Russians dig 800km defensive line ahead of Ukraine’s offensive

Fortifications anti-tank ditches, raised barriers, prefabricated dragon’s teeth, landmines and trenches.

Russian military in the Kherson region of Ukraine. Picture: TASS

Russia has boosted its defences in occupied Ukraine ahead of Kyiv’s anticipated counterattack, wagering its position on 800km of triple-fortified lines and a gush of manpower.

Now that the Ukrainian terrain, muddied by the spring thaw, has begun to dry and Russia’s latest wave of attacks has fizzled out, a counterstrike may be weeks or perhaps days away.

The Russian defensive wall runs from Kherson, in the south, to the north-east of Ukraine, spanning more than 800km.

“These defensive lines consist of layered fortifications and trenches,” said Brady Africk at US think-tank American Enterprise Institute. They include anti-tank ditches, raised barriers, lines of pre-fabricated defences known as dragon’s teeth, landmines and trenches for personnel, he said.

The Russian objective is “to maintain control over occupied territory and to attempt to limit Ukraine’s ability to conduct a counteroffensive,” he said.

Moscow’s strategy is to be able to “absorb any attack,” said Pierre Razoux at France’s Mediterranean Foundation of Strategic Studies. “The attackers are likely to get stuck by the time they reach the second layer, and even if they get past it, the third is going to be very hard to breach,” he said.

Russia will employ the time-honoured strategy of channelling attacking troops onto ground of their choosing, said Andrew Galer at British strategy think-tank Janes. But Ukraine gets to decide where to attack Russian lines, he said, adding that Kyiv may not have made its choice yet.

Ukraine could well try to mislead Russia with a small-scale attack to pull defending forces there, and then direct the main attack elsewhere, he said.

Vassily Kashin, at the HSE university in Moscow, said Ukraine could pick the region of Bakhmut for its attack, where battles have raged for 10 months, but acknowledged that “the data we have are very limited”.

Dr Kashin said the balance of forces at the front is changing in favour of Russia. “Ukraine can try to change this with a last desperate blow,” he said.

On Monday the head of paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said a counteroffensive could come on the day his group took control of Bakhmut, which he said could be around May 9, the anniversary of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.

Superiority in troop numbers remains a major advantage for Russia, boosted further by recent recruitment efforts, experts said.

“Russian forces may be exhausted by their efforts, but they still have enough personnel reserves to help absorb the shock,” said Philippe Gros and Vincent Tourret at France’s Strategic Research Foundation. “They have deployed enough anti-mobility measures to complicate any Ukrainian progress considerably.”

Despite a lack of training, the sheer number of reservists should be enough to hold Russia’s lines. “No Ukrainian offensive, even the most successful one, will bring the war to an end,” Dr Kashin said.

Ukraine is better armed than a year ago, but its task is made harder by the fact that some of the weapons pledged by its Western allies have not made it to the frontline. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday military hardware deliveries represented “more than 98 per cent of the combat vehicles promised”, but analysts said NATO deliveries were not coming fast enough to give Ukraine a strong chance of taking back lost territory.

Experts also warned that Ukraine has several other priorities besides the counterattack, including securing the cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv as well as the logistical axis between both cities. Ukraine also must protect its border with Belarus, secure supply lines near the borders with Romania and Poland, defend Odesa in the south and prevent attacks on nuclear power installations.

Any Ukrainian advances will only make sense if Kyiv’s troops can then hold the conquered territory, an effort bringing new logistics challenges.

“The further they get retaking territory, the longer the supply chain becomes,” Mr Galer said.

AFP