Aleks from Black Mountain Analysis has an interesting analysis update, which I'll quote a bit of below:
I won’t quote everything, but the whole analysis is here:
Operational update 4
Ukrainian Objectives (Western Perspective)
Ukraine is tasked by its Western masters to achieve one or several of the following goals either fully or partially:
Kill at least several thousand Russians
Ukraine gathered, depending upon the source, approximately 100,000 men for this offensive. This is the manpower pool that is available for depletion. Usually, an attacker needs a 3:1 advantage over the defender in order to break through defensive lines. Since Russia has a far better trained army, far more modern weapons and tactics, and an Air Force that continues to increase its capacity for close air support (CAS), the ratio needs to be far higher. Ukraine needs to put approximately 10 soldiers in the field to overcome each Russian.
Let’s simplify here for the sake of explanation. Let’s assume that the Ukrainian army gathers all 100,000 men in Zaporizhzhia and tries a concentrated offensive in the direction of Melitopol. (BS, yes, but bear with me).
If Russia fields 10,000 men, all the Russians and all the Ukrainians would die. Again, this is only for illustration. Hence, Russia would be forced to field far more than 10,000 soldiers in order to stop the offensive and reduce its own losses. I’d say that if Russia fortifies its defensive positions in Zaporizhzhia with 50,000 troops, the ratio against Ukraine would skyrocket from 1:10 to 1:20. With this ratio and battlefield setup, the Ukrainian offensive would fail and the Russians most likely would suffer far fewer than 10,000 casualties.
Why do I play with such figures? It is very simple: Russia only needs to invest 10,000 men and the Ukrainian offensive is doomed, right? All of them will die, but Ukraine will have lost 100,000 men and will not have achieved its goals, right?
Totally wrong. This is still a Special Military Operation. An SMO. Such casualties are no longer acceptable. They were in Phase 1, but no longer. Over the course of 14 months, Russia has lost some 20-30,000 people in Ukraine. Which is already a tragedy. If it would lose 10,000 men over the course of a few days/weeks, it would be a disaster. Remember the funerals with thousands of Ukrainian flags all over Ukraine? Such a situation would be likely in this scenario, though on a smaller scale, in Russia. That would cost the Russian government a lot of political capital and trust. The soldiers need to be protected. Still, it is an SMO, and not yet a war where such numbers would be acceptable.
You get my point? The Ukrainian soldiers are doomed. Most of them will die; they know that. But if that is so, why not achieve a huge blow against “Putin” by killing several thousand Russian soldiers in the process to add to the destabilization of the Russian position. Consider the following objectives:
Capture at least one major Russian city in Novorossiya
Will the offensive take place? Where will the offensive take place? When will it take place? With what intensity? I don’t know! I really don’t know. But I will share some of my thoughts with you.
Judging by the Russian overt preparations, it seems to me that the Russians are expecting a two-phase offensive. One phase in the Kharkov direction, most likely as deception and distraction; and the main offensive, or phase two, toward Melitopol.
Who knows?
Some people have discussed the possibility of an incursion into Belgorod or other Russian core territories. Possible, but I can’t see a single political advantage for Ukraine doing that.
Personally, I would argue that Mariupol would be the one big prize to win, for both the West and Ukraine. It would cause the biggest possible damage to Russia. How?
It would cut the land bridge to Crimea.
It would cost Russia the lives of thousands of soldiers defending the town. Russia can tactically retreat and withdraw from a lot of places but Mariupol is not one of those places. It would necessarily develop into a force-on-force battle to defend the town, which would be extremely costly in terms of casualties. Even if Russia would eventually succeed in defending the town, it would need to deal with the thousands of casualties.
Russia would lose its pearl and PR victory where it proudly films daily how the town is being rebuilt.
The Russians would need to reconquer the city, and they would destroy it again in the process. The reconquering would be extremely bloody and costly for the Russians.
Russia would lose a lot of trust of its own citizens; Novorossiyan citizens, as well as international partners.
Hence, I wouldn’t be surprised if we would see the following development from Ukraine:
Start probing and distracting attacks in the Zaporizhzhia Region.
After gaining Russia’s attention in Zaporizhzhia, start an armored offensive in the Kharkov region with all of the Western equipment. It should look very realistic. As we saw in Summer 2022 in Kherson, Ukraine would absorb thousands or tens of thousands of casualties for this mock offensive.
After having Russia’s full attention in the abovementioned fronts, Ukraine could start a massive insertion offensive with light units into Mariupol. What is an insertion offensive? An offensive that is designed to open a channel through which Ukraine could insert several tens of thousands of troops into Mariupol to take positions in the buildings there.
In the best-case scenario, this channel could be kept open to supply the garrison. In the worst-case scenario these people would simply serve as means to force Russia to reconquer Mariupol and again destroy the city in the process.
I’m not saying this will happen. And this is not my analysis. I have absolutely no idea what will happen at all. I only want to say that from my point of view, this would deal the biggest possible damage to Russia and I can imagine that this is the reason why the Pentagon is so optimistic about what is to come. This scenario is not unrealistic at all.
Always keep the following in mind: The West doesn’t care about the Ukrainians. If we again consider the Ukrainian force of 100,000 troops for the frontline, then we need to think about them, in business terms, as an investment. Ukraine is going to expend all of them in the expectation of gaining far more in return. Let me translate that into the situation on the ground: All Ukrainians accumulated for this offensive will, according to the West, die, be wounded, or be captured in order to achieve a return for the West that is more valuable than the loss of 100,000 Ukrainian men.
What is more valuable than 100,000 Ukrainian men for the West? Anything. They are worth nothing to the West. But let’s be more realistic. The Mariupol scenario mentioned above would be more than worth it. It would be a bigger return to the West than anyone can imagine.
Let’s conclude this point. Mariupol would be the crown jewel. But of course, any other Russian city in Novorossiya could be the target as well.
Sever the land bridge to Crimea at least for several hours/days
Severing the land bridge to Crimea would be also a major blow to Russia. Not as bad as losing Mariupol, but it would still be some kind of a defeat for the SMO with a possible conversion into war. Moreover, it would cost Russia many casualties in defense of the territory. But the losses would be far fewer than in the Mariupol scenario, since Russia would conduct a mobile defense with several fallback lines from Zaporizhzhia to the boundary of Crimea.
Put Ukrainian boots on Crimean soil, at least for several hours/days
The same as for the severing of the land bridge but more serious. It would be an attack on the Russian core territory. Hence, there is a real possibility that it could trigger protests in Moscow. Moreover, it would have an impact on the trust and confidence of the Crimean people in the ability of Moscow to protect them.
In fact, the goal of the West here is to show the Russian people that the SMO is not sufficient to defeat Ukraine/the West, and to trigger protest against Putin in demand of war. There are certain reasons why President Putin is still driving a SMO instead of a war. I understand them. In fact, it would be harmful for Russia to escalate the SMO into a war against a country like Ukraine. Such protests in support of the conversion to war wouldn’t be favorable for the Russian government.
Russian Objectives
For Russia, a concentrated frontline by Ukraine would be damaging under any circumstance. For many reasons:
Huge casualties. 1,000 – 10,000 troops are what I estimate between the best- and worst-case scenarios. This is inevitable in a force-on-force engagement, which Russia has tried to avoid at least since Phase 2 (War analysis) of the war.
There is not much space left for mobile defense (tactical retreating to pre-defined fallback positions) of the bigger cities under Russian control. Some could be abandoned in order to avoid huge casualties. Some (Mariupol etc.) will not be abandoned under any circumstance.
Political damage, as already described above, in case of losing critical cities, land bridges, or the entrance to Crimea.
This offensive could, within a few weeks, cost Ukraine up to 70,000 men in dead and critically wounded. It is far more favorable to Russia to hinder or mitigate the offensive so that these lives could be saved for Ukraine after the war.
Long-time readers of BMA know our thinking. We predict that Russia is fighting for a collapse. Of course, a collapse can happen because there are no people left. And this is indeed not an unrealistic option. Far more favorable would be to trigger the collapse by destroying materiel, not manpower. This would end the war before the human potential of Ukraine would run out. I will go deeper into this in the Logistics section below.
As we see, a Counteroffensive by Ukraine will not be good for Russia. Yes, these troops and equipment, unfortunately, will need to be destroyed anyway. But it is far more favorable for Russia to do that on Russian terms and in places of Russian choice, and not as Ukraine dictates.
My analysis of the events on the battlefield in recent days is that Russia is trying to either totally stop the offensive in its tracks, or if this is not possible, to take out as much steam as possible to make it less harmful. These are my observations:
Massive bombings of the Ukrainian rear. Everywhere in the close and middle distance from the frontlines. Kramatorsk, Slavyansk, Pavlograd etc. These attacks are especially effective since the Russian Air Force has now started to make massive use of heavy glide-bombs. Targets are troops, equipment, and ammunition supplies/accumulations in the rear.
Massive missile attacks on the same targets as mentioned above. Most of these attacks are not reported or kept secret by the Ukrainians, but there are more than enough reports about massive damage dealt to targets in the rear.
I’m not entirely sure, even though I fully trust Larry Johnson with his analysis about the Pentagon leaks, whether there are Russian elements in play here as well. Releasing such documents at this time is not very favorable to the West and Ukraine.
Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t mean that Russia triggered the release, even though it is not impossible. No, it also could mean that Russia can take heavy advantage of the release by promoting it in the Ukrainian social sphere.
I still believe that this is not a leak, but is engineered with a certain objective. Which one and by whom, I don’t know. But it is not unrealistic that such documents could be used by Russia as a means to reduce the morale, motivation, and support of the Ukrainian public and their soldiers.
If the (close to) real situation, which is absolutely catastrophic, becomes known somehow to the Ukrainian public and military personnel, this could have a massive impact on the soldiers’ performance on the battlefield.
To sum it up: Russia is either trying to avoid the counteroffensive entirely, or to make it as weak as possible in order to reduce its own military and political losses as much as possible.
Months ago, BMA identified five spots (War update) where Russia is grinding the Ukrainian army down in order to improve the Russian position. And this is what will continue: killing the Ukrainian army from a safe distance, and in small bites. Russia thereby avoids direct force-on-force engagements. Wagner and Artemovsk (Bakhmut) is something different. I will explain that later.
I won’t quote everything, but the whole analysis is here:
Operational update 4
