In the obliterated eastern industrial city of Avdiyivka, Ukrainian
troops are trying to avoid being encircled by a multipronged Russian
offensive -- the largest single coordinated effort since Moscow launched
its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
About 500 kilometers to the southwest, something else is happening: The Ukrainians are crossing the Dnieper River.
For nearly two weeks now, at a location along the marshy wetlands along
the east bank of the river, Ukrainian marine infantry and other units
have been holding out against assaults from Russian paratroopers and
frequent poundings from fighter jets and artillery. A closely watched
Russian war blogger this week reported a second Ukrainian bridgehead,
further upriver.
It’s far from clear whether the effort will succeed; river crossings are
complicated and dangerous for even the best-equipped armies. Ukrainian
forces will have to move more troops and heavier armored equipment
across the water if there’s to be any hope of opening a major new front
against Russian troops, experts said.
At best, the river crossing is a glimmer of good news as Ukraine’s
larger counteroffensive, launched at the beginning of June, bogs down
against formidable Russian defenses -- and soon, wet, winter weather. At
worst, it’s a sign of desperation, a last gasp in a push that has
fallen short of the goal of cutting though a Russian-held corridor and
reaching the Sea of Azov.
“Russian defenses are now deep, well-prepared, and backed with
significant reserves, whereas Ukraine is now fighting mostly with forces
raised since the 2022 invasion and which have never had the luxury of
time to train properly at brigade level and above,” said Stephen Biddle,
an adviser to U.S. General David Petraeus during the Iraq War and now a
professor of international relations at Columbia University.
“This combination is not propitious for quick offensive success,” he said.
Russia Strikes Back
In the southern Zaporizhzhya region, one of the three locations that Ukraine focused on when it launched its long-anticipated counteroffensive
in June, Ukrainian troops used Western-supplied weaponry -- Leopard
tanks, Bradley armored vehicles, Marder infantry vehicles -- to try and
punch through Russian defenses: a series of trenches, anti-tank
obstacles, and mine fields collectively known as the Surovikin Line.
The effort fell short, and a large amount of Western equipment was damaged or destroyed.
After breaching one or two sections of the defenses in September south of the Zaporizhzhya town of Orikhiv, Ukrainian troops have not gone much further.
Kyiv’s forces “advanced an average of only 90 meters per day on the
southern front during the peak of their summer offensive,” the
Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said.
However, it added, “Slow progress on the southern front does not mean that Ukraine is failing or will fail in its objectives.”
Still, the slow progress presents a major challenge for the Ukrainian military, as well as political leaders.
“The lack of a breakthrough in Ukraine’s summer offensive and the shift
in materiel advantage [toward Russia] mean that Kyiv must fight
carefully if it is to retain the initiative,” the Royal United Service
Institute, a London research organization, said in a report last month.
'Give It A Go'
In the Kherson region last year, Ukrainian troops ratcheted up pressure
on Russian brigades that had defended the western banks of the Dnieper,
which Russia had controlled since the early weeks of the invasion.
In November 2022, after months of attack, Russian forces withdrew to the opposite bank. There, they built fortifications and lobbed rockets and missiles into the city of Kherson, terrorizing civilians and pounding Ukrainian positions.
Ukraine began sending small units across the river and its delta in the weeks following; commandos staged small attacks on the Kinburn Spit, at the mouth of the Dnieper, but have been unable to dislodge Russian forces there.
After a major Dnieper dam at Nova Kakhovka that had been under Russian control was destroyed in June, thousands of hectares downstream were flooded, simultaneously complicating both Ukraine’s advances and Russian defenses.
On October 18, Russian war bloggers reported that
troops from Ukraine's 35th and 36th Marine Infantry Brigades had
crossed the Dnieper, about 8 kilometers upriver from the now-destroyed
Antonivskiy Bridge in Kherson. One report said units reached the village of Pishchanivka, about 2 kilometers southeast of the riverbank.
Russia's Defense Ministry later appeared to corroborate the reports of a river crossing.
On October 30, meanwhile, Rybar, a Telegram channel linked to a former
Russian Defense Ministry press officer, said Ukrainian troops had
entered the village of Krynky, about 20 kilometers upriver from
Pishchanivka.
