Two recent piece published in Ukrainian media take a look at the situation in eastern Ukraine and describe the reasons for the crumbling of Ukraine's defense lines.
The usually government friendly Ukrainska Pravda talked with units at the front line:
The Pokrovsk front didn’t just crumble overnight. Since 15 February 2024, when they withdrew from Avdiivka, Ukraine’s defence forces have been retreating towards Pokrovsk – sometimes faster, sometimes slower – almost every week.
The first difficulties arose when the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, which had been holding the line in the vicinity of Orlivka and Semenivka (not far from Avdiivka), was replaced by the 68th Separate Jaeger Brigade. The rotation of military units is one of the most vulnerable defence areas in general, and for the Ukrainian army in particular, and the Russians took advantage of that.
Rotations are a complicate business. The unit that gets relieved is supposed to wait until the replacement unit has completely arrived. Only after explaining the positions and situation to the new troops are the old ones supposed to retreat.
In reality that rarely happens as it is described in military manuals. The troops eager to get out do not take time to brief the incoming forces. Positions are emptied before the replacements have had time to settle in. Traffic snarls ensue as the number of vehicles in an area double before returning to a normal level.
The enemy will of course use any such situation to make it more difficult for the rotating side. Botched rotations have caused several occasion where the lines were open and allowed Russian units to break in. They may be the main cause for the Russian break through from Avdiivka towards the key supply point in Pokrovsk.
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From those in the known:
Vitalii, a crew member who operates a large attack drone, tells Ukrainska Pravda that he was deployed in the area in March, and that the Russian attacks started even before the 68th Brigade could take up its positions.
"We met guys from the 68th who had only just taken up their positions and were forced to retreat immediately because of the FPV drone attacks. When a brigade leaves, they take all the electronic warfare equipment with them. This is typical on this front: they [the Russians] advance the most during rotations. The occupiers take advantage of those times."
"The night we replaced the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade in Semenivka, the enemy attempted to carry out an assault operation. The meat-grinder attacks haven’t stopped since then," an Ukrainska Pravda source in the 68th Brigade confirms.
Another big cause of losses are miscommunication between the various units that hold the lines. The results are breakthroughs and utter confusion about who holds positions and where:
Another major turning point that marked the undoing of the Pokrovsk front was the Russians’ sudden breakthrough in Ocheretyne, a relatively large, urbanised town on the railway with industrial facilities, and therefore a particularly useful defence position. Russian occupation forces entered the town in mid-April.
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"Before the offensive, I received intelligence that the Russians were going to assault Ocheretyne, where we had no troops at the positions," the officer says. "I passed this information on to my commanders straight away, but the commander of the brigade stationed there [the 115th Separate Mechanised Brigade – ed.] responded: ‘We have forces there, they’re all there.’Next morning the Russians started to walk into [Ocheretyne], moving through what were officially minefields – but in fact there were no mines there. After we surrendered Novobakhmutivka, Ocheretyne and Soloviovo, the front started to collapse at the rate we’re seeing now."
"When the Russians captured Ocheretyne, there was no stable contact line as such," Vitalii the drone crew member adds. "No one knew where the front was. Soldiers in the villages of Sokil, Yevhenivka and Voskhod were walking around with guns in their hands, asking each other for passwords to figure out if they were dealing with one of us or the enemy."
In general Russian troops are superior in experienced manpower and have more ammunition to fight:
"The first problem on the Pokrovsk front is personnel numbers, the second is their level of training, and the third is the skills of the unit command. And then we run into the defence-related issues – tactics, measures, and so on." This, a soldier from the 47th Brigade tells Ukrainska Pravda, is the order of priority of the reasons for the Russians’ super-fast advance.
Brigades are kept in the fight even as they are staffed to as low as 40% of their nominal strength. Replacements, if the arrive at all, are unqualified for fighting:
"The backbone of the brigades was lost during the battles near Avdiivka, and the replenishments that arrived later left a lot to be desired," says a source from the 68th, explaining the shortage of motivated people. "The mobilisation failed. Let's be honest – each subsequent replenishment was less motivated and trained. So they could not reliably hold the defence.
In Semenivka we had about 90% experienced people in the unit and 10% newcomers. Now we have about the same ratio, but the other way round. And the average age of the newcomers can even be 55+, not 45+."
On the positive side there were a number of well prepared fortifications had been build near Pokrovsk. Unfortunately they had been build by unexperienced forces in the wrong places and were thus unusable:
Bunkers and connected trench lines were indeed built on the Pokrovsk front – but there’s a catch. Many of these fortifications are unsuitable for serious defence. They’re frequently located in the middle of fields, which makes them visible to the enemy and difficult for the defence forces’ personnel, ammunition and supplies to reach.
"When [Ukrainian MP Mariana] Bezuhla posts photos of empty trenches and asks why nobody was defending them, I know exactly why. Because it’s stupid to sit in a hole in the middle of a bare field. Sooner or later an FPV drone will fly right into your face," Vitalii tells Ukrainska Pravda angrily.
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"On the Pokrovsk front, trenches and dugouts had been made right in the middle of fields, making logistics impossible. They dug anti-tank ditches that led directly from enemy positions to our rear positions, and it’s impossible to monitor them. These fortifications help the enemy advance more than they help us defend.
