Russia Launches Assault on New Front Against Stretched Ukrainian Forces
Moscow’s troops attacked in Ukraine’s northeast as Kyiv waits for fresh U.S. military aid
KYIV, Ukraine—Russia launched armored attacks across the border in Ukraine’s northeast, opening a new front against Ukrainian forces already struggling to hold the line as they await U.S. aid.
The attacks will force Ukraine to make hard choices about where to deploy depleted troops and limited weaponry against mounting Russian offensives along a front line stretching hundreds of miles.
The Russian assaults with infantry and armored vehicles began early Friday in the northeastern Kharkiv Region after heavy shelling on the border and airstrikes on the city of Vovchansk, Ukrainian officials said. Ukraine’s military said the attacks were repelled and that it was sending reinforcements. Russian war correspondents said Moscow’s forces had seized a handful of villages along the border.
The new Russian offensive comes at a critical moment for Ukraine, as its battered units are desperately trying to repel an enemy with more troops and greater firepower. Kyiv’s military is struggling with the impact of months without large-volume deliveries of American arms, especially artillery shells and air-defense interceptors. The U.S. recently restarted shipments, following the passage last month of funding legislation, but significant deliveries will take time to reach Ukraine’s front-line troops.
Kyiv’s weaponry shortfall has allowed Russia to advance gradually in the east in recent weeks. Russian troops are fighting for a foothold in the eastern city of Chasiv Yar and have seized several villages to its south, threatening a key supply route.
Ukrainian front-line troops are outnumbered and say Russian forces can fire around 10 artillery shells for every one used by Ukrainian defenders. Russia has in recent weeks built up a significant force to the north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, although Ukrainian officials and analysts say it is insufficient for an assault on that city.
Instead, it could be an effort to establish a buffer zone in an area where Ukraine has carried out incursions into Russian territory. The assault could also draw Ukrainian forces from other areas and weaken them elsewhere along a front stretching hundreds of miles from near the Black Sea to the country’s northern border.
“The defender needs to be strong everywhere,” said retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.
Kimmitt said a challenge for Ukraine will be determining if this is a full-scale attack or a feint. Russia could draw Ukrainian forces to defend against an assault in one location and then launch a second attack elsewhere. He noted that Ukraine did this at the end of 2022, when it besieged the southern city of Kherson and then sprung an attack on the lightly defended area near the northern city of Kharkiv.
At that time, Ukrainian forces largely flushed Russian forces out of the Kharkiv region with a lightning counteroffensive. But Ukraine now finds its forces thinned by brutal battles against its more-populous neighbor and depleted military supplies.
Ukrainian officials say Russia is likely to ramp up offensives into summer with the aim of seizing most of the eastern Donetsk Region, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed is part of Russia.
Russia seized the eastern city of Avdiivka in February, its first major advance for months, and in recent weeks has thrust northwest from the city, seizing several villages.
Ukrainian soldiers serving in the area said Russian forces had taken advantage of an inexperienced brigade rotating into the Ukrainian line to cut through. Russian troops are now about 6 miles from a highway that leads from Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub, to the Chasiv Yar front.
Russia is hammering Ukrainian front-line positions with massive glide bombs launched from warplanes, which Ukraine is struggling to counter with outmatched Soviet-era fighter planes and scarce air-defense systems needed to protect cities.
Russian forces are suffering heavy losses but appear undeterred, though analysts say casualties will eventually sap their strength.
Ukraine, with artillery shells in short supply, is relying on small explosive aerial drones to hit Russian infantry and vehicles seeking to advance. Drone pilots operating in the area of Russia’s recent advance near Avdiivka describe repeatedly hitting infantry as they seek to advance, leaving only a few stragglers to be picked off by Ukrainian riflemen.
But still the Russians are often able to advance. One Russian tactic has been to use what Ukraine calls “camels”—soldiers who bring forward ammunition or other supplies in ones and twos. The first ones are almost always killed, but eventually enough make it forward with sufficient supplies to establish a foothold.
