The Situation at the Front in March-April 2024

Russia has limited ability to carry out a large-scale offensive against Ukraine

Ivan Sichen

After Russia captured Avdiivka in February 2024, the situation at the front stabilized. Of course, this does not mean a lull in the fighting. The enemy continues to attack in certain directions, and in some areas it advances, in particular, near the city of Chasiv Yar. However, the enemy cannot break through the defense of our troops and achieve strategic success. Even with advantages in personnel, armored vehicles, aviation and artillery. Unfortunately, our Western partners are still delaying providing us with a sufficient number of weapons and ammunition, which affects the ability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to resist the aggressor. But these problems are resolved in one way or another for the benefit of our state. On the one hand, Russia is slowly but steadily losing the ability to maintain and increase its military potential, and on the other hand, Western countries continue to provide military assistance to Ukraine and have even begun to increase its volume. So far, the initiative on the battlefield belongs to Russian troops, but the Armed Forces of Ukraine are repulsing Russian attacks more and more confidently. Let’s consider the situations in more detail.

Having superiority in air, missiles and artillery ammunition, Russian troops are trying to reach the administrative border of Donetsk region. To do this, they conduct constant assault operations with forces from platoon and company to battalion. A particularly difficult situation arose in the Bakhmut direction in the area east of Chasiv Yar and Klishchiivka; in the Avdiivka direction — near Berdychi, Orlivka, Vodiane and Pervomaiske; in the Novopavlivske direction — near Novomykhailivka. The situation is quite tense in the Lyman, Orikhiv and Kherson directions. Thus, in the Lyman direction, the enemy is conducting local offensive actions in the areas of Bilohorivka and Vesele; in the Orikhiv direction — near Robotyne and Verbove; in the Kherson direction Russians are trying to dislodge a Ukrainian bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnipro River near Krynky.

The enemy’s successes are insignificant, but it continues its attempts to break through the defense line of the Ukrainian troops. At this, the enemy’s main efforts are focused on capturing the city of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk region, as a starting point for further offensive in the direction of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. To achieve this goal, Russia spares neither personnel nor military equipment. During each assault, along with tanks and armored vehicles, up to 70–80 % of the Russian soldiers are destroyed, but the powerful front-line reserves of the Russian army so far allow it to quickly replenish its units.

The Russian Ground Forces’ attacks are actively supported by tactical aviation. However, fearing Ukrainian air defense, Russian aircrafts are forced to use guided bombs (GBU) from a long distance. This reduces the effectiveness of their use, although GBU is a powerful weapon that is constantly being improved and poses a significant threat to our troops in advanced positions. It is there that Russia uses also most of its UAVs: from Scalpel tactical strike drones to operational-tactical Geran (Shahed) UAVs.

In its efforts to occupy Ukraine, Russia is trying to use the so-called window of opportunity, which is considered by the military and political leadership in the Kremlin as a prerequisite for the possible large-scale offensive at the end of spring or in the summer of 2024. According to the Kremlin plans, such prerequisites include at least two key points.

For one, thanks to the introduction of various forms of mobilization, putting the economy on a “war footing” and the military and technical assistance from China, Iran and North Korea, the Russian Armed Forces were able to significantly increase their offensive potential. According to the military command of the Russian Federation, about 620,000 Russian servicemen, more than 2,000 tanks and 300–350 tactical aircrafts are currently deployed at the front in Ukraine. In addition, Russia claims the ability to produce up to 3 million artillery shells per year, which is three times higher than the capabilities of the United States and Europe.

Other trends took place in Ukraine. During last year’s unsuccessful counteroffensive, the Ukrainian troops suffered losses of personnel and equipment, which is quite difficult to compensate, even with the help of Western partners. All the more so when the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine delayed for so long the adoption of a new mobilization law, and some representatives of the US Republican Party are still blocking the allocation of aid to Ukraine.

Russia can really use this window of opportunity to try to seize Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa, and even Kyiv itself. Currently, sufficient number of Russian troops has not yet been deployed to carry out a large-scale offensive, and Russia’s threats to occupy the mentioned administrative and industrial centers of Ukraine are mostly components of information war. However, if a decision is made, the Russians can quite quickly deploy a sufficient number of additional troops to Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions of the Russian Federation, as well as to Belarus, to carry out a large-scale offensive.

