{"id":298133,"date":"2024-11-07T07:44:47","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T07:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=298133"},"modified":"2024-11-09T07:02:04","modified_gmt":"2024-11-09T07:02:04","slug":"ukrainian-defences-in-donbas-risk-getting-steamrolled-by-russian-advance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=298133","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian defences in Donbas risk getting steamrolled by Russian advance"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e9bastian SEIBT — France24.com Nov 5, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

As Russian troops chart a steady advance in east Ukraine, worn-down Ukrainian forces are struggling to plug holes in their front-line defences. At stake is the \u201cfortress\u201d town of Pokrovsk, a transport and logistics hub that could give Russia a clear pathway to advance in the Donetsk region and beyond.<\/p>\n

On the front lines in Donbas<\/a>, the\u00a0situation\u00a0\u201cremains difficult\u201d<\/a>, Ukraine\u2019s army chief\u00a0Oleksandr Syrsky said in a Telegram message on November 2. Ukrainian forces there are\u00a0\u201cholding back one of the most powerful Russian offensives since the beginning of the full-scale invasion\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n

A renewed push by Russian forces that began in springtime now seems to be bearing fruit in east Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Russian army\u00a0advanced 478\u00a0km\u00b2 into Ukrainian territory<\/a><\/u>\u00a0in October, according to an AFP study analysing data from the American thinktank the Institute for the Study of War. This is the largest advance it has made since the early days of the full-scale offensive in Ukraine in spring 2022.<\/p>\n

\u2018A war of attrition\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In recent months, Russian forces have maintained \u201ca huge continuous offensive and continuous pressure\u201d in east Ukraine, says Gustav Gressel, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a war of attrition. Capabilities are degrading on both sides,\u201d says Gressel. \u201cIt\u2019s a race to see who will reach the bottom first \u2013 and on many issues, it seems that will be Ukraine, especially on heavy equipment. Armoured fighting vehicles haven\u2019t been replaced by Western deliveries. And, of course, personnel is a critical issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russia\u00a0\u201cdoesn\u2019t have more troops or weapons\u201d, says Dr Huseyn Aliyev, senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow and specialist on the war in Ukraine.\u00a0\u201cBut the real shift, where things have changed quite dramatically, is on the Ukrainian side where there\u2019s a big problem in their defensive line.”<\/p>\n

Essentially, territorial gains are less a show of superior Russian force than an\u00a0indication that Ukraine\u2019s defences are collapsing.\u00a0Ukrainian front-line forces are facing the enemy with ever dwindling arms and personnel, slowly but surely unable to plug the holes that Russia is inflicting on its defensive line.<\/p>\n

According to Aliyev, \u201cpoor organisation\u201d of troops is one of the biggest problems the Ukrainian army faces.<\/p>\n

For two years, experienced regiments that have been fighting against Russia have received hardly any reinforcements. And instead of fortifying these existing units, \u201cnew brigades have been created with less experienced officers and quickly trained troops, mostly from recent mobilisation efforts. They don’t have the same level of morale as the veterans, but these are the brigades sent to stop the Russian advance,\u201d says Aliyev.<\/p>\n

The result is that battle-hardened units are depleted and new units deployed on the frontlines are critically inexperienced.<\/p>\n

\u2018A failed gambit\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Proof of Ukraine\u2019s organisational failure can be seen in Ukraine’s surprise occupation of Russia’s Kursk region in August.<\/p>\n

One of Ukraine’s military objectives was to push Russia to redeploy some of its troops in Kursk to fend off advances in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

But subsequent territorial losses in east Ukraine are \u201cproof the Kursk operation was a failed gambit”, says Frank Ledwidge, senior lecturer in law and strategy at the University of Portsmouth, and specialist in military activity in Russia and former Soviet states.<\/p>\n

Had the elite troops sent to Kursk been sent to Donbas instead, “Ukraine might have had a far better chance of holding the defensive line”, Aliyev adds.<\/p>\n

