Russia’s Strategy

Russia’s approach to war planning, particularly concerning the ongoing conflict with Ukraine, has often been misinterpreted. The Russian strategy exhibits remarkable tactical prowess, maturity, and calculated decision-making. By drawing Ukraine into a prolonged state of attrition, Russia aims to exhaust Ukrainian resources while incrementally advancing its positions. This accumulative push allows Russia to secure territorial gains and serves a strategic purpose by creating a buffer zone and gaining leverage in negotiations. Additionally, Russia’s strategy of gradual advance serves to root out the potential for insurgency within the territories it seeks to control. By consolidating their positions methodically, Moscow aims to preemptively address any potential resistance or insurgency from local populations, which helps maintain control over the newly acquired territories with the priority of stabilizing the regions under Russian control.

The Russian strategy evolved over the early course of the operation, which was intended to reign in the Ukrainian regime out of its NATO ambitions and the ethnocultural cleansing of the Donbas region, but not to occupy or annex Ukrainian territory per se. But as the narrative from Western countries became more entrenched with hostility and delusional opportunism to use Ukraine to degrade Russia permanently, the Russian strategy shifted to the gradual bleeding and destruction of Ukrainian military capabilities, including its projection of power and threat.

Hence, fundamentally, Russia has never completely aimed at capturing Ukrainian territory in a grand scenario. Russia also knew that such a strategy would be militarily frivolous in terms of tactical, operational, and strategic goals. However, it was also not in its long-term political interests and was fraught with significant risks. Russia is not fighting the war the Soviet Union had during WWII. Neither is Russia the Soviet Union, nor are the historical contexts or exigencies under which it operates similar to or necessitates conducting itself based on what might have been relevant almost eighty years ago! Russia also never had the military manpower at the outset of the Special Military Operation or even today to roam across Ukraine. And it has to preserve a significant portion of its forces to protect itself from potential ongoing aggression from NATO and its multiple allies close to Russian territory.

Ukrainian Forces

Ukraine’s force structure is always difficult to understand because of its tendency to form ad hoc battlegroups and its practice of fragmenting forces into resident brigade commands. In fact, ORBAT and force distribution in Ukraine are in a league of their own. As a result, the AFU’s organization and force generation are often more opaque and difficult to understand than Russia’s, for example. Whereas Russia uses conventional army-level groups, Ukraine has no organic commands over the brigade level. The chains of higher command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are extraordinarily flexible and irregular entities. Ukraine’s entire fighting organization is an improvised mixture and modification around established formations. That aspect applies especially to its highest field commands down to the brigade level. The AFU field command system’s most conspicuous anomaly is its absence of any division-level (and higher) formations. Ukraine started abolishing the Division around a decade ago in a forced restructuring.

The German Kampfgruppe units during WWII were used as a contingency against front disarray, severe losses, and replacements. They were ad-hoc combat units formed during World War II by the German Army, often composed of infantry, armor, and supporting elements for specialized tasks or missions. The AFU idealization of all-level Kampfgruppen is bizarrely unique. That said, the primary picture is one of three Ukrainian “Operational Strategic Groupings,” vaguely akin to army groups. These are, from north to south, Operation Strategic Groupings (OSGs) in Khortytsia, Tavriya, and Odessa. Against these are arrayed four Russian Army Groups – from north to south: Army Groups West, Center, East, and Dnieper. Assessing the total line strength is always tricky, largely because we do not always have good insight into the actual combat rating of these units. However, we can make estimates of paper strength. Based on deployment information from the Project Owl Ukraine Control Map, we can estimate that the nominal strength in the theater right now is some 33 Division Equivalents for Ukraine against perhaps 50 DEs for Russia – a significant, but not utterly overwhelming Russian advantage. Ukrainian Army-level formations are absent because they simply do not exist, and such arrangements prove to be a pressing challenge for any formal military establishment.

War Doctrine

But, as the Operation evolved, Russia rather quickly devised a strategy of destroying Ukraine’s Military and, by extension, degrading its NATO sponsors through long-term attrition, where the territorial battles have been used as opportunities to demolish Ukrainian forces little by little, as death by a thousand cuts over an extended period and across a vastly stretched battlefield where killing the enemy and destroying its equipment is the primary goal no matter how limited the amount of territory actually gained.

