Below Hudson Senior Fellow Can Kasapoğlu offers a military situation report about the war in Ukraine.
1. Battlefield Update
Russia’s military efforts remain concentrated along the front lines in Ukraine. As winter deepens, Russian combat formations are likely to intensify their offensive operations, in part to grant Vladimir Putin a populist advantage before the Russian presidential elections scheduled for March 2024. In a recent address, Putin predictably stepped up his threatening rhetoric against the West, likely to boost his reputation as a strong leader and consolidate support at home.
Meanwhile, the Russian war machine continued its stubborn push around Bakhmut and Avdiivka this week. Ukrainian military officials reported that Russian forces intensified mechanized offensive operations near Avdiivka, leading to marginal gains and advances. Western Zaporizhzhia Oblast is also witnessing significant combat activity at the time of writing.
Last week, the main Russian assault, aimed at capturing the unoccupied parts of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts, centered on the eastern front. But Ukrainian forces are maintaining their strategic positions and are pushing back, especially in the southern sectors of western Zaporizhia Oblast and eastern Kherson Oblast. Evidence suggests that Russia is currently facing significant struggles fighting at night due to a dearth of necessary equipment, including night vision goggles (NVGs) and low-light cameras for drones. This deficit handicaps Russia’s artillery-spotting abilities
Open-source intelligence suggests that despite rumors of flagging Western willpower, the West is continuing its military and economic aid to Ukraine. Yet as the war continues, Russia is cementing ties with its allies in hopes that the Western alliance supporting Kyiv will fracture. Last week, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko met with China’s Xi Jinping to enhance bilateral cooperation. Given the two leaders’ October discussions on increasing military partnerships, ties between Minsk and Beijing will remain worth monitoring. With Iran and North Korea increasing their military assistance to Russia, Beijing’s further involvement would only complicate the situation.
2. Iran’s Shahed Drones Now Possess Stealth Capabilities
Russia’s winter offensive has seen the re-incorporation of cruise missiles in large numbers into Moscow’s mixed strike packages. Last week, Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers reportedly launched Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles at various cities in Ukraine, including Kyiv. According to Ukrainian official sources, the country’s air defense systems intercepted 14 of 19 missiles.
In the meantime, as winter settles in, Russia is increasing the lethality of its Shahed loitering munitions. Open-source intelligence suggests that the recent Shahed-136 drones Russia has used in Ukraine now feature a darker, carbon-coated composite. This repainting is likely a tactical modification designed to dodge Ukrainian air defenses and provide the drones with a reduced radar signature.
Stealth technology in aircraft involves reducing reflectivity on the composite and the design to minimize a craft’s radar signature. The Shahed family’s design philosophy, which integrates the body with the wing, provides a degree of low radar trace. But vulnerabilities in the munition’s original design, particularly in its vertical stabilizers, placed a ceiling on its stealth potential.
Covering the system with radar-absorbing materials (RAM) to diminish its radar footprint provides a cost-effective and efficient work-around that mitigates these flaws. The carbon-based stealth paint will likely make Shaheds more difficult to detect on Ukrainian radars, reducing the reaction time for Ukraine’s air defenses.
In addition to its new stealth design, another troublesome modification to the Shahed family is the loitering munition’s integration with mobile networks. As a previous edition of this report highlighted, Russia is now equipping Shaheds with power banks and SIM cards. These assets reportedly allow drone operators to connect to Ukraine’s mobile networks, adjust the drones’ flight trajectories, and track their locations in real time.
Reports by Ukrainian defense experts claim that the baseline’s new warhead contains standard explosives made with pre-formed tungsten fragments adapted from existing Russian missiles. Ukrainian sources claim that the warhead is tailored to cripple Ukraine in winter, as it is particularly effective against electrical infrastructure.
Russia’s increasing use of decoys to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses poses another significant risk. Open-source intelligence suggests that Russia is resorting to primitive, wooden drones featuring low-cost radar reflectors to distract Ukrainian air defenses in an effort to ensure that more Shahed drones hit their targets. While Ukraine’s interception rates have been adequate thus far, the kamikaze drones that have reached their target destinations have nonetheless caused significant damage. According to the Ukrainian Energy Ministry, for example, Russian attacks on December 3 caused power outages in over 400 settlements.
3. A New Report Highlights Differences between Kyiv and Washington
A recent investigation by the Washington Post shed light on Ukraine’s preparations for last spring’s counteroffensive. Making headlines in both American and Ukrainian circles, the piece highlighted a strategic divergence between Ukraine’s approach and Washington’s suggested roadmap to victory.
Washington’s plan for Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the report suggests, was for Ukraine’s 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade to deploy US-supplied Bradley Fighting Vehicles beginning on June 7. The initial 24-hour objective was to advance nine miles to Robotyne, aiming ultimately to recapture Melitopol and disrupt Russian supply routes.
Yet both that particular operation and the counteroffensive in general did not proceed as expected. On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces faced unanticipated and dense minefields that complicated their advance and led to significant losses. In the meantime, Russian forces, holding higher ground, effectively used anti-tank missiles and air support to inflict substantial damage on Ukrainian troops. The newly formed Ukrainian combat formations faced severe setbacks, prompting a reassessment of their strategy by the high command.
Therefore, despite months of co-planning with US officials, Ukraine’s counteroffensive stalled, making limited progress and highlighting reported disagreements between Ukrainian and US military elites. High-ranking Ukrainian military officials, in a series of interviews, attributed their limited territorial gains to a lack of combat experience among troops. Ukraine’s failure to achieve breakthroughs in its counteroffensive sowed frustrations and strategic differences between US and Ukrainian officials.
These divergences deepened further as Kyiv and Washington attempted to plot a strategy for attacking layered Russian defenses. This process revealed differing ideas about economy of force and the concentration of combat formations. Ukraine’s Western partners, in accordance with the NATO way of warfare, preferred a thorough concentration of offensive forces at the weakest and the narrowest point of the Russian defensive lines, while the Ukrainian General Staff preferred to disperse Russian logistics by extending the assault to multiple major axes. This key disagreement between Washington and Kyiv highlights the importance of managing the battlefield geometry in combat operations.