Their failures, and their disorderly retreat eastward, have made the goal of President Vladimir Putin’s special military operation to take all of Luhansk and Donetsk regions much more difficult to achieve.
Over the weekend, the Russian retreat continued from border areas seized since March. Villages five kilometers from the border raised the Ukrainian flag.
Live updates: Russia’s war in Ukraine
The collapse of Russian defenses has sparked cross-recriminations between prominent Russian military bloggers and Russian state media figures.
As the Ukrainian flag has been raised in one community after another in recent days, one question has come into focus: how is the Kremlin responding?
A lightning fast business
Ukrainian officials had telegraphed that an attack was imminent — but not where it actually happened. There has been much noise about a counteroffensive in the south, and even US officials have spoken of Ukrainian operations to “shape the battlefield” in Kherson. Russian reinforcements — perhaps as many as 10,000 — rushed to the area within weeks.
There was indeed a Ukrainian attack on Kherson, but one that appeared to be to fix Russian forces, while the real effort was hundreds of miles to the north. It was a disinformation operation the Russians might have been proud of.
Kateryna Stepanenko at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, says the deception worked.
“Ukrainian military officials reported that elements of the (Russian) Eastern Military District that had previously supported offensive operations toward Sloviansk had been redeployed to the Southern Axis,” he told CNN.
Their replacements were clearly not up to the job — a mixed bag, Stepanenko said, “Cossack volunteers, volunteer units, DNR/LNR militia units and the Russian Rosgvardia (National Guard). These forces were not enough to defend a huge and complex first line”.
The Ukrainians chose the weakest point in the Russian defenses for their initial push — an area controlled by the Luhansk militia with Russian National Guard units further back. They were no match for a highly mobile armored attack that quickly made artillery irrelevant.
Igor Strelkov, former head of the militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic and now a scathing critic of Russian military shortcomings, noted the poor training of these units and “the extreme attention to the actions of the Russian air force.” In short, the Russian frontline units were hung out to dry without adequate air support.
Several videos located and geo-analyzed by CNN, as well as local accounts, depict a chaotic withdrawal of Russian units, with large amounts of ammunition and equipment left behind.
The poor quality of Russian defenses along a critical north-south axis sustaining the Donetsk offensive is hard to fathom. Once it began, the intent of the Ukrainian offensive was clear — to destroy this supply artery. Within three days, they had — largely because Russian reinforcements were slow to mobilize.
The counterclaims begin
The Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday tried to present the abandonment of Kharkiv as a planned reorientation of efforts in the Donetsk region — but in reality it complicates those efforts.
Until this week, the Russians were able to attack Ukrainian defenses in Donetsk from three directions: north, east and south. The northern axis is now gone: the threat to the industrial zone in and around Sloviansk is greatly reduced, as is the prospect of the Ukrainian defenses being encircled.
Simply put, the battlefield in eastern Ukraine has been redrawn for days.
The most influential — and perhaps surprising — public critic of the situation has been Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has supplied thousands of fighters to the offensive. In a Telegram post on Sunday, he said he would contact senior defense ministry officials to explain his message.
“It’s clear that mistakes were made. I think they’re going to draw some conclusions,” he said.
Alluding to unrest among commanders, Kadyrov said that “if the Russian General Staff did not want to leave, the (troops) would not retreat” — but Russian soldiers “did not have proper military training” and this led them to retreat.
Influential military bloggers in Russia were even more blunt. Zakhar Prilepin, whose Telegram channel has more than 250,000 subscribers, reposted a comment describing the events in Kharkiv as a “disaster” and a major intelligence failure.
“We can now observe the result of the criminal irresponsibility of those responsible for this direction,” the post reads, before concluding: “The special military operation has long since ended. There is a war going on.”
Another pro-Putin blogger named Kholmogorov reposted an equally scathing account from Partizan’s Telegram channel from the front lines, which essentially accused the Russian authorities of deserting the troops.
“The soldiers were on foot with a machine gun and a knapsack. Abandoned by command, not knowing the way, they walked haphazardly,” the post said.
The poster, who describes himself as a Russian Orthodox nationalist, says that while hatred for the enemy grows, “hatred for the government and administration grows even more.”
Adding his own thoughts, Kholmogorov said: “Lord, save the Russian soldiers from blows in the front and even more from blows in the back.”
Similar analysis came from Pyotr Lundstrem’s Telegram channel.
“There is NO thermal imaging, NO bulletproof vests, NO reconnaissance equipment, NO secure communications, NOT enough helicopters, NO first aid kits in the military.”
Referring to commemorations in Russia this weekend for Moscow Day, the city’s birthday, he added: “You’re celebrating a billionth holiday. What have you got?”
On Saturday, as the ride continued, Putin was inaugurating a Ferris wheel in Moscow.
The Institute for the Study of War notes that “the withdrawal announcement further alienated Russian milliblogger and Russian nationalist communities who support the Kremlin’s grandiose vision of seizing all of Ukraine.”
Putin’s next move
Prominent media figures in Russia are trying to paint this week’s disaster as a planned operation. TV presenter Vladimir Soloviev reposted a comment on Telegram insisting that “the enemy, buying an easy promotion in a given sector of the front, is leading into a trap.”
“At this time, Russian units are deliberately regrouping,” the commentary added, although there are few signs of this.
That raises the question of how the Kremlin is prosecuting the war after suffering its worst week of the entire campaign. It seems that there are no high quality units. Some existing tactical battalion groups have been reconstituted. volunteer battalions have been raised throughout Russia to form a Third Army Corps. US officials say the Russians are running short on ammunition, even turning to North Korea for supplies.
Stepanenko, at the Institute for the Study of War, told CNN that the remarkable success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive will force a reassessment of how to use the new army corps.
Stepanenko, who studies the recruitment and organization of the Russian military, says the Russians “may still try to use these units to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv, although the rush of ill-trained and unprepared units into such operations will it was an extremely dangerous endeavor.”
He believes that given Russia’s need for fresh manpower, “it is likely that Russian forces are deploying these elements directly to the front line anyway based on reports that some volunteer battalions are already fighting on the Kherson front.”
The Russian military may still have considerable strength in terms of its missile, artillery and missile forces. But despite the already reshuffled top command, its ground operations appear poorly organized, with little autonomy granted to commanders. The last week has revealed issues of motivation and leadership.
Russian bloggers who supported the attack say a radical rethink is needed. One commented: “We need a change of approach to the war in Ukraine. Mobilize the economy and industry. Create a political control center for the war.”
Strelkov came to the same conclusion, saying that it is time to “start fighting for real (with martial law, the mobilization of the army and the economy.)”.
Throughout the conflict, Putin has avoided a general mobilization, which may be unpopular at home.
It is impossible to know whether the Kremlin will now double down on an effort to complete the special military operation or begin seeking a negotiated settlement.
The first option looks like a long data series of the last week’s events. the second would be humiliating. The third possibility, perhaps the most likely, is that Russia will insist on an inch-by-inch offensive while taking little or no additional territory. But now he faces an adversary with the wind in his sails and fresh doses of Western military aid being prepared for the winter months.
Ukraine’s advances on the battlefield have reinvigorated allied support, with a meeting in Germany this weekend producing further pledges of long-term support.