“They are pressing us with their numbers,” said one pilot. He said he had killed a platoon’s worth of Russian soldiers one recent day, “and they keep coming.”
Still, Russian forces are suffering from a lack of coordination that would allow a deeper breakthrough. The pilot described a recent Russian assault using an armored vehicle carrying a powerful electronic jamming device that blocked the use of explosive drones in a dome of around 500 yards around it. For around half a day, Ukrainian drone pilots were helpless, but no Russian infantry assaulted the nearby Ukrainian trench. Eventually, the jammer was disabled by Ukrainian artillery fire.
Russia’s apparent inability to coordinate its air force and ground troops in battle may prove helpful to Ukraine, said Seth Jones, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
Russia’s air force has inflicted lethal damage on Ukrainian troops using bombs and missiles, but most of those strikes have been launched from well behind the front line and not been staged in coordination with ground attacks, Jones said. Modern military doctrine is built around what are known as combined-arms tactics, where air, ground, naval and other forces strike in coordination, to support and reinforce each other.
“I don’t see the Russians using an effective mix of air and ground together in joint operations,” said Jones. “It’s not close air support.”
He said that during fighting in Syria a few years ago, Russian aircraft showed more coordination supporting Syrian and Iranian-backed ground forces.
Russian aircraft have stayed away from the front because Moscow hasn’t achieved air superiority in Ukraine, he said. Without air superiority, Russian pilots and their planes or helicopters are at risk of being shot down. Ukraine over recent months has blasted many Russian aircraft from the sky.
Moscow’s aerial barrages this year have threatened to deplete Ukrainian air defenses or force Kyiv to decide between using its scarce air-defense batteries to protect cities or troops on the front. New deliveries from the U.S. and European allies may alleviate some of that pressure on Ukraine, reinforcing Russian concern about deploying aircraft too near the front.
Kyiv must now make similar choices between bad options across the battlefield.
Russia, having stretched Ukrainian forces thin along the front, can press in several places. A large offensive would require Moscow to stage troops and supplies before conducting an attack, which could be visible to Ukrainian and Western surveillance. But Russia could build resources in several places or feint in one and strike harder in another.
If Russia stages a large attack, Ukraine’s biggest challenge will be to respond quickly, with sufficient scale. To stop Russian troops from achieving a breakthrough, Ukrainian forces would probably need to halt wave upon wave of attacking armor.
And a diversion could sap Ukraine’s ability to respond, as the U.S. and allies did against Nazi troops with the D-Day invasion in 1944, noted Kimmitt. Then, Allies created a sham invasion force targeting one part of France and instead invaded another.
In the first Gulf War, too, U.S. Army General Norman Schwarzkopf staged a similar maneuver, appearing to prepare a direct, amphibious attack on Iraqi forces in Kuwait. Meanwhile, he secretly swung an entire corps across the desert to his flank, stunning Iraqi troops with what became known as his “left hook.”
Kimmitt said U.S. military strategists carefully studied Soviet World War II battlefield maneuvers and applied the concepts in both Gulf Wars—and that Moscow might employ them now.
To stem a Russian push, Kyiv will employ a range of arms. Those likely will include Western-supplied precision weaponry, deep-strike rockets to hit behind Russian lines and drones, which Ukraine is producing in growing numbers. But the most valuable weapon may be older-generation “dumb” artillery, especially antitank land mines that can be spread by artillery shells, which the U.S. developed in the 1980s, said Kimmitt.
“But you have to stockpile a significant amount,” Kimmitt said. “Can Ukraine mass enough to make a difference?” He said drones and precision weapons are likely to prove helpful but not decisive in such a battle.
The U.S. has recently sent Ukraine longer-range missiles, but won’t allow their use on Russian territory, preventing Ukraine from striking command posts and formations preparing to strike across the border from the Kharkiv region, the new front opened by Russia on Friday.