Mediaboss Marketing

The first 24 hours of Ukraines much anticipated counteroffensive may be the longest day for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel said to an aide before the expected Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944: The first 24 hours of the invasion will be decisive. For the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest daya statement immortalized by the blockbuster Hollywood film about the Normandy landings, The Longest Day. Rommel knew that the initial phase of an attack often shapes the character of the subsequent fight, decides victory or defeat, and determines the strategic impact of an offensive.

The first 24 hours of Ukraines much anticipated counteroffensive may be the longest day for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel said to an aide before the expected Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944: The first 24 hours of the invasion will be decisive. For the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest daya statement immortalized by the blockbuster Hollywood film about the Normandy landings, The Longest Day. Rommel knew that the initial phase of an attack often shapes the character of the subsequent fight, decides victory or defeat, and determines the strategic impact of an offensive.

Most of the speculation and debate is about when and where Ukrainian forces will strike, how big an attacking force Ukraine has assembled, and how much of an impact newly supplied Western weapons will have. Its unlikely that anyone outside Ukraines high command knows whether Ukraine now has a decisive advantage in firepower, munitions, troop numbers, and battlefield logistics. What we do know is that in recent months, the war has increasingly been defined by attritionneither side appears to have a decisive advantage, and each is trying to wear the other down. Whatever happens on Ukraines D-Day, it will not be easy for Ukrainian forces to avoid the wars character as one of attrition, even if they are large, well-prepared, and well-equipped.

There is perhaps only one way for Ukraine to escape the scourge of attrition in the opening hours of the upcoming offensive: set off paralysis in the Russian military leadership and panic across the Russian rank and file. Ukraines greatest chance of success will come if Russian soldiers skedaddle from advancing Ukrainian forces without putting up much of a fight. Even if the correlation of forces were advantageous for Ukraine, that alone would not be sufficient to attain these effects. Rather, intangible factors such as tactical surprise, battlefield leadership, and fighting morale will likely be decisive in the first 24 hours of an attack. These intangible factorsnot weapons alonewill help define whether the Ukrainians succeed in panicking the Russians, paralyzing the Russian military leadership, and causing a temporary breakdown of command and control. In this scenario, Ukrainian armored columns punch through layered Russian defenses, quickly advance into the Russian rear, and threaten command and control nodes like military headquarters and supply centers, compounding the panic and paralysis.

This kind of breakdown on the Russian side is exactly what took place during Ukraines lightning counteroffensive in September 2022 in Kharkiv oblast. The Ukrainians had set the conditions for the attack with a campaign of artillery attacks. Then, even though the Russians had observed the Ukrainian buildup, the attackers achieved tactical surprise, committed superior numbers, caused temporary panic, and set off a breakdown in Russian command and control. All of this delayed the speedy dispatch of Russian reserves that might have steadied the front line. As a result, Ukraine liberated more than 6,000 square kilometers of Russian-occupied territory in 10 days. The first 24 hours of that offensive were decisive, as the initial Ukrainian advance and exploitation of the breach in the front line triggered chaos and panic on the Russian side. In the upcoming spring offensive, Ukraine will likely attempt to replicate the Kharkiv offensives lightning character.

Achieving tactical surprise in the opening hours of the offensive will be crucial, since it increases the chance of local fire superiority and an advantageous correlation of forces, at least for a short period of time. This does not require Ukraines assembling of forces to remain secretan unlikely proposition in any case, given satellite imagery as well as cheap and pervasive drones on the battlefield. Rather, to stretch out Russian forces and prevent a concentration of defenders, Ukraine will need to leave Russia in the dark about where and when those assembled forces will strike. At the same time, Ukraine will need to make sure that the location chosen for the breakthrough attempt can be quickly expanded to enable deep penetrationfor example, by swiftly seizing important roads, intersections, or railroad junctions.

Of course, Russian defenses will need to be overcome first. A Ukrainian intelligence analyst shared a detailed description of echeloned Russian defenses in the south of the country: a formidable network of minefields, pyramid-shaped concrete blocks known as dragons teeth, anti-tank ditches, dugouts, and trenches. Whats more, since the defeat in Kharkiv and retreat from Kherson, Russia has now deployed a greater number of troops along a significantly shorter front line.

