Zelensky delivers a sharp message to Russia

The past week has seen a stunning transformation of the battlefield in eastern Ukraine as a rapid armored offensive by Ukrainian forces rolled through lines of Russian defenses and recaptured more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory.

That is more territory than Russian forces have captured in all their operations in Ukraine since April.

As much as the offensive was brilliantly conceived and executed, it also succeeded because of Russian inadequacies. Throughout parts of the Kharkiv region, Russian units were poorly organized and equipped – and many offered little resistance.

Their failures and their disorderly retreat eastward have made the goal of President Vladimir Putin’s special military operation to take all of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions significantly more difficult to achieve.

Over the weekend, the Russian retreat from border areas that had been occupied since March continued. Villages within five kilometers of the border raised the Ukrainian flag.

The collapse of Russian defenses has ignited accusations among influential Russian military bloggers and Russian state media personalities.

As the Ukrainian flag was raised in one community after another over the past few days, one question came into focus: how is the Kremlin responding?

A lightning operation

Ukrainian officials had telegraphed that an offensive was imminent – but not where it actually happened. There was plenty of noise about a counterattack in the south, and even US officials spoke of Ukrainian operations to “shape the battlefield” in Kherson. Russian reinforcements – perhaps as many as 10,000 – poured into the region over a period of weeks.

There was indeed a Ukrainian attack in Kherson, but one whose intention seems to have been to repair Russian forces, while the real effort came several hundred kilometers to the north. It was a disinformation operation the Russians could have been proud of.

Kateryna Stepanenko of the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based analytical group, says the deception worked.

“Ukrainian military officials reported that (Russian) Eastern Military District elements that had previously supported offensive operations against Sloviansk had been redeployed to the southern axis,” she told CNN.

Their replacements were clearly not up to the task – a mixed bag, Stepanenko said, of “Cossack volunteers, volunteer units, DNR/LNR militia units and the Russian Rosgvardia (National Guard). Such forces were not sufficient to defend a huge and complex front line. “

The Ukrainians chose the weakest spot in the Russian defenses for their initial push – an area controlled by the Luhansk militia with Russian National Guard units further back. They were no match for a highly mobile armored attack that quickly rendered artillery irrelevant.

Igor Strelkov, former head of the militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic and now a caustic critic of Russian military shortcomings, noted the poor training of these units and “the unusual caution of the actions of the Russian aviation.” In short, Russian frontline units were hung out to dry without adequate air support.

Several videos geolocated and analyzed by CNN, as well as local accounts, depict a chaotic withdrawal of Russian units, with large amounts of ammunition and hardware left behind.

The poor quality of Russian defenses along a critical north-south axis supporting the Donetsk offensive is hard to fathom. Once underway, the intent of the Ukrainian offensive was crystal clear – to destroy this supply artery. Within three days they had done so — not least because Russian reinforcements were slow to mobilize.

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