Ukraine is not the only one that has prepared the counteroffensive announced for months. Already on April 3, the General Staff of the Ukrainian armies reported on its social networks that Russia was “strengthening its defensive capabilities” in the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, located near the front line.
This defense involves in particular minefields, used with fortifications “to repel or slow down” Ukrainian forces, according to a June 10 memo from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), an American think tank.
These fortifications are, for example, “concrete trenches and reinforced command bunkers, entanglements of barbed wire” and anti-tank ditches, according to a May 19 article by the Royal United Service Institute (Rusi), a British think tank specializing in defense issues.
Various defensive lines
Along the front, the Russians have deployed “about six defensive lines,” a French military source told AFP on May 9.
“The first line is strong points that allow you to see what’s going on, the second line is more to stop an attack, it’s heavily mined. Then there is the artillery, the first tanks to counterattack, and finally the reserves and then the command. the posts and the logistics”, detailed the superior officer. All about thirty kilometers.
For the Ukrainians, “the initial operations of the counteroffensive could be the most difficult and the slowest,” according to ISW. “Initial setbacks are to be expected” before breaking through well-established defense lines, consolidated for months by the Russians.
Drills and Improved Equipment
To prepare, Russia was also able to hold military exercises. The British Ministry of Defense reported a “security exercise” on May 24 around the Crimean Bridge, a peninsula in southern Ukraine annexed by Russia in 2014. Russian forces “among other things created a smokescreen, concealing partly the bridge.
In recent months, “Russia has most likely been struggling to secure its long-term supply” of Iranian drones, the British Defense Ministry said in its daily update on June 13. Moscow is also “trying to launch domestic production” of drones “surely with the help of Iran,” he added. However, Vladimir Putin assured this Tuesday that he lacked “high-precision ammunition, communication equipment and drones.”
In general, Russia has sought to improve some of its equipment since the beginning of the war. It has, for example, “began using thermal camouflage on its vehicles and, through a series of other modifications,” “reduces the detectability of tanks from a standoff distance,” Rusi notes.
Progress that Putin did not claim on Tuesday. “It became clear that several things were missing: high-precision munitions, communication equipment, drones,” Vladimir Putin said during a meeting with Russian war correspondents.
“We have some, but unfortunately not in sufficient quantity,” he added.
Ukraine, for its part, has benefited from the input of modern Western equipment. Le Rusi points out that all the improvements made by Moscow are aimed at “compensating for the serious shortcomings of the Russian units.” If “the Russian armed forces present a significant challenge to the Ukrainian military in terms of defense,” they may also “quickly lose their coordination.”
Source: BFM TV
