Russian Army Cannot Sustain Multiple Offensives at Once, Ukraine Says

Russia is incapable of sustaining multiple offensives at once, a Ukrainian official said this week as Moscow anticipates a fresh spring counteroffensive from Kyiv.

The Institute for the Study of War said in its latest analysis of the conflict on Thursday that recent Ukrainian assessments confirm the Washington-based think tank's longstanding estimation that Russia cannot conduct multiple offensive operations simultaneously at this time.

As Russia braces for Ukraine to launch its counteroffensive to recapture its occupied regions, the bloody battle for the industrial city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine continues to rage. Russia has been pouring its troops into the region since the summer of 2022. The capture of the war-torn city would represent Russia's first major battlefield gain in more than half a year.

Meanwhile, reports indicate Russian troops are gearing up to prevent a Ukrainian advance on Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2014. Russian forces have been fortifying the area. Photos and videos have circulated of trenches being built on Crimea's beaches, while satellite imagery from Maxar, a space solutions company, showed Russian forces building an extensive web of defense fortifications on the Black Sea peninsula.

The ISW noted that on Thursday, Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov said Russian forces deployed an unspecified number of personnel from the Avdiivka area to reinforce its offensive operations around Bakhmut.

Hromov said Russia has lost about 4,000 Wagner and conventional personnel in Bakhmut since around March 30.

"Hromov's statement supports ISW's longstanding assessment that the Russian military—in its current form—is unable to conduct large-scale, simultaneous offensive campaigns on multiple axes," the think tank said.

The ISW said the Kremlin has not yet undertaken the necessary reorganization of its war effort to effectively leverage economies of scale to support large-scale Russian force generation.

"Current Russian half-measures and decentralized recruitment efforts to regenerate forces such as crypto-mobilization, leaning on Russia's regions to generate volunteers, relying on new small PMCs, and pressuring various Russian state-owned enterprises to sponsor and pay for recruitment campaigns seek to shift the resource burden to generate forces among different siloviki (an elite group of Russian businessmen and leaders) and elements of the Russian state," it said.

According to the ISW, the Kremlin is reportedly billing the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom for its volunteer recruitment efforts in the Donetsk region, offering volunteers a monthly salary of 400,000 rubles ($4,900).

The measures Putin has taken to expand recruitment efforts for his war in Ukraine include signing a decree on March 27 that removed an upper age limit for Russian National Guard members serving in parts of Ukraine that are under the control of Russian forces.

The ISW concluded that the Kremlin's decision to "continue relying on financially incentivizing voluntary recruits with both one-time payments and accrued lifetime benefits will create large long-term structural costs and will not be sustainable indefinitely."

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry by email for comment.

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