Within about a week, the Ukrainian forces recovered from their Russian counterparts areas of more than 3,000 square kilometers since the start of their counter-attack at the beginning of the month, according to what Ukrainian officials announced on Sunday, in developments that experts who spoke to Al-Hurra considered a “turning point” or the beginning of For a new stage in the war, which has been going on for about two hundred days.
Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale counterattack in the Kharkiv region, which surrounds Ukraine’s second largest city, in the past few days, recapturing dozens of towns and villages from Russia in a lightning attack.
It started with Balaklia, whose encirclement was just the beginning of Russia’s troubles, and then the Ukrainians managed to liberate it after two days of fighting in the city’s streets.
Simultaneously, Ukrainian forces were advancing eastward through Volokhiv Yar, Shevchenkov, and finally toward Kobyansk, a major railroad supplying Russian troops to the south.
By September 8, the fighting for Kobyansk began. A photo circulating a day later showed soldiers standing next to a sign on the southern edge. Pro-Russian military commentators were dumbfounded, accusing the country’s top leadership of treason.
The Syrian academic residing in the Russian capital, Moscow, told Al-Hurra: “Undoubtedly, the recent Ukrainian advance and counter-attack was very large, and not ordinary, because with great speed they were able to recover hundreds of thousands of square kilometers from the Russian forces that had entered the Ukrainian depth.” .
The commander of the Ukrainian army confirmed, on Sunday morning, that his forces had recovered from the Russian forces areas with a total area of more than three thousand square kilometers, since the counterattack began at the beginning of the month.
The figure is a third larger than the total area announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky late Saturday.
“The great Ukrainian flag has returned to Chalovsky. It will be the same everywhere. We will expel the occupiers from every Ukrainian town and village,” he said in a video posted online.
In Ukraine Taras Shevchenko is celebrated as a national poet and prophet. He is one of Ukraine’s best-known symbols of the struggle for independence and freedom.
For good reason: pic.twitter.com/bNIqMbfBwE— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) September 11, 2022
In the vicinity of Balaklia, one of the first towns recaptured by Ukrainian forces, AFP reporters saw evidence of fierce battles, with buildings appearing destroyed or damaged and streets desolate.
Abandoned ammunition boxes and military equipment were seen scattered in areas left by Russian forces, according to photos published by the Ukrainian army.
“The liberation of towns is underway in the Kobyansk and Izyum regions of the Kharkiv region,” the Ukrainian military said in a circular on the situation on the ground.
The failure of the Russian campaign
In his interview with Al-Hurra, the Syrian researcher at the Middle East Institute in Washington, Samir Al-Taqi, considered that the ability of the Ukrainian forces to recover large areas, in a short time, shows the inability of the Russian army, in principle, to reorganize itself, and to avoid fundamental defects. Which appeared in his work during his attack in its early stages.
He said that “the first stage was a sweeping attack to control the whole of Ukraine by reaching the capital, Kyiv, but it failed, so the second stage came, which was a policy of “gradual nibbling”, but the response to it was the successful counterattack by the Ukrainians.”
He explained that “the policy of “gradual nibbling” that Russia implemented in Syria and succeeded in, failed in Ukraine because the front is large, and the Russian forces were not able to mobilize sufficiently in the right places in order to prevent a counterattack, and there has become a major question mark about Russia’s ability to continue in The war is among the goals for which it was planned and for which the war was waged.
russia is trying to maintain its status as the largest supplier of military equipment for the Ukrainian army, and even to improve its status, knowing that lend-lease will soon come into effect.#UAarmy loves its trophy ammo ???? pic.twitter.com/2NMPAPPgP2
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 11, 2022
Al-Hamza told Al-Hurra website: “The Russian forces arrived at the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv at first, and retreated. And the will to fight and defend their lands.
He added: “Now the Russian military leaders are justifying what is happening by saying that they are redistributing and redeploying forces, but people know that this is not the case, and that the Ukrainians have recaptured these areas by force, and the Russians have significantly retreated and failed to repel the Ukrainian attack.”
There was no official Russian reaction to the gains made by the Ukrainian forces, but a map of Kharkiv presented by the Russian Defense Ministry during its daily briefing, Sunday, showed a significant withdrawal of the Russian army from this region.
The map displayed in the briefing video showed that the Russian army no longer controls, on Sunday, only a small part of the territory located in the east of the Kharkiv region behind the Oskol River.
On Saturday, the ministry presented a map that showed that the Russian army was occupying much larger areas in that region.
Meanwhile, a sudden announcement was made by the Russian army, on Saturday, that it was “regrouping” its forces from Kharkiv to the Donetsk region in the south to focus on military efforts there.
But the announcement came shortly after Moscow confirmed it was sending reinforcements towards Kharkiv.
And the magazine “The Economist” reported that the former officer in the Russian Security Service, Igor Girkin, who led the Russian-backed forces in the first battle of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014, wrote on an unnamed social networking site that the Ukrainian units were launching raids deep into the territory that they invaded. It is controlled by Russia, adding that there is confusion for Russian forces there and that “everything is destroyed”.
Other social media platforms frequented by Russian analysts, according to the magazine, indicate that there is now a race to send reserves to prevent the situation from deteriorating further, as the Russian military has released footage of rifles and vehicles heading towards the front lines.
In his interview with Al-Hurra, Al-Hamza believes that six months ago, the Russians could not control Kharkiv, even though most of its residents speak Russian, which means that they are loyal to Russia, and now they are the opposite.
He explained that “in the villages and cities captured by Russia, they could not win the sympathy and support of its residents on their side, and therefore the Ukrainians were able to advance at a tremendous speed, thanks to the great Western support and advanced weapons, but the most important thing here is the will of the Ukrainian army, which is fighting for a clear cause, unlike The Russians who entered the battle with the goal (to fight the Nazis), and the defense of Russia does not come through the war on Ukraine, as the soldiers began to believe in that.”
