Kursk 2.0?

 

moon of alabama

Lazy and arguably biased as I am, I will just present the analysis (slightly edited) of the former Swedish officer and defense politician Mikael Valtersson:

ANALYSIS UKRAINIAN COUNTEROFFENSIVE ZAPORIZHIA AFTERNOON JUNE 9

Hard fighting continues along the Zaporizhia front, but with no Ukrainian breakthrough. Sometimes UkrAF makes small gains and then RuAF retakes the lost territories. But all fighting are still being conducted in the grey area in front of the Russian main defence lines.

bigger

I will not go into details about attacks and counterattacks, but the main areas of fighting has been centred around Lobkove to the west, and Robotino to the south, of Orikhiv. Lobkove was captured a short while by Ukrainian forces, but later they retreated due to intense Russian bombardments.

bigger

In Robotino Russian forces retreated to the second line of forward positions closer to the settlement, then Russian forces retook the lost positions and presently Ukrainian forces has taken them a second time and now Russian forces try to retake the first line a second time. But still the Ukrainians has not reached the settlement of Robotino and they are fighting an uphill battle in open terrain through Russian minefields and might have to withdraw a second time to their original positions.

bigger

The Ukrainian forces don't seem to sweep mines in advance of the attack. They do it with a couple of mine clearing vehicles when they attack and behind them the Ukrainian armour advance in a column that is an easy target for Russian AT assets. In a way it resembles the Russian armour columns in the beginning of the war. Columns that took catastrophic losses to Ukrainian AT weapons, a history now repeated by the Ukrainians.

In advance of an offensive, the attacking side must secure air and artillery superiority, so they can shield their mine clearing operations and troop concentrations. And at the same time destroy the defenders command structures and logistical hubs. Finally when they attack their air and artillery superiority can be utilised to severely hurt and slow down enemy reserves to secure breakthroughs. This becomes even more important if the enemy has large reserves and a defence in depth.

On the Zaporizhia front the situation is the opposite, so Ukrainian forces hasn't many choices how to act. One method is to achieve strategic surprise as in the Kharkiv offensive last autumn. That option doesn't exist on the Zaporizhia front. In general I would say that an attack towards an enemy who has all the benefits RuAF has on the Zaporizhia front is suicidal.

The only way Ukrainian (and western) commanders even could have contemplated that such an offensive could succeed was if

1. western weapons were much superior to Russian weapons,
2. western trained soldiers much superior to Russian soldiers and
3. Russian morale was dismal.

If all these factors where true, UkrAF might have had a chance to succeed, but nothing seems to corroborate those assumptions.

Many on the Ukrainian and western side had anticipated hard initial resistance from RuAF, but after 2-3 days fighting and advances of around 6-8 km, they expected an increasing collapse of Russian morale and the real breakthroughs would come. Nothing of this seems to be other than wishful thinking, since fighting still are in the grey zone and Russian resistance are unbroken. At the same time Ukrainian forces take heavy casualties both in soldiers and vehicles.

The offensive isn't over yet and the main Ukrainian attack fist remains with probably over 600 tanks and as many IFVs around Orikhiv. But the future for the Ukrainian offensive looks bleak if their vanguard is destroyed before they reach the Russian main defence lines. The probability is large that Ukraine has to use up their main force to get through a couple of the Russian defencelines and then they will run out of forces to exploit any successes and be forced to withdraw.

To summarise, the most likely outcome of the Ukrainian offensive is minor territorial gains at a horrendous cost.

As I've said before it seems to be Kursk 2.0

I largely agree with the above assessment (even though Kursk 1.0 was much larger and way more balanced).

The biggest tactical mistake I see on the Ukrainian side is the bunching up of vehicles. The distance between combat vehicle on roads and in open fields should be 100 meter, not 10, 5 or 1 meter like in the picture below. The Ukrainian columns regularly get slaughtered by artillery strikes because they always(!) bunch up. Keeping distances is a basic training lecture for any combined arms warfare unit.

bigger

Where are the air defenses? Ukraine has received 37 German Gepard (cheetah) air defense tanks. These are old but can keep the air clean,  each within a 10 kilometer wide bubble. The Gepards were specifically designed to cover tank and mech-infantry battalions in battle. But judging from the number of drone videos the Russian can put out, there is not one Gepard in the whole area.

Also where are the electromagnetic measures. Why can Russian artillery directing drones fly over the combat zone but not Ukrainians?

Why are no fog grenades used by Ukrainian artillery to cover the approaches and breaching attempts by Ukrainian armor?

How are piecemeal commitments, wave after wave but hours apart, going to change anything when what is needed are massive consistent pushes to get through?

Folks, these are basics, not higher level operational or strategic issues. I have drilled these basics into conscripts. If you can't even get those right, after allegedly intense 'western' training, what hope is there to breach through seriously prepared Russian defense lines?

None.

Here is some of the damage done to last night's and today's morning attacks by an allegedly prime Ukrainian unit, the 43rd 'western' trained brigade, that uses prime 'western' equipment.

bigger
bigger
bigger
bigger

Here is video of more.

The first serious probing attacks for the counter offensive started on June 5. I have listed the Ukrainian losses the Russian Ministry of Defense has since reported. Note that these numbers are mostly for the whole front, not just for the Zaporizhia region.

bigger

These numbers are, like in most frontline reports, likely too high. But even if one only takes them at half or a third for real they are still frightening high.

bigger

A whole brigade, more likely a third each of three brigades, has been wasted for zero gains.

Consider that we are five days in and the Ukrainian forces, despite using Leopards and Bradleys, their main forces, have hardly crossed the first contact line. The real Russian first defense lines are still miles away and there are three or more of those.

The History Legends Youtube channel calls this a disaster.

I agree with that too.

Posted by b on June 9, 2023 at 16:33 UTC | Permalink 

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/06/kursk-20.html#more