After 15 months of fighting, the war in Ukraine is heading towards its most critical point. Kyiv has assembled a force – 12 brigades and perhaps 60,000 troops strong, if leaked Pentagon papers are to be believed – equipped largely with Nato-standard tanks, armour and artillery, and trained in part in the west.
At the same time, Russia’s winter offensive is over and it has failed. The campaign to gain ground along the eastern front from Kreminna in the north, to capture Bakhmut in the centre and Vuhledar in the south is faltering, the culminating point often considered by militaries as the optimum point for a counterattack.
Now Ukraine has to demonstrate, given the western weapons it has received, that is has a path to a military victory, that it can push back the Russian invaders. But the question is: where could it attack?
1. Break the land bridge and isolate Crimea
Ukraine’s advantage, says Ed Arnold, a research fellow at Rusi, the defence thinktank, is that it has choices of where the counterattack could take place. “The hallmark of a good strategy is that it creates options,” he said, and it may even be that Ukraine will press – or appear to press – in a number of locations to try to inflict a serious defeat.
The most obvious point for a Ukrainian attack is to strike from the Zaporizhzhia sector south and south-west towards Melitopol, or possibly south-east towards Berdiansk. The ultimate goal is to cut the road supply links that run close to the coast, but maps of Russian fortifications, based on satellite imagery, show a relatively dense double line of trenches and positions surrounding the key city of Tokmak.
The goal is ultimately to render Russia’s long occupation of Crimea untenable, which could be achieved if the Kerch Bridge, which connects the peninsula to Russia proper, can be blown again – perhaps with the help of newly acquired Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles that could also strike at the key logistics hub of Dzhankoi. But Ukraine knows Russia will fight hard for Crimea, even from a distance, so there may well be advantages to attacking elsewhere.
2. Attack over the Dnipro River into occupied Kherson
A riskier strategy would be to try to launch an amphibious operation across the Dnipro River farther west, where there are fewer but still plenty of fortifications. Britain expanded its programme of training for Ukrainian soldiers in February to encompass marines, and there have been some reports of marines battling to establish bridgeheads in the islands of the Dnipro delta, west of Oleshky.
A significant attack would be “high risk, high reward”, says Arnold, and he argues it is not obvious that Ukraine needs to try something so risky at this point. It is also unclear whether progress across the delta would be straightforward for a significant attacking force. The area is one of the least reported from in the war, making understanding what is happening in the area difficult.
3. Strike into northern Luhansk and threaten to surround forces in Donbas
An alternative to an attack aimed at cutting off Crimea would be to strike into the lightly populated northern Luhansk, aimed at cutting off Russian supply lines that tend to run north-south through Svatove on the frontline and Starobilsk beyond to the east, and in turn threatening Russian-held positions farther south.
The area is less likely to be as well defended, and the aspiration would to achieve a repeat of the September Kharkiv offensive where Ukraine exploited a lightly defended area of the Russian lines farther west, and forced a chaotic retreat on Moscow’s forces who were at risk of being outflanked at points during the speedy advance.
Critical here for Ukraine would be to achieve an element of surprise, and, Arnold says, “having the intelligence to identify a Russian weak spot”. An attack in this area could work opportunistically, if the Russians over-defend in the south, while threatening it could force Moscow to move some troops 200 miles or so north-east.
4. Counterattack around Bakhmut
Six weeks ago, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s land forces, appeared to suggest that Ukraine could strike back in Bakhmut, a previously unimportant Donbas city that has become the scene of the fiercest fighting in the war.
At the time, the idea looked unlikely, but finally in recent days Ukraine has launched some limited counterattacks just north of Bakhmut, and again eight miles (14km) to the south-west. Their tentative success suggests Ukraine could try to encircle the battered city, threatening exhausted Russian forces that have only just captured most of it.
The disadvantage is that for all the symbolic value that would be gained from regaining the lost majority of Bakhmut, the Donbas area is less strategically significant. Cutting into Russian lines in the east does not threaten Crimea and any effort to capture the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, occupied since 2014, would be fraught, not least given the difficulty of urban warfare.
Where an attack in the east could help is “if it fixes the Russians in the area”, Arnold says, meaning it forces Moscow to allocate troops to the eastern front, so giving Ukraine greater opportunity in the south. Probing attacks in Bakhmut could be a prelude to an offensive elsewhere.
• This article was amended on 14 May 2023 to clarify Oleksandr Syrskyi is the commander of Ukraine’s land forces.