As far as Russia’s War Doctrine in Ukraine is concerned, Russia is committed to positional attrition warfare as this maximizes the asymmetry of their advantage. This depletes the firepower of not only the Ukrainian Armed Forces but also of NATO members without engaging in direct conflict with them. Russian Armed Forces iron out Ukrainian defenses with artillery and then push forward into pulverized defenses. As Ukraine continues to funnel units to refill positions, they play into the hands of the Russian Military. Noting the importance of deploying fresh operational reserves as a crucial element of any counterattack, Russia keeps the burn rate at the front high. It degrades Ukraine’s ability to form reserves and continues to place immense pressure on Ukraine and NATO, not solely in terms of seizing territory but in terms of attrition, chipping away infrastructure, and creating a cumulative impact on Ukraine’s overall fighting capability. Kiev’s position is untenable as they may be able to fight effective static defense from prepared positions. Still, they cannot reverse Russian gains or respond to new breakthroughs without a combined arms reserve. Any serious effort by Ukraine to retrieve the fortified cities will divert the scarce trained manpower and equipment, thus squashing any attempts of offensive campaigns. They are also currently exhausted to the point where they lack combat-effective combined arms reserve units. Furthermore, such units have been unable to maneuver efficiently due to fuel shortages and incessant Russian artillery and air strikes.

Russia’s Advances

Russia is slowly advancing on almost every axis of the theater, which has both strategic and tactical implications, as the Ukrainians are being forced to burn reserves while being prevented from rotating and reconstituting their forces, as well as a precise operational formulation. Russia’s maneuver scheme must be kept in mind regarding its minimum end-state objectives: to capture the remaining Donbas city agglomerations (around Slovyansk) around Kramatorsk Although the war and Russia’s military ambitions may not end there.

At present, there are several main axes of advancement: On the central axis of the front, the Russian thrusts on the Avdiivka axis and the Chasiv Yar axis converge on the crucial Ukrainian hub of Konstytinivka, capturing which is a prerequisite for any serious effort to advance on Kramatorsk.

Simultaneously, Russian forces exert ongoing pressure on the northern front, employing a gradual squeeze tactic on the city of Kupyansk at the apex of the Oskil line and advancing towards Lyman along the Zherebets axis. These maneuvers aim to establish a foothold towards the strategic objective of Kramatorsk, contingent upon Russian control of the north bank of the Donets River up to the Izyum confluence with the Oskil.

In the southern sectors, Russia expands its zone of influence following the capture of Marinka, likely intending to build momentum towards Kurakhove, thereby placing the Ukrainian stronghold of Ugledar in a precarious position. Ugledar’s proximity to Russian rail lines vital for the land bridge amplifies its strategic significance, prompting Russian efforts to seize it. Additionally, Russian forces target the Ukrainian-held Robotyne salient, a remnant of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. While these assaults serve to tie down Ukrainian forces, they also aim to preempt any Ukrainian aspirations to utilize Robotyne as a launching point for future offensives towards Tokmak. Thus, these southern operations serve both attritional purposes and the strategic neutralization of Ukrainian staging areas. The overarching operational scenario indicates Moscow is gaining offensive momentum across the entire theater. This trend undermines Ukrainian combat effectiveness by impeding rotation, regeneration, and lateral troop movements while depleting Ukraine’s already limited reserves.

Sustaining the War Effort

The Russo-Ukrainian War is one of industrial attrition – a grueling campaign marked by relentless assaults against entrenched defenses, where concrete, steel, and explosives dictate the tempo. Ukraine confronts a stark reality: Russia’s military buildup nears critical mass, tipping the scales decidedly in Moscow’s favor. Initially strengthened by a substantial shell inventory, Ukraine’s arsenal benefitted from meticulous resource management and international aid, notably from the United States and South Korea. However, sustained high-intensity combat depleted much of these reserves, leaving Ukrainian forces grappling with a critical shortage of artillery ammunition.

