Russian forces have apparently now completed their conquest of the Luhansk region. They have however only partially succeed in achieving their operational objective of capturing the Donbas. They have not destroyed the Ukrainian army in field, nor their steel will. 1/12 🧵
2/ The Ukrainians, having persevered in the face of Russian artillery & air power, conducted a disciplined retrograde operation to preserve their army. They have ensured the Russian forces have bled for every metre of territory gained in Luhansk. smh.com.au/world/europe/a…
3/ Russia will leverage this ‘victory’ for its strategic influence campaign. Putin, having already apparently declared victory in the past 24 hours, will want to communicate this as a success to his domestic audience.
4/ Russia will use a ‘victory in Luhansk’ message to portray that the tide of the war has turned (it hasn’t). Russian messaging will seek to convey to wavering nations & politicians in the west (there are still a few) that supporting Ukraine is only delaying the inevitable.
5/ The Russians, always ruthless in their battlefield calculations, are likely to have made the assessment that no matter how exhausted Russian troops and logistic systems are, the Ukrainians are probably more exhausted. War is about relative advantages, and exploiting them.
6/ The Russian Army will therefore seek to continue advancing to secure the Donetsk region. To do so, they will maintain the approach taken in the eastern campaign; advance behind extensive artillery and rocket fires, seek the envelopment and destruction of Ukrainian forces.
7/ But Russia is also under pressure in the south. Ukraine is continuing to seize territory through a series of rolling counter attacks. This war in the south is the more decisive front. Possession of Ukraine’s south permits Russia to economically strangle Ukraine.
8/ Russia’s challenge in the south is magnified for the Russians by the Ukrainian resistance activities. Over the weekend, another Russian train was derailed in the south, and there has been a campaign targeting Russian soldiers and collaborators. reuters.com/world/europe/u…
9/ So, in the wake of any Luhansk success, Russia may have no choice but to rebalance its forces between the east and the south. This - and stout Ukrainian defences in the east - will impact on their ability to seize the entire Donbas.
10/ So, while tactical momentum in the east of Ukraine may be with the Russians, this momentum has been enormously expensive in lives and ammunition, has destroyed whole cities and has resulted in relatively small amounts of seized territory.
11/ In the short term though, the Ukrainians in the east face a renewed Russian onslaught. It is likely to be every bit as brutal as that we have seen in the past two months.
12/ But the Ukrainians have shown how effective a defensive strategy can be if it integrates modern sensors, precision munitions, reinforcements, flexibility and good #leadership. They will need a full measure of all these in the weeks ahead. End. (Images: @IAPonomarenko)
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In the past 24 hours, it has been reported that the Biden administration has finally submitted a strategy for supporting #Ukraine to the U.S. Congress. What is the current U.S. strategy for Ukraine, what might the new strategy look like and will it influence on the trajectory of the war? 1/19 🧵
2/ Currently, there is no published U.S. strategy specifically for the war in #Ukraine. After 31 months, the Biden administration is still using crisis management, speeches and slogans such as ‘for as long as it takes’ rather than developing and executed a clear, well resourced strategy for Ukraine.
3/ The key elements of the U.S. approach since the beginning of the war have been: 1. Providing military assistance to Ukraine; 2. Rallying international support to provide economic, humanitarian & military aid; 3. Leading development & implementation of economic sanctions; & 4. Avoiding a war between the U.S. & Russia.
I have posted my weekly update with events in #Ukraine, Russia, and the Pacific theatre, as well as my recommended readings. Some key points in the thread below. (Image: @DefenceU) 1/11 🧵
2/ In Russia, Ukraine’s Kursk campaign continues although advances in the past week have been fewer than in the initial part of their post-break through exploitation operations. Russia’s response has gathered momentum.
3/ While there have been some advances, the Ukrainian incursion appears to have reached - or is close to reaching - the ‘limit of exploitation’ that I discussed in this articleback on 12 August. In that piece, I examined what Ukraine’s options were once that occured. These include defending all terrain seized in Kursk, selecting defendable terrain and withdrawing into that, and withdrawing back into Ukraine altogether. It appears that the second option is most likely at this point.
The Ukrainian attack into #Kursk, now into its 3rd week, was a tactical & operational surprise for the Russians. But the Ukrainians also surprised their supporters in the West. And part of the reason is that many Western nations can’t conceive of such audacity in the modern world. 1/14 🧵engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ukrai…
2/ Ukraine also surprised their supporters in the West in large part because #Ukraine deliberately withheld details of the #Kursk attack to preserve operational security, avoid second guessing by talkative bureaucrats in the West, and avoid the inflated expectations of the build up to their failed 2023 counteroffensive.
3/ The operation is not without risks. The Russian advances in the Donbas, particularly on their Pokrovsky axis of advance, are taking ground and threatening a key line of defended cities in eastern Ukraine. Losing these would cause significant challenges for the Ukrainian defensive campaign in the Donbas and political challenges for the Ukrainian president.
Throughout the #Ukraine war, adaptation has been a critical national & battlefield function for #Ukraine, and for the Russians. This is a process that pulses & pauses, and is distributed unevenly throughout combat units & the bureaucratic institutions of state. What observations about strategic adaptation might be made of the #Kursk offensive? 1/16 🧵🇺🇦
2/ The capacity to learn and adapt is crucial to generating advantage in wartime. Given the pace of contemporary military operations, when advantage is generated, it can be quite transitory or rapidly overtaken by enemy counter adaption. Therefore, learning and adaptation must be an ongoing endeavour. One of the most important levels of learning in war is that which takes place at the strategic level.
3/ Strategic adaptation occurs in both peace and war, although war provides better incentives for thinking about better ways of applying all national means to achieve wartime objectives. At heart, strategic adaptation is about engaging in a battle of learning & adaptation with an adversary, applying lessons better or more quickly than they do, & ensuring this knowledge is used to shape the trajectory of war, and ultimately, winning it.
This provides further disturbing evidence (on top of the tens of thousands of Russian war crimes) that unnecessary cruelty is a systemic part of Russia’s invasion of #Ukraine and not isolated, individual acts. There are institutional incentives for the Russians to behave this way (medals, etc). Putin and Gerasimov are ultimately culpable. 1/6 🧵🇺🇦
2/ This is vastly different from the conduct of the Ukrainian military through the war. As I examine in my new book, The War for Ukraine, fighting a ‘just war’ is a key element of Ukraine’s war #strategy. As Zelenskyy noted last week, in #Kursk “we must fight by the rules.”
3/ This “fighting by the rules” plays a big role in projecting legitimacy for the Ukrainian state and helps in gaining military, diplomatic, financial and moral support from other nations.
Ukrainian objectives for the #Kursk operation have gained some recent clarity with statements by the Ukrainian President, as well as other Ukrainian officials. What are these objectives, and what are the Russian options to respond to the Ukrainian Kursk campaign? 1/24 🧵🇺🇦
2/ The first Ukrainian objective is political. Zelenskyy has described how "we’ve already expanded and will continue to expand the circle of those who support a just end to this war. It's essential that Ukraine enters this fall even stronger than before." Ukraine must be stronger as the year tapers off into Winter & it must also be seen as such by its supporters and those who support Russia.
3/ Another element of this political objective is to pierce the Russian bluffing about escalation. #Ukraine has demonstrated, again, that the various red lines projected by the Russian president are nothing but a chimera designed to reinforce Western political timidity about decision-making on the war, and shape Western decisions about provision of weapons.