Russia-Ukraine War

Ukraine: Starve, Stretch and Strike the Enemy

Forget blitzkrieg. A counteroffensive strategy of attrition demands patience to wear down Russia’s supply lines and force psychology

Supply and demand, that’s what logistics is about.

Just in time.

And in the battle of war logistics, Russia is losing.

The critical supply element for Ukraine is skilled troops. Russian grossly outnumbers Ukraine in men and materiel, even now after almost 500 days of war, but there’s now doubt that Ukraine’s forces are much more highly trained. Russia is using aging conscripts and now that Wagner is out of the picture (at camps, at least temporarily), Russia is hard pushed to maintain a strong perimeter along a front line of over a thousand kilometres.

“Ukrainian forces appear to be focusing on creating an asymmetrical attrition gradient that conserves Ukrainian manpower at the cost of a slower rate of territorial gains, while gradually wearing down Russian manpower and equipment,” the Institute for the Study of War said on 4 July 2023.

In other words, Ukraine’s logistics are more or less balanced, while Russia’s are grossly skewed. Apart from aircraft, Ukraine can just about replace its materiel losses in real time (bring on the F16s). As for Russia, because of their corruption, inefficiency, poorly maintained equipment and delusional command, they are losing materiel faster than it can be replaced. Pictures have emerged recently of 152mm artillery shells at the front line which were produced in 1939.

They have lost a staggering 2,000+ tanks since the war started and it’s estimated that currently they can only build about 200 tanks a year. some estimates top 4,000 tanks.

Now they are shipping in T-55 tanks (designed in 1946). Even the Russians watching the train call the T-55s mammoth shit.

But although Ukraine has a solid supply line of arms from the West, it has to minimise the human loss and avoid costly full frontal large-scale assaults.

“The question is: how do you take a front line that is more than a thousand kilometers long and turn it into more of a problem for Russia than for Ukraine?” That is what Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the United Kingdom’s armed forces and chief military adviser to the British Prime Minister asked a Parliamentary hearing. Then he answered his own question, pointing out that feints and probes on multiple axes were to be expected.

Weak points would be discovered and exploited.

Look at the shape

I’m only an amateur, but it seems obvious to me that Ukraine has much more flexibility in offence than Russia has security in defence. Russia has laid very deep and dense minefields and in some areas has three heavy defensive lines. But can they man them with sufficient high grade troops to make them effective?

Russian forces appear to be ‘defending forward’, according to retired Australian Major General Mick Ryan on ABC (1m 30s into the video). This is dangerous for Russia given the length of the front line, the quality and quantity of their forces.

In my recent story about ‘Distributed Denial of Defence (DDoD)’ I quoted Dylan Combellick:

The front line makes a little more sense geographically speaking, at least. Ukraine does in fact have an army, and it will probably attack at some point along this 950km long line. The problems here are … many. First, Russia reportedly has around 140,000 troops in Ukraine right now, along the front line. This isn’t very many, considering how many they have supposedly drafted, which makes me wonder if Ukraine’s count might be a little low, but anyway. 140,000 troops for 950km of trenches. That’s about 150 soldiers per kilometer of trench, or about one soldier every 7 meters. This is nowhere near enough for many reasons.

And Jordan Kovacsik wrote about probing, using well-trained troops with modern armour in close support.

These UAF attacks are more than likely probing missions. We see drones take point and scout out positions, followed closely by UAF tanks and, subsequently, infantry. However, if the probing mission manages to break through, then all the better, but Ukraine, at this point, still looks disciplined and is reserved.

It’s also clear many of the UAF troops trained by the British and NATO have made it to the front. The British, especially, have always seen the tank as an infantry support weapon. This is why we see such a tight relationship between the UAF armour and infantry. In many of these videos, the UAF infantry is a harrowing 5 metres from their own armour as it runs over Russian positions; all the while, the tanks are belching fire from their multiple guns. — Jordan Kovacsik on Medium

There’s little doubt that Russia has learned some military lessons as the conflict has progressed, but their military doctrine cannot cope with quick changes, delegation of command, initiative and flexibility. There is still evidence of stupid logistics, such as this Grad missile dump:

Despite Russia’s numerical superiority, Ukraine materiel losses are proportionally much lower. And their personnel losses even more so.

There’s been no argument that Ukraine would have difficulty taking on a full combined arms offensive simply because they do not have anything approaching air power equivalence, let alone superiority. The Russian KA-52 Alligators have proven dominant and a real threat to Ukraine’s tankers along the Zaporizhzhia contact line.

Hence the need to starve, stretch and strike as the counteroffensive strategy.

Over the last couple of months we’ve been hearing talk from senior military figures in NATO suggesting that they had great confidence in Ukraine’s counteroffensive strategy. But nothing much seemed to be happening. Now I finally understand why, and I believe it is working.

In the Gulf War of 1990–91, the Allies bombed and rocketed Iraqi infrastructure for 37 straight days, along with special forces operations behind enemy lines. All that activity was designed to destroy the Iraqi logistics and demoralise their troops. Then the ground offensive started.

Ukraine has relatively little in the way of air power and is carefully using what little it does have. It does have Storm Shadow cruise missiles, Himars and other precision guided weapons such as Excalibur artillery shells. It desperately needs ATACMS and F-16s to accelerate the degradation of Russian forces, but I suspect that the West is now waiting for Russian to implode before any further commitments to new weapons systems are made.

Patience, and control of the enemy’s logistics is the key. Increase their demand, choke their supply. Piss off their people.

Weak points will appear in the Russian defence lines as their forces run out of WWII ammunition, weapons and the will to fight.

Prigozhin has done Ukraine a favour and accelerated the process by sowing confusion in Russian command circles with the recent Moscow State Circus on the M4 motorway. This confusion and distrust has spread through the ranks.

As I write, the UAF offensive has reached Klishchiivka.

And what about attrition of the ruble?

Now below 1 US cent.

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