Ukrainian forces “managed to gain a foothold: the village center is
being held by several dozen members of Ukrainian units. Sweeping the
settlement [of Ukrainian forces] is complicated by the heavy fire of
enemy artillery and enemy electronic warfare operations,” the channel said.
There was no independent confirmation of the report, though Ukrainian
emergency officials reported that Krynky was under aerial bombardment
overnight.
“The fact that they have been able to successfully cross the river and
establish two or three bridgeheads is a significant achievement and
shows that the Russians are having issues dealing with the array of
consecutive operations in the northeast, east, and south of the country
at the moment,” said Mick Ryan, a retired Australian Army major general
who has written extensively on the war in Ukraine.
“That said, it is still early days and it remains unclear whether this
is a demonstration to draw Russians away from further to the east or is a
significant operation in its own right. My sense is the Ukrainians have
decided to 'give it a go and see what opportunities might fall their
way,’” he told RFE/RL.
In the east, Russian troops launched attacks
from two separate directions on Avdiyivka on October 10. Heavily
fortified and home to Ukraine’s largest coking plant, the city had been
in Ukrainian control since 2014, giving its troops the ability to
threaten road and rail lines to the east and southeast, toward the major
city of Donetsk.
Initially, Russian troops suffered heavy losses; the White House last
week claimed at least 125 Russian armored vehicles and more than a
battalion’s worth of equipment had been destroyed around Avdiyivka. The
Washington-based Institute for the Study of War estimated that Russia
had lost hundreds of men and more than 100 armored vehicles and tanks.
'A Substantial Cost'
Russia has upped the ante, seizing several positions north and south of
the city and adding to growing fears of a “cauldron” -- an encirclement
of Ukraine’s troops. In recent days, Ukraine reportedly redeployed units
from its 47th Mechanized Brigade -- one of the more experienced and
better equipped units -- from the front lines near Orikhiv to Avdiyivka,
a possible indication that Ukrainian commanders feared a collapse of
their lines.
“Тhere’s a political decision, a political order to capture this city in
the near future, and…I think there will be serious military operations
using all with the forces they have there; they’re also bringing in
reserves there,” Oleksiy Hetman, a Ukrainian military analyst, told RFE/RL’s Donbas.Realities.
The assault on Avdiyivka may also be an indication that Russia believed
Ukraine’s counteroffensive was petering out and its forces could seize
the initiative, Ryan said.
“The Russians clearly thought that it was a weak point in the
Ukrainian line, and…had a sense that the Ukrainians were close to
culminating [the counteroffensive] and this might be an opportunity to
test that hypothesis,” he said. “I think the Russians have found that
the Ukrainians have not yet culminated and have units and effort in
reserve able to deal with it.”
More than a week later, Russian forces expanded the effort
and began trying to advance at five or six other locations along the
section of the 1,200-kilometer front line that runs through the Donbas
-- the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
That includes places like Bakhmut, a Donetsk region city that Russia
captured, with massive casualties, in May after months of pulverizing
street combat. Further to the north, Russian forces are also targeting
Kupyansk, on the Oskil River in the Kharkiv region; Ukrainian troops captured the city amid a surprise offensive last year.
“The odds of a Russian breakthrough (e.g. at Avdiyivka) aren't much
higher,” Biddle told RFE/RL in an e-mail. “If they pour enough resources
into this fight, they can probably take the town, as they did at
Bakhmut.
“And if the Ukrainians try to hold out too long, they could even lose
some forces to an encirclement. But a clean breakthrough would be much
harder, and to exploit a breakthrough with operational-level
consequences would be even harder still -- especially for a Russian army
that has shown little ability to sustain advances into great depth in
this war,” he said.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive “certainly inflicted a substantial cost on
the Russian military,” Michael Kofman, a Russian military analyst at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a podcast broadcast on October 18.
“From the standpoint of an offensive operation, where usually the
attacker bears the larger share of casualties and material losses, the
Ukrainian military did reasonably well, certainly about as well as could
be expected under the conditions and the level of training that they
had available,” he said.