Unknowns surround Ukraine’s counter-offensive | FinancialTimes

Happy to see you again. I replace Tony Barber, who will be back for next week’s edition. You can reach me at ben.hall@ft.com.

Towns in eastern Ukraine, largely abandoned by civilians, have been teeming with soldiers, observed the FT’s Christopher Miller on a recent reporting trip to Sloviansk. This is another sign of an impending Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring/summer which Kyiv hopes will break Russia’s grip on the occupied territories in the east and south of the country.

Remarkably little is known about kyiv’s military plans and preparations, despite the leaked caches of secret Pentagon files on the war in Ukraine which appeared earlier this year on gaming site Discord. Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s security council, says no more than five people know what the counteroffensive plans are. Even US officials seem to be in the dark. Ukraine’s “operational security” – its control over information about its military – is formidable.

Managing expectations is another matter.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukrainian Foreign Minister told me and Gideon Rachman of the FT in Kyiv last month, the narrative that this spring’s counteroffensive was a watershed moment was dangerous for Ukraine because if it failed, it would bolster those in the west who want to push it into a compromise with Moscow.

“We must by all means counter the perception of the counter-offensive as the decisive battle of the war,” he said, adding that all wars are a series of battles.

Other Ukrainian officials we spoke to were more candid about the importance of regaining the upper hand on the battlefield this summer to maintain Western support for Ukraine’s war effort. The static nature of the front lines from Russia failed winter offensive inevitably bolstered predictions that the war was headed for some kind of hot, frozen conflict.

It would be harder to make the political case for sustained military support for Ukraine to the American public if the war appears to be “in an endless stalemate,” Jack Reed, the Democrat who chairs the Armed Services Committee of the Senate told the Wall Street Journal.

One thing we learned from the Discord leaks is that US expectations for the counteroffensive are quite low, with the intelligence assessment being that Ukraine make only “modest territorial gains” with its military suffering from “force generation and sustainment deficits”.

This assessment was made in February. kyiv has had several weeks since then to train and equip its army for the counteroffensive. Western officials have seemed a bit more positive in public in recent days. NATO Chief General Christopher Cavoli told a US congressional committee this week that Ukraine had taken delivery of 98% of the tanks and armored infantry fighting vehicles pledged by its allies.

However, not all weapons supplied to Ukraine were in good working order. None of the 20 self-propelled howitzers that Italy supplied to Ukraine earlier this year were combat-ready, an adviser to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry told us. Kiev has still not convinced the United States to supply long-range precision-guided missiles or F-16 fighter jets and there have long been concerns about whether it will have enough ammunition and barrels of weapons. ‘artillery.

Ukraine is assembling eight new assault brigades combining experienced troops and volunteers, known as “offensive guard”, and several other brigades of new recruits for his attack. Nine of the new brigades, which usually number between 2,000 and 5,000 men, are trained and equipped by Western armies. But we know little about their actual abilities.

What is Ukraine’s objective? Many analysts, Ukrainians and Westerners, assume that it is a push south through the province of Zaporizhzhia to the Sea of ​​Azov, cutting the Russian occupation forces in half and cutting the bridge land between Russian territory and occupied Crimea. It would be a blow for President Vladimir Putin and a huge undertaking for Kyiv.

But Ukrainian forces are expected to defeat Russian forces entrenched in layered fortified defenses (see this Reuters graphic piece) and then avoid being outflanked and surrounded as they push south.

It is unlikely that the counter-offensive will have such a single objective, especially in its early stages. Ukrainian commanders may decide there is more to be gained from an attack in Donetsk province, where much of the winter fighting has been concentrated.

Like the always shrewd Lawrence Freedman described in a review on Substack, “instead of frontal assaults, which normally end badly, this campaign could be more subtle, using opportunistic probes to find weak points in enemy lines”. There will also be feints and deceptions to keep the Russians guessing – such as enthusiastic reports this week of a Ukrainian “bridgehead” on the left bank of the Dnipro. “Because we can’t be sure what the offense will look like, we may not know when it started,” Freedman said.

If it will be difficult to call the start of the counter-offensive, it will be even more difficult to judge its success. What if it doesn’t reach the Sea of ​​Azov? Would taking back pieces of Donbas count as a victory?

We are so conditioned to use territorial gains as a measure of success that we neglect the effects of offensive action on an army’s ability to keep fighting, says Michael Kofman in the War on the Rocks Podcast. Russia’s last significant territorial gains came in July, when it seized the remaining major cities in Lugansk province after heavy fighting. The huge casualties suffered enabled Ukraine’s lightning counterattack two months later, when it broke through thin Russian defensive lines to liberate thousands of square kilometers of Kharkiv province in just days.

Many in the West already see in the Ukrainian spring/summer counter-offensive the conditions for a possible negotiation between kyiv and Moscow. At present, this seems premature. There are a lot of battles to fight. And whatever happens, Ukraine will have to show that it is ready to fight. But he has a lot to prove.

More on this topic

Two books coming out in May will shed light on this conflict, how it happened and how it might play out:

The Russian-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy is an immensely readable yet authoritative story of the ideological origins of a conflict that spanned nine years and decades.

Generation Z: at the heart of Russian fascist youth by Ian Garner is a chilling tale of how Vladimir Putin won the hearts and minds of young Russians, potentially turning the country into a long-term aggressor.

Ben’s pick of the week

Miles Johnson’s account in the FT of how the family of Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin enjoyed a life of international luxury despite Western sanctions against him