He added that the morale of the Russian soldiers declines with the passage of time, and they missed the great motives that were present at the beginning, which mobilized through propaganda, media, and general mobilization that they are fighting in Ukraine in order to defend Russia, but they began to be convinced that this is not the case.
Al-Taqi, in turn, points out that during the war, “basic flaws appeared in the Russian armament system, but the fundamental failure is that the weapons may be good, but they are not able to perform joint and long-term missions, are not supported by the necessary maintenance, consume a lot of fuel and there are great risks.” In addition, Russia suffers mainly from a shortage of pilots.
He explained that “the main defect lies in the failure to manage complex military operations in which artillery, infantry, aviation, helicopters and air defense systems share. This mechanism has become for the American army, for example, and modern armies are integrated and controlled through secure communication mechanisms and good information management.” All these systems and forces are now operating as one weapon and one body, but this military structure, coordination, harmony, coordination and good management of all these forces at the same time is not available in Russia.”
.@ZelenskyyUa
Service members of the 14th Mechanized Brigade of #UAarmy liberated the village of Chkalovske, Kharkiv region. pic.twitter.com/rNTqP6n1T3— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 11, 2022
As for the second point regarding the problems facing the Russian campaign, it is represented in “logistics, as it appeared that some of the Russian weapons are really advanced, but they require high logistics, with a high rate of breakdowns, which requires the presence of engineers along with tanks and weapons, but all these capabilities were not They are mobilized, not ready for the invasion.”
Analysts stress that supplying Ukraine with Western weapons has contributed to restraining the Russians, limiting their offensive and controlling much larger areas.
Al-Taqi said: “The feasibility of supplying important Western armaments, with the recognition of the Ukrainians and the Russians, has been proven, including the British anti-tank system, and the British underwater marches to clear mines, which in practice allowed the Ukrainian navy to be relatively free of movement, and in return paralyzed the ability of the Russian Navy in Black Sea”.
The Russians also have a big problem, which is the lack of marches with sufficient and advanced capabilities, to the extent that primitive marches such as the Turkish Bayraktar were able to neutralize tank weapons in some areas, according to al-Taqi.
‘Russian misfortune’
Al-Taqi believes that Russia’s resort to obtaining drones from Iran is “evidence of the Russian misfortune, especially since Moscow knows that Ukraine possesses Turkish Bayraktar planes, which managed to damage the equivalent of two billion dollars of Russian weapons, which Armenia owned during its war with Russia.” Azerbaijan at the end of 2020.
He added that “there is a lack of preparation for war by Russia, as evidenced by the pursuit of Iranian drone services similar to what is on the market now in the United States, which indicates that the issue is reaching the point of humour.”
Al-Hamza believes that “Western weapons play a role no less important than the steadfastness of the Ukrainian army, and the future may be greater because the Ukrainians did not use everything they had and the Russians also had great military capabilities that they did not use.”
“turning point”
But Al-Taki considers that the Ukrainian military counterattack, which succeeded in liberating thousands of kilometers, is a “turning point” in the war, noting that the current situation will advance the battle to a ceasefire, either trench warfare or attrition without negotiations, peace or approval. the parties.
Al-Taqi told Al-Hurra website: “The Russian military leadership has traditions and capabilities and has actually changed its tactics, but what kind of strategies can it implement now, as it did not succeed in the policy of the rapid military overrun of Kiev, nor the slow bite, and now it lacks only a war of attrition. To preserve Putin’s political face, unless he turns to crazy wars such as a tactical nuclear weapon, but this means suicide for him and for Russia, because then the whole world will undoubtedly rise up, and it will be a major disaster.”
“war of attrition”
He added that “in the case of a war of attrition, the battle will continue for a long time, and without the Russian forces advancing, which has become difficult to move, as a result of the lightning strike that they wanted was exceeded, and it became difficult for Russia to reorganize its forces, unless it used superpowers.”
For his part, al-Hamza believes that the Ukrainian forces’ restoration of a large number of towns and villages “is not a strategic shift in the battles, but I think it is the beginning of a new phase in military operations for both sides.”
He explains that “for the Ukrainians, it is the beginning of major offensive operations to regain other areas, and also to deplete the Russian forces, and it is imperative for the Russians now to recalculate and plan as much as they can, meaning that it has become difficult to think of controlling new areas and they are unable to maintain the areas that were They seized it previously, especially since they are fighting on lands that do not belong to them, which means that protecting and defending it requires additional effort.”
He adds that Russia should try to win the support of the residents of the areas it controls in Ukraine, which requires providing them with food and living supplies, and this is a burden on Moscow, especially as it is subject to massive Western sanctions, which is also reflected on the morale of the soldiers, because their families suffer from The high cost of living and difficult economic conditions, and they write to their families and realize that the situation is not the same as it was six months ago, unlike the Ukrainians, who now have very great support and seem to be more comfortable.”
Al-Hamza continues: “In my estimation, it will turn into a war of attrition, and this has become the fait accompli, because it is difficult for the Russians to think of progress now or incursion into Ukrainian lands, otherwise they will face great difficulties and problems, in addition to the fact that the lands they controlled are in danger, and may even open fronts. New ones like Kherson, as Zelensky stressed, more than once, that only the liberation of the lands will be accepted, and at the same time, the Russians are holding on to the eastern and western regions that they controlled, and therefore the reality says that the battle will be prolonged and turn into a war of attrition.
But Al-Hamza warns that if the Russians are “crammed into a corner, they may use more lethal weapons, and it may reach a limited use of nuclear weapons, and I never rule that out,” according to his analysis.