The Campaigns to Come

Thinking about the considerations for Ukrainian and Russian offensives in 2023

Ukrainian self propelled artillery conducts a fire mission (Image: @DefenceU)

It is almost 11 months since Russian forces crossed the international frontier and began their invasion of Ukraine.  And like many previous wars that featured large, well-resourced belligerents, this war has settled into a series of pulses and pauses. As I recently wrote:

What we are currently seeing in this war is the normal ebb and flow of a long war.

Currently, the war is in one its lower tempo periods. This is not to say that it is ‘low tempo’ in an absolute sense; it isn’t. But relative to the activity of the last four months of 2022, with the Ukrainian offensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, both sides have been undertaking smaller scale activities. Partly this is because humans need a break from operations to reflect, reinforce and relax before the fighting begins again. No one can fight endlessly without a physical and emotional respite from battle.

There is much military activity being undertaken even in this low tempo phase. Perhaps the most important is the planning and preparations for the campaigns that will inevitably be launched in 2023 by Ukraine and Russia.

Up front, I should state that my aim here is not predicting where these offensives might take place. There are many logical areas where Ukraine or Russian might be able to commence offensives in 2023. However, exploring this would be speculative.

What I wish to explore here are the common threads of these offensives wherever they might be conducted, and regardless of which side might conduct them. The extensive preparations for these offensives, which are ongoing and probably started back in 2022, are characterised by several common considerations.

The Russian Context

The context for these offensives is that Russia has lost the initiative in this war at every level. Despite its minor gains around Soledar and Bakhmut, Russia is desperate for a battlefield victory. And while it can mount surges of drone and missile attacks, even these will decline in effectiveness as Ukraine’s air and missile capacity improves and expands.

Russia needs to conduct offensives so that it can seize the territory that Putin annexed in 2022. But it also needs to convince the Russian domestic audience of the worth of the Special Military Operation and justify the mobilisation of its personnel and industry over the last few months. At the same time, the Russian military wants to gradually attrit the Ukrainian armed forces.

Russia’s capacity to launch large scale offensives in the short term is limited, however. They have sustained massive personnel and equipment losses in the past 10 months. The ongoing mobilisation efforts will not have provided the same quality formations and equipment as that lost. As any military professional knows, inducting 150 thousand new private soldiers is not the same as building new, combined arms formations capable of planning and executing offensive actions.

However, the influx of mobilised personnel does give Russia some capacity for offensive activities in 2023. But scale, duration and sustainability of these offensives will be limited by the equipment, ammunition and leadership issues that have been problematic for Russia in the past few months.

Importantly, Russia does appear to have the political will to resume the offensive. It just doesn’t have the same resources to do so as it had in February 2022. And, as has been the case since the start of the war, Putin’s political objectives have rarely aligned with Russia’s military capacity to realise them.

Prospects for Ukraine

Ukraine starts 2023 in much better shape militarily than Russia. The Ukrainian Armed Force have momentum, and they are being provided with an array of new equipment such as wheeled gun systems, tanks, Infantry Fighting Vehicles, self-propelled artillery and munitions to enable mobile, offensive operations.

The Ukrainian military also has momentum. It has been winning of the battlefield. Nothing steels soldiers’ hearts and minds more than success in operations. So, Ukraine’s military knows how to win in contemporary military operations, and they have seized the tactical and strategic initiative from the Russians. This is important as they prepare for the campaigns to come.

Unlike Russia, Ukraine has also benefited from a stable leadership cohort at the highest levels. While Russia has changed its military commanders every few months, including last week’s appointment of General Gerasimov, the Ukrainian high command has remained largely the same. This continuity allows for better learning, the adoption of lessons into subsequent plans, and the confidence that experience and time in position brings.

For Ukraine, this approach has proven successful. After all, Ukraine has been winning on the battlefield and in the strategic fight for global influence.

Back to their 2023 preparations. In a recent article in The Economist, Ukrainian commander-in-chief, General Zaluzhnyi, noted that:

We have made all the calculations—how many tanks, artillery we need and so on and so on. This is what everyone needs to concentrate on right now. May the soldiers in the trenches forgive me, it’s more important to focus on the accumulation of resources right now for the more protracted and heavier battles that may begin next year.

Considerations for the 2023 Campaigns in Ukraine

General Zaluzhnyi described how the accumulation of resources was an important element in preparing for future operations. But it is just one of several important considerations for senior military and political leaders as they complete their planning for 2023 and contemplate the commencement of offensives in the short to medium term.

In exploring how both sides are likely to think about the offensives to come in 2023, I will use the following seven considerations: purpose; design; timing; location; resources; adaptation; and politics.

1. Purpose. Purpose matters at every level of military endeavour. The campaigns in 2023 will have a desired purpose. For the Russians, it will be to secure ground that supports the 2022 annexation declaration. Part of their purpose will also be to play for time, hoping the West tires of war.

Putin has attempted to provide this with his narrative of “Ukrainian Nazi’s and NATO threat to Russia:

For years, Western elites hypocritically assured us of their peaceful intentions, including to help resolve the serious conflict in Donbass. But in fact, they encouraged the neo-Nazis in every possible way, who continued to take military and overtly terrorist action against peaceful civilians in the people's republics of Donbass. The West lied to us about peace while preparing for aggression, and today, they no longer hesitate to openly admit it and to cynically use Ukraine and its people as a means to weaken and divide Russia.

It is not apparent that Putin’s messaging has provided the same resolve to Russian soldiers as Zelensky’s messages has to his own people.

For Ukraine, purpose is very clear and has been explicitly described by President Zelensky. Ukraine’s purpose for the campaigns in the coming year is to clear the Russians from Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, and to free Ukrainians in occupied areas. As Zelensky noted in a speech January 2023, addressing the Russian president, he described how:

The war will be over when your soldiers either leave or we drive them out. So, let them take the toilet bowls - they'll need them on the road - and go back home. Behind our border of 1991.

Purpose is important in planning. It is absolutely vital in leadership and the execution of operations.

2. Design. Operational design is an important component of military professionalism. Through good operational design, commanders and their staffs’ sequence and orchestrate tactical goals and actions to meet strategic and political objectives.

It is an art and a science that US schools such as the US Marine Corps’ School of Advanced Warfighting (SAW) and US Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) focus on in teaching their students. Full disclosure – I am a proud graduate of SAW, Class of 2003.

For Ukraine, they will need an operational design that considers how many offensives they might commit to at once, and how each consecutive advance is sequenced. This design considers main effort, supporting efforts, command and control, boundaries, and opportunities to exploit breakthroughs.

Another vital element of campaign design is prioritisation. All manner of support is required for campaigns and this must be carefully allocated. This includes for weighting of combat forces, engineers and artillery logistic support, intelligence, military police and transportation. It also includes inter-service collaboration. At least in theory, campaigns should be largely joint rather than service oriented.

Any Ukrainian operational design for the coming year will probably seek to avoid what the Russians tried to do during their invasion – advance on multiple fronts simultaneously without an obvious main effort and little unity of effort. Unity of effort is a critical aspect of operational design.

Good operational design will also underpin tactical mission command. The Ukrainians so far have shown themselves to be more tactically innovative than the Russians. Indeed, as a recent RUSI report noted, the Russian’s have a tendency to reinforce failure:

During the first phase of the war, it was apparent that the course of events described in the orders issued to units diverged significantly from developments on the ground. Nevertheless, units continued to seek to execute their orders long after it had become apparent that assumptions in those orders were wrong.

The Ukrainians, who appear to have a more disaggregated approach to control, also demonstrate a greater willingness to allow subordinates to exploit opportunities. If this is combined with good operational design, Ukrainian combat forces on the offensive will be better able to utilise mission command to adapt more quickly to changing battlefield situations than their Russian enemies. In a fast moving advance, this is critical.

3. Timing. In war, the ability to exploit time is one of the most important considerations in the planning and execution of military activities. Colin Gray has written that:

Every military plan at every level of war is ruled by the clock.

Timing for future offensives on both sides will be influenced by the ability to concentrate the numbers of forces required for close combat, engineer support (the advance takes a lot of engineers), artillery support, air support, communications, logistics, psyops, and electronic warfare.

On both sides, timing for the coming offensives will also be driven by the level of attrition of enemy forces, weather (especially cloud obscuration), phases of the moon (darkness still matters) as well as political considerations (examined later in this thread).

Finally, timing will be dictated by each sides ability to degrade their adversaries logistics networks, supply holdings (especially munitions), and reserves (think HIMARS attacks on Russian troop barracks). The timing of strikes – physical and cyber – on enemy command and control hubs and headquarters in the lead up to an offensive will be important. These must be undertaken at just the right time to cause maximum disruption and uncertainty, which can then be exploited by advancing forces.

The Ukrainians will be wargaming many different offensive operations, including the best time to shift its ongoing Kreminna offensive to a wider campaign. This is a more significant activity than most appreciate. Such planning and wargaming requires excellent intelligence on Russian reserves, combat potential, logistic holdings, and operational priorities. Timing will be critical

4. Location. While I stated up front that I would not be proposing the best locations for offensives, terrain is still an important consideration. Which part of Ukraine offers the most potential for gains in territory for the Ukrainian forces that might be available? And where are significant concentrations of Russian or Ukrainian forces located?

Wherever possible, attacking in a sector where the enemy is weaker, relative to other areas, will be desirable. But this may not always be possible, and thus the need for new and advanced armour, artillery and engineer equipment for the year ahead.

Terrain and the cross country ‘going’ is also important planning consideration. Will the offensive be conducted over close terrain or open terrain. Will there be towns and cities, and can these by bypassed? Each will drive the pace of advancing troops, their formations and logistic support.

5. Resources. Offensive operations are hugely expensive in reconnaissance assets (to find, fix and kill the enemy), artillery, armour and mobility support (engineers), logistics and air support. Multitudes of each, combined in Brigades, Divisions or Corps, will be needed.

Follow on forces are also needed. Whether they are military police for traffic control, civil police and emergency services or reconstruction personnel, once territory and towns is liberated, Ukrainian government authority needs to be re-established.

For Russia, a key part of assembling the resources for the offensives to come has been their mobilisation efforts of the past four months. While chaotic at times, Russia appears to have achieved some streamlining in its call up of people to serve in Ukraine. This has resulted in large numbers of mobilised troops being sent to the front.

How these troops will be used is already becoming clear. In the withdrawal from Kherson, mobilised troops were often used as disposal rear guards as more valuable and elite formations withdrew across the Dnipro. And in the Battle of Bakhmut, mobilised troops are used in human waves, essentially as ‘bullet catchers’ (also described as cannon fodder by President Zelensky) so other units behind them might be able to exploit any gains they make. We will probably see more of this in the campaigns to come.

Ukraine too is recruiting troops as replacements as well as continuing to build new units and formations for the coming year. These troops however appear to be getting a higher standard of training, including in NATO countries, as well as much better equipment. This will be important in the battles of 2023.

Strategic resources and support will also be necessary for both sides. Ukrainian industry, and western aid donors, will be required to provide weapons, ammunition and other support for the current defensive campaign, as well as building up huge stocks for any offensive. The provision of newer IFVs and western tanks – as well as their support vehicles like recovery vehicles, engineer vehicles, fuel trucks and low loaders – will be critical aspects of this support, as will be the fuel and ammunition for them.

If Ukraine is conducting break-in battles as part of its offensives, this armoured capability will be vital. But so will the provision of intelligence on Russia’s intentions, troop movements and logistic support. And as I have written previously, a step up in the capacity of western industry is needed to increase production of munitions.

