From War of Attrition to War of Maneuver: How Ukraine Puts Russia on the Defensive

They advance in the Kursk region in the first consistent incursion into Russian territory since the start of the invasion 27 months ago

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to the military before the first F-16s received from Western powers. | EFE

Source: El Independiente

Ana Alonso@alonsay, Varsovia

It will be 96 years since the so-called Miracle of the Vistula. The Bolsheviks had set out to annex Poland and soon stood at the gates of Warsaw. They set August 15, the day of the Assumption to conquer the city. However, Marshal Józef Piłsudski surprised them with a counterattack from the south on the weak points of the Red Army, which had to retreat. Believers say that the patron saint of the Polish capital, the Mother of Grace, protected the city and her image was seen in the sky.

What Marshal Piłsudski did was to disrupt the enemy, who had underestimated the Polish Army. These days we see how the Ukrainians have also surprised Russia with the largest incursion into their territory since the start of the war more than 27 months ago. Ukraine has gone from a war of attrition to a war of manoeuvre and that has forced Russia, which has long been punished on the Ukrainian front in the Donbas, to go on the defensive. For the first time since 1945, Russia is being (partially) invaded.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who convened the Security Council on Wednesday, called the Ukrainian advance "a large-scale provocation." It is striking to hear Putin, who ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, placing Russia as an attacked country and not an aggressor. "The operation will end with the crushing defeat of the enemy," promised the Russian chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov. If he doesn't succeed, his head is in danger.

Russia brought war to our land and will be sorry to have done so."

Mykkhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser in the president's office, said on Friday that "the root cause of any escalation", including that of Kursk, is "unequivocal aggression" by Russia, which believed it could invade Ukraine with impunity. It is the first acknowledgment by a senior Ukrainian official of the ongoing offensive. "War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably reaps the corresponding results," Podolyak added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the day before that "everyone can see that the Ukrainian army knows how to surprise", in remarks made at an event to launch a new military application. Later, in his nightly address, the president of Ukraine pointed out: "Russia brought war to our land and will be sorry to have done so."

State of emergency

Acting Governor Alexei Smirnov decreed a state of emergency in the region on Wednesday to "alleviate the consequences of the incursion of enemy forces". Putin on Thursday pledged 100 euros to help Russians living in the area to leave their homes in the face of the Ukrainian advance. They feel abandoned.

Ukrainian forces have conquered some 350 km2 of Russian territory, according to some sources, in the Kursk region, and have advanced 40 km along three front lines. Russian propagandists do not believe the information they are processing. The Ukrainians have reached the towns of Bolshoye Soldatskoye and Ivnitsa.

According to the Revista Ejércitos, "there are already sufficient indications to ensure that this is not a one-off incursion like those carried out by anti-Kremlin volunteers on other occasions. On the Russian side, there have been moments of panic." This boost on Russian territory takes place just as Ukraine is receiving the first F-16s from Western powers.

The August surprise

Ukraine, which was suffering heavy losses in Donetsk, did not seem to be using all the material that had come to it from the Western powers. Specialists, including the experts of the Army Magazine, considered that it was being reserved for an offensive, perhaps at the beginning of 2025, when it already had the F-16s, which are beginning to arrive. But surprisingly on Tuesday evening he began to use these means in a place that no one had suspected would be his next target: the Kursk region, a name associated with the last battle fought by Nazi forces to break through the Eastern Front, in the summer of 1943.

"It is foreseeable that Ukraine will continue to make progress in this area. The very configuration of the terrain and the absence of defenders are reminiscent of what happened in 2022 in Kharkiv, support this idea," estimates the Armies Magazine.

Countering losses in Donbas

Ukraine's goal would be to get Russia to move troops it has in the Donbas, where the Ukrainians are running out of units, to this front. He also wants to show that war is not sentenced.

"There are two models of war fundamentally: war of attrition and war of manoeuvre. To defeat a large Russian mass, it is necessary to resort to manoeuvre. The Westerners gave the Ukrainians their script of what they should do and provided them with material in dribs and drabs. When the offensive does not meet its objectives, it becomes a war of attrition in which the destruction of the enemy is sought at all costs. But Ukraine has not mobilised the youngest and also has a smaller population, so it is at a clear disadvantage. In the Donbas, the Russians are gaining ground at the cost of terrible losses. They are running out of armoured vehicles but the Ukrainians have fewer and fewer troops," explains Jesús Manuel Pérez Triana, military analyst and editor of GuerrasPosmodernas.com and @osintsahel.

With aviation and electronic warfare, the Ukrainians have harmed the Russians in Kursk

"So it seems that the Ukrainians will have to give up more space in the Donbas. In this context, the Ukrainians attack in a Russian area that seemed unprotected. It's like the game of Go, where you take advantage of the enemy's weak points. Its objective is to destroy the main node of the gas. With aviation and electronic warfare, they have harmed the Russians. They may seek to get Putin to order part of the Donbas troops to go and fight in Kursk. Or to have land to change for the Donbas, but it is doubtful that Putin would accept that," Triana adds. Putin is a big fan of the game of Go.

There are several implications of this Ukrainian incursion into Russia, according to Petro Burkovksy, director of Democratic Initiatives. "The Russians were caught by surprise both tactically and strategically. On a tactical level, they underestimated the concentration of Ukrainian forces on their border. And this is very strange because the city of Sudzha is the place of the gas transport metering station. That means that now they cannot lie that Ukraine is stealing gas, imported by Europe. Sudzha station is the place where specialists check the pressure of the pipelines and calculate the volumes of gas supplied to Europe. Other stations are located in the territory of Ukraine and Hungary/Slovakia. Thus, strategically, Russia has missed the opportunity to manipulate with the volumes of exported gas and blame Ukraine."

If Putin is serious about defending the homeland, he must cancel the offensive in the east and add reserves in the Kursk region

Burkovsky adds that it has also become clear that "Russia lacks the resources and reserves to carry out a full-scale war. It is true that it continues to make slow progress in Donbas. However, as you will recall, Putin demands peace in terms of 'facts on the ground', i.e. Ukraine must accept the ceasefire line as a 'new frontier'. At this point it means giving up Russian lands if Ukraine manages to keep the captured territories."

But what is really at stake, according to the analyst, is who will prevail in this new battle. "If Ukrainian troops reach Bolshoye Soldatskoye, Malaya Loknya and Korenievo, the Russian army will have great trouble regaining it. It will be more than three months, that is, we have reached the elections in the US, so Putin has bad options and very bad ones. If he is serious about defending the motherland, he should cancel the offensive in the east and add reserves in the Kursk region. Or it could try to oversize its forces or even try to invade Ukraine from the northeast at some other point." Still, we have to wait before knowing what this crucial battle will bring.

Meanwhile, in a sign of Russian surrealism, Putin signed more than a hundred laws on Thursday that prohibit talking about drugs in books, the sale of energy drinks to minors, or force influencers with more than 10,000 followers to register with the Russian censorship body. All very relevant while the inhabitants of Kursk feel abandoned.