Time for a new Ukrainian offensive?

Hello,

I have just released this video where I discuss the potential of a new Ukrainian offensive.
It's possible that Russia's current offensive will culminate within the coming months, and usually that is a good time for the adversary to launch a counteroffensive. So what are the arguments for and against Ukraine doing that? In the end I argue that it would be risky for the Ukrainians to do anything dramatic before the American election, but there are also strong arguments for retaking the initiative as soon as possible.

As usual here as a video or as a transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

Recently, I've seen an emerging debate about the possible timing of a new Ukrainian counter-offensive. Ukraine is on the defensive at the moment, and that has been the case more or less since last October. But at some point, they will want to turn this around and go on the offensive again, and the question is when should we expect that to happen? So let's talk about it.

In a war, it's a normal thing that things move back and forth. Both sides will have periods where they take the initiative, they go on the offensive, and then after that there will be a period where they have a defensive posture and they focus on rebuilding their forces and preparing for the next push.

And that has also been the case in the war between Russia and Ukraine. I think if we paint with very broad strokes, then we can say that for the first six months or so of the full-scale invasion, then Russia was on the offensive, and then after that, then Ukraine took the initiative, and we had a Ukrainian offensive that lasted for about a year. So that's from the late summer of 2022 and until the fall of 2023. And in this time, there was Ukraine's very successful Kharkiv offensive, there was the successful Kherson offensive, and then there was also the infamous summer offensive of last year, which was not very successful. And all that was followed then by a period where Russia was in the offensive, and that has lasted since the fall, and it's still going on. And we can argue about then how successful this Russian offensive has been, but I would probably tend to say that it's limited what they have achieved. If we look at how many resources they have used and how much time this offensive has taken, then it's not all that impressive in my opinion.

But in general, we should probably expect that at some point the initiative will then shift back to the Ukrainians, and then we're going to have a period where Ukraine is on the offensive. And if we look at war as a kind of dynamic of energy, then we can say that when you're on the defensive, then you can rebuild energy and you can store energy. And then when you go on the offensive, then you use that energy. And then you have to go on the offensive because it's the only way you can win the war, but it also means that you will be consuming energy. And then eventually you won't have any energy left, and then that offensive has to end and you will have to go on the defensive again.

So that point at which you don't have more offensive energy, that is called the point of culmination. And that is usually a good moment for the enemy to launch a counteroffensive because he's coming from a period of defensive fighting where he has been building up energy and you're at a low point. So when you're trying to figure out what the right timing is for a counteroffensive, then you will very often try to predict when the enemy will reach the point of culmination. And then the war can sort of bounce back and forth like that until at some point one of the sides can't do it anymore. And then we will have what we can call a decisive offensive that can end the war.

That's also what happened when Russia launched their current offensive. They spotted that the Ukrainian offensive had culminated and then they took the initiative. And by now the question is, how close are we then to the point where the Russian offensive is about to culminate? They have been attacking for nine months and they are consuming resources. And at the same time, the Ukrainians are building up their resources. So they're receiving weapons assistance from their partners. And we are getting reports that the Ukrainians, they don't experience a weapons shortage as they did a couple of months ago. And in the spring, Ukraine also launched a new big wave of mobilization. So there's talk that they're building up something like 14 new brigades. So that's quite a significant force that they can use at some point.

The discussion that has started to emerge is what should the Ukrainians do if the Russian offensive culminates within the next couple of months? Should they seize the initiative and should they launch a counteroffensive? Or should they try to stay on the defensive and sort of give themselves some more time to build up more forces?

It's a good question because there are arguments both ways. But what some people are arguing is that the Ukrainians should be careful not to waste this opportunity and to give the Russians more time to prepare solid defenses. Because we've seen how good the Russians are at building defenses and how difficult it is for the Ukrainians to attack when the Russians can fight from fortified positions. So that's an argument for why Ukraine should try to time their counteroffensive after the Russian point of combination.