Ukraine has sought to expand its production capabilities to sustain its war effort, primarily in Europe and the United States. Yet, this strategy encounters formidable obstacles: sluggish industrial ramp-up, production targets insufficient to match Russia’s onslaught, and logistical hurdles such as barrel scarcity. The United States has fared better in ramping production, slated to deliver approximately 500000 shells in 2024. Europe faces various problems, like labor shortages, exorbitant energy costs, and a consensus-driven decision-making culture that is slow to allocate significant resources. The European practice of small orders placed by individual member states also makes manufacturers hesitant to invest significantly in new production lines. Or, as one Belgian general put it: “We’re in deep shit.”

Ukraine’s ammunition shortfall remains dire even if the USA and Europe meet their delivery targets. Optimistically, combined efforts might yield 1.3 million rounds annually, equating to a modest daily allocation-insufficient for sustained offensive operations. Ukrainian Defense Minister Reznikov’s assertion of needing nearly 12000 shells daily underscores the magnitude of the challenge. While this figure may be aspirational, conservative estimates suggest Ukraine requires at least 200000 shells monthly to maintain a functional military posture. However, with current projections, Ukraine faces an uphill battle in amassing the requisite stockpile for intensified offensives. Artillery barrels deteriorate with prolonged use, typically lasting around 2500 shots for a howitzer. Consequently, assuming sustained firing rates as desired by Reznikov, Ukraine would face the wearing out of approximately 125-150 guns per month. Complicating matters further, Ukraine operates at least 17 different artillery platforms. Meanwhile, Russia’s shell production capacity has been significantly underestimated. Domestic Russian production has surged, with Estonian estimates indicating around 3.5 million shells produced in 2023, which is expected to increase to 4.5 million in 2024. Russia has considerable capability to sustain a firing rate of up to 12000 shells per day, with reserve surge capacity. Even if European production surges as anticipated, there remains a substantial advantage for Russia, potentially reaching a ratio of 3-1 or even 5-1 in artillery firepower. This advantage is compounded by Western reports of increased Russian production of advanced strike systems such as cruise missiles, Geran drones, Lancets, and glide bombs, boasting greater power and range. Recent publications, such as those from the Royal United Services Institute, highlight Russia’s capacity to deliver significant numbers of tanks, armored vehicles, and missiles, further solidifying its military dominance.

The most important question is simple: whether an army’s relative combat power is growing or shrinking over time – that is, whether its ability to generate forces is greater than its rate of burn – can it reconstitute attrited units in a timely manner, generate replacements, recover, repair, and replace broken equipment, and so forth. The prototypical example of this is, of course, the German-Soviet War. Even though the Third Reich enjoyed favorable “loss ratios” throughout most of the war, the ratio of combat power consistently grew in the USSR’s favor due to their vastly superior force generation powers. During the Battle of Kursk, Hitler even quipped that the loss ratios should predict an imminent German victory. Loss ratios do not matter nearly as much as the relative rate of loss and force generation. Estonian intelligence estimates underscore Russia’s ability to continually train, equip, and deploy additional troops, outpacing current loss rates. RUSI further emphasizes the growth in Russian forces deployed in Ukraine, from 360000 to 470000 over the last year, highlighting the formidable challenge Ukraine faces. Russian force generation continues to grow steadily over time rather than merely replenishing losses.

In contrast, Ukrainian forces face increasing manpower shortages, with under-strength brigades tasked with increasingly demanding operations. It’s evident that Ukrainian reserves are dwindling, as highlighted in Avdiivka, where brigades from other fronts were hastily deployed, indicating a lack of strategic reserves. The elite 3rd Assault Brigade was even committed in the final stages of the battle to stem the tide. Meanwhile, units like the 110th Mechanized engaged for months, suffered significant attrition due to the inability to rotate out. In contrast, Russia conducts regular troop rotations while Ukrainian forces remain on the front lines due to a shortage of replacements.

The Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, Sergei Shoigu recently made an uncharacteristically bold statement that the AFU was committing much of its remaining reserves: “After the collapse of the counteroffensive, the Ukrainian Army command has been trying to stabilize the situation at the expense of the remaining reserves and prevent the collapse of the frontline.”

What to Expect?

