Ukraine’s High-Cost/Low-Reward Strategy – WWIII Prelude News 5/9/2023 – Salients and Extraditions

Howard Crane | September 5, 2023

Above is a crude and simplified diagram representing the extensive defensive line which runs from the Sea of Azov to the Russian border which Ukraine has been pounding its head against with no result for 3 months now, resulting in the needless deaths of thousands of combatants. It’s necessary in order to understand why Ukraine aren’t winning and media reports of their “breaking through” are a slight, yet dangerous, distortion of the facts.

Dubbed “The Surovikin Line” after Commander Sergey Surovikin, this extensive network of fortifications were constructed along the border of the Russian-annexed regions of Ukraine with the rest of Ukraine. After the long battle for the strategically-valuable Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) earlier this year, Russia has dug in to protect their new territory and the citizens within it, only making minor advances to better their defensive positions. Since then the war has frozen in place, except for the long-awaited Ukrainian Counteroffensive in June. Despite deliveries of Western equipment and their best configurations and reshuffling of units, they haven’t been able to break through this defensive line. This isn’t for lack of courage and ingenuity – they’re simply out-matched.

Without visuals, we’re prone to assume that the Russian front line is literally a strip of soldiers camped out waiting to fight the Ukrainians when they arrive, so it’s then easy to believe they’ve broken the line when the media reports it. The fact is that the advancing troops have to contend with three layers of defenses, behind which are thousands of Russians who rotate into the front and back behind the line to avoid both danger and fatigue, while making sure they’re fully supplied at all times. So you can see why I say it’s no bad reflection of the capabilities of the Ukrainians. The only thing that could give them a shot at breaking through would be air superiority, allowing for Russian positions to be bombed from above.

The Diagram

The asterisks * represent minefields, which are placed very liberally ahead of the front lines. These minefields are so numerous that when the Kakhovskaya dam exploded, flooding hundreds of miles of fields and towns, it was a very real concern that mines would have come loose and flowed downstream toward populated areas, endangering civilians. In wars past, mines were relatively easier to detect and deactivate, but it now requires special crews and equipment as they’re no longer made of metals. Ukraine is short on these at the moment and simply have to “make do”, which has predictable and tragic results.

The ▲ symbols represent dragons teeth. These are pyramids of concrete reinforced with steel (rebar) which prevents (or at least delays) tanks and other motorised units from crossing. This slows any advancing troops and forces them to proceed on foot, which will become relevant later.

Funnily enough, I grabbed this photo from a Pravda article from December 2022 with the headline “Russians are panicking, begin to fortify Kursk Oblast with ‘dragon’s teeth’ and ditches.” It’s important to any propaganda war to frame everything your enemy does as either out of panic, delusion, or recklessness, to both soften the blow and bolster the morale of your own people. But common sense tells us that when you’re at war with your neighbour it’s probably a good idea to build defensive structures at the border you share with them, especially if that border area isn’t already well protected. Just ask the Polish about their border with Belarus – I suppose the Poles are also “panicking” despite not being at war with their neighbour.

The snaking lines I’ve drawn in red represent the extensive trench network constructed by professional engineering companies. These fill several functions: they further slow enemy progress, they serve as cover for troops engaging with the enemy, and they are used by troops to travel between locations on the front undetected. The □ symbols represent fortified positions in elevated or obscured areas, further giving the Russians an advantage.

Where this front line gets particularly perilous for the advancing troops is that big red square over the middle of the diagram. This represents Russia’s fire control. With the use of bombers, drones, and artillery, Russia can suppress the advancing forces even further. Since Ukraine has almost ran out of tanks and personnel vehicles weeks ago, troops are forced to advance on-foot, leaving them as easy prey for scatter-shot artillery rounds and anti-personnel drones, or simply being shot at from a higher elevation. This makes the Ukrainian counteroffensive, frankly, disgusting and unconscionable as it all-but guarantees wounding or fatality. If sane minds write the history books of tomorrow, they’ll condemn this war and agonise as to why it couldn’t have ended by the Summer of 2022.

This diagram, of course, isn’t an exact replica of the real thing. For one, it snakes around key towns, cities, and strategic geographical features. More importantly, there are about 3 or 4 of these lines, making it even more difficult to fully penetrate. Perhaps Russia would have constructed these fortifications anyway, but maybe Ukraine shouldn’t have spent half a year talking about how they’re going to launch a “Spring Counteroffensive”.

Further to the left we have another snaking line, representing yet another trench network being constructed roughly 40 meters behind the rear of the line.

Let’s Talk About Drones For a Minute

Once upon a time, not so long ago, drones were a new technology and they were valuable. This is due to their size as well as their rarity in terms of how many could be produced. In the space of this war, this concern has almost completely vanished. These small and light-weight aircraft, capable of shooting or dropping grenades on troops, are astronomically cheaper than mortar or artillery shells, so they’re used as if they too are disposable. The website LostArmour.info reports the Russian use drones has increased dramatically over the 3-month offensive – 92 in June, 123 in July, 201 in August.

Being shot at and having artillery fired at you when you have no cover is frightening enough, but now you have to get into firefights with drones!

The Foolish Strategy

I’d like to thank HistoryLegends on YouTube for filling in some of the holes in my knowledge of the current battle and also for creating the useful maps below.

The focus of Ukraine’s counteroffensive has become a very small town about 70km South-East of Zaporizhia called Robotyne. A direct assault has been attempted on the town, but that had failed and been replaced with the strategy to carve out a salient to the East – basically, a bubble inside the enemy lines – about 10km in.

Although this is a valiant and commendable effort, to say that they’ve breached the Surovikin Line is simply wrong as they have simply entered deep into the fire control zone. For the majority of their counteroffensive they’ve been arguing with their Western allies, with them saying the promised equipment isn’t arriving soon enough and the West retorting by saying Ukraine is failing to use the Combined Arms tactics they’ve been trained in. Having failed at making any significant gains for two important propaganda-sensitve moments – the “Peace” Summit in Saudi Arabia on August 5th and Ukraine Independence Day on August 24th – they are now under pressure to show some kind of progress to further justify more Western aid. The result is the blunder happening right now outside of Robotyne. In their push to advance even further passed the fortifications they don’t seem very concerned about their flanks (the east and west of their position). With the recent repositioning of 3 highly-trained Russian units to this part of the front from elsewhere, it’s easy to see how they can be surrounded – cut off from supplies and overwhelmed.