After the failure of their lightning offensive, at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the Russian forces reduced their ambitions and now concentrate on the conquest of Donbass. A limited objective where…

INTERVIEW

One hundred days of war in Ukraine: "A Russian victory is emerging, but very localized"

A column of Russian military vehicles shelled by Ukrainian artillery in the Izium region on April 14, 2022. AP

Text by: Franck Alexandre

8 mins

After the failure of their lightning offensive, at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the Russian forces reduced their ambitions and now concentrate on the conquest of Donbass.

A limited objective where a war of attrition is being played out, indicates Vincent Tourret of the Foundation for Strategic Research.

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RFI: First,

let
's talk about these fights in Sivierodonetsk in

the Donbass

.
W
e are witnessing a high-intensity artillery war.
T
oday, the front lines are very compact and it is the artillery that is king in this battle of Donbass!

Vincent Tourret:

Yes, we can say that.

We are witnessing a return to the fundamentals of the Russian doctrine where we observe a much better combined arms integration.

Not necessarily joint, with the fires of aviation, for the moment, it still seems quite insufficient.

But at the level of the integration of artillery fire, they manage much better.

Somewhere, it was a little expected since it is one of their strengths.

This is how they imagined conducting their operations, putting the element of fire forward to conquer the ground and then prepare the maneuver of the troops.

That is to say , we

crush
everything with artillery and then we advance?

In a somewhat simplified way, it can be summed up as this.

The developments of Russian doctrines were to bet, either towards a better quality of firepower, that is to say with the arrival of precision ammunition, the networking of components - therefore, the integration of sensors , for example, drones with guns, rocket artillery, tube artillery.

They could bet on this new quality, except that this one, one notices, was insufficiently developed.

Afterwards, they return to a more basic mode, which is a little less effective, but which works: a zonal approach, step by step, more methodical, which will suddenly compensate for the imprecision of the shots with a greater mass of fire.

Today, the Russians only fire smooth ammunition, they are short of precision missiles?

What we can observe is that you have an alteration, a change in the composition of the Russian strikes.

That is to say that their salvos were initially long-range missiles, missiles they call tactical-operative: the whole range of Iskanders, Tochkas, cruise missiles.

This stock, which concerns rather sophisticated weapons, is running out of stock, especially since they need some of these missiles to carry out their strategic deterrence mission.

Nor should it be assumed that there are no more Iskanders, no more sophisticated Russian missiles, it's just that those that remain cannot be used for conventional purposes in the course of operations.

What we observe today

Just

the armament on the Ukrainian side,
there is
the American and French armament - one thinks of
the small dozen
Caesars,
which are very effective
- and the American triple Seven, but also the imminent arrival of multiple tubes
which
could the qualitative difference!

The form of the fights evolved, starting from fights that were rather close range.

The Ukrainians had the upper hand because they could play on a larger infantry, which could saturate the Russian armored points with anti-tank weapons and play on the ground, valuing the defense.

This configuration has evolved today.

The Russians make more use of their live fire and artillery, which decreases the effectiveness of the Ukrainian infantry.

Western contributions become all the more critical for the Ukrainians, especially as they need to compensate for their inferiority on the heavier segments of the strikes.

It is absolutely relevant to reinforce them in artillery.

A French CAESAR in 2018. © Creative Commons

At the beginning, we saw a three-axis offensive fail on the Russian side, and finally, now,

focus on
a more restricted objective, the Donbass.
It is
an asymmetrical and high-tech war, on the Ukrainian side,
with
fierce resistance.
What can we say about these 100 days of war?
And
what analysis

do you make

of it

You have already had a total change in the level of war envisaged by the Russian camp.

At the beginning, you had the vision of a “special operation” which was going to be determined first of all by the speed, the quality of the Russian high-tech forces and which was going to be able to sweep Ukraine in a few days.

This scenario did not materialize at all.

Today, you have truly entered into high-intensity warfare.

Above all, there was an awareness on the Russian side that this was a much higher level war.

And it shows in their operational ambition.

We see that there is a concentration, but experienced as a kind of reduction of their objectives.

You have increasingly reduced encirclements, centered on the Donbass, and a much more pragmatic vision for the Russians of what they can really achieve with the forces they have at their disposal.

►Also read: Donbass: the anger of Ukrainian soldiers at the front

For example, there was the theoretical diagram by the encirclement by the Dnieper, all that was completely evacuated.

Today, operations are really concentrated on the extreme point of the Ukrainian system, around Sievierodonetsk, with the thrusts on Popasna and Lyman.

Concretely, there is a Russian victory taking shape, but which is extremely localized, which is very limited.

Where is the Russian army?

C an
Russia be able to continue its offensive thrust?
Much has been said about the effectives which had suffered considerable attrition, which had only benefited from the very limited reinforcement
of
approximately 10,000 men, from formed units which had been at the front for a hundred days.

On the offensives in progress, around Sievierodonestk,

a priori

, it seems capable of going to the end of its operation plan and taking the city.

Moreover, the Ukrainians seem rather to abandon their forward positions, also making a pragmatic choice to tighten their defense more towards the rear.

In fact, there are several questions in what you are asking me.

Already, the state of the Russian army.

How does it deal with its losses?

And then, what follow-up to the war?

What will be his next steps?

On the state of the Russian army, what is interesting and almost a paradox is that despite the losses which are extremely heavy -we are talking about more than 10,000 men lost, that's for sure- and with losses also very important material -we have spoken of the wear and tear of the stocks of sophisticated missiles, but also of the armored losses, there are the losses of the aviation...- you have an army which, paradoxically, no longer knows the effects of deep demoralization that there was at the beginning of the first phase of the conflict.

You have a Russian army which has better discipline, which not only has better tactical effectiveness on its infantry units, but which has solidified.

It is much more consistent, in any case, in what it tries to obtain and in the means it uses.

On the other hand, on the evolutions of the conflict, they are much more pessimistic for the Russians.

Despite the few advances they have made in recent days, you have an exhaustion of their offensive potential.

The big question that is emerging is: will the Ukrainians be able to take the initiative and launch real counter-attacks to recover lost territories?

And there, we are really entering an unknown because, what we know of the Ukrainian army, it is an army which has above all performed in defence,

and that's what she was formed for.

It was there that she had drawn her experience with the war in the Donbass since 2014, and she showed all her quality.

►Also read: In the Donbass, the Karpatska Sich battalion against the Russians on the northwestern front

The big question is: will she be able to transform the tactical quality of her units that she has demonstrated so far into a quality of a higher level?

So, at the operational, even strategic level, to be able to articulate much more ambitious maneuvers, to be able to dislodge the Russians?

And there, we really have no way of knowing.

The wear is strong, we know it.

The Ukrainian counter-attacks are above all tactical and local, on Kharkov, today on Kherson, but a larger-scale attack is, for the moment, very difficult to determine in its feasibility.

One hundred days of war in Ukraine: "A Russian victory is emerging, but very localized"

One hundred days of war in Ukraine: "A Russian victory is emerging, but very localized"

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