The battle for the Ukrainian Donets Basin has turned into a proverbial meat grinder. The Russians have a clear artillery advantage, but not enough ground troops to make decisive territorial gains. On the Ukrainian side, lack of manpower is not the main problem, but the lack of the guns and missile launchers needed to push the Russians back.
The losses among the Ukrainians have risen to an average of one hundred to two hundred men a day, the government in Kyiv says. A multiple of those numbers get hurt. Fallen professional soldiers, hardened by nearly a decade of war experience, are being replaced by young, inexperienced and barely trained men from the volunteer units set up after the Russian invasion.
Less is known about the Russian losses, but it is likely that they are also heavy, military experts say. In intercepted phone callsalthough released by Ukraine and not yet independently verified, Russian military personnel are complaining about the poor conditions in the Donets basin.
One of them states that only about fifteen soldiers of his Battalion Tactical Group (BTG, the standard combat unit of the Russian army, which normally consists of seven hundred to eight hundred men) are left. Even specialists, such as engineers, would be sent to the front as cannon fodder.
Russian firepower discourages Ukrainian troops
Those guns, that’s what it’s all about in eastern Ukraine now. “It has become an artillery war,” Vadym Skibitsky, deputy chief of Ukrainian military intelligence, told earlier this month. The Guardian† That is not in favor of the defenders. “Ukraine has one artillery piece for every ten to fifteen Russian artillery pieces.”
Ukrainian soldiers returning from the front also speak of severe shortages of ammunition and chaotic leadership. A recent report by Ukrainian and Western intelligence agencies, seen by the British newspaper The Independent, confirms that image. The Russians would have up to 40 times more grenades and missiles to fire than the Ukrainians. They can hardly answer the Russian artillery anyway, because most of their cannons can shoot up to about 25 kilometers away, while the Russians can bombard them from 300 kilometers away.
That imbalance in firepower on the Eastern Front is having “a gravely dispiriting effect on Ukrainian troops, as well as a palpable effect; the number of desertions is growing every week,” the report said.
Battle for Severodonetsk will intensify
The overwhelming artillery force, however, does not make Russia the obvious winner of the battle for the Donets Basin. It is also difficult to dislodge well-dug-in defenders with artillery fire. At some point, ground troops will have to move forward to gain actual territory.
Despite the heavy losses, a lack of manpower is not an acute problem for Ukraine, which believes it can mobilize at least a million soldiers if necessary. If the Kremlin wants to counter this with comparable numbers, it can no longer avoid a formal declaration of war and a general mobilization in Russia. However, that would not be a popular decision with ordinary Russians, and the conscripts it would bring would not be nearly as motivated as the Ukrainians, who defend their home and hearth.
With territorial gains, things do not go very smoothly for Moscow at the moment. In recent weeks, the fighting in eastern Ukraine has centered on Severodonetsk, the last major city in Luhansk province that is still (partly) controlled by Ukraine. The remaining defenders have entrenched themselves in and around the Azot chemical plant. After Severodonetsk it will be the turn of the smaller neighboring city of Lysychansk.
According to Kyiv, Russian forces have been given a deadline to take those two cities and reach the border between Luhansk province and Donetsk province on June 26. Satellite images show that the Russians are gathering additional troops and equipment to do this, weakening their presence elsewhere in Ukraine. The advance to Sloviansk, a city in Donetsk, is suffering as a result. Russian propaganda channels seem to be preparing the public at home for an uphill battle for that city.
Artillery, artillery, artillery
In the south and southeast of Ukraine, the Russians currently have their hands full fighting off Ukrainian counter-attacks. They are putting up extensive defenses in the provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya. Here too, artillery plays an important role, but in the reversed picture: the Russians use it to keep Ukrainian attackers at bay, while the Ukrainians need it to crush the Russian defenders before they can really advance to regain territory. to conquer.
The lack of artillery thus affects Ukraine both in the east and in the south. Representatives of the government in Kyiv are pushing that message to their Western allies in every possible way. The handful of howitzers and missile launchers Ukraine has received are nowhere near enough to turn the tide.
“We need help, and quickly,” Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said earlier this month. The Economist† “Because the cost of any delay is measured in Ukrainian blood.”