Ukraine's New Tactics Threaten Russian Positions In Zaporizhzia, Crimea

Data is destiny. Ukrainian forces, analyzing their success in the past year, have developed tactics that reflect their strengths. They attack with 'clouds' of drones in advance of lightly armed infantry who, when they have identified and pinned down a Russian position, call in heavier machine guns and mortars to be delivered by drones. This saves time, manpower and effort.

And the places where these new movements work best are in the relatively open steppes, which makes Zaporizhzhia and the approaches to Crimea likely targets for a next major offensive, especially after the Ukrainians' success in liberating Dnipropetrovsk. JL

Stefan Korshak reports in the Kyiv Post:

Zaporizhzhia and Crimea are “the most promising” areas for a future Ukrainian offensive because it’s here that Ukraine’s technical edge - small forces of well-trained infantry backed by big masses of tactical drones - get leverage over Russian defenses. The Ukrainians have started concentrating fighting outfits on the Ternuvate--Velyka Novosilka axis (79th, 80th and 95th Air Assault Brigades), which have been beefed up with the 82nd Air Assault and 92nd Mechanized Brigades. Russians troops find themselves under fire from machine guns and grenade launchers ferried to firing positions not on an infantryman’s back, but by drones. If the Russians run then they get hunted down by FPVs, if they stay put they get pinned down by drones and winkled out by Ukrainian infantry. Ukraine's plan is the systematic destruction of Russian fighting capacity on the line and behind the line with drones as a prelude to a ground offensive against weakened resistance.

If and when the Ukrainians launch a major offensive, it will be in the Tavria steppe with the objective of reaching and cutting off the Perekop land bridge. This is not new Ukrainian operational thinking, of course, but talking about it as a possibility is, and we haven’t heard anything like that since June 2023. 

Zaporizhzhia and Crimea are “the most promising” areas for future Ukrainian offensive operations, because it’s here that Ukraine’s technical edge – meaning relative small forces of well-trained infantry backed by big masses of tactical drones – can get leverage over Russian defenses.

Is it just the 1st Assault Brigade? Again, this is tea leaves, but no, probably the ambition is bigger. The research group Tochnyi this week put out an analysis confirming what some information platforms had been sitting on for a month or more: to wit, the Ukrainians starting concentrating solid fighting outfits on the Ternuvate-Velykomykhailivka-Velyka Novosilka axis in May (79th, 80th and 95th Air Assault Brigades), and now that forces has been beefed up with the 82nd Air Assault and 92nd Mechanized Brigades, and at the spear tip is one or two battalions of 425th Assault Infantry Regiment. 

People not paying to attention to the Russo-Ukrainian War probably would say who cares what units the Ukrainians have deployed. But to people paying attention, it’s pretty obvious this is a rare-for-the-AFU concentration of several of the regular army’s most capable units, in a fairly small area. The Tochnyi report predicted the Ukrainian concept is to wear out the relatively light Russian forces in the area and at some point in the future shift to the offensive.

At minimum, this is confirmation of the AFU top leadership concentrating force in Zaporizhzhia region. As to maximum, the Tochnyi report speculated that the Ukrainian plan is the systematic destruction of Russian fighting capacity on the line and behind the line with air strikes (in the Ukrainian case with drones) as a prelude to a ground offensive that would overwhelm weakened resistance, similar to the Allies in France in 1944. Which seems possible, but not immediate. 

Based on the way the Ukrainian national government is talking (Russia better start negotiating soon or things will get worse for Russia in a couple of months), the Tochnyi theory makes sense.

More on Ukrainian infantry assault tactics

This week the Russian milbloggers, possibly in a linked development, announced something that we on the Ukrainian side have known for some time but haven’t been publicizing: the way the Ukrainians are attacking, at least in some places, is light infantry carrying ammo and personal medkits, and drones carrying everything else.

The blogger RomanovLite said it’s become the practice in “several sectors” for a Ukrainian assault not really to register until some Russians in a village find themselves under fire from several directions, and among the weapons shooting at them are heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers ferried to firing positions not humped on some infantryman’s back, but by drones. If the Russians run then they get hunted down by FPV drones, if the Russians stay put then they get pinned down by bomber drones and winkled out by the Ukrainian infantry. Sometimes the Russian artillery tries to interfere but first thing that gives away their position and attracts drones, and second thing often the Ukrainian infantry is on top of the Russian infantry, so shelling the Ukrainians means shelling the Russians the artillery is supposedly trying to protect. 

According to the Russian side, the best way to stop this is to catch the Ukrainians on the approach and then use artillery and drones to attack them, which is effective provided one’s own observer drones are available, but of course the Ukrainians also have drones that hunt drones.

Back in the Cold War days, 1980s, a British author and former General named John Hackett, a cavalryman, who wrote a couple of notional Third World War novels. At one point in a footnote or a forward or something he mentions how peculiar it is that he finds himself having been trained to go to war by riding a horse to go hit his enemy on the head with a sword, yet fast forward 50 years and it’s laser-guided munitions and thermal sights.

As an aside, like more than a few people reading this I think, I was taught to fight as a soldier with the idea that there was combined arms big heavy armored machines like fighter jets and helicopters in the sky and tanks and infantry fighting vehicles on the ground. Most of that right now seems to me to be nearly as obsolete as General Hackett’s saber, if I’m honest. 

But more to the point, if we do see a larger-scale Ukrainian offensive, then at minimum it’s going to look like a lot of light infantry backed by a bunch of drones, with the armored vehicles coming later. And it might just be without the armored vehicles.