It will be very difficult for Ukraine to achieve sufficient fire superiority to quickly destroy these layered defenses, and it will be similarly hard to concentrate enough troops to quickly seize Russian positions. (A successful offensive usually requires the attacker to substantially outnumber the defender.) Gaining momentum under heavy Russian fire will be especially difficult given the need to overcome the layered defenses: Clearing a lane of land mines for tanks and other vehicles to traverse, clearing the dragons teeth, and breaching the ditches all require specialized equipment and skills. The more likely avenue to success is for the Ukrainians to force the Russians to abandon their defensive positions without much of a fightperhaps by triggering a panic that their positions got flanked and are now in danger of being cut off and encircled. That might be accomplished by finding a spot in Russian defenses where the layers are weaker, significantly attriting Russian forces with localized and temporary fire superiority, and advancing into the defenders rear. This may be the only realistic option for Ukrainians to achieve a quick and deep strategic breakthrough.

In this initial phase, tactical leadership will be crucial, especially the ability to make and execute decisions at lower command levels to exploit various opportunities on the battlefield. Every military operation is, in one way or another, organized chaos. This is even truer for attackers: Units may take the wrong turn, coordination may be difficult because of enemy jamming of communications, and even precisely determining the enemys whereabouts is a lot harder while on the move. Solid tactical leadership is crucial for overcoming, or at least mitigating, the friction inherent to war.

Leadership on the battlefield is also crucial because it has a direct impact on fighting morale. Soldiers who dont trust their military leaders because the latter seem overwhelmed by the friction of warfighting will quickly see their morale evaporate. If that happens, it is among the Ukrainians that panic could break out in the opening phase of the offensive. Junior tactical leaders will have to spot weaknesses in the Russian defenses and quickly exploit these by pushing as many armored formations as possible through that particular spot to get into the Russian rear. This requires taking huge risksfor example, by temporarily operating outside the air defense umbrellaand consequently demands highly motivated troops. Whoever has the upper hand in tactical leadership and morale at the onset of the attack will be less likely to panic and more likely to have a tactical advantage likely lasting beyond the first 24 hours.

Beyond tactical surprise, leadership, and morale, there is another factor that will determine the success of the counteroffensive: To what degree will the Russian side be able to quickly mobilize its operational reserve? This, too, will largely be determined in the first 24 hours. If a general panic clogs roads with retreating Russian forces, mobile reserves held in the rear will have a tough time reaching the front line at the point of breakthroughif these Russian reserves are available at all.

The first 24 hours of the upcoming spring offensive may indeed be the longest day for Ukraine. In the long run, Ukraines armed forces will have a tough time escaping the crucible of attrition of this artillery-focused land war. The Ukrainians could achieve tactical success if they are able to cause paralysis in the Russian military leadership and panic among troops, triggering a rout in the opening phase of the counteroffensive. Whether this will be sufficient for Ukraine to achieve long-term strategic gainslet alone win the waris another question entirely.

Link:
The First 24 Hours of the Counteroffensive Will Be Ukraine's Longest ... - Foreign Policy

DUBLIN, April 19 (Reuters) - Ryanair (RYA.I) expects to start flying in Ukraine within two weeks when fighting eventually ends and plans to become the country's largest airline, Group Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said on Wednesday.

O'Leary, whose airline is Europe's largest by passenger numbers, said he had hired around 60 Ukrainian pilots and around 80 cabin crew and his aim was to fly 30 routes from four Ukrainian airports back into the European Union within weeks of the conflict ending.

The airline would then plan to open up three or four large bases in the country within 6-12 months. He said he had no insight into when the conflict, triggered by Russia's invasion in February last year, might end.

"We would be back in there hopefully within two weeks after someone tells us it's safe to fly back into Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa. Kherson will be a lot longer because the airport has been destroyed," O'Leary told the Bloomberg New Economy Gateway conference near Dublin. "We will be Ukraine's biggest airline."

Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Kirsten Donovan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Continued here:
Ryanair vows to return to Ukraine within weeks of conflict ending - Reuters

KYIV, April 19 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy inspected the frontier with Belarus and Poland on Wednesday, and thanked border guards for their defence of the country since Russia's invasion.

