As Ukrainian Troops Advance, Russia Appears Intent on Fighting Long War

In recent weeks, Ukrainian counteroffensive operations have liberated large swathes of Russian-occupied territory in the country's south around Kherson and in the eastern Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk regions. Even after its recent declaration of a "partial" mobilization of forces, the heavily depleted Russian military appears incapable of turning the tide in the conflict.

The Kremlin's strategic disadvantage, however, has not convinced decision makers in Moscow to cut their losses and call for an end to Vladimir Putin's "special military operation." Instead, Russia is showing every indication that it intends to make its war in Ukraine as long and destructive as possible.

"This sounds obvious, but it's important to understand: the fact that Ukraine is making gains simultaneously on two fronts means that they have sufficient forces to conduct successful offensive operations in multiple theaters," Dmitry Gorenburg of the Center for Naval Analysis told Newsweek.

Russia's failure to reinforce one collapsing front at the expense of the other collapsing front indicates to Gorenburg that the Kremlin has not yet given up on its maximalist war aims.

"I think they still want it all," he said. "They can't get it all, but they can't reconcile themselves to not having it all, and the result is an incoherent jumble of strategy that makes it very difficult to imagine how Russia could possibly actually win this war."

"Putin is showing no sign of reducing his goals, and the people around him are either also completely inflexible, or else they lack the power to change anything," Gorenburg continued. "As long as Putin is in charge, I don't think he will end this, no matter how costly it becomes even for Russia itself."

The most clear-cut way for the conflict to end, even without Vladimir Putin's personal consent, would be for Ukraine to achieve a complete victory on the battlefield by driving Russian forces off of Ukraine's legally recognized territory. However, as Ukraine's advances approach larger urban areas and long-established Russian defensive lines, their progress is likely to slow.

In the years preceding Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian-controlled militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk "People's Republics" turned their de facto borders into a veritable fortress of trenches and bunkers. The eastern towns which Ukraine has recently liberated — Balakliya, Kupiansk, Izyum, Lyman — all fall outside of the zone which was under the physical control of these Russian proxy forces prior to February 24, 2022. Retaking long-occupied Russian territory is likely to prove a much tougher task than liberating recently captured towns has been.

"From early 2015 onwards, both sides built up very robust positions along the old OSCE Special Monitoring Mission lines," George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War told Newsweek.

"On February 24 of this year, it was very difficult for Russian forces to break through the defenses that Ukraine had established over the past seven years," he continued. "And if Ukrainian forces decide to attack in the direction of the Russian long-held held positions in eastern Ukraine, then it would likely be very difficult for them to break into the Russian lines moving in the other direction."

The difficulty of taking back large cities is another factor that will slow down the pace of Ukraine's counterattack in the east.

"The operational template that Ukraine used to liberate Lyman, essentially surrounding the town and forcing the defenders to either surrender or die, is what Ukraine would likely do if or when they get to Donetsk or Luhansk," Barros explained. "It's just that the task requires exponentially more resources when we're talking about a city of several hundred thousand rather than a town of several thousand."

Similar speed bumps are equally predictable in the south around Kherson.

"From October 1-4, Ukraine liberated over 1000 km² of territory on the right [western] bank of the Dnieper River," Barros said. "Russian sources attribute the collapse to Ukrainian numerical superiority in the area, which is significant, because it's a sign that Ukraine's months-long efforts to degrade Russian logistics is beginning to have a tangible impact."

Since mid-August, Ukrainian forces have been using U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket systems to disable the bridges that Russia depended on to resupply its troops on the right bank of the river. Although the Antonovsky Bridge and the roadway across the Nova Kakhovka dam have become all but completely unfit for use by heavy vehicles, Russian forces have not yet abandoned their precarious positions on the Dnieper's western bank, where they still occupy the regional capital.

"Even if Russian forces continue to be driven from the north of the region, they might choose to pull back to defensive lines around the city itself," Barros cautioned. "Very soon, Putin will be forced to make a strategic level decision about whether to accept another military defeat and conserve combat power by withdrawing from the right bank, or to dig in and try to hold the bridgehead at all costs."

The latter scenario could come to resemble the Battle for Mariupol, only in reverse. In Mariupol, outnumbered and undersupplied Ukrainian units carried on a doomed defense for weeks, tying down Russian forces and preventing them from being deployed to other theaters.

However, unlike Russian forces, which continued to take heavy casualties by engaging the AzovStal defenders head on, the Ukrainian General Staff is likely to opt for a more pragmatic approach.

"In the event that Russia refuses to retreat from Kherson, there's a high probability that the Ukrainians will be smart enough to siege the city, to conserve their forces and not engage in extremely attritional block-to-block combat operations," Barros said.

Barros is less confident in the strategic judgement on the Russian side.

"Kherson city is looking increasingly like a fundamentally untenable position for Russia," he added. "Russian forces will eventually starve there if they insist on trying to hold it against sustained Ukrainian advances, but Putin is still calling the shots, and he seems to be under the false impression that they are capable of winning this war militarily."