When and how will Ukraine launch a counterattack against Russia? | Ukraine war news | Al Jazeera

With spring in Ukraine, there has been an uneasy lull in Russia’s battlefield hostilities in a war that began last year.

Despite the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of mostly untrained personnel, Russia’s winter offensive was never fully realized. Many were transported directly to the front lines, only to die in what survivors call a “cannon fodder storm.”

With critics and an American journalist imprisoned, the Kremlin appeared to be winning more against dissidents and opposition than it was on the battlefield in Ukraine, where Russian troops were in the besieged east Difficult advance inside the city of Bahmut.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has failed to regain any territory south of Kherson or east of Kharkov in the months since Russia withdrew from some key areas.

With spring rains turning the soil slushy and impassable for troops and heavy weapons, Ukraine is amassing a new force trained to use new Western weaponry, as if its long-promised counteroffensive is imminent.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal said last week that “we believe that a counteroffensive will take place in the near future,” adding that “the United States absolutely supports us.”

But where and how will the counteroffensive begin?

One Western military analyst said he believed Ukraine had enough manpower and equipment to dominate.

“Whenever they choose to launch a counteroffensive, they will have enough well-trained and well-equipped manpower,” retired U.S. Army Major General Gordon Skip Davis told Al Jazeera.

He also said Kiev’s only major shortcoming was a critical shortage of air forces, which could be compensated by improved air defense capabilities, noting that the US-made Patriot air defense system arrived in Ukraine on Wednesday.

‘Counterattack will be a push’

More importantly, Ukraine will be able to take advantage of the low morale of the Russian army and the shortage of weapons and ammunition.

Davis said, “They have a good reading of Russia’s concerns, and they are likely to turn their fears into seeds to their advantage.” Frequent visits to Ukraine and meetings with its leaders and senior officials.

With Western public support for the Ukrainian cause dwindling, Ukraine needs a victory or two to ensure a continued supply of Western military and financial assistance.

“The counteroffensive will inspire all political leaders who support Ukraine and say this is the sacrifice we must make to keep Ukraine free,” Davis said.

With a crescent-shaped front stretching hundreds of kilometers from eastern Ukraine to the south, Ukraine needs to choose carefully where to strike first.

“I don’t think they’re going to do a two-front attack,” Davis said. “They’re just going to pick a major concentration area.”

One of Ukraine’s most viable options is to dismantle the land bridge to Crimea that Russia built when it occupied much of southeastern Ukraine early in the war. The land bridge spans separatist-held areas in the eastern Donbass, as well as Mariupol and Berdyansk, both of which lie on the Sea of ​​Azov.

But the threat to Crimea could lead to further escalation, as Putin sees the annexed peninsula as his crown jewel.

Another option, Davies said, would be to strike areas in the east of the country under separatist control, which are “the least prepared in terms of defense and depth”.

However, he added that many of those who remained there had been staunchly opposed to the regime in Kiev since 2014, thanks in large part to the prevalence of Russian state media and the economic isolation of the poor separatist region. Totally dependent on Moscow.

According to another analyst, the public sees the most likely scenario as a southward Ukrainian attack on Russian-occupied cities such as Mariupol and Berdyansk. And that could start in early May of this year.

“This seems to be the shortest and most reliable way to launch a successful counter-offensive,” Nikolai Mitrokhin of the University of Bremen in Germany told Al Jazeera.

In order to divert Russia’s attention and distract the Russian reserve forces, Ukraine has indicated that it is ready to attack from other directions.

One of the signals was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision in mid-April this year to appoint new executive leaders in towns in the Russian-occupied Lugansk region.

However, Mitrokhin said the map was littered with hotspots where counteroffensives were widely expected.

These include the eastern towns of Svatovo and Kreminna, as well as anywhere in the Zaporozhye region, as well as the Dnieper Delta south of the city of Kherson.

Mitrokhin pointed out, “But of all this, only the capture of the Lisichansk-Severodonetsk agglomeration in the east, the attack on Mariupol on the Zaporozhye front, and the crossing of the Dnieper River as A supportive strike is considered to have achieved the strategic goal.”

“Ukraine needs to disperse Russian positions in the south of the country”

Leading Ukrainian war analysts point to the attack between the eastern towns of Severodonetsk and Kremina as crucial to reversing Russia’s efforts to seize the entire Donbas region.

“If we operate there, then the enemy will have to leave Bakhmut,” former deputy chief of staff of the Ukrainian military general staff Ihor Romanenko told Al Jazeera.

He also said that the push south might be more difficult, but could also herald the gradual liberation of Crimea.

Romanenko pointed out that Russia’s positions in the south “have been strengthened, and Ukraine needs to disperse them in order to enter the Crimea peninsula and turn it into an island in terms of logistical supplies”.

In recent months, Ukraine has stepped up drone and artillery strikes in western Russia that borders Ukraine.

Romanenko said that invading these areas – Bryansk in particular – could distract much of the Russian military’s attention and sow panic among ordinary Russians.

But the West opposes such a bold move.

Romanenko emphasized, “This will be a rational action, but it will also have military and political implications.”

Western allies do not want Ukraine to enter the Russian mainland to avoid further escalation and prevent Russia from using nuclear weapons.

He also said Ukraine was too dependent on Western arms supplies to ignore the concerns.

At the same time, Russia’s current goals are very different from its original plan.

The Kremlin failed to deliver on its plan to seize Kiev and topple Zelensky’s government within days of the start of the war.

Russia has learned the hard way how poorly its decisions are based on outdated Soviet-era strategy, logistics and battlefield coordination.

Today, the Kremlin just wants to buy time.

“It is very important for Russia to suspend the conflict, to gain better control over the occupied territories and to rebuild the economy,” the Kiev-based analyst Alexey Kushch told Al Jazeera, as Iran has done under Western sanctions. Adjust its economy that way.

He also noted that Russia wanted to “drain Ukraine’s blood by scaring off investors and driving people to flee by risking a restart of the war. Then attack again”.