The president posted video footage on the Telegram messaging app that showed him meeting border guards in woodland with barbed-wire fencing beside a river in the Volyn region of northwestern Ukraine.

"It is an honour for me to be here today to thank our border guards for protecting the state border," Zelenskiy wrote under the footage, which also showed him addressing the border guards and handing out awards.

"For the protection of our state in Bakhmut. I know how firmly you stood there, holding Bakhmut," he said, referring to the eastern Ukrainian city where fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces has been intense for months.

[1/4]Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visits the border with Belarus, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Volyn region, Ukraine April 19, 2023. Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS

Zelenskiy said after discussing border protection measures at a meeting in January that Ukraine must "be ready" at the frontier with Belarus even though Kyiv did not see "anything powerful" there apart from statements.

Russia used Belarus as a launchpad for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, and President Vladimir Putin said last month that Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons on its close ally's territory.

In a separate post on Wednesday, Zelenskiy said he had discussed security and socio-economic issues with political and military leaders in the Volyn region.

Zelenskiy has travelled widely in recent weeks. On Tuesday he met troops in the eastern city of Avdiivka, where fighting has also been fierce as Ukraine prepares for an expected counteroffensive to try to win back Russian-occupied territory.

Reporting by Dan Peleschuk, Editing by Timothy Heritage

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Read the original:
Ukraine's Zelenskiy visits border with Belarus and Poland - Reuters

17 April 2023

Image source, Getty Images

Ten days after leaked Pentagon documents burst into public view, what have we learned about the war in Ukraine?

The documents, mostly dating from February and March, offer tantalising insights into the state of the conflict. There's a wealth of detail, much of it highly complex.

But reading between the lines, you get a real sense of the Pentagon doing its utmost to understand the course of the conflict, sometimes with difficulty.

The "fog of war" is definitely on display.

Take the critical question of how many men and pieces of equipment each side is losing. The raw data tells a story (as many as 223,000 Russian killed or wounded soldiers, versus as many as 131,000 Ukrainians), until you read that the Pentagon has "low confidence" in the numbers.

This is due to several factors, including operational secrecy, deliberate distortions and what is described as "potential bias in Ukrainian information sharing".

In other words, the US may be Ukraine's most important ally, but Washington doesn't always trust what it's being told.

A similar lack of certainty is visible in a summary of the battle for the Donbas, dated 22 February.

It says the Pentagon has "moderate confidence" that the battle is "likely heading for a stalemate throughout 2023."

But it goes on to say that it would have higher confidence in this assessment "if we could accurately estimate the endurance of Ukraine's operations," adding that it cannot fully account for the toll Ukraine's counter-offenses in late 2022 took on Russian morale and equipment.

These are just a few examples of the questions swirling around the minds of Pentagon planners on a daily basis. There are a host of others.

What might cause Israel to get more involved? Can South Korea be prevailed upon to set aside its reservations and supply Kyiv with badly needed artillery shells? What if Vladimir Putin dies?

Image source, Getty Images

The leaks suggested that some members of the Russian elite had plotted to undermine Vladimir Putin's war.

Given the high levels of uncertainty, it's hardly surprising that Washington should revert to covert means to improve its understanding of what's going on.

Even if that means spying on the very country it says it's committed to helping.

And so we hear of intercepted conversations in which Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top officials discuss the pros and cons of hitting Russian targets in Belarus or Russia itself.

On 17 February, President Zelensky's Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak learned of an alleged Russian plot to sabotage Vladimir Putin's "special military operation", involving the Russian Chief of the General Staff, Valeriy Gerasimov, and the head of National Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev.

The plot, allegedly timed to coincide with a day when Vladimir Putin was scheduled to begin a round of chemotherapy, never materialised.

But for the Pentagon, anxious to detect signs of division and weakness in Moscow, one can imagine that the report must, for a day or so, have seemed intriguing.

Military conflicts are large, complex events, always shifting according to a wide range of military and political factors.

Which means that circumstances are likely to have changed in subtle ways in the weeks since the documents were drawn up.

The much reported case of Ukraine's air defences is a good example.

At least two documents from late February describe a situation in which key elements of Ukraine's defences - Soviet-era SA-11 and SA-10 surface-to-air missiles - are expected to run out by March 31st and May 2nd respectively.

