by Andrew Salmon 

    The Ukrainian defenders of the Donbas region continue to defy predictions – not to mention Moscow – by clinging onto territory though a mixture of stubborn defensive fighting and a new diversionary tactic.

    The defenders have successfully drawn the attackers into street combat – a particularly lethal format of fighting that favors dug-in defenders – in embattled Severodonetsk, despite the city’s lack of obvious strategic value for Kiev. 

    Their second tactic to slow the Russian onslaught – diversionary assaults to lure attackers away from their key objective – had proved unsuccessful until last week.

    Ukrainian counterattacks outside Kharkiv and south toward Kherson made no appreciable impact on the Donbas fighting. But in a new approach, Ukrainian forces started shelling the separatist-held city of Donetsk, the largest city in Donbas, on June 13.

    It is a hugely sensitive target. Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking at the St Petersburg Economic Forum on June 17, called the ongoing conflict “our special military operation in the Donbas” – rather than generalizing it as an operation in Ukraine.

    According to Russian media, the shelling continued yesterday. Separatist leaders have asked Moscow for more forces, while unconfirmed reports suggest a new Russian operation is pending to take out or push back the Ukrainian artillery.

    It is unclear whether or how long these developments will impact Russia’s main offensive – or whether, in the information war, they will dent Kiev’s moral reputation as the victim in this conflict.

    In the bigger picture, while Kiev’s forces stubbornly cling onto shrinking chunks of Donbas, its lack of a major maneuver force that can seize the initiative and dictate events leaves the initiative in Moscow’s hands. Moscow is using that to bite off and digest chunk after chunk of territory.

    So the current phase of the war pits small-scale tactics against big-picture strategy – and Ukrainian manpower against Russian firepower. Who can sustain the effort?

    On the one hand: Ukraine is suffering massive losses from Russian fire. And conscript morale is eroding, as witness multiple videos of Ukrainian sub-units either refusing to fight or pleading for support.

    On the other hand: Russia clearly has a limited number of units capable of conducting the kind of battle Ukraine is forcing it to fight. Meanwhile, its armored forces, three months into the Donbas battle, have been unable to close their pincers on the Donbas trap – or even shut key highways in the region.

    A classic military lesson – most ferociously taught at Stalingrad in 1943-3 – is that an immobile defensive force can slow a mobile attacking force by drawing it into the streets. Fighting in built-up areas – FIBUA – is one of the most stressful, casualty-intensive forms of combat.

    “Urban fighting is a huge force multiplier for the defender,” Gastone Breccia, the author of La Guerra Della Russia (“Russia’s Wars”) told Asia Times. “Especially so if it is at a disadvantage with heavy weapons.”

    Absent pinpoint coordination between infantry, armor – which is hugely vulnerable in constricted streets – and artillery/airpower, firepower advantages are nullified.

    Footage of devastated Mariupol makes clear how destructive FIBUA is:  Even a cursory visual analysis shows the attackers employed direct fire to clear defenders using the city’s buildings as firing points.

    Moreover, the defenders of Severodonetsk have followed the example of Mariupol by retreating through the city into an industrial complex. That game plan was used, most famously, by the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, where some of the most intense fighting was for giant factories-cum-fortresses.

    Exacerbating Russian commanders’ problems is the presence of civilians in Azot. It is unclear if they are there voluntarily or as “human shields.”

    Though Moscow is fighting the war with professionals, not conscripts, it appears to field a limited number of units suited to urban assault.

    These include Wagner Group contractor deployed to Popansa and Severodonesk; Chechen militia – deployed in Mariupol and Severodonetsk; and veteran Donbas militias, also deployed in Mariupol and Severodonetsk.

    Russian regular units deployed around the Donbas salient – ie a position surrounded on three sides – have been making gradualist gains against highly vulnerable Ukrainian positions since April.

    However, they have failed to pinch off the salient at its “shoulders” in the west – a move that would trap all Ukrainian units in the east.

    Instead, they have been gnawing away at its “foot” in Severodonetsk, in the east. That approach may deliver the city, but promises no capture of major numbers of Ukrainian troops.

    Nor have Russian forces managed to cut key Donbas roads that provide the Ukrainians with internal lines of communications, though some of these routes are now under fire.

    One barrier facing the Russians has been the Donets River, and other water obstacles, in the salient’s north.

    “The Russians have shown poor understanding of the technical aspects of river crossing: forming up areas, rapid transit, egress from the bridgehead, traffic control, etc,” Prit Buttar, a historian of the Ukraine battles during World War II, who has travelled widely in the country, said.

    For unclear reasons – possibly due to the large number of anti-aircraft missiles in theater – Russia has not used airborne or heliborne troops to “bounce” the river. 

    However, the river is not just a problem for the Russian forces.

    The Ukrainian troops in Severodonetsk’s Azot complex are cut off from their rear by the Donets: The three bridges that provided their lines of communication and of withdrawal to the sister city of Lysychansk are down.

    That means their wounded cannot be evacuated and they cannot be resupplied with food or ammunition.