In the near term, one could expect Russia to progress toward the following intermediate operational goals:

•   Developing a concentric offensive towards the Ukrainian agglomerations around Chasiv Yar, Novomikhailovka and Toretsk

•   An offensive along the Zherebets-Oskil line towards Lyman to capture or screen the Donetsk River line as a prerequisite for an operation against Kramatorsk

•   Continued assaults towards Kurakhove in preparation for the liquidation of the Ugledar salient

•   Preventative attacks towards the Orakhiv axis to prevent future Ukrainian attempts to exploit the Robotyne salient

While 2022 witnessed initial successes for Ukraine, 2023 saw missed opportunities despite ample Western assistance. Instead, Ukraine exhausted valuable resources in defending Bakhmut and futilely attacked a well-prepared Russian defense in the south. With Russian force generation rising inexorably, Ukraine faces the looming threat of strategic defeat. To avert this, Ukraine must pursue a radical mobilization plan bolstered by increased support from its allies. However, Ukraine lacks the capacity to train and equip its forces independently. Without substantial NATO assistance, a total mobilization risks escalating casualties without significant gains. Yet, even maintaining current levels of aid is challenging amidst waning international support and domestic crises in crucial NATO member states.

2022 was the year of wild swings as the front stabilized into a conveniently shaped and quickly supplied Russian position, and 2023 was the year of Ukraine’s strategic window of opportunity, frittered away at Bakhmut. 2024 is the year that Russia’s swelling force generation reaches a climax, and the war turns in an evident and irreversible way against Ukraine. As Steve Harris of Iron Maiden remarked in one of the most iconic songs of the band, “The sands of time for me are running low…”, Kiev has almost no time and resources to ‘orchestrate’ (special courtesy Wagner PMC) any meaningful offensive operations. Of course, once substantially degraded, the Ukrainian regime and its allies would be at Russia’s mercy in shaping the postwar era in Ukraine, both politically and territorially. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has demonstrated that industry, manufacturing & the physical economy have always been relevant, and newly emerging powers such as India must grasp this insight to develop a broadly industrialized economy in the wake of a real two-front threat and a rewarding prospect of becoming a serious global power. That said, the window of strategic opportunity has closed for Ukraine and now opens wide for Russia. In this sense, one must appreciate how a few meters in this theatre equals hundreds of miles relative to the grand old wars of the previous century. The heinous attack at the Crocus City Hall marks the beginning of a new phase in the conflict. March 2024. Not very far from Fontainebleau, a windy dawn at Brussels unfolds skies seven and a half decades old. The sun struggles to pierce through the misty haze, and the approaching summer months carry the weight of a hot war.

The post MILITARY HISTORY: Kursk, Manchuria and Russo-Ukrainian War (Part 2) appeared first on IMR.

Montgomery himself said it best. When asked what it would take for the Red Army to break through to the Atlantic, he simply answered: “Shoes.”

As the dust now settled on the conclusion of World War II, Western European leadership was anxious about a potential tactical challenge – a communist-led land invasion. The USSR had emerged from the conflict as a formidable power, while its former European allies were weakened after the War. Yet, to understand the gravity of this situation, we must rewind our clocks by seven years to the onset of WWII itself. The Second World War had an odd symmetry in that it ended much the same way it started: with a well-drilled, technically advanced, and operationally ambitious army carving apart an outmatched foe. Of course, the major phase of the war began with Germany’s swift devastation of Poland, which rewrote the book on mechanized operations. The Soviet Union’s equally totalizing and fast victory of Manchuria in August 1945 marked the end of the war, or at least the final major land campaign.

To provide proper context, it is essential to tell the tale of the Battle of Kursk before proceeding with Manchuria. In the challenging spring of 1943, the Wehrmacht faced a daunting situation. Army Group South’s efforts to reach the Caucasus had been in vain, and the aftermath of the Stalingrad defeat required a monumental effort led by Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein to salvage the Army. With Soviet forces outnumbering the Germans twofold on the eastern front and having a significant advantage of reserve troops, the odds were stacked against the Germans. The Red Army’s superiority in tube and rocket artillery further compounded the challenges. Manstein’s successful counterattack in Central Ukraine had pushed the Soviets back, regaining key cities like Kharkov and Belgorod. However, a planned offensive towards Kursk had to be canceled due to weaknesses in the German formations further north, which resulted in the Soviets occupying a significant bulge centered around Kursk.

