Russia's 2023 Winter Offensive: Week 1

Minor gains for Moscow - along with a humiliating defeat near Vuhledar

Russia’s winter offensive has begun, though the onset has been relatively soft, to the point that giving it a specific starting date is probably an exercise in futility.

At this point, it appears that Moscow’s strategy is to steadily ramp up pressure on the Ukrainian forces entrenched in Donbas ahead of a more spectacular stroke, probably landing closer to Kharkiv.

Generally speaking, making obvious moves is a bad idea in warfare unless you have absolute dominance over your opponent. This Russia manifestly lacks (though its leaders might not know it yet), meaning that if Putin’s generals want to win, they have to embrace proper military science.

It remains possible that, as prominent US and UK based analysts insist, the Russian military is a spent, hollow force incapable of achieving success on the battlefield. However, given that these same experts anticipated Kyiv’s swift defeat last year, just like their deluded counterparts in Moscow did back in February, it is important to consider that they might not themselves have a particularly effective paradigm for waging war.

It isn’t as if any of them have direct experience with this kind of fighting. Or worked out how to win in Iraq or Afghanistan over, what, twenty years?

Recently, I ran across a quote by a Ukrainian soldier speaking to a journalist about the way Ukraine fights. In it, he insists that Ukraine’s military science is neither Russian nor “Western,” whatever that is supposed to actually mean, but Cossack.

After observing Ukraine hold off a far larger, theoretically better equipped Russian military, it is apparent that this is indeed the case. Only, with a twist: Ukraine’s Cossack style of warfare can be described in scientific terms as systems-based warfare.

A note: in the American context, systems means something different than it does in Europe. Americans treat systems as if they are purely abstract, but Europeans tend to take the view that systems are very, very real.

That is, their operations are material, and can be traced and modeled using scientific techniques. Social systems involve large numbers of people communicating truths that exist only in their minds, yet also directly impact their material behavior in ways scientists can observe and predict if they’re using the right unit of analysis.

Over the past year, the principle that best defines all of Ukraine’s military efforts is straightforward: denial.

To accomplish anything with a military force requires planning and managing an astounding number of moving pieces. Friction, to borrow from Clausewitz, is everywhere, and most military leaders spend their time focused less on brilliant strategies and more on keeping their people fed and supplied.

To achieve objectives on the battlefield - the purpose of military operations - requires the concentrated application of material force in the form of combat power. This in turn must be prepared for the conditions it is expected to face, which affects its fighting efficiency.

In general, to make a defender leave a place they are determined to hold requires an overmatch of combat power. The ratios vary depending on the terrain and other conditions, not least the opposing force’s own fighting efficiency, something rarely fully understood until directly tested.

Rather than assert dominance in the NATO or Russian style, Ukraine embraces a different way of war, one that emphasizes simply impeding the opponent’s actions wherever possible. Whatever Russia attempts, Ukraine opposes however it can, retreating once resistance becomes too costly or is proven futile.

Ukraine carefully husbands its forces, rotating battalions off the front line and reconstituting battered units with a combination of experienced veterans and recruits trained to NATO standards abroad. It doesn’t obsess over discipline, and a degree of democratic organization prevails at the tactical level, where numerous reports throughout the war have indicated regular soldiers can object to and modify their superiors’ plans.

This is speaking broadly, of course, and every brigade will have a different culture depending on its leaders’ experiences. Some, from the Soviet era, are likely more rigid and orders-obsessed, trained to see soldiers as disposable inputs. NATO-led officers are likely to tolerate substantial initiative on the part of their subordinates, while also doing their utmost to protect the privileges and mythos associated with leadership and authority in English-speaking society.

Ukraine’s forces have the opportunity to learn from and adapt both. This likely means that Ukraine’s armed forces are the most experienced and combat effective on the planet. Breaking Ukrainian brigades is not an easy task, and quite frankly I suspect most NATO countries would fail to beat them if forced to try.

Maybe that’s the real reason they hesitate to give Ukraine weapons that won’t ever be needed in Europe again if this war ends in Russia’s collapse and reformation in a sane form. Who else would Europeans ever fight? China is a long, long way away, and Xi Jinping is not Genghis Khan.

For Russia, the task of seizing ground from Ukraine requires pulling large numbers of troops and equipment together in a small enough area to provide the necessary force ratios. But in a world full of cheap remote sensors and long-range artillery, this is now extremely difficult.

Russia’s initial successes in the east and south, where Putin’s forces last year were substantially less incompetent than their counterparts near Kyiv, were made possible by the relatively low density of Ukrainian troops fighting on the northern and southern flanks of the line of contact. The situation is now very different despite Russia’s mobilization efforts, because Ukraine started playing the total war game much earlier.

Most analysts apparently believe that Russia will focus its attacks on Donetsk and Luhansk, trying to bash through Bakhmut to lay siege to the vital Kramatorsk metropolitan area to the east. They also generally expect that Russia will try to return the front lines to the Siverski Donets near Yampil and Lyman to assist this effort.

And in the first week of escalated ground attacks, Russia has certainly given the outward impression that this is the operational plan.

Yet I remain convinced that there are aspects of the Russian campaign that have not yet come into view, major assets not yet committed to the fight.

Unless Russia is so absolutely confident in its strategy it doesn’t feel the need to try and hide it - something that runs up against the logic behind the well-executed and sudden withdrawal from the north bank of the Dnipro and Kherson city last fall after months of preparing a fight to the bitter end - it is wise to presume that Russia is playing the old trick of distracting everyone with one hand while the other prepares a nasty surprise. Deception is vital in Soviet, now Russian, military science, and Russia is aware that every word spoken by Putin or one of his cronies is carefully dissected for meaning by NATO analysts.