Given that the two systems combined account for 89% of Ukraine's medium to high range protection, according to the document, these sound like dire predictions.

The projections are based on what is described as "current interceptor consumption", with the conclusion that Ukraine can only withstand 2-3 more waves of Russian attacks on its civilian infrastructure.

In fact, there have been no further mass attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure, meaning that Ukraine will have been able to eke out some of its precious stocks a little longer.

Nor is there any reference in the documents to the arrival of 13 MiG-29 jets from Slovakia, only approved by the government in Bratislava in mid-March.

Image source, Getty Images

MiG-29s, like the ones donated by Slovakia, have long been the backbone of Ukraine's air force.

Inevitably, the overwhelming tone of these documents is more sober, even pessimistic, than most public American pronouncements about the war.

There are no predictions here of sweeping Ukrainian successes when its much anticipated counter-offensive begins, possibly in the coming weeks.

Instead, the talk is of "modest territorial gains."

It's likely that some of Ukraine's reported weaknesses will have informed joint US-Ukrainian planning long before they came to public attention.

What we don't know, because these snapshots, although recent, are mere glimpses of a constantly evolving situation, is how successfully any of those weaknesses have been addressed.

Follow this link:
Ukraine war: As the dust settles, did the US leaks reveal anything important? - BBC

Russian forces are stepping up their use of heavy artillery and air strikes in the devastated eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the commander of Ukraines ground forces said on Tuesday.

Poland and Ukraine will resume negotiations early on Tuesday to try to reopen the transit of food and grains, the Polish agriculture minister told public radio station PR1. The two countries held talks on Monday over bans by central eastern European countries seeking to shelter their farmers from the impact of an influx of cheaper Ukrainian grain.

Romanias ruling Social Democrat party (PSD) has said it will ask the coalition government to approve an emergency decree enforcing a temporary ban on Ukrainian grain imports, mirroring similar moves by countries in central and eastern Europe.

Russias defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, told his Chinese counterpart on Tuesday that their countries military cooperation was a stabilising force in the world and helped to reduce the chances of conflict.

Security concerns have prompted Russian authorities this year to cancel traditional immortal regiment nationwide victory day processions where people carry portraits of relatives who fought against Nazi Germany in the second world war.

The UK has condemned the sentencing of Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was jailed for 25 years on Monday for opposing the war in Ukraine. UK foreign secretary James Cleverly summoned the Russian ambassador, Andrei Kelin, for an explanation. Kara-Murza holds dual Russian-British citizenship.

Kara-Murzas wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, told British broadcaster LBC that she was baffled by the UK governments weak response. Introducing sanctions against his perpetrators would actually be a very practical step that I would very much like to see, she said.

The UNs human rights head, Volker Trk, urged Russia to release him, while Baltic neighbour Latvia sanctioned 10 Russian officials and lawyers involved in the case.

Russias leading opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, faces the prospect of new criminal charges, one of his lawyers has claimed. Vadim Kobzev alleged on Twitter that authorities had provoked Navalny by placing another inmate in his cell, and that Navalny had been given no choice but to drag him out. He had then been told he would be charged with thwarting prison authorities, which carries a maximum sentence of five years, Kobzev said.

The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, held a meeting with the Russian-installed head of Ukraines occupied Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, on Tuesday.

Russia is not yet planning to block Wikipedia, its minister of digital affairs said on Tuesday as a Moscow court handed the online encyclopaedia another fine for failing to remove content Russia deems illegal.

G7 foreign ministers have condemned Russias irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and its threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus as unacceptable, after a three-day meeting in the Japanese resort town of Karuizawa. Any use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by Russia would be met with severe consequences, they warned.

The Pentagon said it expected findings within 45 days from a review into how the US military handles classified information after last weeks arrest of an airman over the leak a trove of highly classified documents online.

Russia said it had repelled an illegal Ukrainian attempt to infiltrate Russian territory in the southern border region of Bryansk, 11 days after reporting a similar incident. The intruder stepped on a mined protection line, said regional governor Alexander Bogomaz on Telegram.

Excerpt from:
Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 419 of the invasion - The Guardian