    Severodonetsk was defended by a Ukrainian mechanized infantry brigade – three battalions of troops with armored vehicles – as well as local militia. Georgian and English-speaking units of Ukraine’s foreign legion were also deployed in support.

    It is unknown how many were extracted, and how many are trapped in Azot.

    Could the defenders break out? It is possible. It has been done before.

    In February 1944, six divisions of Germany’s 8^th Army were trapped in the Cherkassy cauldron. They broke through their ring of besiegers, with some escapees swimming the (freezing) Gniloy Tikich Stream to escape. And in September 1944, survivors of the British 1^st Airborne division escaped the Arnhem cauldron by breaking out across the Lower Rhine.

    However, these were desperate gambits. Both forces left behind their heavy equipment, suffered severe attrition and were rendered combat-ineffective in the aftermath of their traumatic experiences.

    The modest Donets is hardly a challenge to a fit man with reasonable swimming abilities. But any cross-river breakout is hugely perilous.

    “There are enough separatists fighting alongside the Russia Army to know this area just as well as their former countrymen, so anything the Ukrainians know about the peculiarities of the Donetz … the Russian Army knows too,” Douglas Nash, author of “Hell’s Gate: The Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket” told Asia Times. “Plus, they have drones and they can be used to continuously monitor the river for any Ukrainian escape attempts.”

    Drones are highly effectively artillery spotters.

    “Any river crossing is particularly vulnerable and artillery can be used to great advantage to destroy or disrupt any attempt by the Ukrainians to escape,” Nash, a former US Army armored officer, added.

    The eventual outcome in Severodonetsk is hardly in question. Moscow is committed to capturing the urban/industrial center in Lugask oblast, which Moscow has vowed to take.

    For Kiev, there is no strategic reason to hold the city, beyond pinning down Russian troops. But with the war on the ground mirrored by an information war in global media, there are political reasons to extend the fight.

    “Severodonetsk might be a battle worth losing,” Breccia, who teaches conflict history at Pavia University, said, citing falling interest among Western publics in the war. “The war is slipping away from the front page and from that small area where our conscience is most sensitive.”

    With Kiev dependent upon Western governments’ supply of arms and ammunition, it must keep Western publics engaged.

    “Ukrainians have a desperate need to keep the attention increasing, not decreasing,” he said. “To keep the interest alive for a few more weeks, the resistance of the forces engaged in Severodonetsk can be fundamental. Even if they should be condemned to defeat.”

But he notes that “you need professionals” to fight effectively in streets “not hastily drafted conscripts.”

    Some estimates suggest Kiev may be losing half a battalion to a battalion per day. And there is evidence of morale erosion.

    Russian media outlet RT, analyzing multiple videos of protests against their commanders by Ukrainian troops, noted that a bill had been submitted to parliament in May enabling commanders to shoot troops. Though it was not passed, “the very appearance of such an initiative clearly indicates that the problem is real,” RT summarized.

    Drone footage from Donbas frontlines shows massive craterization around Ukrainian trench nets – a pounding that must be hugely demoralizing. However, artillery is most effective among troops in the open, and the footage also suggests Russian reliance on dumb, rather than smart munitions.

    Meanwhile, Ukraine has struck back with its own artillery on a high-sensitivity target for Russia.

    Ukrainian guns and rockets have been shelling the city of Donetsk and other separatist-held areas for a week. And Russian forces have been unable to halt it.

    Russia’s TASS news agency reported today that further damage was caused to Donetsk on June 19, by both Grad rockets and “155mm artillery systems used in NATO countries.”

    Multiple Western countries, including the US, France and Canada have supplied Ukraine with those systems. 

    The strikes on Donetsk and other locations under separatist control may well be ruthless. However, they suggest that the outgunned Ukrainian artillery is finally making an impact.

    As recently as June 17, Putin referred to Ukrainian attacks on the separatist regions as “genocide.” Earlier, on June 14, according to Reuters, Denis Pushilin, the leader of the separatist republic of Donetsk, had asked for more Russian troops, while  Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the “the protection of the republics is the main goal of the special military operation.”

    According to Kiev media, citing a Russian Telegram channel, Putin said that Russian forces would, in response, attack Ukrainian fortified positions near Donetsk from the rear, though he admitted that this would take time.

    Even if Russia’s campaign in Donbas is slowed, the strikes carry a likely moral cost for Kiev, which has won widespread global sympathy as a victim of aggression and which, as Breccia notes, needs to maintain this sympathy to keep flagging Western publics on-side.

    UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric called the attacks, which reportedly hit a market and a maternity hospital and killed five civilians, “extremely troubling.”

    Pro-Russian British YouTuber Graham Philips, who has been reporting from Donbas since 2014, has posted footage of what he says are strikes impacting areas around high-rise buildings in the city.

    The attacks look lighter than the devastation that has rained down upon Ukrainian cities. And Russian POWs have pleaded guilty in Ukrainian courts of war crimes. But there are signs of savagery on the defenders’ side, too.

    Asia Times has viewed disturbing – but unconfirmed – footage that purportedly shows Ukrainian soldiers shooting captured Russians, and cutting the throats of Russian prisoners, then finishing them off with AK fire.