If they’re not playing deception games here, with so much at stake they truly are as dumb as everyone says. The early fighting certainly makes it look that way.

One week ago, Russian forces launched one of their biggest attacks to date on the Ukrainian lines in the south, near Vuhledar. This and a similar attack west from the embattled town of Kreminna towards Lyman created two penetrations of the Ukrainian front lines up to ten kilometers deep.

At the same time, Russian attacks intensified north and south of Bakhmut, reaching two key highways supplying the town. After Soledar, Wagner mercenaries backed by Russian airborne troops with solid training and equipment pushed across the Bakhmutovka river and almost surrounded Krasna Hora.

Ukraine has pulled back from the latter and deployed a mechanized brigade to reinforce its forces fighting north of Bakhmut. This Russian success is substantially more dangerous than its push toward Chasiv Yar, south of Bakhmut, because it forced Ukrainian units off some of the high ground that has given them an advantage in the fighting so far.

US-based commentators have begun speculating about the fall of Bakhmut, despite Ukraine’s clear commitment to fight for it. In certain instances, notably Mariupol, Sievierdonetsk, and now Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces have held their ground pretty much until they are out of ammunition.

A few experts are already trying to import this experience into terms NATO officers can understand, perversely echoing arguments about sacrificing units in doomed stands in fortress cities made by Hitler back in 1944, when his troops were losing to the Red Army basically everywhere. What they fail to understand is that Mariupol was a tragedy, a forced sacrifice caused by Ukraine’s inability to mount a major counteroffensive in the south until last summer.

The stubborn defenses of Sievierodonetsk and Bakhmut are not the same. In the former, Ukrainian troops retreated only when they faced the threat of being surrounded by a Russian breakthrough to the south and running out of Soviet-era ammunition for their artillery. In the latter, Ukraine still has the option to retreat along a rail line by night, when Russian forces are not particularly effective at fighting.

So while it is possible that Bakhmut will be abandoned soon, it is equally likely that Ukraine will keep units in the city inflicting casualties on the Russian attackers for a long time to come. Unless and until Russia can surround it, holding Bakhmut makes sense not as some kind of sacrifice, but because rubble is highly defensible by light infantry who can often inflict serious casualties and still withdraw reasonably intact.

This is likely why Russian forces are trying to surround Bakhmut with greater vigor than they are attempting to storm it. Holding Soledar and the low ground east of Bakhmut for so long was a more questionable decision, though it does appear to have broken the back of Wagner’s convict corps. But so long as Ukraine controls the high ground west of the city, withdrawal seems most unlikely.

Given the forces Russia has clearly committed to this sector, denying them the ability to make rapid progress could derail the entire campaign.

The danger, however, is that Ukraine now has so many units fighting near Bakhmut that it could be weak elsewhere. This may partially explain the successes Russia has had near Vuhledar and Kreminna in recent days.

At the former, however, Russia suffered a nasty setback that could have wiped out an entire marine brigade. Footage has emerged of a Russian battalion-sized group running into a minefield and being decimated by artillery east of the town. And a successful Russian push over a water barrier west of it towards Bohoiavlenka appears to have been not only contained but completely reversed.

This only further illustrates the challenge facing Russian commanders on the ground - a head-on assault in Donbas will suffer extreme casualties and quite possibly fail. It is exactly what Ukraine has been preparing for these past months, and is an operation Russia chose not to commit to a year ago, instead trying to surround and isolate Donbas from reinforcement and resupply.

Hence, my ongoing suspicion that this sharp increase in attacks is a prelude to something bigger. Were I in Russia’s position, I would be doing everything possible to focus attention on Donbas, playing dumb right in line with the expectations routinely set by US pundits.

And then, somewhere around the seventeenth or twentieth, military units would suddenly converge north of Kharkiv, possibly Sumy too. Taking advantage of the fact most of Ukraine’s army is too far away and too locked in grinding trench warfare to send aid, I’d try to punch as far down towards the Dnipro between Poltava and Kharkiv as I could get.

Since I began making this case several weeks ago, Ukraine has actually moved a mechanized brigade from its reserve to the vicinity of Sumy. It is very possible that several of the new brigades being formed to absorb the incoming modern equipment Ukraine will start fielding soon could be training near Poltava.

However, it is also entirely possible that Russia is committed to a simple, all-out assault in Donbas, though this would almost have to be augmented by an attempt to retake Kupiansk and Izium. Unless Russia is truly near exhaustion, which is a dangerously optimistic presumption that totally ignores how hard Ukrainian units are reportedly having to to fight right now, there has got to be some kind of Russian surprise in the works.

Otherwise, expect a lot more debacles like Vuhledar. Russia always has reserves, but even its supplies of military gear are not endless.

Over the coming weeks, I will continue to post updates on the progress of Russia’s winter offensive, and then I intend to track the advance of Ukraine’s defenders as they advance to liberate their lands.

For the record, I consider myself aligned with the OSINT community, writing in support of Ukraine but from as objective a perspective as I can. Most analysis about the Ukraine War by English-speaking analysts is deeply biased not from a desire to help Ukraine so much as a need to protect certain knowledge domains from scientific scrutiny.

Matters of war and warfare are naturally ones powerful people would prefer the rest remain disengaged with. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes - you may not be interested in war, but…

Stay tuned, and in the coming months I’ll lay out a general systems theory based model of warfare that I suspect is close to the one Ukraine has developed to defeat Putin’s Russia. The lessons are applicable to almost any aspect of life where complexity rules the day.

Which, anymore, is basically all of them.

Peace, and glory to the heroes!

Героям слава!

For far too many will soon join their ancestors in the afterlife. Sadly, the currency of war has always been, and always will be, blood sacrifice to the old gods.