Ukraine forces – and Western weapons – face crucial test

A week before Ukraine’s counteroffensive began, the country’s ministry of defense posted what felt like a film trailer. The video pulsated – tanks rolling, rounds firing, missiles launching – with a chanted voice-over announcing “our decisive offensive.”

Three weeks in, that counteroffensive so far hasn’t followed script.

The Ukrainians have liberated territory, fighting at three main points across the country’s east and south. But it’s come at a slower pace, and likely with higher casualties, than expected. Early on, pictures of destroyed Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicles and tanks – supplied by the West for the fight – began to surface. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, told the BBC this week that the progress has been “slower than desired.”

“Some people believe this is a Hollywood movie and expect results now,” he said in the same interview. “It’s not.”

President Zelenskyy and officials in the West have urged patience, arguing that Ukraine’s best-trained and best-equipped forces are still in reserve. That, reportedly, has begun to change.

Ukraine’s nine brigades, numbering 36,000 soldiers, that have been trained in Western tactics and armed with Western gear are now entering the fight. Their presence augurs a new act in the nascent counteroffensive and perhaps the war.

The U.S.-led coalition supporting Ukraine has resupplied and retrained swaths of the Ukrainian military to fight like a modern Western force. Whether those tactics and that gear – even in numbers less than the Ukrainians wanted – are enough to break formidable Russian lines is the grand experiment taking place right now on the front and a sign of whether the war in Ukraine can break from its long-grinding pace.

“The Ukrainians need to get out of an attrition war and into a maneuver [war], and that will require punching through lines,” says Seth Jones, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

If they are not able to do that, he says, negotiations for a cease-fire might be the eventual result.

Need for more weapons

To this point, the war in Ukraine has been a slow, punishing fight, with few exceptions. Russia seized almost 20% of Ukraine’s territory with overwhelming force soon after it invaded last March. Since then, it’s either retreated or made marginal gains in small Ukrainian cities like Severdonetsk and Bakhmut. 

The success of Ukraine in repelling these attacks and then retaking territory on its own – with offensives near Kharkiv and Kherson last year – aided the argument that with more kit they could liberate more territory. 

The supply of weapons so far hasn’t met Ukraine’s demand. Western countries never sent a requested long-range tactical missile artillery system known as ATACMS, and they still haven’t authorized the training or transfer of F-16 fighter jets to the country. 

“The Ukrainians are fighting with a hand tied behind their back because there have been limits on Western aid,” says Dr. Jones.

Testing for weak points

But in the last six months, sophisticated Western infantry fighting vehicles, tanks, and artillery have flowed into Ukraine in preparation for a counteroffensive in the south or east. 

That counteroffensive is still in its probing stage, says Peter Dickinson, editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert blog. This involves testing different areas of the front for weak points, like poking Jenga blocks to see which one slides easily out. The intent is to fray Russian positions, identify a weak point, and then attack with intent to draw Russian reserve forces to the front.

The deployment of Ukraine’s best-trained brigades could signal a shift away from that probing stage, and, Ukraine hopes, toward a less static front. 

In its way are enormous obstacles.

Offensive operations are almost always more difficult than defensive ones. The front line is 600 miles, far more compact than it was last year during Ukraine’s surprise offensive near Kharkiv, perhaps making it easier to defend. And Russian positions are robust – minefields, trenches, tank-stopping “dragons teeth” layered like defensive tiramisu. These defenses have been assessed as the most extensive in Europe since World War II. 

Russia also has a distinct airpower advantage. So far in the counteroffensive, its forces have pounced on Ukrainians with helicopters, which emphasizes the limits of Western aid.

“What [Ukrainian forces are] trying to do is unprecedented,” says Mr. Dickinson. “I don’t think any major military power would even contemplate an attack like Ukraine is trying to do until they had complete air superiority.” 

Lastly, Ukraine’s best-equipped forces lack battle testing. Leadership chose to leave more experienced units on the front while training new ones for its counteroffensive, which means new units will inevitably have to harden as they fight. That takes time and will make it more difficult for Ukraine to increase the tempo.

To Ukraine’s advantage, analysts say, are morale, innovation, and certain equipment. The Ukrainians to this point have demonstrated a greater will to fight, driven by the stakes of the war for their country. They’ve also shown the ability to freestyle with Western equipment, using drones in particular to great effect during surveillance and sabotage operations. 

Western equipment has given the Ukrainians an advantage in fighting at night, which they’re now increasingly doing. They’ve also reportedly been able to inflict damage on Russian armor with their own, lighter, infantry fighting vehicles. 

Such edges may seem small but are all part of an overall effort to identify weaknesses in the Russian defense and then accelerate attacks against them. The war in Ukraine has been slow and attritional to this point, but so was World War I until the Central powers hit a breaking point in 1918, says Margaret MacMillan, a historian of warfare and professor emeritus at Oxford University.

“Quite often in a war, you get the two sides holding together until one begins to break,” she says. “Then that pivot, I think, can be very quick indeed.”