Ukraine's Counteroffensive: Part II
Limited Gains, Attrition, Operational Pause?
Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the south is in its second week and is making small gains, likely at a high cost to both sides. Several settlements have changed hands multiple times a day. To summarize the general situation:
South of Velyka Novosilka, widely referred to as the Vremevsky salient in Russian social media, Ukraine took several settlements including Makarivka and Staromaiors'ke. To date, this marks the furthest advance by Ukrainian forces.
Towards Vasylivka, the Ukrainians took Lobkove and entered P'yatykhatky. After entering P'yatykhatky, pro-Russian social media claimed the settlement was effectively destroyed by thermobaric rockets from TOS’s. Currently, there is no footage supporting this, but I would not be surprised if the Russian withdrawal from P'yatykhatky was followed by some type of bombardment to cover their retreat as this is fairly standard practice from both sides. The TOS-1’s and 1A’s are somewhat limited in range so would have been fairly risky to use in this role.
South of Orikhiv there was next to no movement of the frontlines over the past week, although the Ukrainians still appear to be interested in seeing if something develops and are actively conducting reconnaissance here.
Naturally, both sides are claiming to be inflicting “many times” as many casualties as they are inflicting. From the Russian side, we largely saw the same footage of the abandoned Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and Leopard 2 tank recycled from multiple angles over the week. The Ukrainian military was more restrained in their footage for most of the week, although towards the end, they released more of it. Western media outlets interviewed several Ukrainian service members and the general consensus among them was
A. Resistance was greater than expected.
B. Mines continue to be a serious problem.
C. Russian attack helicopters are also a major issue, which is a somewhat new development.
Looking at the situation as dispassionately as possible, I think it is fair to assume Ukraine probably hoped for more success at this stage. At the same time, both the Russian mil blogger community and most of the Western-based analysts largely agree that most of the reserves the Ukraine military has amassed so far are yet to be committed. Last week, I estimated 15 Ukrainian brigades were in the general area of the counteroffensive. The count is probably now closer to 20. These brigades are likely not being committed as whole units to combat, at least not at this stage. Ukraine and the Russians will rotate individual battalions and sometimes companies and smaller elements in and out of the front lines.
However, scrolling through the depths of pro-Russian Telegram channels, one will see lofty claims of defeating brigade-sized attacks every day with dozens of destroyed vehicles and hundreds of Ukrainian casualties each time. Scarce evidence of this type of scale exists; instead, the most we generally see are indirect fire and drone strikes against platoon or company-sized elements. Sure, one could claim that this represents a “fraction” of what is happening, but do we think the Russians would hold back footage of Ukrainian losing hundreds of vehicles? The same goes vice versa; the Ukrainians are probably not going to hold back spectacular footage showing them blowing away the Russians in the name of OPSEC. We are not going to get footage of everything, but if the counteroffensive was truly a one-sided contest, there would be more of it. For a rough historic parallel, for Operation Desert Storm, the Coalition side released thousands of hours of combat footage to the media while the Iraqis released almost none of it. Naturally, all of this is my opinion and the situation is not “exactly” comparable.
Continuing along this train of thought, we should at least attempt to estimate who is getting the better of the current attritional exchange to better determine if Ukraine should either continue to attempt a breakthrough or call it off. In general, if both sides are approximately equal, one would expect the attacker to take more losses. We should not completely discount the somewhat unpleasant notion that Ukraine may be getting the worse of the exchange. The best resource the public has to work with is the well-known Oryx list1 and the lesser-known Russo-Ukrainian Warspotting site, which nicely compiles the Oryx list data and sorts it by unit and location where possible.
Naalsio26 from Warspotting on Twitter is compiling vehicle loss data on the offensive so far. Here is his data for Ukraine and Russian losses thus far:
There are a few things to keep in mind before interpreting this data
This is based solely on what has been released on social media. Thus it is dependent on either side a. having the footage and b. deciding to release it. If Ukraine is maintaining some type of gag order in certain units, it would affect the data. The same goes for Russian units. As discussed above, I generally believe if either side has footage, they tend to release it.
If Ukraine or Russia is using more dismounted infantry than the other side it would not show up in the data. We cannot definitively conclude Ukraine is taking more casualties because they lost more vehicles than the Russians on social media. Russian volunteer units in particular have fewer vehicles and might be manning the frontlines in some areas.