The Ukrainian public relations operation into the Russian Kursk oblast did not achieve its hoped for effect. Pressure on the Ukrainian front in the east was not relieved:
Another figure – the official number of combat encounters reported by Ukraine’s General Staff – confirms that Russian infantry attacks on the Pokrovsk front have continued, and have in fact slightly intensified. We analysed the number of combat clashes on the Pokrovsk front before and after the Kursk operation began and found that it had increased significantly – on average from 40 to 52 per day.
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Nor, unfortunately, has the opening up of the Kursk front decreased the amount of artillery attacks and guided aerial bomb strikes on the front line as a whole. On the contrary, their number, just like the combat clashes, has slightly increased. There are an average of 4,500 to 4,600 artillery attacks per day, with the number of guided aerial bomb strikes ranging from 97 to 105.
A second report on the war in the Pokrovsk direction, this one by Kyiv Independent, comes to similar conclusions:
Since the first break through of Ukrainian defense lines in April near the village of Ocheretyne, Russian forces have advanced over 20 kilometers towards Pokrovsk, with the key logistics hub once considered to be deep in the rear, now gradually coming in range of Russian artillery and suicide drones.
Despite Kyiv’s attempts to draw away Russian forces from Pokrovsk with the surprise incursion into Kursk Oblast, Moscow made sure not to take its foot off the pedal, further intensifying its attacks over August.
Thin defense lines and a lack of supplies make losses inevitable:
The infantrymen’s stories testify to the starkly attritional nature of the fight: although Russia’s relentless infantry assaults come at a high cost, with enough time and enough fire covering the defending positions, the defenders are inevitably overwhelmed.
“We can be fighting them off for a while, but eventually our ammunition runs out,” said Dmytro, 32.
“And while they are getting resupplied constantly, we can't do the same, they cover all the routes, and because of that, we have to give up our positions.”
The lack of higher (divisional) command leads to a breakdown in communications:
With many different units — all in various states of combat effectiveness — deployed to the Pokrovsk front, effective communication between brigades is a crucial factor that is often lacking, soldiers from both brigades told the Kyiv Independent. One officer of the 68th, who asked not to be identified because of the nature of his comments, said that for months over summer, one of the neighboring brigades would consistently fail to report lost positions, leaving his own units vulnerable from the flank without knowing about it.
“In our area, there are a lot of different units, and communication between them becomes a big problem,” said Oleksandr.
Units do not only lack men but the lack of personnel has morale effects on those few who are still in the fight:
“In the last two months here, to be honest, we have had serious losses. Killed, injured, and taken prisoner,” said Olena Tarishchuk, a 39-year-old lieutenant responsible for monitoring the morale and mental state of the fire support company’s personnel.
“We need rest, we need rotation, we basically need support. We don't have enough manpower to carry out our orders.”
Inevitably, extreme manpower strains, on top of the reluctance of Ukraine’s higher command to rotate exhausted units off the front line, take their toll on the infantry’s morale.
There are two basic oddities in the Ukrainian military, reflected above, that explain some of its errors.
The high command decided early on to use the brigades as its major autonomous fighting units. A commander of a front may have (more or less) control over a dozen of those. The more typical organization would be a division staff which controls three to four brigades. Above divisions a corp command would coordinate the movements of several of them. A front command would sit on top of several corps and direct the greater moves with a long time perspective.
While such a traditional structure has its own problems with the additional bureaucracy layers it does coordinate much better than a lose structure of free-running brigades who do not even know the names and radio call signs of their neighbors.
A second systemic failure in the Ukrainian army is the lack of replenishment of personnel.
Experienced brigades are kept on the front until that have less than a third of their original strength. They are not replenishment while still in the fight. Newly mobilized men are instead put into newly constituted brigades which zero frontline experience.
A better system would rotate out units that have lost a third of their men and fill them up with new recruits before pushing them back into the fight. The result would be the same number of soldiers but with experience mixed into all of the army's units.
I am sure that NATO and U.S. forces have lectured the Ukrainians on both of these issues. But the Ukrainian command has a will of its own and is often resistant to critique and changes.
It has now even dismantled its only internal unit that was still able to present an objective view of its failures (machine translation):
The other day the People's Deputy Mariana Bezuglaya wrote a post in which she stated that the training centers "do not teach anything" and send untrained conscripts to the front line.
After that, Volodymyr Zelensky said that he had heard a report on the situation in training schools at the Headquarters and stated that he was instructed to develop measures to correct the situation. By indirectly acknowledging the existence of problems.
Bezuglaya at the same time said that the reporter at the Headquarters-Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Defense Igor Voronchenko-was dismissed after his report. According to her – by Defense Minister Umerov at the suggestion of Commander-in-Chief Syrsky.
"Immediately after he reported at Headquarters about the catastrophic situation with training in the training centers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Voronchenko's frank and detailed report startled everyone and caused great anger in Syrsky. The General Inspectorate of the Ministry of Defense was the last outpost that provided at least some kind of expertise regarding what is really happening in the Armed Forces of Ukraine," Bezuglaya writes.
The General Inspectorate's task was to point out the cause of failures. But the command insisted on destroying it instead of learning from its takes.
A certain stubbornness can be a great asset. But the situations in wars change all the time and it is necessary to adopt to them. The Ukrainian military has too often failed to do that.