Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ukraine’s “Counter-Offensive” Major Belly Flop

this is a 28 page documenting Ukrainian's past moves, Russian lessons and Ukranian challenges.

https://static.rusi.org/Stormbreak-Special-Report-web-final_0.pdf

Executive Summary
Irrespective of the progress made during Ukraine’s counteroffensive, subsequent
offensives will be necessary to achieve the liberation of Ukrainian territory. It
is therefore important to assess the tactics employed and training provided
during the Ukrainian offensive to inform force generation over the coming
months. This report scrutinises tactical actions to identify challenges that need
solving.
The prerequisite condition for any offensive action is fires dominance. This has
been achieved through blinding the counterbattery capability of Russian guns
and the availability of precise and long-range artillery systems. Ensuring the
sustainability of this advantage by properly resourcing ammunition production
and spares for a consolidated artillery park is critical.
Ukraine is suffering from heavy rates of equipment loss, but the design of
armoured fighting vehicles supplied by its international partners is preventing
this from converting into a high number of killed personnel. It is vital that
Ukrainian protected mobility fleets can be recovered, repaired and sustained.
This also demands a focus on industrial capacity and fleet consolidation.
Attempts at rapid breakthrough have resulted in an unsustainable rate of
equipment loss. Deliberately planned tactical actions have seen Ukrainian forces
take Russian positions with small numbers of casualties. However, this approach
is slow, with approximately 700–1,200 metres of progress every five days, allowing
Russian forces to reset. One key limitation on the ability to exploit or maintain
momentum is mine reconnaissance in depth. The exploration of technological
tools for conducting standoff mine reconnaissance would be of considerable
benefit to Ukrainian units.
Another limiting factor in Ukrainian tactical operations is staff capacity at
battalion and brigade level. Training of staff would significantly assist Ukrainian
forces. This will only be helpful, however, if training is built around the tools
and structure that Ukraine employs, rather than teaching NATO methods that
are designed for differently configured forces. There is also a critical requirement
to refine collective training provided to Ukrainian units outside Ukraine so that
Ukrainian units can train in a manner closer to how they fight. This requires
regulatory adjustment to allow for the combination of tools that are highly
restricted on many European training areas.
Russian forces have continued to adapt their methods. Some of these adaptations
are context specific, such as the increased density of minefields, from a doctrinal
assumption of 120 metres to a practical aim to make them 500 metres deep.
Other adaptations are systemic and will likely have a sustained impact on Russian
doctrine and capability development. The foremost of these is the dispersal of
electronic warfare systems rather than their concentration on major platforms,
a shift to application-based command and control tools that are agnostic of
bearer, and a transition to a dependence on more precise fires owing to the
recognised inability to achieve the previously doctrinally mandated weight of
imprecise fire given the threat to the logistics sustaining Russian guns. It is vital
that Ukraine’s partners assist the country’s preparations for winter fighting,
and subsequent campaign seasons now, if initiative is to be retained into 2024.

https://www.cna.org/archive/CNA_Fil...core-tenets-and-operational-concepts.pdf

96 page document

Executive Summary
Russian military leaders describe the current military strategy as one of ‘active defense.’ This
concept has a deep history in Soviet military thought, evolving from an operational discussion
towards a strategic framework in the late-Soviet period. In Russia, military strategy represents
the highest form of military art, offering general tenets on the theory and practice of war,
preparation for national defense, ways of preventing conflict, managing forces in wartime, and
delineation of strategic operations. Taken together, the military strategy and associated
operational concepts shed light on the ‘Russian way of war,’ influences, and central thesis.
Russian strategy reflects choices in planning, operational concepts, and the force structure or
capabilities to realize them. This study interrogates the choices made in Russian military
strategy, under the rubric of active defense, their underlying thesis, and expression in strategicoperational concepts.
The notion of activity in Russian military strategy describes both preventative measures taken
before a conflict breaks out, to deter it, along with tenets for conducting the war. During a
threatened period, or escalating crisis, Russian forces take preventative measures to neutralize
threats, which can include preemptive use of limited force in a time of perceived imminent
threat. A defensive strategy emphasizes maneuver defense, and counterattack. It is a defensiveoffense that envisions persistent engagement of an opponent throughout the theater of
military action, to include critical infrastructure in their homeland, executing strategic
operations that affect an adversary’s ability or will to sustain the struggle. Consequently,
Russian military strategy is comprised of operational concepts that represent defensive and
offensive constructs without clear distinction. Active defense devalues strategic ground
offensives, privileging the aerospace domain, maneuver defense, and forms of noncontact
warfare.
The sense of ‘active’ within active defense envisions demonstrations or limited use of force, to
convince opponents that the costs of aggression would exceed desired benefits. From a Russian
perspective, states chiefly use non-military means, and indirect approaches, to achieve political
goals. Hence the Russian military seeks to offer answers to what the state perceives as forms
of undeclared warfare, containment, and coercion. However, the nature of war is understood
as one where non-military means are effective because they are backed by technologically
advanced military capability. A strategic conventional offensive remains decisive in the initial
period of war. The principal threat envisioned is an integrated massed air strike against
critically important objects of military, economic, and political significance in Russia. The
strategic nature of long-range precision guided weapons, and other forms of non-kinetic attack,
like electronic warfare, are foremost in Russian military considerations.

