The past week has seen a stunning transformation of the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, as a rapid armored offensive by Ukrainian forces broke through Russian defense lines and recaptured more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory. That’s more territory than Russian forces have captured in all of their operations in Ukraine since April. While the attack was brilliantly planned and executed, it also succeeded because of Russian inadequacies. In all areas of the Kharkiv region, Russian units were poorly organized and equipped — and many offered little resistance. 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. 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. Read more:
