Special Report: What Did Ukraine Get Right and Wrong During the Summer-Fall Offensive

The Ukrainian summer-fall offensive has culminated with Ukrainian troops on the defensive in every area of operation (AO) except Orikhiv and Kherson. Ukrainian combat potential is, for the most part, exhausted due to a combination of factors, and it is highly unlikely that Ukraine will launch large-scale offensive operations before June 2024. It isn’t objective to look at the Ukrainian offensive, where conditions setting started in April 2023 and the primary offensive started on June 4, culminating during the last week of September, and declare it was a complete failure. It also isn’t objective to say that the blame lies exclusively with NATO and NATO-aligned partners and undelivered and delayed military aid.

In the simplest of terms, Ukraine’s primary objectives were the liberation of Bakhmut and Melitopol. While Bakhmut was a primary objective, it was likely less about politics and unrolling almost ten months of Russian advances. It is more likely this was meant to lock Russian forces in place to support the main offensive toward Meltipol. Advances out of Velyka Novosilka were likely subordinate attacks. Looking strictly through that lens, the summer-fall offensive failed to achieve any of its operational goals. If we use a letter grade, Ukraine gets a D. But it isn’t that simple.

What did Ukraine get right?

Battle for the Black Sea: While Ukraine did not achieve a strategic victory over the Black Sea Fleet, which still has significant combat potential, Ukraine did regain military control of the western and central Black Sea and restored commercial shipping from Odesa region ports. Russia was forced to withdraw most assets from occupied Sevastopol to Novorossiysk in Russia. While it is extremely likely Russia has been stockpiling Kalibr cruise missiles for a winter campaign against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, it has been months since the last major attack from the Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine liberated the Boyko Towers, a group of natural gas platforms in the Black Sea that Russia was using for surveillance, forward operating bases for tactical aviation, and air defense. This was achieved without a surface fleet of manned ships and special operations. Similar to drone warfare in 2022, Ukraine has rewritten the book on asymmetrical naval warfare in 2023.

Quality versus Quantity in Artillery: Despite the volume of Western aid received by Ukraine in 2023, even if all promised deliveries had been met, Ukrainian forces would still be numerically outnumbered by every metric. Ukrainian counterbattery capabilities forced Russian commanders to make difficult choices, and neither were effective. Either move artillery pieces dangerously close to forward most line of friendly troops (FLOT) to improve accuracy, risking drone detection and immediate counterbattery or fall back so deep in the second echelon that accuracy was completely sacrificed. Ukrainian commanders did an excellent job of taking advantage of the superior range and accuracy of NATO and NATO-ally provided artillery and drones to disrupt Russian artillery. Additionally, Ukraine’s command and control structure for ground forces to request artillery support continued to improve through 2023 and become more streamlined, and those improvements have not stopped.

Integrated Air Defense: After stockpiling missiles and drones for almost two months, Russia launched daily missile and drone strikes for seven weeks in May and June of 2023. Ukrainian forces became the first military on the planet to have a confirmed intercept of a ballistic missile with the Patriot system, including multiple intercepts of the Russian Kh-47 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic cruise missile. The success of Ukraine’s integrated and layered air defense around Kyiv was so high that attacks on the region have become extremely rare. While it is easy to point to other regions of Ukraine that continue to experience missile and drone strikes, the reality is there aren’t enough air defense assets on the planet to create a layered defense that would be 90% to 95% effective against drones of various sizes, sub-sonic, sonic, and ballistic missiles to protect a nation the size of Ukraine.

Diminishing Russia’s Fall-Winter Combat Potential: While Ukraine’s allies need to accept the reality that the Kremlin has no red lines for military losses and, through stealth mobilization, is adding 20,000 troops a month, Ukraine did force Russia to commit its reserve forces almost certainly allocated for a fall-winter offensive. Unlike 2022, when we assessed that neither Ukraine nor Russia would enter a pause during the winter months, it is unlikely either combatant will launch major offensive operations over the winter of 2023-2024.

What did Ukraine get partially right?

Drone Warfare: As previously noted, Ukrainian forces wrote the book on modern drone warfare and have forced a much-needed rethinking about the role of close air support, light infantry tactics, how armor is used on the modern battlefield, what areas should be considered the rear echelon, and electronic warfare. Why is this a partial success? Because Russia caught up and, you could argue, is starting to surpass Ukraine. Low-cost first-person view drones are one of the primary reasons the line of conflict more closely resembles World War I trench warfare. Neither combatant can move a group of troops larger than a squad undetected. What Ukraine appears to have underestimated was Russia’s ability to learn and adapt. A number of mistakes were made that demonstrated that Ukrainian commanders had become too comfortable in the rear echelon.

Military Modernization: While fighting for its existence with one hand metaphorically tied behind its back, Ukraine is in the midst of accomplishing something no military on the planet has done before – modernize its military and standardize on new weapon systems, tactics, command structures, and training programs while fighting a full-scale war. It is completely unreasonable under these conditions to expect Ukrainian military training and operations to match NATO and NATO-aligned nations in under two years. Before outlining what Ukraine got wrong, it is critical to point out that Ukraine got a lot right.

What prevented this from being under what Ukraine got right are critical mistakes that were made in 2023. Ukraine continues to send undertrained soldiers, mostly attached to territorial guard units, to the lines of conflict, causing unnecessary losses. While there has been continued improvement in the coordination of artillery, armor, and light infantry, the only bright spots were south of Velyka Novosilka and, by the end of the summer, south of Bakhmut. Too many times, artillery strikes to set conditions for an offensive weren’t followed up with a ground attack until hours later, enabling Russian units to prepare. There are reported cases of crews being assigned to armored vehicles with no training in their operation. Numerous videos showed Ukrainian troops not taking advantage of some of the fundamental advantages of Western-provided hardware, including firing on a target while traversing and using the superior reverse gear in tanks after firing from a static position.

What did Ukraine get wrong?

Strategic Objectives for the Summer Offensive: Ukraine used a winning strategy for achieving strategic objectives in 2022 – don’t attack Russian defenses at their strongest point. When Russian General Surovkin ordered the creation of static defenses in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and southwestern Donetsk, Russia made it clear to the world that they fully expected Ukrainians to advance toward Tokmak and then Melitopol. During the spring of 2023, Ukraine transmitted through its actions and veiled statements it would attack in the direction of Melitopol.

Our analyst team was equally transparent that we did not believe Kyiv would make Melitopol a strategic objective because the only other place where Russian static defenses might be stronger is immediately west of the city of Donetsk. Even as the Ukrainian offensive evolved, we believed that advancing toward Berdyansk made more sense. As the summer offensive continued, our team, along with many other analysts, became hopeful in early September when Ukrainian forces reached the second echelon of the Surovikin Line, advancing up to 17 kilometers through the most robust section of Russia's static defenses. Ukrainian forces needed just another 3 to 4 kilometers. Russia’s commitment of its reserve forces, likely meant for their own fall and winter campaigns, stabilized the line.

I’m very averse to playing armchair general, as no one on our team is a former general. Bluntly put, we would not have bet the summer offensive trying to advance through Russia’s most robust defenses. Kyiv knew they no longer had air parity. Kyiv knew that Russia had committed up to 150,000 troops in the region, almost half of Russian ground forces in Ukraine. Kyiv knew that Russia fully expected an attack in this direction. Despite all of this, and despite knowing that they did not have all of the weapons that their allies had committed, they didn’t change the battle plan. While the failure to deliver promised aid on schedule contributed to the lack of success, in our assessment based on 20-20 hindsight, Kyiv’s summer offensive plan was deeply flawed.

Inability to Successfully Do Combined Arms Warfare Above the Company Level: It is important to acknowledge that some localized tactical offensives did demonstrate textbook combined arms tactics at a company level. Specifically, this was demonstrated in the Velkya Novosilka and Soledar AOs. What Ukraine continues to be incapable of is launching sustained and coordinated offensives across multiple axes simultaneously. A lot of these problems appear to be at the battalion and brigade command level, and there are no easy fixes. Because of this inability to coordinate, tactical advances made on the battlefield could not be converted into operational success. Russian defense lines could not be pressured in multiple areas simultaneously, which would have taken advantage of Russia’s inferior fire control systems and created significant indecision on where and when to commit reserves.

Battlefield Medicine: Ukraine lost a critical advantage it had in battlefield medicine. The Ministry of Defense has not created a standard for individual first aid kits (IFAKs) nor mandated military-wide basic training on how to use an IFAK effectively. When Russia expanded its war of aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, a key advantage for Ukrainian troops was the quality of their IFAKs and battlefield medicine. Through 2023, there were repeated scandals regarding the quality of new IFAKs issued to Ukrainian troops, the lack of available IFAKs, non-standardization, and no certification testing of tourniquets. This caused unnecessary losses, particularly among newer units, degraded morale, and, as the issues with tourniquets and IFAKs spilled out into the public sphere, disrupted volunteer efforts to support battlefield medicine programs. In our assessment, that was preventable.

How will 2023 end?

In the last 10.5 months, Russia has captured or recaptured approximately 550 square kilometers of territory, mostly before June 1. During the same period, Ukraine liberated approximately 400 square kilometers of territory, mostly after May 1. With Russian forces making creeping gains in the Avdiivka AO and Ukraine expanding its bridgehead in Kherson and continuing to slowly liberate territory in Zaporizhahia, we don’t anticipate the 150 square kilometer Russian advantage to change significantly by year's end. For perspective, that is equal to capturing about 25% of Chicago, Illinois.

Has the Russia-Ukraine War reached a stalemate? We don’t believe so. We do assess that it is accurate to state the front is frozen east of Orikhiv and that neither combatant has much ability to change that in the short term. We don't believe that the arrival of F-16s, which we are not convinced will happen before the fall of 2024, will have as much impact as the arrival of cluster munitions in 2023 and guided multiple launch rocket systems (GMLRS) in 2022, better known as HIMARS. We also agree with Ukrainian General Valerii Zaluzhnyi that there needs to be a technological leap to change existing battlefield dynamics.

Through the winter, we expect Ukrainian commanders to build and improve defenses and move to a purely defensive posture, except in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. This is a necessity due to exhausted combat power, an urgent need to reconsider future tactics, and the diminishing supply of ammunition. We don’t anticipate that Ukraine will achieve more than tactical successes in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia through June 2024. We also believe that Russia will capture Avdiivka in the coming months, mostly because the Kremlin is clearly demonstrating they have no regard for personnel losses.