A lightning offensive near Kharkiv could mark a turning-point in the war
Editor’s note (September 10th 2022): since this story was published, Ukraine has made further gains. On September 10th it was confirmed that Ukraine’s army captured Kupyansk. Russian and Ukrainian sources report that Izyum was also liberated. Igor Girkin, the Russian former commander quoted in our article below, warned of a potential “strategic defeat”, with Ukraine “encircling and destroying large formations of our troops”. Russia’s defence ministry unconvincingly described the collapse of its lines as a deliberate effort to “regroup” the forces around Izyum for attacks in Donetsk province to the south.
ON SEPTEMBER 6TH Ukraine’s army launched a surprise offensive in the country’s north-eastern Kharkiv province. It has met with spectacular success. In the space of a week, boasted Volodymyr Zelensky, the president, on September 8th, his armies had liberated 1,000 square kilometres (386 square miles) of territory from Russia. Remarkably, the bulk of that has come not from a long-advertised push in the southern Kherson region, which began on August 29th, but from the smaller armoured thrust south-east of Kharkiv city.
The yellow and blue flag of Ukraine is now flying in several liberated towns and villages. Video footage from the Kharkiv region showed local residents cheering Ukrainian convoys and soldiers. Fighting is now under way for Kupyansk, a major logistics hub for the Russian war effort, which just four days ago was around 60km behind the frontlines. Thousands of Russian troops may soon be trapped between the advancing Ukrainians and the Oksil river to their rear. Pro-Russian military bloggers and analysts are furious at the collapse of their country’s defences and the apparent disarray in Russia’s command.
The Kharkiv offensive is the most significant shift in Ukraine’s favour since the end of March, when Russia’s army, mauled and bogged down in the suburbs of Kyiv, retreated from the entire region around the capital in what it described as a “goodwill gesture”. Coincidentally, the latest offensive is being run by General Oleksandr Syrsky, who also organised Kyiv’s defence in February and March. He appears to have spotted a weak point in Russian lines near the city of Balakliya, which had been in Russian hands since March 2nd.
Balakliya was quickly encircled, allowing the Ukrainians to move farther east to cut Russian forces in two at the Oskil river, pinning a southern contingent against the river itself. Three small bridges connect the west bank with the east, but they fall well within the range of Ukrainian artillery. It appears Russia had redeployed a significant proportion of its elite troops to guard against Ukrainian counter-offensives in the Kherson region. “War is the art of deception,” says one source in the Ukrainian armed forces. “We deceived them good.” What is less clear is why Russian forces failed to anticipate the danger, and why they have been unable to use air power and rocket artillery to staunch the attacks.
The Kharkiv offensive did not come out of the blue. A Ukrainian soldier who took part in the initial attack says that columns of Russian troops left the area following intense artillery barrages on September 4th and 5th. “They moved even before we started fighting,” he says. “They must have known we were about to attack, but the idiots seemed to have no idea what they could lose. They didn’t understand it was important.” Ukraine began the ground offensive on September 6th, initially taking satellite towns around Balakliya. The following day, the town itself was surrounded. After two days of street fighting a group of Ukrainian soldiers raised their flag above the town hall. A local source says that some of the occupying Russians changed into civilian clothes and escaped on bicycles and stolen cars.
The Balakliya encirclement was only the beginning of Russia’s problems. In parallel, Ukrainian forces were advancing eastwards through Volokhiv Yar, Shevchenkove and finally towards Kupyansk, a key rail hub for supplying Russian forces to the south. By September 8th, fighting for that town had begun. A photograph circulated one day later showed soldiers posing next to a sign on its southern edge. Pro-Russian military commentators were stunned, accusing the country’s high command of treason.
Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, a former officer of the FSB, Russia’s security service, who led Russian-backed troops in the first battle of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2014, confirmed that Ukrainian units were conducting raids deep inside Russian-held territory, “disorienting” troops there. “Alles kaput” (“All is destroyed”), he wrote on social media. Other social-media channels frequented by Russian analysts suggest that a race is now on to send in reserves to stop the situation from deteriorating further. Russia’s army published footage of guns and vehicles rolling towards the front lines.
A Ukrainian military intelligence source says that the success of the offensive was contingent on American-supplied HARM anti-radiation missiles, which home in on the emissions of Russian air-defence radar and other equipment. It also relied on surface-to-air systems that threatened Russian aircraft: Ukrainian sources single out Germany’s Gepard, a set of anti-aircraft guns on tracks. This threat left Russia reluctant to deploy air power; when it did, it suffered losses. Unconfirmed reports suggest that at least one Russian fighter jet and two helicopters were downed during Ukraine’s operation. Russian aircraft have reportedly struggled to distinguish between Russian and Ukrainian units in the pell-mell of fighting, with frontlines shifting rapidly.
“They are blind, and we see everything,” claims the Ukrainian official. Whether the counter-offensive ultimately succeeds will now be down to speed, he argues. If Ukraine can secure its new positions by the Oskil river before Russian reinforcements arrive, Izyum to the south would be in its sights. There have been reports that the Ukrainian army has also conducted attacks south of Izyum, in a possible attempt to envelop the city. Capturing it, or threatening Russian operations there, would drive a hole through Russian military logistics in the Luhansk region; they could take several weeks to rebuild. It would also enable Ukraine to reclaim towns that Russia captured after agonisingly long and bloody battles over the summer.
Ukraine’s leaders have long sought a turning-point in the war: an operation that would demonstrate to Western backers that Ukraine can win it, if provided with the right weapons. This week General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, made his first public statement of the conflict on that subject. Success was “directly and exclusively dependent on the resources available to Ukraine”, he wrote in an essay for Ukrinform, a state news agency. The offensive in Kherson has had mixed results. Casualties are very heavy, according to an informed official, and progress has been relatively slow. But the news from Kharkiv will go some way to stiffening Western resolve.
On September 8th, during a meeting of defence ministers at Ramstein air base in Germany, news of the Balakliya breakthrough was met with applause. Speaking in Prague the next day Lloyd Austin, America’s defence secretary, described the Kherson and Kharkiv offensives as “very, very encouraging”. Some see them as pivotal. “After seven months of vicious and desperate fighting, future historians may see this as an important turning-point,” says Mick Ryan, a retired Australian general who tracks the conflict. “The strategic initiative in this war may have shifted to the Ukrainians in the last few days.”■
