Unknowns shroud Ukraine’s counter-offensive | Financial Times

Welcome back. I’m standing in for Tony Barber, who will be back for next week’s edition. You can contact me at [email protected].

The towns of eastern Ukraine, largely abandoned by civilians, were bustling with soldiers, the FT’s Christopher Miller observed on a recent reporting trip to Slovyansk. It is another sign of an impending Ukrainian spring/summer counter-offensive that 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 cache of secret Pentagon files on the Ukraine war that appeared earlier this year on the Discord gaming site. Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s security council, says no more than five people know what the counter-offensive plans are. Even American officials seem to be in the dark. Ukraine’s “operational security” — the grip it exerts on information about its military — is formidable.

Expectations management is another matter.

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told me and the FT’s Gideon Rachman in Kyiv last month the narrative of this spring’s counter-offensive being a make-or-break moment was dangerous for Ukraine, because if it faltered it would strengthen those in the west who want to push it into a compromise with Moscow.

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“We should counter by all means 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 for maintaining western support for Ukraine’s war effort. The static nature of the front lines since Russia’s failed winter offensive has inevitably strengthened predictions that the war is heading for some kind of hot frozen conflict.

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

One thing we did learn from the Discord leaks is that US expectations of the counter-offensive are quite low, with the intelligence assessment being that Ukraine will only make “modest territorial gains” with its military suffering from “force generation and sustainment shortfalls”.

That assessment was made in February. Kyiv has had several weeks since then to train and equip its army for the counter-offensive. Western officials have sounded a little more positive in public in recent days. Nato’s top general Christopher Cavoli told a US congressional committee this week that Ukraine had taken delivery of 98 per cent of the tanks and armoured infantry fighting vehicles promised by its allies.

However, not all the weapons provided to Ukraine have been in good working order. Not one of the 20 self-propelled howitzers Italy provided to Ukraine earlier this year was battle ready, one adviser to Ukraine’s defence ministry told us. Kyiv has still not persuaded the US to provide long-range precision guided missiles or F-16 fighter jets and there are longstanding concerns about whether it will have sufficient artillery ammunition and barrels.

Ukraine is assembling eight new assault brigades combining experienced troops and volunteers, know as the “offensive guard”, and several other brigades of new recruits for its attack. Nine of the new brigades, which typically have 2,000-5,000 troops, are being trained and equipped by western armies. But we know little about their real capabilities.

What is Ukraine’s objective? Many analysts, Ukrainian and western, assume it is a thrust southwards through Zaporizhzhia province all the way to the Sea of Azov, cutting Russia’s occupying forces in two and severing the land bridge between Russian territory and occupied Crimea. That would be a crushing blow for President Vladimir Putin and a huge undertaking for Kyiv.

But Ukraine’s forces would have to overcome entrenched Russian forces in layered fortified defences (see this Reuters graphical piece) and then avoid being outflanked and encircled as they push south.

The counter-offensive is unlikely to have such a single focus, especially in its early stages. Ukrainian commanders may decide there is more to be gained by an attack in Donetsk province, where much of the winter fighting has been centred.

As the ever-astute Lawrence Freedman describes in an assessment on Substack, “instead of frontal assaults, which normally end badly, this campaign might be more subtle, using opportunistic probes to find weak spots in the enemy lines”. There will also be feints and deceptions to keep the Russians guessing — like the excited reports this week of a Ukrainian “beachhead” on the left bank of the Dnipro river. “Because we cannot be sure what the offensive will look like we might not know when it has started,” Freedman says.

If it is going to be hard to call the start of the counter-offensive, it will be even harder to judge its success. What if it falls short of reaching the Sea of Azov? Would retaking bits of the Donbas count as a victory?

We are so conditioned to use territorial gains as a metric for success that we neglect the effects of offensive action on an army’s capacity to fight on, says Michael Kofman in the War on the Rocks podcast. Russia’s last significant territorial gains were in July, when it seized the remaining sizeable towns in Luhansk province after heavy fighting. The huge losses it incurred enabled Ukraine’s lightning counter-attack two months later, when it smashed through thin Russian defensive lines to liberate thousands of square kilometres of Kharkiv province in just a few days.

Many in the west already see Ukraine’s spring/summer counter-offensive as setting the conditions for a possible negotiation between Kyiv and Moscow. Right now that seems premature. There is a lot of fighting to go. And whatever happens, Ukraine will need to show it is ready to fight on. But it has a huge amount to prove.

More on this topic

Two books due out in May will illuminate this conflict, how it came about and how it might pan out:

The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy is an immensely readable but authoritative history of the ideological origins of a conflict nine years in and decades in the making.

Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia’s Fascist Youth by Ian Garner is a frightening account of how Vladimir Putin captured the hearts and minds of young Russians, potentially turning the country into long-term revanchist 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 the western sanctions against him