Some of Ukraine’s European allies are increasingly skeptical its military will be able to make a decisive breakthrough this year because Russia’s defenses have had time to dig in ahead of the looming offensive.
(Bloomberg) — Some of Ukraine’s European allies are increasingly skeptical its military will be able to make a decisive breakthrough this year because Russia’s defenses have had time to dig in ahead of the looming offensive.
The mood among Western officials marks a sharp departure from late last year, when Kyiv surprised its allies – as well as Russia – with a pair of successful counteroffensives that recaptured large swathes of occupied land.
That fueled hopes its forces might be able to make further breakthroughs this year that would tip the momentum of the war in Ukraine’s favor. Now, Kyiv’s allies are reining in their expectations and contemplating the need for intense fighting well into 2024, according to European officials involved in efforts to support Ukraine’s military.
Ukraine Latest: US Reels From Arrest in Massive Documents Leak
US officials were offering their own downbeat assessment of the outlook six to eight weeks ago, according to a trove of classified documents whose exposure in a leak has stirred anger in Kyiv. The concerns expressed then remain entrenched among some Ukrainian allies, despite the arrival of billions of dollars in NATO ammunition and weaponry since.
While a Ukrainian drive toward the city of Melitopol in the south, aimed at splitting Russian forces is widely expected, some European officials are now skeptical that can be achieved this year.
Instead, a more realistic target is now seen as a 30 km (20 mile) or so advance that would put Ukraine’s most capable artillery within range of Russian supply lines and create conditions for a deeper push in 2024, one of the officials said. Allies need to work now to enhance their production capacity and the support that will be needed to sustain those efforts, the official added.
Even a less ambitious push would likely cost thousands of lives and large quantities of ammunition and equipment because of Russia’s layered defenses of minefields, ditches and concrete anti-tank pyramids that have been built over the winter.
The classified US assessments — mostly written in February to early March, and of still uncertain authenticity – worried over perceived Ukrainian weaknesses. Those included problems in generating and training the manpower needed for such a complex combined forces attack, and a perilously low stock of air defense missiles to protect them.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin pushed back against that pessimism in public this week. He said Kyiv remained confident of success in the counteroffensive after a meeting in Washington with his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov. The US would go on providing the “security assistance capability” to achieve it, Austin said.
Reznikov called for the US to provide the F-15 or F-16 combat aircraft it has so far refused to offer. Ukrainian officials and Western military analysts warned as far back as last autumn that Ukraine was running critically low on air defense missiles and fighter jets could help compensate for that.
What Tanks Ukraine Will Get and Why It Wants Them: QuickTake
Ukraine’s offensive is expected to begin by mid-May and to consist of operations from multiple directions, including potential decoys, according to several European defense officials. One said the start of the offensive wouldn’t necessarily be the main element of the operation, given that Russia has been preparing for the attack.
Ukrainian analysts expect a later start, as new troops and equipment are integrated to enable what they believe could be the best and possibly last chance of defeating the Russian invasion. The actual timing and direction of the offensive are closely held secrets.
Fresh military hardware includes US kits known as JDAMs that make precision missiles out of ordinary gravity bombs. Kyiv’s allies have also supplied artillery shells, tanks and other arms for the offensive.
With the war now thought likely to grind on into next year, allies are developing new supply plans. A second major offensive would require further large-scale deliveries of Western financing, weapons and ammunition. There will be the risk that this runs into political opposition in capitals as well as capacity constraints.
“Neither army is what it was,” said Dara Massicot, a specialist on the Russian military at the Rand Corporation, a US think tank. She predicted a war of attrition at high cost to both sides.
Since the US assessments were drafted, Ukraine’s allies have been working to address some of the issues, such as ramping up the production and supply of 155mm artillery shells. They also began deliveries of some longer range GPS-guided bombs.
Several European nations have been urging others for months to boost and accelerate supplies.
Still, the problem from Ukraine’s point of view is that the US and some of its allies have not followed up on their “whatever-it-takes” rhetoric to avoid a stalemate on the ground. A number of nations have been urging allies to speed up their support in recent months.
“We need less contemplation on “leaks” and more long-range weapons in order to properly end the war,” Ukraine’s de facto presidential spokesman Mikhail Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
Contrary to the US, Ukraine has publicly dismissed the leaked documents as fakes. Podolyak, in an April 7 Telegram post said the documents were “based on a large volume of fictitious information.”
The documents say Ukraine’s chances are not great, “but at the same time Austin is saying they have given us everything we need,” said Mykola Bielieskov, research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Ukraine government think tank. That discrepancy “leads us to some rather unpleasant conclusions.”
The US should supply surface-to-surface missiles produced by Lockheed Martin Corp, Bielieskov said. The MGM-140 ATACMS have a range as long as 300 km (190 miles) and could be used to reach far behind Russian lines. That would enable Ukraine to curb the movement of the munitions and reserves essential to Russian defense, eliminating the need to fight through 30 km of defensive fortifications first.
The problem is that ultimately Ukraine and the US have different priorities, Bielieskov said. “The war has eliminated Russia as a great power threat for years to come, so US and Ukrainian interests are not necessarily aligned.”
The US has withheld the missiles over fears they might be used against targets deep within Russia. Officials fear that could expand the war and feed Kremlin propaganda that Russia is not invading Ukraine, but defending itself from attack by NATO. Russia already condemned the delivery of tanks and long range precision munitions as escalatory.
The US and other governments have underestimated Ukrainian capabilities on multiple occasions, including a US prediction at the start of the war last February that Russia might overrun Kyiv within 72 hours.
There were also predictions of a stalemate last summer, just before the Ukrainian breakthroughs. That trend appears to be happening again, Bielieskov said.
But if Ukraine runs out of air defenses and is exposed to Russia’s still large and capable air force, “that would be our nightmare,” he said.
–With assistance from Gregory L. White.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.