Naturally, I am pro-Ukrainian and so is Naalsio26 so this data and analysis might be somewhat biased. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a blight on Europe. Speaking for myself though, I want to have as accurate a picture of what is going on as possible. Painting an overly optimistic appraisal of the situation creates an environment in which misinformation thrives. Governments and the public at large should know what is working and what is not working. Leaving out the negatives creates an information space that can be manipulated by malign actors.
That being said, here are some things that stand out in the data as it stands.
Ukraine has lost 105 vehicles while Russia has lost 65, according to what is currently on social media. However, a significant number of Ukraine’s losses are assessed as abandoned (41%). Some of these may be able to be recovered.
Differences in force structure that match what we know of Ukrainian and Russian units in the area show up in the data. 37% of all Ukrainian losses are infantry mobility vehicles. Russia has lost the same number of tanks and more artillery.
The number is significantly closer when counting only destroyed vehicles: 55 Ukrainian and 53 Russian.
Looking at the destroyed vehicle count by day in graphical form:
One can see there was a rather large difference in the ratio (approximately 3 to 1 in favor of Russia) from 7 June to 11 June. Then the gap dramatically closed to be roughly equivalent as of 17 June. This could be explained in several ways. Ukraine may have seen the extensive posting by pro-Russian channels of Ukrainian losses and decided to begin posting their own available footage. The Ukrainians may have altered tactics in such a way that they are sustaining fewer vehicle losses. Or perhaps the offensive is simply achieving better success as of three days ago than it did in the beginning. This is hardly “Vulhedar in reverse” as some pro-Russian commentators claim; it seems to have evolved into a closely contested engagement in which Ukraine makes limited gains which are then almost immediately counterattacked by Russian tactical reserves. We do not have a clear picture of what is occurring behind the frontlines in as far as who is winning the artillery battle and who is better supplied.
Taking all these factors into account, my low-confidence assessment is Ukraine sustained significant losses in the first week of the counteroffensive, possibly more than the Russians. Over the past week, losses on both sides became roughly equivalent. Accounting for social media lag time, this possibly corresponds to the success Ukraine had south of Velyka Novosilka. So the question now is should Ukraine continue forward if it taking roughly the same number of losses as Russia? It becomes more of a strategic question: does Ukraine need to achieve a decisive victory this year or should it anticipate a protracted attritional conflict for years to come? If the war is to last years, Ukraine cannot trade casualty for casualty. On the other hand, severing the land bridge to Crimea after a hard-fought breakthrough in Zaporizhzhia might prompt Russia to offer more favorable terms…or it might simply harden the Russian position. If the land bridge is severed, does Russia declare a full mobilization and will its population support it? It is a risk either way and is hopefully something that is being weighed carefully among senior decision-makers.
At this point, it’s probably too early to say if Ukraine will continue to counteroffensive or take an operational pause, as the Institute of the Study of War assessed might happen. Taking a pause is a risk as it might allow Russia to resupply and reinforce the threatened sectors of the front. It is also hard to say if Russia or Ukraine has a numerical advantage in the south. If I had to bet, both sides are likely equivalent in numbers at this point.
Compared to the Kherson counteroffensive last year, which seems most apt, Russia only withdrew once its supplies were low. This process took months to achieve and once the bridges over the Dnipro were damaged, Russia had no better option than to retreat. For Ukraine to achieve a similar operational effect here, it would need to maintain pressure on the Russian front to force the expenditure of supplies (mostly ammunition) while simultaneously isolating the area from resupply. The isolating aspect was much easier to achieve in Kherson because of the Dnipro River.
As I have alluded to on Twitter before, units generally need a full replenishment of shells from their high organization approximately every three days in combat conditions. If that link starts to break down, we could see a rapid degradation of the Russian position. This might also help explain why Russia is so tenaciously defending its forward lines; yielding even a few kilometers might allow Ukraine to disrupt Russian supplies in the region. Currently, there is no sign of the Russians giving way easily but will be something to keep an eye on in the coming weeks.
Update, Oryx updates are largely moving to Warspotting as of 6/19
latecomer to this blog, but a simple question: why are you pro-Ukrainian?
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