The kyiv counteroffensive has already begun “at the strategic level”

It is a series of attacks that has nothing to do with chance, while the Ukrainian counter-offensive is on everyone’s lips. In recent days, several bombings and acts of sabotage attributed to kyiv have targeted Russian infrastructure in the occupied territories and border regions.

On Tuesday, May 2, Ukrainian forces attacked a village in Russia’s Bryansk region, the regional governor reported on Telegram. At night, a new freight train derailed due to the detonation of an “explosive device”. The previous day, another locomotive and seven carriages had been the target of a bomb attack in the border region. On the same day, a high-voltage line was damaged by an explosion, this time in the Leningrad region near the Estonian border, according to local authorities.

This weekend, five villages in the Belgorod region were also hit by Ukrainian artillery, causing power outages. In addition, a drone attack caused a large fire in an oil depot in Sevastopol (Crimea).

Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian authorities have regularly denounced incursions by Ukrainian armed groups into its territory, particularly in the Bryansk region. For its part, kyiv almost never claims responsibility for these acts of sabotage, which have often targeted the railways on which the logistics of the Russian army depend.

“The counteroffensive has already begun at a strategic level with these in-depth actions on command posts and logistics nodes to stop the supply of the Russian army, especially fuel and ammunition,” said General Dominique Trinquand, former head of the mission. French military before the UN. “The Ukrainians are also trying to blind the Russians by hitting their electronic warfare instruments,” that is, the tools for listening, locating and jamming enemy communications.

This serves to configure the battlefield in anticipation of the axes of attack that will be favored. The objective is to prevent the adversary from stockpiling material or sending reinforcements quickly. But all this can take several weeks, so one should not imagine that this type of action means an imminent operation,” says Guillaume Lasconjarias, a military historian and professor at the Sorbonne.

A similar campaign of targeted attacks and sabotage to “shape the battlefield” had also been carried out by late summer 2022. It led to a successful counter-offensive that stopped the Russians in the east, in the Kharkiv and Izum regions, and in the south, in preparation for the recapture of Kherson.

war of nerves

But in contrast to the strict information blackout imposed by kyiv during last year’s counter-offensive, this time Ukraine seems uncharacteristically quick to communicate its intentions. “Preparations are nearing completion,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Friday. “The equipment has been promised, prepared and partly delivered. In the broadest sense, we are prepared,” he said of Western weapons and equipment.

“There is a lot of strategic communication to put pressure on the Russians. However, if we know there is going to be a counteroffensive, we don’t know where, when and how it will take place,” says General Trinquand.

“The objective is, in effect, to create a climate of nervousness among the Russians”, confirms Guillaume Lasconjarias. “But more than that, it is about addressing the Ukrainian public opinion, which is expecting this offensive. Finally, saying that there will be a counter-attack, but that there are still needs, is also a way of putting pressure on the Western allies so that the weapons , logistics and ammunition are available for this counteroffensive.”

For its part, Russia has no intention of sitting idly by, as evidenced by the increasing number of missile attacks on Ukrainian territory in recent days. Moscow carried out the biggest wave of attacks since March on Friday, killing 26 people, including 23 residents of a single building in Uman.

“The Russian Defense Ministry has recently changed its rhetoric and is trying to portray this campaign of attacks as a proactive approach as concern grows within the Russian information space about the Ukrainian counteroffensive,” the Institute for the Study of the War in a note published on Monday.

The head of Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, declared on Sunday that a Ukrainian counter-offensive could even be “a tragedy” for Russia, as its men are running out of ammunition. “We only have 10-15% of the ammunition we need,” Wagner’s boss declared. Yevgeny Prigozhin, who blamed the Russian army’s top brass for the shortage, said he expected a Ukrainian attack by mid-May.

“A One Shot Gun”

If Wagner’s boss pleads his camp as usual, this outing reveals a form of apprehension on the Russian side, while Kiev will be able to count on most of the weapons promised by the West to launch its offensive. According to the NATO Secretary General, Ukraine has received “98% of the military aid promised by the West.” In total, “1,550 armored vehicles, 230 tanks and a lot of ammunition” have been delivered, Jens Stoltenberg declared last week.

Despite the losses suffered since the beginning of the conflict, the Ukrainians have managed to build an army trained to NATO standards. “The figure of 60,000 men divided into 12 brigades by the Ukrainian side has been mentioned,” General Trinquand declares. “Given the quality of the equipment and the quality of the preparation, the Ukrainians are in a strong position to win a victory on a small front,” predicts the military expert.

On the other side, the Russians have established a defensive line of 800 km, from Crimea to Kharkiv, made up of minefields, dragon’s teeth (concrete cones to slow down the advance of the armored vehicles) and trenches. The success of the counteroffensive will largely depend on the ability of the Ukrainian forces to “break through” all these obstacles.

“This requires engineering resources to pump out the waterways or carry out demining operations to allow the tanks to pass,” explains General Trinquand. “You have to break through, but then be able to explode. This means sending reinforcements and at the same time that the Russians cannot react,” explains Guillaume Lasconjarias.

The stakes are high for Ukraine, which has a chance to deal a decisive blow to Russian forces, which the US says have lost 100,000 men, including 20,000 killed and 80,000 wounded, since December 2022.

“But for Ukraine, it’s a one shot shot,” says General Dominique Trinquand. “They may succeed in pushing the Russian army down and create turmoil that will be felt even in the Kremlin. But if they fail, we are in for several months of fighting on the front lines and a return to a war of attrition.”

Text translated from its original French version