And there would also be some political advantages to that because it could perhaps create some renewed optimism and maybe it could break the narrative that we're beginning to see that this is a hopeless fight and that the Russians are just impossible to beat. And this is actually something that we're seeing quite a lot right now. In recent months there have been more and more this talk about the need for peace negotiations now and that the Western countries must force the Ukrainians into a deal.

I don't want to turn this video into a whole discussion about peace negotiations. But I think this narrative is really dangerous. And I've already made several videos where I've sort of warned against this assumption that there is a deal out there and that the Ukrainians can just take this deal if they want to because that's just not the case. And I think it's important we understand that the problem is not that we need to force the Ukrainians to the negotiating table. But the problem is how do we persuade the Russians to go to the negotiating table and how do we persuade them that they also need to make compromises. Because that's not at all where the Russians are at the moment. But this is still a very common argument that is made in Western analytical sort of communities and that this is a hopeless fight and that there is no way that Ukraine could ever turn the tide against the Russian forces in this war.

So there will be strong incentives for the Ukrainian leadership to be aggressive and try to launch a counteroffensive as soon as they can because that can maybe re-energize the war effort and it can maybe turn the current pessimism into some optimism again.

However there are also arguments for the opposite that Ukraine should wait and that they should not go on the offensive right away. And one argument is of course that they might not be ready. So you don't want to send brigades into battle before they're ready.

But another argument is the uncertainty that there is about the outcome of the American election in November. If Biden is reelected then the American assistance for Ukraine will probably continue more or less as before. But if Trump is elected then it's unclear what will happen. Donald Trump has indicated that he might stop sending weapons to Ukraine. So the Ukrainians will have to prepare for the eventuality that in just a few months there might not be more support coming from the United States. And frankly I think that's going to be the decisive factor in this that it would just be too dangerous for the Ukrainians to launch a counteroffensive before there is clarity about the outcome of the American election.

If we go back a few months then there was a big ammunition shortage in the Ukrainian military and that was caused by the American assistance package that was blocked in the U.S. Congress. And that created a shell hunger and that gave the Russians very significant advantages on the battlefield. But the reason why it got so bad was that it happened just after a period of Ukrainian offensives because the American aid started being blocked in Congress just after the Ukrainian counteroffensive had culminated. So the Ukrainian military was really low on supplies and they were just about to go into this period where they needed to rebuild the stockpiles when the Americans stopped the aid and then they didn't have the resources that were necessary to rebuild those stockpiles.

So I think the Ukrainians will be eager not to make the same mistake twice that and if they can stay on the defensive until after the American election and they can then also use that time to make sure that they have big stockpiles of weapons then they will be in a pretty good position to withstand the Russian pressure for a while even if Donald Trump is elected and there are interruptions in the deliveries of weapons.

So that is my take on this question of when we might expect the Ukrainians to try to again take the initiative and go on the offensive on the battlefield. There will be very strong incentives for them to try to do that as soon as possible because there will be an opportunity when the Russian offensive has culminated and politically for the Ukrainians they will want to try to rebuild some of that optimism about how the war is going but the uncertainty is just too big before we know the outcome of the American election.

To make a strategy you need to align the ends, the ways, and the means and it's just not possible for the Ukrainians to make a coherent strategy for a counteroffensive before they have an overview of the means that they will have for this counteroffensive and once the American election is over then they will have a much better understanding of the resources and what do they have what it takes to actually conduct this counteroffensive but not before that.

So in the end the thing that I think will be decisive for the timing of the Ukrainian counteroffensive it's going to be the American election and it's not really going to be the situation on the front line and in the meantime I think we should expect the Ukrainians to try to continue having a patient approach where they really would like Russia to continue their offensive as long as possible and maybe there will be some local counterattacks from the Ukrainians the Kharkiv region is an example of a place where maybe they could try something without investing too many resources but it would be risky to launch a big counteroffensive across the entire front line before there is more certainty about the supplies of weapons and that will probably not happen then before 2025.

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