Battle of Kursk

The plan was to have armies from Army Group Center and Army Group South attack the base of the bulge, meet at the rear, and encircle the Soviet forces within. However, Manstein faced obstacles with the mud season halting operations during the spring thaw, causing both sides to pause and regroup. German intelligence believed the USSR could deploy 40 fresh divisions in Kursk. In reality, they deployed 800 divisions! The Red Army planned to fill the bulge with troops and artillery, denying the Wehrmacht any possibility of encirclement. This demonstrates the importance of operational reserves in warfare. However, it is also crucial to note that a clash of tanks occurred at Prokhorovka, where the powerful Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army aimed to counterattack against the approaching SS spearhead, leading to a close-range tank-on-tank combat. However, the clash resulted in a tactical debacle for the Soviet tank army, as they launched an ill-advised frontal assault against technologically superior German vehicles. The technological gap between the German Big Cats – the Panzer V Panther, and the Tiger proved to be serious opponents for the Soviet tanks. Although, the battle at Prokhorovka did not greatly alter the course of the larger Kursk operation, as the German attack failed to break through the heavily fortified Soviet defenses. But this was a clarion call for the Soviet military planners.

Manchuria

Now, Manchuria is one of the many forgotten fronts of the War despite being among the oldest. The Japanese had been meandering in Manchuria since 1931, consolidating a pseudo-colony and puppet state ostensibly called Manchukuo, which served as a launching pad for more than a decade of Japanese incursions and operations in China. For a brief period, the Asian land front had been a key pivot of world affairs, with the Japanese and the Soviet Red Army fighting a series of skirmishes along the Siberian-Manchurian border and Japan’s brutal 1937 invasion of China, which was an indicator of the impending global war. However, circumstances had pulled attention and resources in other directions, particularly the events of 1941, with the outbreak of the German-Soviet War and the Great Pacific War. After a few years, as a significant geopolitical pivot, Manchuria was relegated to the background and became a lonely, forgotten front of the Japanese Empire until 1945.

Among the many topics discussed at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 was the Soviet Union’s long-delayed entry into the war against Japan, opening an overland front against Japan’s mainland colonies. Although it seems relatively obvious that Japanese defeat was inevitable, given the relentless American advance through the Pacific and the onset of regular strategic bombing of the Japanese home islands, there were concrete reasons why Soviet entry into the war was necessary to hasten Japanese surrender. More specifically, the Japanese continued to harbor hopes late into the war that the Soviet Union would choose to mediate between Japan and the United States, negotiating a conditional end to the war that fell short of total Japanese surrender. Soviet entry into the war against Japan would dash these hopes. The Soviet Union’s overrunning of Japanese colonies in Asia would emphasize to Tokyo that they had nothing to fight for. Against this backdrop, the Soviet Union spent the summer of 1945 preparing for one final operation to shatter Japan in Manchuria.

The Soviet maneuver scheme was tightly choreographed and well-conceived – representing in many ways a type of encore, perfected demonstration of the operational art that had been developed and practiced at such a high cost in Europe. The strategic plan involved utilizing the unique geography of Manchuria, which extended into the Soviet Union’s borders. The plan was designed to rapidly and efficiently attack several rail and transportation hubs situated in the Japanese rear. These hubs were identified as Qiqihar, Harbin, Changchun, and Mukden, and the aim was to secure them quickly and effectively. By rapidly bypassing the main Japanese field armies and converging on transit hubs in the rear, the Red Army effectively isolated all the Japanese armies from each other and from their lines of communication to the rear, effectively slicing Manchuria into a host of separated pockets.

It is important to acknowledge that the Japanese faced insurmountable odds in resisting the attack. The Soviet force was overwhelmingly equipped with manpower and resources-three fronts consisting of over 1.5 million men, 5000 armored vehicles, and tens of thousands of artillery pieces and rocket launchers. The Japanese were facing an uphill battle from the onset. Imperial Japan (including Manchurian proxy forces) had a paper strength of perhaps 900000 men, but the vast majority of this force was unfit for combat. Virtually all of the Japanese Army’s veteran units and equipment had been steadily transferred to the Pacific in a cannibalizing trickle-a vain attempt to slow the American onslaught. Accordingly, by 1945, the Japanese Kwantung Army had been reduced to a lightly armed and poorly trained conscript force suitable only for police actions and counterinsurgency against Chinese partisans.

