Ukraine Prioritizes Maxiumum Impact Targets To Undermine Russian War Effort

It's not just you. The number of pictures seen on various media of Russian oil refineries, factories, ports and supply depots blowing up or burning are increasing because Ukrainian forces have prioritized striking them to degrade Russia's ability to support its troops war fighting capabilities. 

And the growing reports of reduced Russian vehicle activity, shell fire and other indices suggest it is working. JL 

James Marson and Daniel Michaels report in the Wall Street Journal:

Since Russia’s invasion almost two years ago, Ukraine has held off numerically superior Russian forces with extreme bravery and advanced precision Western weaponry. Kyiv’s limited forces humbled what had been considered one of the world’s top militaries. Ukraine has (now) given priority to hitting targets that can have maximum impact, such as Russian air bases from where attacks are launched, and fuel refineries or supplies far behind front lines. The goal is to undermine Moscow’s ability to wage war, and not just hit groups of troops. “By hitting targets at depth, you are relieving troops at the front,”

After a hard day of fighting last month, Ukrainian troops lost a couple of ditches near the northeastern city of Kupyansk. By the following morning, the Russians had dug a mile-long trench and were firmly established.

A Ukrainian sniper listening in on a Russian radio channel heard how. The Russians had deployed a special trench-digging team typically made up of drunks and other ne’er-do-wells. When one refused to dig, one Russian officer reported, the laggard was swiftly dealt with: “We eliminated him.”

The advance had no immediate strategic impact, but it shows how Russian troops are slowly pressing forward using a critical advantage: masses of poorly trained conscripts and indifference to the loss of life.

Ukrainian front line

Russian forces as of Feb. 6

BELARUS

RUSSIA

POL.

Kyiv

Kupyansk

UKRAINE

Avdiivka

Mariupol

ROMANIA

Odesa

100 miles

Black Sea

100 km

Source: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project
Andrew Barnett/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Ukrainian troops are disadvantaged amid shortages of all kinds of equipment even before the consequences of Republicans blocking additional aid to Kyiv fully affect the battlefield. The most immediately painful shortage is in artillery: Russian forces are outshooting Ukrainians by about 10 Russian shells to every one they fire, a Ukrainian security official said.

With manpower and equipment severely depleted by last year’s failed counteroffensive, Ukraine finds itself fighting a defensive effort aimed at delaying Russian advances and preventing a breakthrough.

Russia hasn’t solved the challenge of how to cut through Ukraine’s defensive lines with armored vehicles, which Ukrainians can quickly spot and target with aerial drones. But they are inching forward using their superiority in manpower and artillery shells.

The scarcity of shells, missiles and rockets is impeding Ukrainian efforts to hold back waves of Russian armored vehicles, troops and artillery. Ukraine is improvising by using explosive drones to take out armored columns. But Russian ground troops still manage to slip through, despite taking heavy casualties, allowing Moscow’s forces to press forward.

“They are taking bites,” the Ukrainian security official said.

Russians have penetrated the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka from the north and south, and are seeking to cut off its main supply line. The Russians are also closing in around Kupyansk, a city that Ukraine retook in 2022 in a lightning counteroffensive.

Neither city is a strategic prize, but taking either would be the first major conquest for Russia since it captured the eastern city of Bakhmut in May and allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to claim a morale-boosting victory.

For Kyiv, which one year ago was basking in the unexpected success of campaigns against overextended Russian troops that regained hundreds of square miles in late 2022, the spreading adversity is an unwelcome change of fortune. President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top general, Valeriy Zaluzhniy, are at odds and political infighting is growing.

Zelensky has noted that the prospect of battlefield losses holds potentially dire consequences.

“People really don’t like losers,” Zelensky said in an interview last month with Britain’s Channel 4, referring to the war’s earliest days, when few foreign leaders thought his government would survive. The lesson remains relevant, he indicated. In politics, he said of how failures are shunned, “it’s everywhere…from the war to financing, from the military, just to bilateral relations.”

To be sure, Ukraine is having more success in the air and sea war. Russia appears to have failed in its efforts this winter to cripple civilian infrastructure, including electricity and heating, with missile and drone strikes. On at least three occasions, Ukraine used its U.S.-designed Patriot air-defense missiles to surprise expensive Russian warplanes and shoot them down.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said last week it had used naval drones to destroy a Russian missile corvette off occupied Crimea. Ukrainian drone attacks have severely curtailed the movements of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and allowed Kyiv to increase exports from its main southern port of Odesa to close to prewar levels.

The concern for Ukraine is the fragility of the front line. Soldiers in the trenches complain their units aren’t fully staffed and hardly rotated for rest. Zaluzhniy has complained about poor recruitment, blaming the government.

Since Russia’s large-scale invasion almost two years ago, Ukraine has held off numerically superior Russian forces with a combination of extreme bravery and advanced precision Western weaponry. The exactitude of systems including U.S. Javelin shoulder-launched antitank missiles and truck-based Himars rockets, and European Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles has allowed Kyiv’s limited forces to humble what had been considered one of the world’s top militaries.

Now, with Congress unable to agree on more military help for Ukraine, its soldiers and politicians fear that their defenses are weakening. Europe is struggling to step up, but it lacks the Pentagon’s well-stocked arsenals and ability to quickly expand production of vital supplies such as artillery shells.

If Congress doesn’t approve new funding for Ukraine, U.S. equipment won’t suddenly stop, but slowly expire. Past appropriations budgeted for munitions that are only starting to be shipped, such as Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs, which are fired from Himars or other vehicles and have a range of more than 90 miles.

Facing the prospect of waning U.S. provisions, Ukrainian troops have been husbanding the munitions they consume fastest, including ammunition and defensive systems. Russia, sensing opportunity, has been barraging Ukraine with drones, missiles and rockets that destroy military equipment, demoralize the population and—potentially most threatening for the longer term—deplete Kyiv’s stock of air-defense interceptors.

Ukraine has given priority to hitting targets that can have maximum impact, such as Russian air bases from where attacks are launched, and fuel refineries or supplies far behind front lines. The goal is to undermine Moscow’s ability to wage war, and not just hit groups of troops. Kyiv hopes the approach will be more cost-effective than targeting front-line soldiers and may buy some breathing room for Ukrainian soldiers.

“By hitting targets at depth, you are relieving troops at the front,” said retired German Lt. Gen. Heinrich Brauss, of Ukraine’s use of British-French cruise missiles.

Ukraine is also racing to expand its production of small one-way drones loaded with explosives. Early in the war, Kyiv and private citizens imported large numbers of remotely piloted drones, first for reconnaissance and later as offensive systems. 

Over the past year, Ukraine has shifted to making its own explosive drones in roughly 200 factories scattered around the country, most of them small, improvised operations. The goal is to produce one million drones this year, or more than 80,000 a month. 

From a production rate of about 5,000 drones a month last summer, Ukraine by the end of last year had reached 50,000 a month, according to Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.