In March-April 2024, in addition to hostilities directly on the front, Russia intensified missile attacks on key cities of Ukraine and its energy infrastructure using the accumulated stockpile of missiles and UAVs. Special attention during terrorist missile attacks is paid to Odesa and Kharkiv, which the Russians failed to occupy in 2022. Currently, the Russians are trying to make Kharkiv completely uninhabitable. And shelling of the Odesa port infrastructure is also carried out to block the operation of grain corridor from Ukraine. At the beginning of the full-scale war, the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation tried to do this, but the Ukrainians partially destroyed it, and the remnants were driven to Novorossiysk. After a certain pause, the ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet are again launching Kalibr missiles on Ukraine, but only sporadically and for terrorist purposes. The use of Onyx anti-ship missiles by the Russians has the same objective.

At the same time, Russia continues to build up its military potential, both to strengthen its troops at the front in Ukraine and for possible counteracting NATO (especially after the accession of Finland and Sweden). Today, such plans include: increasing the number of personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to 1.3 million people, restoring the Moscow and Leningrad Military Districts (in 2010 they were united into one — the Western Military District), formation of two new armies and an army corps, 14 divisions and 16 brigades, as well as the Dnieper River Flotilla.

These trends create the impression that Russia’s military superiority over Ukraine and NATO is total and irresistible. Especially with the suspension of US aid to Ukraine and the risks of its complete termination in case of election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States. Such moods are actively imposed by the Kremlin as part of disinformation campaign against Ukraine and our Western partners. Unfortunately, some Ukrainian and Western media are involved in spreading Russian disinformation. Some of such materials were most likely paid for by Russian special services, others try to interest readers with loud headlines, or simply do not realize what is really happening. Therefore, I propose to consider in more detail Russia’s real ability to carry out a new large-scale offensive against Ukraine.

True, the Russian Federation really accumulated a much larger military potential than it had before the full-scale war against Ukraine. But this mainly applies only to the recruitment of military personnel — a “cannon fodder”, which is expendable resource for Russia on the battlefield. The exact number of recruited to the Russian Armed Forces and other armed formations from among conscripts, contract servicemen and prisoners is unknown. Only some indirect estimates can be made.

As you know, at the beginning of the full-scale war, the total number of Russian troops that invaded Ukraine was 150,000–200,000. Since then, about 450,000 Russians have been killed (or seriously injured). Now their number at the front is up to 620 thousand. That is, about one million Russians were taken to the war. For Russia, this is not much. But the outflow of such a large number of people from the country’s economy, together with about two million Russians who left for abroad after the announcement of partial mobilization, caused extremely negative consequences for the Russian economy. According to official data alone, the labor shortage in the Russian Federation has increased to 5 million workers.

There is also a shortage of prisoners for recruitment into the Russian army. By 2023, there were about 420,000 prisoners in Russian correctional colonies. Since that time, various private military companies (such as Wagner), and then the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, recruited more than 150,000 people from the correctional colonies for the war in Ukraine. Subsequently, such recruiting began directly from pretrial detention centers and prisons. It is not known how many of them killed, but at least 50,000 people were injured, who were later amnestied. Therefore, the number of prisoners in Russian correctional colonies decreased sharply, as a result — they began to be closed. That is, this source of mobilization has already been exhausted.

Therefore, the Russian Federation is trying to mobilize residents of the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine (in Crimea and the Donbas such mobilization has long since become total), as well as people from Central Asian countries who have acquired Russian citizenship. However, in neither the former nor the latter cases, the Russian authorities achieved much success. Both Ukrainians and Tajiks, Kyrgyzs, Uzbeks and Kazakhs do not want to serve in the Russian army, let alone participate in the war against Ukraine.

Equally difficult are the problems with weapons and military equipment for Russian troops. For example, as early as 2022, Russia began to transfer its economy to military rails. However, the military industry of the Russian Federation is still not capable of compensating for losses on the battlefield and providing for the needs of the troops in armored vehicles, artillery and aviation, let alone warships. Everyone knows that the Russian military-industrial complex can produce new tanks in extremely limited quantities, in fact individually. Therefore, the needs of the troops are met exclusively through the restoration and modernization of old tanks from long-term storage bases. According to various estimates, the capabilities of the Russian defense industry allow sending no more than 300 restored tanks to the troops per year. The situation is a little better with armored combat vehicles. Russia claims the ability to produce up to 200 armored vehicles per year and modernize up to 1.5 thousand.