There was nothing for the Japanese to do. The Kwantung Army had far less of a fighting chance in 1945 than the Wehrmacht had in the spring of that year. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets broke through everywhere at will when they began the assault on 9th August. Soviet armored forces comfortably overran Japanese positions, which were armed primarily with archaic, low-caliber antitank weaponry that could not penetrate Soviet armor even at point-blank range. By the end of the first day, the Soviet pincers were driving far into the rear. The offensive demonstrated the Red Army’s extreme proficiency in organizing enormous operations and moving at high speeds. By August 20 (after only 11 days), the Red Army had reached the Korean border and captured all their objectives in the Japanese rear, in effect completely overrunning a theater that was even larger than France. Many of the Soviet spearheads had driven more than three hundred miles in a little over a week.

The combat aspects of the operation were ludicrous, given the totalizing level of Soviet overmatch. Red Army losses hardly breached the 5-digit mark, which is inconsequential for an operation of this scale. What was genuinely impressive – and terrifying to alert observers – was the Red Army’s clear demonstration of its capacity to organize colossal operations in scale, both in the size of the forces and the distances covered. Soviet forces would begin a formal withdrawal from Manchuria and Korea in 1946. Still, as they receded, they left in their wake consolidated and well-supported communist political machines, including the Workers Party of Korea under Chairman Kim Il Sung and the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong. The Soviet Union presented something of a unique geopolitical triple threat. In its own right, it had astonishing state capacity to field massive armies and roll them over continent-sized spaces. It had a proven model of effective political institutions that could allow local communist parties to establish powerful political monopolies.

All of these powers had been on full display in Asia, with the lightning advance, the rapid consolidation and funneling of resources to local communist parties, and the durable North Korean and Chinese party states that were left behind once the Red Army withdrew. To make matters even worse, this powerful Soviet expansion apparatus was now precariously forward deployed deep in the heart of Europe, with the Soviet frontier pushing all the way into Central Germany. The fear that the Soviet Union would replicate its Manchurian exploits in Europe became the foundational anxiety of the Cold War – predating both Soviet atomic weapons and, by extension, the fear of nuclear war. As early as 1947, France and the United Kingdom began signing joint defense pacts, which expanded to include Belgium and the Netherlands with the 1948 Treaty of Brussels, bringing about the short-lived “Western Union Defense Organization” (WUDO). It was clear, however, that such a limited alliance structure would be utterly inadequate in the event of war with the Soviet Union. France and Britain were degraded, threadbare powers in no place to fight yet another major war.

The Cold War

The beginning of the Cold War can be best identified as a sequence of events in 1948 and 1949, which together represented the breakdown of the post-war Soviet-American cooperation in Europe and the consolidation of the power blocs that would characterize the Cold War. In those intervening years after the end of the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union undertook a series of actions designed to consolidate their positions in Europe according to the postwar settlement. The US rehabilitated Western Europe under the Marshall Plan, while the USSR forbade Eastern bloc countries from participating. There was thus a certain degree of symmetry as both the USSR and the United States consolidated the two spheres of Europe, creating a sharp split down the spine of the continent. The US intervened in Greece to prevent a communist takeover, followed by a Soviet-backed coup in Czechoslovakia. The Soviet abandonment of the Allied Control Council ended any joint administration in occupied Germany. The situation worsened with the attempted communist putsch in Berlin and the Soviet blockade of the German capital, leading to the Berlin airlift. The formation of NATO in April 1949 was a response to the deteriorating security situation. The Soviet Union predictably followed with the Warsaw Pact a few years later. The Cold War was on.

The doctrines established during the Cold War have persisted to a significant extent in the present tactical situation in Europe. NATO’s expansion has not helped ease these considerations. The balance between evolving military technologies and the constraints of available resources continues to shape contemporary military strategies in the European theater.

Modern-day Russia has overcome its Kurskian deficiencies by arming itself with some of the world’s most advanced weaponry and establishing an elaborate, yet normative means of use.

However, a notable departure from historical precedents such as Kursk and Manchuria is Russia’s manpower limitation. This has impacted its ability to swiftly conduct large-scale Manchurian offensives in Ukraine. This scarcity of manpower has influenced Russia’s tactical decision-making, leading to a more calculated approach to strategic dynamics.

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