The Ukrainian Army Retreats In The East, Advances In The South

Ukrainian forces have retreated from Lysychansk, the last free city in Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. The retreat comes weeks after the Ukrainians withdrew from Severodonetsk, Lysychank’s twin city on the opposite bank of the Donets River.

The two industrial cities, with a combined pre-war population of around 200,000, were the focus of Russia’s renewed offensive in Donbas, which kicked off in mid-April after the Kremlin pulled its battered battalions out of northern Ukraine.

Ukraine contested the cities not because it had a realistic chance of withstanding relentless Russian bombardment, but because a slow fighting retreat promised to sap much of the Russian army’s remaining strength.

Also, holding in place 50 or more Russian battalions in the east—that’s half the overall Russian force—prevented them from heading south to block a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has been inching toward Russian-occupied Kherson, a strategic port with a pre-war population of 390,000 that’s important to Ukraine’s eventual economic recovery.

The question, as Ukraine’s exhausted brigades scramble east to their next line of defense around Siversk—13 miles to the west along shell-pocked roads—is whether Kyiv’s strategy worked.

It’s impossible to say for sure how many Russians died in the battle for Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, but it’s possible to guess. The Kremlin’s disastrous, two-month campaign aimed at encircling Kyiv cost the Russian armed forces as many as 15,000 dead and several times that number wounded.

There’s no reason to believe the Donbas fighting—which took place along a narrow front on the eastern edge of a 40-mile-wide pocket of Ukrainian-held terrain surrounded on three sides by Russians—was any less bloody.

The general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces estimated the Russians have lost more than 35,000 people in 14 weeks of fighting. The staff of course has every reason to exaggerate.

But it’s worth noting that the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, which contributed its 20,000-man army to the Russian effort, reported losing more 2,000 of its troops killed and another 8,500 wounded by late May—a loss rate that lends some credence to the Ukrainian general staff’s claim.

All that is to say, the Russian army probably has lost many thousands of troops in Donbas in the past couple of months. Desperate to rebuild shattered battalions, the Kremlin has begun calling up reservists and forming front-line units on the basis of the training-focused “third battalions” in each brigade.

A new volunteer battalion that formed within the Russian navy’s 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade is indicative. “This battalion consists of reservists, volunteers, military policemen, servicemembers from coastal defense units and sailors from various naval vessels, which likely means that the volunteers are inadequately trained and do not have the requisite infantry experience to be effective in high-intensity combat,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. reported.

“The composite nature of this battalion indicates that Russian military leadership continues to struggle with proper and consistent constitution of combat-ready units,” ISW added.

There are shortages of modern equipment. Having lost more than 800 tanks in Ukraine—nearly a third of its pre-war active inventory—the Russian army pulled from storage long-retired T-62 tanks that Russia first produced in the early 1960s. “The Russian armed forces are increasingly hollowed out,” the U.K. Defense Ministry concluded.

The Ukrainian army suffered losses, too, of course—between a hundred and two hundred deaths every day at the height of the fighting for Severodonetsk last month, according to Ukrainian officials. Ukraine’s overall losses might be lighter than Russia’s own losses, but not by much.

Those hundreds or thousands of Ukrainian casualties bought time for Kyiv. As the battle of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk raged, Ukrainian brigades launched an attack toward Kherson—and made steady if slow progress against thin Russian defenses. As Lysychansk fell in early July, the Ukrainian army was advancing into the town of Bavinok, just five miles north of Kherson.

At the same time, the Ukrainian army and navy finally scraped the last Russian troops off Snake Island, a rocky islet that sits astride the shipping route to Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port. Ukraine clearly has exploited Russia’s narrow focus on Donbas in order to make gains in the south.

That dynamic could continue as the Kremlin eyes Siversk and other free cities in the shrinking Donbas salient. Expect the Ukrainians to continue trading a few miles of terrain and a few ruined eastern settlements for the opportunity to liberate Kherson.

“It is highly likely that Ukrainian forces’ ability to continue fighting delaying battles, and then withdraw troops in good order before they are encircled, will continue to be a key factor in the outcome of the campaign,” the U.K. Defense Ministry noted.