Instead, \u201cRussia has managed to defuse and bring the Kursk situation under control and, contrary to Ukrainian expectations, Russia has not decided to withdraw significant numbers of soldiers from other parts of the front,” says Patrick Ren\u00e9 Haasler, political analyst of geostrategies in the post-Soviet space for the security collective, the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) Verona.<\/p>\n

Breaching the line of defence<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Russian advance is all the more worrying for Ukraine as enemy troops are getting closer and closer to the town of Pokrovsk, around 60 kilometres west of the occupied city of Donetsk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“For the last two or three months, Pokrovsk seems to have been the main objective for Russians in the region,” says\u00a0Ledwidge.<\/p>\n

Russia said on November 3 its\u00a0troops had advanced<\/a><\/u>\u00a0into the village of Vichneve, a dozen kilometres from the town.<\/p>\n

If Pokrovsk fell into Russian hands it would make Ukrainian military operations in the Donetsk region especially difficult. The town is a logistics hub, well connected to surrounding cities.<\/p>\n

“It’s at a crossroad for trains and roads,\u201d says Ledwidge. From\u00a0Pokrovsk there are good connections to surrounding cities including\u00a0Zapo, Dniepr, Kramatorsk and Kupiansk.<\/p>\n

The town is also symbolic. It was established as a defensive line in 2014 when Russia occupied and annexed Crimea<\/a>. Gressel describes it as \u201ca huge fortress, built with very good defences [and] a deep system of bunkers\u201d.<\/p>\n

“It’s one of the last significant defensive positions before the Dnipro River,” adds Haasler.<\/p>\n

Kamikaze drones, glide bombs<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The steady Russian advance towards Pokrovsk in recent weeks has changed the momentum of the conflict in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Instead of trench and positional warfare,\u00a0“it is looking more and more like a war of movement”, says Aliyev. “Ukraine now can lose up to two villages a day compared to some months ago when it was just one each month.”<\/p>\n

The use of glide bombs has helped Russian troops push forward as they can be \u201cemployed against large fortified positions or facilities”,\u00a0Haasler says.\u00a0They can be\u00a0launched from a distance meaning \u201cfor Ukrainians it\u2019s much harder to do something against the glide bombs than to do something against Russian artillery”, Gressel says.<\/p>\n

Kamikaze drones<\/a> have also played an important role.\u00a0Russia\u2019s Lancet 3 UAV model had 600 confirmed deployments in May 2024 and 2,500 in October, Haasler says.<\/p>\n

The drones are \u201cdesigned to destroy armoured vehicles and air defence systems. [They] represent a cost-effective method for inflicting significant and financially relevant damage on the Armed Forces of Ukraine,\u201d Haasler adds.<\/p>\n

But despite recent success, Ledwidge doubts that Russia will be able to maintain a war of movement for long. \u201cThe Russians don’t have enough experienced troops for the level of combined warfare that such a manoeuvre war asks for.\u00a0You need engineering, infantry and armoured vehicle units.\u201d<\/p>\n

He believes Russia will fall back on brute force to continue its war of attrition in the hopes of wearing down Ukraine until its defensive positions fall like dominoes.<\/p>\n

If Russian troops do capture Pokrovsk, \u201cthey will have managed to break an important Ukrainian line and then they will probably fulfil their objective of managing to conquer the Donetsk Oblast\u201d, Gressel says.<\/p>\n

From there troops would be well placed to start new offensives towards Zaporizhzhia in the south and then into the north.<\/p>\n

Even freezing winter temperatures may do little to slow a Russian advance. \u201cThe logistical nightmare of going through winter is much worse in Russia or south Ukraine where you have a very low-density road and railroad network,\u201d Gressel says. \u201cIn the Donbas you have a lot of good, well-built roads and railroads.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article has been translated from the original in French<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Readers may have noticed that we now hear very little from the MSM about the war in Ukraine. That\u2019s because Russian forces have been steadily advancing while Ukrainian forces struggle with desertions and weapons shortages. In essence the West\u2019s proxies are now facing the very real prospect of defeat <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":295665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=298133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298135,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298133\/revisions\/298135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/295665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=298133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=298133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=298133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}