For the Russians, they are clearly starting to run short on the munitions and weapons that were stockpiled over decades during the Cold War. Consequently, Russia will have to increase the output of its defence industry and seek foreign sources of supply for items like ammunition and computer chips.

6.  Adaptive Campaigning. Belligerents in war must constantly seek ways to outthink and to out fight the other side. New technologies are introduced, new tactics developed & new organisations are introduced to exploit new ideas and technologies.

Both sides have adapted in this war. Russia, expecting to undertake a coup de main in the first days of the war, had to adapt from around D+3 to conduct combat operations. It had to reorient the mindset of its troops and adjust its logistics to do this. But, the Ukrainians have also adapted their operations constantly, and have generally done so faster than their Russian enemies.

Constant probing for opportunity even after planning is complete and an offensive has been launched.  The Ukrainians – especially at the tactical level – have been superior to the Russians at recognising and exploiting battlefield opportunities. This will be an essential characteristic for the Ukrainians as they commence their offensives in 2023.

As the 2022 RUSI report notes, the Russians are:

…culturally vulnerable to deception because they lack the ability to rapidly fuse information, are culturally averse to providing those who are executing orders with the context to exercise judgement.

The Ukrainians therefore probably have a greater capacity to deceive the Russians about main and supporting efforts, exploit opportunities where they appear, and to re-orient offensives (or conduct immediate subsequent operations) where possible.

That said, in every offensive both sides start by fighting ‘with’ information. As offensives develop and evolve, both sides will be fighting ‘for’ information. With this they will seek heretofore unidentified opportunities to exploit weaknesses in their enemy’s plan, morale or scheme of maneuver. We will see this in 2023.

7. Politics. A final consideration, for both sides for their offensives in 2023 will be politics. Clausewitz tells us that:

War is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.

Every offensive in 2023 will be connected to the political situation. The recent installation of Gerasimov, while largely about Moscow politics, is also about Putin being impatient for battlefield victories. This will influence the timing and kind of Russian offensives this year.

It is certainly an influence in the Ukrainian offensives to come. Possessing a healthy interplay of civil and military leaders (what Eliot Cohen describes in his book Supreme Command as the unequal dialog) military endeavours always have political objectives.

Politics also influences exploitation limits. In offensive operations ‘limit of exploitation’ is a line beyond which military commanders may not exploit the success of earlier stages of an attack.” Such a line will be needed for a Ukrainian offensive. In a major campaign, this won’t just be a military consideration.

The Ukrainian President will be seeking a balance of reclaiming Ukrainian territory while retaining Western support. While the limits of Ukrainian military offensives may be governed by political and not just military issues, Zelensky has also been clear on liberating all of Ukraine including Crimea. Whether it is 2023 or even 2024, at some point a military campaign to retake Crimea will have to be planned by the Ukrainians.

The Offensives to Come

We are now at a point where we await potential Ukrainian and Russian offensives in 2023. Some, using the World War One stalemates on the western front as an analogy, have proposed that there now exists a situation of stalemate in this war.  While this might make for interesting headlines, it just isn’t true.

Both sides possess significant military and strategic potential to continue fighting this war. Both have demonstrated to adapt and change their offensive and defensive activities over the course of the war. There are many ways we might see Ukraine and Russia innovate and evolve in the year ahead. The current situation, while a lower tempo period of the war, is not stasis.

Over the winter both sides will have been preparing and shaping the environment for these offensives.  They will have been training soldiers, deploying units, conducting reconnaissance on the ground, in cyberspace and in the air while seeking weaknesses to exploit in the offensives to come.

Neither Ukraine nor Russia is willing to give up on its political objectives for this war. Both retain the will to fight. Whether 2023 will be a year of decision in this war remains to be seen. But of one thing we can be certain. The coming year will be one that features offensive activities, advances, withdrawals and bitter fighting. There are many more offensives and battles to come before Ukraine liberates all its territory.