Valeriy Zaluzhny, chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, announced the Kharkiv counteroffensive on Thursday.
“I have briefed my American counterpart on the operational situation,” Zaluzhny stated, referring to U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Ukrainian army reportedly has gone on the offensive in the country’s war-torn east.
For the faltering Russian war effort, this is very, very bad news.
Ukrainian formations apparently including the battle-hardened 92nd and 93rd Mechanized Brigades in recent days began pushing north and east from Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine just 25 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border.
Russian troops retreated east across the Donets River, blowing up bridges behind them as they fled toward the border.
If the Ukrainians can keep the Russians off-balance and keep up the strength of their front-line formations, they might be able eventually to advance all the way to Izium, 50 miles from the Donets River crossing.
Just southeast of Izium is where the Ukrainian army has concentrated its best units, including the 4th and 17th Tank Brigades and the 95th Air Assault Brigade.
A pair of mechanized brigades. A couple tank brigades and an air-assault brigade. Several other brigades plus lots of drones and artillery.
The combined Ukrainian force might be adequate to complete a decisive encirclement of the roughly two dozen under strength Russian battalions inside the elongating Izium salient.
Don’t think the Ukrainians don’t know what they’re doing.
Ukrainian commanders, many of them veterans of the Soviet army, understand Russian doctrine and how to exploit the flaws in Russian doctrine.
Cutting a salient is a classic tactic for defeating a Russian offensive.
The key is that Russian battalions by design are heavy with artillery but light on infantry.
Firepower, not manpower, lies at the heart of Russian doctrine.
That lack of infantry, so evident during Russia’s abortive attempt to occupy Kyiv early in the current campaign, means that an attacking Russian force often struggles to defend its rear.
To make up for their own lack of infantry, Russian commanders tend to assign pro-Russian paramilitaries undertrained, lightly-armed locals to guard supply lines.
For the Ukrainians, these weak rear-area forces are the way through and around a Russian advance.
They’ve done it before. In August 2014 during the initial Russian-backed attack on eastern Ukraine, the 95th Air Assault Brigade penetrated more than a hundred miles behind Russian lines, punching right through the separatists the Russians had assigned to protect their rear.
The 95th “destroyed and captured Russian tanks and artillery, relieved several isolated Ukrainian garrisons and, finally, returned to their starting position,”
U.S. Army Capt. Nicolas Fiore recalled in a 2017 paper for Armor, the official magazine of the Army’s tank corps.
If the Kharkiv brigades succeed in linking up with the brigades on the opposite side of Izium, the 95th might get a chance to repeat its 2014 feat.
There’s a lot that can go wrong for Kyiv. The Ukrainians can’t risk leaving their own rear unguarded.
In a rush to deliver a potentially decisive blow, Kyiv could risk overextending its advance the same way Moscow appears to be doing in its own advance.
The brigades the Ukrainians are counting on for an encirclement maneuver around Izium are the same brigades that defended Kharkiv for two hard months.
If those brigades move south, what forces will fill in behind them to ensure the city of 1.4 million remains safe and free?
LTA Work Of Art 