Asymmetry And The Conventional Wisdom

As sometimes happens, I sat up in bed early this morning suddenly recognizing that nobody has pointed out that the Russian abandonment of Snake Island on June 30 was an unacknowledged victory for the asymmetric strategy in the Russo-Ukraine War. After four months of trying to defend the island, losing major naval assets in the process, including the flagship of the Black Sea fleet, the Russians left -- but Ukraine chose not to reoccupy the island. It would have been just as expensive for them to defend as it was for the Russians. and as long as the Russians deem it prudent to stay away, they don't need to. According to the Guardian,

Maritime tracking services showed a logjam of ships waiting to pass into the Danube since a second route through the Bystre estuary was opened after the recent Russian retreat from the nearby Snake Island.

. . . Although large carriers cannot pass through the Bystre estuary, limiting the amount of grain that can be exported, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that already 16 ships had transited the Bystre route in the four days since it reopened.

. . . Until recently, the Bystre estuary route had been closed, but that has changed with the removal of Russian forces from Snake Island.

It seems to me that conventional thinking would have been that Ukraine needed to reoccupy Snake Island for this to take place, while all that was really needed was for Russia to stay away. Ukraine got the desired result, a partial end to the Russian blockade of its Black Sea ports, without the need to reoccupy and defend Snake Island. We're seeing similar thinking in analysis of the war's current phase, for instance in the Financial Times:

“Russia could still wear down Ukrainian ammunition stockpiles, its reserve of skilled troops and the patience of the international community to slowly claw back a path towards meeting its aims,” wrote two researchers, Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, in a report for the London-based Royal United Services Institute last week.

As well as a chronic shortage of artillery ammunition, they highlighted multiple other Ukrainian weaknesses, including a lack of skilled infantry and armoured vehicles to conduct offensive operations, a shortage of secure radio equipment and an inability to detect and take out Russian electronic warfare capabilities.

The implicit assumption is that Ukraine needs a large conventional force of "skilled infantry and armoured vehicles to conduct offensive operations" in order to push the Russians back in the Donbas. But the same implied logic would have required just as large a force for the Ukrainians to push the Russians away from Kyiv, or presumably a navy just as large as the Russians' to drive them away from Snake Island. That wan't needed in either case. Ukraine drove the Russians off Snake Island with no navy.

The UK Ministry of Defence suggests the idea of a large-scale Ukrainian conventional counteroffensive in the Donbas may also miss the point:

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 14 July 2022

Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/ooeYS0oJa7

🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/3TkIw6XCNU

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) July 14, 2022

We can stipulate that, as the Institute for the Study of War continues to report, as of yesterday,

Russia’s operational pause largely continued, with limited Russian ground assaults along the Slovyansk-Siversk-Bakhmut salient.

But especially in the context of the UK Ministry of Defence's estimate above, the ISW's conclusion simply doesn't follow:

The Russians will likely launch a larger-scale and more determined offensive along the Slovyansk-Siversk-Bakhmut line soon, but there are no indications yet of how soon that attack will begin or exactly where it will focus.

The UK MoD instead suggests the Russians are in danger of losing momentum due to their "operational pause", which due to their aging vehicles, weapons, and Soviet-era tactics they're unlikely to regain. In other words, we're back to the 40-mile convoy that one day may start moving, and when they do, watch out!

However, a problem with the "operational pause" theory is that it attempts to explain only the circumstance that the Russians must refit and redeploy after taking Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. It doesn't factor in the effect of longer-range NATO weapons in forcing the Russian supply and command centers farther to the rear:

Since Ukraine received the first far-reaching weapons such as HIMARS and M270, there was no safe place for russian supplies. The invaders’ stocks of ammunition and fuel began to disappear one after another creating problems for the frontline logistics.

So they try to hide warehouses away, relocating them deeper in the rear, as stated by a Ukrainian General Staff official Oleksii Hromov during a briefing at Media Center Ukraine.

. . . "Currently, the possibility of locating the enemy’s brigade-level warehouses at a distance of 100 kilometers from the front line is being considered, and corps-level warehouses – at 150 kilometers from the front line."

This forces the Russians to put increasing strain on their weak logistical operations. In fact, I'm of the view that this is the factor behind the "operational pause", not some desire to resupply or reorganize -- the Russians have fewer and fewer resources to do that with in any case.