Ukraine hopes to assemble a “million strong” army to try to retake territory occupied by Russia, the defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said over the weekend. Its forces, he added, had also demonstrated to the US they could make good use of newly acquired longer-range rocket artillery, opening the door to the supply of more.
But however impressive sounding the claims were, it is hard to believe Ukraine is yet capable of an effective counteroffensive, even if the much-vaunted US Himars and the British M270 rocket artillery, with their range of 70km to 80km, have begun to arrive and are being put to good use. A turning of the military tide, if it happens at all, will most likely take time.
Ukraine has to talk up its prospects. The idea of a counteroffensive “is a hugely popular idea inside Ukraine”, said Orysia Lutsevych, a research fellow at the Chatham House thinktank, and Kyiv needs to convince the west that with sustained help, its military has a realistic chance of kicking the Russians out.
The country began the war with a 125,000-strong army plus 100,000 in national and border guards, according to figures from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) – but says it is lifting that to an army of 700,000 plus 300,000 of the paramilitaries. But if it can assemble that number under arms, a key issue is their quality.
The three-month long battle in Donbas so far has cost the defenders many casualties, as Russia switched tactics to artillery bombardment. Various figures have been bandied about, but Ukrainian military intelligence sources recently told experts at the Rusi thinktank that 100 were being killed a day, on average.
Add in wounded at 300 or 400 a day, and casualties could amount to about 15,000 a month – perhaps 35,000 to 45,000 in total. A further 7,200 Ukrainian soldiers have gone missing since the start of the war, the country estimated on Monday. Many of these losses will have come from Ukraine’s most experienced forces.
The need to enhance the fighting force is well recognised by Ukraine and its western backers. Britain has begun training Ukrainian recruits – 600 are currently receiving a few weeks of basic training around the UK – and there is capacity to train 2,400 at once and 10,000 every 120 days, assuming the UK government sticks to a pledge made by the outgoing prime minister, Boris Johnson.
Some of the Ukrainian recruits, aged between 18 and 60, are people who have never fired a gun. This is an army that has to be replenished from scratch. Elementary learning is quick though. Raw recruits at first were only able to hit targets with rifle fire 50% of the time. It rose rapidly to 80%, one British trainer said.
Such military training is clearly critical for the Ukrainians, but a successful counteroffensive will require more: a strategic use of a combination of arms, an ability to concentrate force on the chosen battlefield of at least three to one or ideally more (Russia is thought to have managed seven to one in Donbas) and advanced western weapons.
Ukraine has lobbied heavily for Nato standard munitions as it gradually runs out of its traditional Soviet-standard supply. The new weapons, however, create fresh problems as experts Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds noted in a comprehensive analysis for Rusi. For example, while Nato forces use 155mm shells, there is no such thing as a single western howitzer: “Nato standardisation is not very standardised,” they wrote.
At the same time, the US, the lead weapons supplier, remains cautious in the amount it will provide of critical kit. So far, the initial four Himars truck-mounted rocket artillery has been upped to 12. Nevertheless, as Reznikov mentioned, there are encouraging signs.
On Sunday, the Russian nationalist Igor Girkin warned on his Telegram channel that Russian air defence systems were proving “ineffective against” strikes by Himars missiles, and claimed that over the past five to seven days, “more than 10” ammunition and logistics stores had been hit and “about a dozen” command posts. When will the Russians start “fighting in full force?” Girkin asked.
Ukraine will hope that by striking deeper behind enemy lines, the rocket artillery will disrupt Moscow’s ability to continue its grinding offensive in Donbas.
A key indicator of whether Ukraine can halt the Russians is whether Moscow will be able launch a full offensive against the adjacent Donbas cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the two largest population centres in Donetsk province that it does not hold. Until now, Russia has been firing about 20,000 shells a day, slowly destroying Sievierodonetsk and other towns and cities in its path.
As for Ukraine, there are key elements in any normal offensive military package still not available to it. Its air power is limited while moves to supply extra Soviet-standard fighter jets advance at glacial speeds. Russian forces have dug in on large parts of the long front, and where Ukraine has made gains, in the south, towards occupied Kherson, they have been modest, reflecting the resources available to it so far.
Ben Barry, a land warfare specialist with the IISS, said: “If the Russian offensive in the Donbas culminates, there will be growing pressure on the Ukrainians to launch a major counterattack. But the longer they have to prepare, to build up training and stockpiles, the more chance it has of succeeding.” Failure, by contrast, could be a political disaster for Kyiv.
Barry highlights Operation Storm, the final winning offensive in Croatia’s war against Serbian separatists in the 1990s. The August 1995 attack was years in the planning, with the Croats receiving training from a US military consultancy, and it ended more than three years of stalemate. “There may be reason why such wars take years not months,” Barry concluded.