Active defense seeks to answer this threat, addressing the use of indirect means during a
tentative period of danger, or threat, and the military challenge posed by a technologically
advanced opponent armed with strategic conventional capabilities. The strategy’s general
tenets are achieving surprise, decisiveness, and continuity of strategic action. Identifying an
opponent’s vulnerabilities, finding asymmetric counters to neutralize their advantages, and
seizing the strategic initiative. It envisions warfighting defined by fire, strike, and maneuver,
where tactical formations engage each other at distances, and recon-strike contours enable
warfare at standoff ranges.
The battlefield is seen as fragmented, or non-contiguous, without fixed battle lines, where
radio-electronic means integrate with traditional fires and strikes to execute a ‘complex defeat’
of an opponent’s military effort. Ground forces conduct maneuver defense, seeking to sap an
opponent’s strength, degrade them, and preserve the force. Instead of ground offensives,
Russian military strategy accepts the prospect of trading territory to attrit an opponent until a
firmer positional defense and counteroffensive can be mounted.
The operative thesis is that an opponent can be effectively degraded, parrying their offensive
ground operation and deflecting an initial massed aerospace attack. The goal is to disorganize
the opponent’s effort, and shape their political calculus via long-range strikes against critically
important objects. The calculus is that the center of gravity lies in degrading a state’s military
and economic potential, not seizing territory. Here the initial period of war, i.e. the first several
weeks of conflagration, is seen to be decisive. The overall Russian objective is to prevent an
opponent from achieving a decisive outcome, forcing them into a conflict with high levels of
attrition. The vision is to inflict damage to military and economic infrastructure such that
opponents will seek war termination on acceptable terms, and become preoccupied by the
ensuing internal instability.
Military strategy directly informs strategic operations, which involve coordinated tasks,
strikes, operations, and combat actions carried out in a unified scheme and plan to achieve
strategic goals. These operational constructs include a strategic operation to destroy critically
important objects, a strategic aerospace operation, a nuclear forces operation, and a general
strategic operation in theater, merging prior continental and oceanic operational constructs.
Russian military strategy reflects that Russia expects to be the militarily inferior party in a
regional or large-scale war against a technologically superior adversary. It speaks to the
Russian integration of non-military, conventional, and nuclear means in the conduct of war,
and in pursuit of strategic deterrence. It seeks to answer the perceived threat posed by
emerging U.S. concepts of operation, while informing Russian military discussions on force
organization, posture, employment, strategic tasks, and missions of forces.

Reading tdoyka, it sounds like Ukraine is at the gates of Moscow.

Simplicius knows which way the wind blows.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/us-house-of-reps-meltdown-puts-ukraines

TLDR summary - Ukraine's funding is going to get curtailed/cut off. If it were to be cut completely, all at once, Ukraine would survive as political entity for maybe a week & a 1/2. Tapered gradually, it'll be all over but the NAFO wailing by 2025. I assume that includes the mop-up operations against Azov and the public hangings of guys like Zelensky.

Baghdad Bob

That take doesn't jive with reality. The Russians absolutely did try to take Kiev and failed miserably.

Is that what they did in their strategic planning meetings?

lol. more dumb boomer analysis. Its sad how dumbed down our boomer neocons are who believe every word from Biden without question

How so? What specific actions did Russia undertake to seize Kiev that failed?

I just saw a bunch of camel jockeys flying in paragliders with AKs take more land in Israel in a day, than Uke forces trained and supported by NATO and the US have in this "counteroffensive".

Lol, CNN?

Uhhhh....

LOL! Sad but true.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates


Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 9, 2023

Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, Nicole Wolkov, Christina Harward, and Mason Clark


Key Takeaways:

The Kremlin remains focused on promoting the purported legality and legitimacy of Russian internal politics despite Kremlin officials’ admissions to the contrary.
Peskov’s strong comments also indicate the Kremlin's desire to posture confidence and steadfastness against the backdrop of Kremlin concerns over Russian opinions on and support for Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations and reportedly advanced in western Zaporizhia Oblast and near Bakhmut on October 9 amid reports of deteriorating weather conditions in Ukraine.
Russian forces reportedly launched localized offensive operations south of Hulyaipole and may have reorganized the Southern Grouping of Forces, likely in an attempt to further defend against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.
Imprisoned former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin reiterated his previous claims that the Russian military will continue to conduct a strategic defense to freeze the frontlines before the Russian presidential elections in March 2024.
The Russian government is moving toward revoking Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on October 9.
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut, in western Donetsk Oblast, and western Zaporizhia Oblast, and reportedly advanced in some areas.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates


Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 10, 2023

Christina Harward, Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, Nicole Wolkov, and Mason Clark


Key Takeaways:



Russian forces launched localized offensive operations in the Avdiivka area of Donetsk Oblast and southwest of Orikhiv in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 9, which are likely intended to fix Ukrainian forces away from the Robotyne area.
The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed up to three Russian battalions conducted an attack and ISW has observed footage of fighting in the area, but ISW has not observed any confirmation of these claimed Russian advances as of writing.
Ukranian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and made confirmed advances in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.
Russian military leadership may have once again replaced the commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army (CAA), suggesting ongoing pervasive Russian command and control issues in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced plans to open a new corridor through Moldova and Romania for the export of Ukrainian grain.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on October 10.
The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Luhansk Oblast occupation authorities are cracking down against Ukrainian underground communication networks.

I see a lot of sentences in the above posts that all say, “Russia conducted offensive operations…”, logic would dictate that in the absence of Ukrainian offensive operations Ukraine is only playing defense and that’s not conducive to recapturing already captured territory….which is also not conducive to “winning”. 😉