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repeatedly re-announcing the advance to present it as several sequential advances Kyiv has also successfully created an impression within its Western audience that Russian forces are collapsing, and that the war is all but won.
Building on that image President Zelenskiy ostentatiously signed Ukraine’s application to join NATO last week, an application that was rejected by return of email (though NATO’s nine least important members including Montenegro and Northern Macedonia did come out in support).
Putin’s political loss is acute. Polls in Russia showed a reduction of about ten points last week in support for the war (from 80% to 70-75%) – not a critical number but enough to open the door to vociferous opponents in Moscow and St Petersburg. Mr Putin probably cannot afford many more such losses.
The scale of Russia’s actual military loss is much smaller than its perception. The Kherson advances took back 1.5% of the ground occupied by Russian forces in Ukraine, at a cost of some 3% of Ukrainian ground forces in dead and seriously injured. The relative ratio of deaths on each side is sitting somewhere in the 5-1 range in favour of Russia, and the Kherson advances have probably cost Ukraine some 2,000 dead and 4,000 injured. The advance has also cost Ukraine most of its residual tank force.
Also unreported is the fact that even in Kherson (relatively well-manned by regular Russian troops) the density of those troops was acutely low. Total Russian and allied forces in Ukraine number something well below 150,000, spread along a 1,000 km contact line between the Black Sea and the border near Belgorod. That number includes forces in reserve and in support, logistics forces in rear areas, and the high concentration of forces in the Donetsk salient currently pushing west from Bakhmut and Donetsk City. While formal reports do not reveal the actual density of Russian forces along the northern edge of west-bank Kherson informal evidence and the events of the week suggest that is very low, probably 100-150 men per kilometre. Since positions are not simply a line of defence but include men in rear areas the manning of the actual Contact Line is even lower.
Unconfirmed reports of the Duchany advance indicate that it was made by only a single reinforced and armoured Battalion Tactical Group – probably less than 2,000 men in total and about 50 tanks.
Kyiv’s presentation of the attack as a Russian rout is untrue. Russian troops have demonstrated that under overwhelming pressure they will withdraw to re-group, narrow their front and occupy previously prepared positions rather than fight to the death to hold ground. Russian troops have another reason for falling back. Russian small-unit command training does not cultivate the use of initiative. This means that a unit under attack is unlikely to take a local opportunity to counterattack, but will instead default to withdrawal as a response to superior force. When multiplied across a whole front that looks like a rout, but is not.
Kyiv has presented its Kherson and Kharkiv successes as continuous processes, but that too is untrue. The units which spearhead an attack become militarily ineffective if mortality and hospitalisation are high, as they have been in both Kherson and Kharkiv. In consequence an attack must pause while depleted units are cycled to the rear, new units are brought forward, and supplies of fuel, food and ammunition are replenished. With each new phase
7 UKRAINE Country Report November 2022 www.intellinews.com