But in reality, this is just a small part of what the Russian troops really need. Suffice it just to compare: in two years of full-scale war, Russia lost 2,900 tanks and 5,500 armored vehicles. By 2022, more than 10,000 armored vehicles were stored in Russian warehouses. After the collapse of the USSR and the reduction of the Soviet Army, their number was about 16 thousand, but a significant part was sold or stolen. Therefore, today only about 20 % of armored vehicles remain at the storage bases, which can still be restored or modernized. Some experts believe that the figure mentioned is 40 %, but this was last year. Therefore, armored vehicles in Russia will be enough, at most, for a year of medium-intensity hostilities. Let’s remember how tank companies and battalions of Russians are destroyed by artillery and UAVs literally in a few minutes of battle. Therefore, the military command of the Russian Federation is forced to save tanks and armored vehicles, mostly resorting to “meat assaults”.

All that remains for the Russian Federation is to terrorize the Ukrainian population and try to destroy the economy of Ukraine with missile attacks. However, it lacks effort for this as well. Currently, the Russian military-industrial complex can produce to 230 missiles per month. Only 150 of them have a range of over 350 km. The same applies to operational-tactical UAVs of the “Shahed” type. The Russian Federation planned to produce more than 10,000 of them per year. It turned out — no more than three thousand. Most of them are shot down by the means of Ukrainian air defense, although they create tangible problems for the economy of Ukraine, primarily in our energy sector.

Aircrafts are practically not produced in Russia. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, only a few fighter-bombers have been sent to the front. The Russians are not able to replenish the losses. In Ukraine, Russian aircrafts have already been destroyed in the amount of ten aviation regiments. More than a dozen of Tu-22M3 and Tu-95M long-range strategic bombers were destroyed or damaged at the airfields. It would seem that there are quite a lot of them in the Russian Armed Forces — about 90 Tu-22M3s, and 60 Tu-95Ms. However, even before the full-scale war, the Russians had no more than 30 operational bombers of both types. And they can perform combat missions, at most, once or twice a month.

Two A-50 airborne early warning and control aircrafts and an Il-22 air command post aircraft were also destroyed. Another A-50 was damaged at an airfield in Belarus, and an Il-22 was shot down by the “Wagnerites” during their rebellion in June 2023. Up to four Il-76 military transport aircrafts were burnt at the air base near Pskov. Another one was shot down over the Belgorod region. There is no substitute for them either.

During the Second World War, the USSR, with the help of its Western allies, managed to establish the production of weapons and military equipment for the needs of the Soviet Army. Before Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2014, the United States and Europe also provided the Russian military industry with materials and components that it could not produce on its own. After the USA and the EU introduced sanctions against Russia, they were replaced by China, Turkey and a number of other countries that helped Russia circumvent Western sanctions.

Now the USA is blocking such shipments by introducing secondary sanctions against those foreign companies that cooperate with Russia. As expected, this led to completely predictable consequences. First, Armenia and Kazakhstan refused to supply sanctioned Western products to the Russian Federation. Then, Chinese and Turkish banks began to limit the financing of trade transactions with Russia related to sanctioned goods. Thus, since the beginning of 2024, the volume of exports from Turkey to Russia has fallen by 25 %, and for some items — by 50 %.

The lack of components, now already from China and Turkey, leads to the shutdown of enterprises of the Russian military industry, which lose the ability to produce even the minimum amount of military equipment needed by the troops. In addition, they are attacked by Ukrainian UAVs. The most sensitive blows to the military industry of Russia were inflicted on factories for the production of UAVs in Tatarstan, near Moscow and in Bryansk, an aircraft repair plant in Taganrog, and a ship repair plant in Sevastopol.

The above-mentioned facts significantly limit Russia’s ability to carry out a large-scale offensive against Ukraine, not to mention capturing Kharkiv, Kyiv or forcing the Dnipro River. Especially since we have finally started to build fortification lines. In addition, Russia is forced to form new military units in the North-Western and Northern directions for possible counteracting NATO. Therefore, Russia’s war against Ukraine will most likely remain positional in nature with minor advances of the parties in some areas of the front. At the same time, Russia will try to exhaust Ukraine with missile strikes on its economic, energy and transport infrastructure.

However, we have all the tools for an adequate response. More than 50,000 people have already left or been evacuated from Belgorod region alone, which destabilizes the situation in other regions of Russia where these refugees arrive. The same fate awaits Bryansk and Kursk regions of the Russian Federation, from where terrorist attacks on the border territory of Ukraine are also carried out.