Ukraine Has Improved Its Defense By Going On Offense

With its Kursk offensive and increased long range missile and drone attacks on Russian ammunition storage and logistics assets, Ukraine has greatly improved its defensive capabilities while forcing Russia to become more careful about where and how it is able to fight. JL

Jillian Melchior reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Kharkiv’s relative calm has come as Ukraine has shifted to the offensive on Russian territory along the northern front. Instead of merely trying to intercept the enemy’s arrows, it is trying to take out the archer with a series of attacks on missile launchers and weapons-storage facilities. "Strikes on missile launch sites on the territory of Russia, including S-300 launch sites, create significant deficits for Russia and sharply weaken its logistical capabilities.” Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region has further strained Moscow’s war resources and forced the Kremlin to make tough choices about how to use them.

Ukraine’s second-most-populous city is only 18 miles south of the Russian border. When the air-raid sirens go off, residents have at most a few minutes to race to shelter. Throughout the spring and summer, Russians launched between 30 and 60 strikes a day on Kharkiv oblast. In recent weeks that number has plummeted to three to five on most days and rarely more than 10, according to Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration.

This partial respite offers a lesson for the West. By long restricting Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian territory using Western weapons, the U.S. effectively promoted an interception-only response to Russian aerial attacks. Ukraine, however, can’t keep its skies safe solely on the defensive. It has too little air-defense capability to shield its territory, and Russia is ramping up production of glide bombs and other weapons, in addition to getting drones and missiles from Iran and missiles from North Korea.

Kharkiv’s relative calm has come as Ukraine has shifted to the offensive on Russian territory along the northern front. Instead of merely trying to intercept the enemy’s arrows, it is trying to take out the archer with a series of attacks on missile launchers and weapons-storage facilities. Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region has further strained Moscow’s war resources and forced the Kremlin to make tough choices about how to use them.

That dynamic has changed fairly quickly. In May, the situation here looked bleak. As U.S. lawmakers slow-walked additional military aid, Russia took advantage of Ukraine’s dwindling arms and launched an offensive in Kharkiv. Washington’s weapons restrictions created a sanctuary for Moscow to attack with impunity. More than 320 civilians, including more than a dozen children, have died in the region this year, while more than 2,000 have been wounded, according to Mr. Syniehubov’s office.

Relief first arrived in late May, when the Biden administration allowed Ukraine to conduct short-range strikes on Russian territory. Days later, Ukraine took out four S-300 systems in Russia’s Belgorod oblast, north of Kharkiv. The Russians have repurposed these systems, typically used for air defenses, to conduct ground strikes against Ukraine, including in Kharkiv. “Undoubtedly, strikes on missile launch sites on the territory of Russia, including S-300 launch sites, create significant deficits for Russia and sharply weaken its logistical capabilities,” says Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Russians were also “forced to move away their aviation with these glide bombs, and that was the main thrust of how they were attacking,” says Serhii Kuzan, head of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a Kyiv think tank.

The scene of a shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine, May 25. Photo: sergey kozlov/Shutterstock

In recent weeks Ukraine has also executed a series of strikes on weapons-storage facilities in Russia using domestically made weapons. An Aug. 3 attack on the Morozovsk airfield in Rostov hit a storehouse for glide bombs. On Aug. 24, Ukraine hit a depot in Russia’s Voronezh oblast that contained artillery and tank shells, surface-to-air missiles and other ammunition. A Sept. 7 strike, also on a storage facility in Voronezh, reportedly destroyed some North Korean ballistic missiles.

That was merely the beginning. On Sept. 18, Ukraine hit a storage facility near Toropets in Russia’s Tver oblast, creating a blast so big it registered on earthquake-monitoring systems. The head of the Estonian Defense Forces Intelligence Center said Ukraine knocked out some 30,000 tons of munitions. That would “suggest the Ukrainian strike destroyed two to three months of Russia’s ammunition supply,” the Institute for the Study of War noted. Ukraine followed this success on the night of Sept. 20 with additional strikes on Russian arsenals overnight that reportedly stored North Korean ballistic missiles, among other munitions, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

As Ukraine ramped up its attacks on weapons depots, it introduced another dilemma for Moscow with its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in early August. “We can see a big difference,” Vitalii Sarantsev, spokesperson for the Kharkiv Operational Tactical Group of Forces, says of the operation. The Institute for the Study of War has documented how Russia appears to be pulling some forces from the front in northern Kharkiv to Kursk. Russia has a border of about 600 miles with unoccupied Ukraine that it can no longer assume will be safe if left unprotected.

These Ukrainian moves have made Russia think more deliberately about where to conduct aerial attacks. Kharkiv’s respite comes as Moscow pummels Sumy, across from Kursk, and the eastern front, especially near Pokrovsk. But Russia is also unleashing glide bombs on its own territory in Kursk as it challenges Ukraine’s holdings there.

No one knows how long Kharkiv’s period of relative calm will last. The Russians still have “enough combat power” that “they can choose to prioritize almost any sector they want,” says Fred Kagan, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “But they’re increasingly facing trade-offs, whereas before, they were able to do everything.”

The U.S. can build on this momentum by removing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Army Tactical Missile systems on Russian territory. The Institute for the Study of War last month documented “no fewer than 245” Russian targets that would be in range, including more weapons-storage facilities, as well as military bases, tank-repair facilities, logistics centers and other sites that support front-line operations. Kharkiv’s experience illustrates what a difference striking them could make.