LAST UPDATE | 22 Mar 2022
RUSSIA’S INVASION OF Ukraine is in its fourth week.
Almost one month into the military campaign, only one major city – Kherson – has fallen to Russian troops. Russia’s 58th Army is trying desperately to consolidate its hold on Kherson and to take Mariupol.
Supported by Russian aircraft – now based at the captured airport at Kherson – and supported by aircraft and cruise missiles from the Black Sea Fleet, the 58th Army is determined to complete a land corridor from the Crimean Peninsula to Donbass and Russia itself.
The 58th will seek to destroy resistance in Mariupol and to link up with their forces in Donetsk and Luhansk supported by the Russian 8th Combined Arms Army and 20th Combined Arms Army headquartered in the Russian cities of Rostov and Voronezh respectively.
These military actions in the south and east of the country – Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation in the Donbass’ – has been the most ‘successful’ component of the Kremlin’s military intervention in Ukraine thus far.
It is, however, a pyrrhic victory. Denied a swift conventional military capture of Mariupol, the Russian military have now effectively targeted its civilian population in order to force a surrender against persistent Ukrainian resistance.
Denying civilians safe evacuation corridors and targeting critical infrastructure such as water, electricity and food supplies, the Russians have converted Mariupol into a pressure cooker of human suffering.
Unable – or unwilling – to fight their way into the city centre, the Russians have used artillery systems, air strikes and missile attacks to pulverise civilian targets in an attempt to terrorise the population and effect a surrender by force majeure. The principal victims of this strategy are the innocent men, women and children of Mariupol.
To the north of the country, the Russian 35th Combined Arms Army has failed to encircle Kyiv. After a month of combat operations – and several months of preparation at their start-lines in Belarus and Russia – the stalled Russian advance on Kyiv is a spectacular failure.
The failure of motorised rifle units, tank regiments and mechanised infantry supports to move down the E95 motorway to Kyiv will be examined by war colleges and military historians for decades to come.
The Russian 90th Tank Division is currently bogged down at Zalissya on the outskirts of Kyiv at the strategic Tribuzh river crossing. Kyiv’s southern, and south western approaches remain open and controlled by Ukrainian forces.
This gives the Ukrainian military – and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration – an open resupply and reinforcement route west through Vinnytsia routing towards Lviv and neighbouring EU and NATO member states.
Major losses
In the last four weeks, the Russian military have experienced major losses of tanks, armoured vehicles and have endured an unsustainably high level of attrition in their supply and logistics elements. In short, they have been mauled on the approach to Kyiv.
Logistics and supply issues have slowed the Russian advance on Kyiv to an average of less than 10 miles per day. The manoeuver capability of these forces has also been compromised, with evidence that the 35th Army has been unable to function effectively in combined arms operations. Tank columns have been ambushed ahead of their support units – as have motor rifle units unaccompanied by armoured reinforcements.
A key and recurring feature of Ukrainian attacks on Russian units has been the use of state of the art shoulder-launched anti-armour weapons in ambushes and at choke points along the Russian axis of advance.
Using Javelin missile systems and next-generation light anti-tank weapons – supplied by EU and NATO member states – the Ukrainian military have discovered that Russian armour is highly vulnerable.
These man portable missile systems, supplied over land borders from neighbouring European states, have robbed the Russian armoured forces of their much-vaunted strategic and tactical advantage in open ground. What should have been a lightning advance on Kyiv has turned into a faltering and inconclusive snail’s pace advance on the capital city.
It has been costly in terms of Russian equipment and Russian lives. It has also allowed Zelenskyy’s forces to embed their forces in the outskirts of Kyiv and prepare a very comprehensive defence in depth of the city.
Weapons
The Ukrainian military have also used European-supplied weapon systems to great effect in targeting not just armour, but Russian soft skin vehicles, logistics and fuel tankers, troops in the open and strong points. In light of this newly acquired combat experience, Russian forces will be very vulnerable to massive losses should they attempt or succeed to enter Kyiv proper.
With re-supply routes open and from the west, the Ukrainian military can keep counter-attacking and harassing Russian units to the extent that the Kremlin cannot claim to definitively ‘hold’ or ‘control’ any significant new ground after a month of combat.
Russia’s ground forces – with the possible exception of some modest, but brutally violent ‘progress’ in the south – have failed to materialise as an effective fighting force. With their ground element faltering, Russia will increasingly rely on its air and missile capabilities in order to save face and thwart Ukraine’s dogged resistance.
The Russians are mounting increasingly indiscriminate air and helicopter gunship attacks throughout the civilian areas they seek to encircle. However, due to the threat posed by shoulder launched anti-aircraft missiles – such as stinger missiles supplied by the west – Russian air sorties are vulnerable to Ukrainian defenders.
Cruise missiles
In this context, the Russians are making ever increasing use of cruise missiles to target city defences throughout Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol – and have also targeted cities and critical infrastructure in western Ukraine including in Lviv and sites along the border with Poland.
Russian cruise missiles – such as the Kalibr variant – have massive conventional warheads, each containing up to 500Kg of high explosives.
These are capable of destroying an entire apartment block or residential street. As Russia becomes more frustrated with the supply of western weapon systems over land borders in the west, they may choose to target border crossings and other facilities along the Polish border.
In this regard, the Russians have now fired a number of hypersonic ‘Kinzhal’ missiles in recent days. One was fired at a target far to the west in the Carpathian mountains. This sends a very clear message to Ukraine’s European neighbours that their supply of weapons may be challenged by a weapon that can defeat NATO anti-missile missile systems. This also carries with it the severe risk of escalation and widening of the war.
Putin however, will try to avoid a direct confrontation with NATO. He will instead – as he did with Assad in Syria – target the civilian population with an ever increasing strategy of artillery, missile and air attacks. With conventional military tactics failing, the Kremlin may rely on terror to force a surrender of Ukrainian cities.
These terror tactics include the deliberate starvation of urban populations and the cutting off of water supply, whilst simultaneously attacking those who choose to flee along ‘evacuation routes’. There have been reports of the rape and murder of Ukrainian women by Russian forces – a recurring feature of recent wars in the middle east and former Yugoslavia.
This war is unsustainable in terms of human suffering. It is unsustainable on an economic level and represents no political or military benefit to Russia. This war will eventually come to an end. By one means or another.
The challenge to all concerned is to end it before we witness the greatest loss of life in Europe since World War 2 – a widening conflict with near genocidal consequences.
At the moment, Ukraine is paying the price for Putin’s vanity. As each day passes, ordinary Russians will also pay a high price. If the war is not stopped, all of Europe will share in this suffering.
Dr Tom Clonan is a former Captain in the Irish armed forces. He is a security analyst and academic, lecturing in the School of Media in DIT. You can follow him on Twitter.
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