In early April, I predicted that the Russians would launch a general offensive around April 25th. We all saw the massive artillery bombardment that started on April 18th and the subsequent advances across the eastern front. Most sources inferred from all this that the general offensive had started, and it's quite possible they're right. Maybe the Russians are really going for the Dvornikov approach, launching a grinding, methodical attack that clears the way with massive artillery strikes and infantry raids. We've seen a lot of the latter lately. April and May have featured plenty of videos of Russian forces ambushing Ukrainians, in sharp contrast to the first month and a half of the war. The Russians have certainly gotten plenty right this time around, especially their logistical operations and combined arms integration. But another theory is that the Russians are still holding back and keeping open the option of a blitzkrieg maneuver, maybe after they feel sufficiently confident that they've destroyed most of the Ukrainian army and the NATO weapons flowing into the country. A good bet is that the Russians have at least 100 BTGs deployed in Ukraine right now, with about 40 to 50 of them being held in reserve. My question is: what are the Russians waiting for? This question only makes sense if we assume that they do intend to make a major breakthrough in the near-future. Because if they're actively choosing a war of attrition, a Verdun-like scenario to grind down the Ukrainians to dust, then the question doesn't make sense at all. But this scenario just invites another question: is that the best use of Russian resources? Could the Russians be doing anything differently that wouldn't require a major overhaul to their war effort, like a general mobilization? I think the answer is yes.
The biggest strategic flaw in the Russian plan is that they prioritized the wrong part of the eastern front. The soft underbelly of Ukraine has always been the south. Whereas Donetsk and Luhansk are crawling with Ukrainian trenches, bunkers, and bases developed over 8 years, the southern front was never so heavily defended, simply because the Ukrainians probably never expected that they'd have to fight a massive war for it. In one of my predictions, I thought that the Russians would really prioritize the southern pincer through Velyka Novosilka and Huliapole. Those are the two critical military gateways into the heart of Eastern Ukraine, if you’re coming from the south. And yet the Russians have what, maybe 15 BTGs along the southern front? When they should be packing at least 30 down there. In the grinding push that began in April, the Russians have captured Popasna, Kreminna, and Oskil. These are their main achievements, though certainly not the only ones (there were reports out today that they'd also captured Velyka Komyshuvakha, which would be big news if true). And yet the fact that Velyka Novosilka is not in there should be very disappointing for them. The Russians got the right network geography when they went after Izium and captured it, because it's so centralized relative to everything on the eastern front. But they need to wake up and realize that VN and Huilapole are the two central pillars between Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia supporting the entire Ukrainian position in the east. And here's the kicker: they're much easier to capture than places like Severodonetsk and Popasna because they're way smaller! I wonder how much of this reluctance to really push across the south is also due to the fact that Azovstal still has not fallen. Time will tell.
As for Ukraine, it's now become a useful Western proxy to wear down the Russians. Zelensky made the wrong calculation after the Russian withdrawal from the north. He assumed that the Russians were beaten and that he could push for maximalist political and military aims, like the recapture of Crimea and the east. If he'd agreed to a political settlement where he gave away the Donbas and Kherson, that would have been the end of it, at least for the next 5 years. Instead he's pulled his own Putin and decided to go for it all, no doubt under heavy Western pressure. The real risk is that Ukraine could end up losing far more than Kherson and the Donbas. They'll probably lose all of Kharkiv oblast east of the Donets River, and who knows what else. We're talking prime time agricultural land here, the good shit, the shit that allows Ukraine to be a power player in global food markets. It's also unclear what effects the new Westerns toys will have on the course of the actual war (and not the Twitter war that Ukrainians are often fighting). Some of these weapons will never make it to the frontline, others will be captured, and the majority will probably be misused due to lack of training and situational awareness that cannot be made up even with all the intelligence the Pentagon can provide (there's already indications of Ukrainians mucking up the Switchblades). Western weapons will be just enough to keep Ukraine hanging on by a thread, but at great cost to both the Ukrainians and to Western arms inventories.
So to sum it all up: the Russians need more troops in Ukraine and they should attack across the south. The Ukrainians need to get the hell out of the SLR metroplex and establish a better defensive line to the west. Lots of crazy stuff happening. This month should be full of big news.
