Anticipating A Ukrainian Offensive, The Russian Army Is Digging In And Laying Mines

The appearance of a sophisticated Russian army minelaying rocket-launcher in southern Ukraine underscores the problems the Ukrainian army could face if and when it launches a new counteroffensive—one aimed at liberating southern Kherson Oblast south of the Dnipro River and positioning Ukrainian forces for a possible assault on Russian-occupied Crimea.

And the mines aren’t just an immediate threat to Ukrainian operations. They represent a long-term problem, too—even if Ukraine wins the war.

The brand-new Zemledeliye minelaying multiple-launch rocket system appears in action, lobbing 122-millimeter rockets packed with mines, in a video reportedly from somewhere in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, just east of Kherson.

It’s not clear that the video is recent. The green foliage could indicate it was recorded this fall or spring. In any event, the Russians for many months have had strong incentive to mine Zaporizhzhia.

That’s because the oblast, anchored by the port of Melitopol on the Black Sea coast, is the side door into Kherson and the swathe of land the Russians occupy between the wide Dnipro River and the narrow neck of land that connects mainland Ukraine to the Crimean Peninsula, which the Russians seized back in 2014.

The Ukrainian armed forces liberated northern Kherson Oblast, including Kherson city, in early November. The liberation came several weeks after Ukraine’s southern command launched a major counteroffensive—the country’s third since this spring—that steadily forced Russian troops to, then across, the Dnipro.

The fighting in Kherson since then has slowed as both armies contend with Ukraine’s muddy early winter, and reset their forces for the campaigning to come. Intensive fighting could resume as soon as the ground freezes around the new year.

Both armies are fortifying their respective banks of the Dnipro. The Ukrainians meanwhile have landed special operations forces on the narrow, sandy Kinburn Peninsula just south of the mouth of the Dnipro, forcing the Russians to position blocking forces on the eastern edge of the peninsula.

Russian brigades in southern Kherson increasingly are fixed in place, which probably is exactly what Ukrainian commanders want. If and when the Ukrainians attack, they might begin their assault in Zaporizhzhia, where Russian defenses are thinner and there are fewer major geographical bottlenecks.

The plan might be for Ukrainian brigades to aim for Melitopol, 65 miles south of the current front line, before pivoting right and driving across the Dnipro’s left bank all the way to the Black Sea. There are signs the Ukrainian southern command already is preparing for this “Zaporizhzhia left hook.” Russian sources last week claimed Russian artillery bombarded Ukrainian forces assembling in Hulyaipole, just north of the line of contact in Zaporizhzhia.

Unless they can muster the forces for a spoiling attack, the Russians will be on the defensive. Hence the mines. Russian forces are thin on the ground across the wide expanse of Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine’s fixing operations in Kherson, along with ongoing heavy fighting in the east, prevent the Kremlin from shifting a lot of troops to Zaporizhzhia to meet a Ukrainian attack. The mines make up for a lack of manpower.

Like many modern, mechanized armies, the Russian army deploys mines in order to “protect the forward edge of the defense and canalize the enemy into fire sacs within the defense,” Lester Grau and Charles Bartles noted in The Russian Way of War.

The idea is for Russian brigades to dig in and sight their anti-tank missiles, tank guns and artillery toward the best kill zones, where the terrain welcomes enemy forces entering and also complicates their exit. Narrow valleys, for instance. The trick is to direct the enemy into the kill zone by making every other route through the area even less hospitable than the possible kill zone is.

Mines can do the trick. While a modern army has lots of ways of finding and neutralizing mines—from soldiers gently probing the ground with bayonets to explosive line-charges that can flatten entire city blocks and any explosives underneath—demining takes time. Time that attacking commanders can’t spare if they’re trying to build forward momentum as part of a coordinated offensive.

Thus the Russians have been mining Zaporizhzhia in order to give their few brigades in the oblast the best chance of steering any Ukrainian assault into kill zones where the defending Russians at least might inflict enough casualties to blunt the assault—and buy time for Russian reinforcements to arrive.

If Ukrainian commanders are smart and their intelligence is good, they’ll know where the minefields and kill zones are—and do their best to avoid them. Even then, the Russian mines will pose a long-term problem for Ukraine. Both sides deploy mines, but the Ukrainian government generally knows where its own minefields are. Russian minefields, by contrast, might not be obvious to the Ukrainians until someone triggers a potentially fatal explosion.

The Russians have scattered potentially millions of mines across at least 67,000 square miles of Ukraine. The Ukrainian State Emergency Service finds and safes as many as 2,000 mines a day, but every day the Russians deploy more.

“There is no real peace for any child who can die from a hidden Russian antipersonnel mine,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday. Even if Ukrainian brigades manage to dodge the Zaporizhzhia minefields, the mines will continue to threaten Ukraine for years or even decades to come.