Russian territorial gains without first securing even more artillery, armored vehicles and anti-aircraft systems from allied nations is also unclear. Although Kyiv has conducted numerous counteroffensives since the invasion began on Feb. 24, these have been on a small scale.
A failed assault could cost Ukraine troops it can ill-afford to lose, exposing it to a renewed attack, according to a European defense official.
Still, Zelenskyy pledged last month to take back lost territory in the south, where Russian occupation up to Kherson has cut Ukraine’s access to the sea and crippled its industrial heartland along the Dnipro, with major cities and factories as little as 50 km from the front lines.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week added a further reason to act, saying Moscow now aimed to permanently separate the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces from Ukraine. He likened them to the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics, which Moscow recognized as independent on the eve of the invasion.
Lavrov cited further deliveries of arms by Ukraine’s allies, claiming the longer reach of the weapons put Donetsk, Luhansk and Russia under threat.
The Kremlin has ordered referenda to approve Kherson and Zaporizhzhia’s annexation by Sept. 15, according to people familiar with the matter. Most of both provinces are under Russian occupation and such votes would be illegal. Even so, annexation would raise the stakes for any counteroffensive, because the Kremlin could portray it as an attack on Russia.
Ukraine also is under pressure to show its supporters in Europe and the U.S. it can strike back, before they enter a season of energy crises, inflation and recession, caused in part by the war.
“To be honest, it will be an important reminder to the rest of Europe that this is a winnable campaign by the Ukrainians,” MI6’s Moore said, in a rare public appearance at the Aspen Security Forum, “because we are about to go into a pretty tough winter.”
Pressure to secure gains is mounting for Russia, too, not least because it will be difficult to hold referenda with Ukrainian artillery still able to shell cities such as Donetsk, which would be crucial to turnout.
The main problem is that while Ukraine gets more modern weapons to fight with, Russia is having to switch to ever older tanks, guns and missiles, a person close to the Russian defense ministry said, asking not to be identified talking about confidential matters.
Igor Girkin, a nationalist with 410,000 followers on Telegram who has fiercely criticized Russia’s military leadership for being disorganized and ineffective in its campaign against Ukraine, said in a recent post there was “wild” under staffing of front-line units, while morale was poor with soldiers refusing to fight. He described recent progress by Russian forces in Ukraine as “tortoise-like.”
“We have nothing to attack with in depth,” said Girkin, a Russian citizen who played a prominent role in the 2014 Russian takeover of Crimea and weeks later became the first commander of Russia-backed separatist forces in Donbas. Girkin is being tried in absentia in the Netherlands, charged with murder in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, where all 298 on board were killed. He has dismissed the trial.
A Ukrainian counterattack on Kherson could succeed at least in the short term, because it has more troops in a region where Russian forces are relatively weak and have their backs to the Dnipro river, according to the person with knowledge of Russian defense capabilities.
In the end, though, “it would still be a fight between two artilleries, and that means what we need most is more artillery, both for tactical depth at 20-25 km, HIMARS at 80 km and ATACMS,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Ukraine government think tank. He was referring to Army Tactical Missile Systems, with a range as far as 300 km. The U.S. is not known to have sent ATACMS to Ukraine.
“Also it would be about mobility, more armored vehicles, more air defense to cover these moving formations and secure communications,” Bielieskov said. “This is a process and it is too early to say the Russian front has stabilized.”
