OPINION: Coming up Sevens, Counterattack and Counter-Counterattack, Ukraine Ops Skillz, Lee vs. Longstreet

Loyal readers among you may recall that last week I flagged a Ukrainian government order to clear civilians out of border regions of Ukraine’s Glushkoho region (I think I referred to it as Glukhiv), as a real operational threat to Russian forces on the other side of the international frontier, in Kursk Oblast.

My argument was that even if the Ukrainians were just trying to make the Russians nervous about a potential SECOND Ukrainian push into Kursk Oblast, and the Ukrainians had no intention of backing it up with actual troops, Russian officers responsible for planning Kursk Oblast operations had no choice but to take the threat seriously.

This is what military people call “operations” The problem for the Russians was (and is) that by invading Kursk Oblast through the town of Sudzha, and pushing north about 20 kilometers, the Ukrainians had already effectively isolated a 15 km. by 30 km. chunk of Russia – and whatever force the Kremlin had inside of it – to the west.

The territory by Ukraine’s Glushkoho region, which currently is under Russian control, is in “operational terms” isolated, which in civilian speak means that the Russians own it but it’s a hard place to supply. This geographically is because a dogleg of an unfordable (we assume) river called the Seym that runs through the sector and, near the Glushkoho region, borders a chunk of Russian territory by the north and somewhat by the east. The Russo-Ukraine border also doglegs by the Glushkoho region and borders the same chunk of Russian territory by the west and south.

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The crux of the operational problem for the Russian war planners is that they probably don’t know what forces the Ukrainians have across the border in Ukraine, and now, they also know the Ukrainians already invaded Russia further to the east, near the town Sudzha. So geographically the Ukrainians are positioned to press three of the four sides of the box of territory inside Russia and, obviously, whatever Russian military force is in there.

The Russians also know, because it’s been happening for weeks, that along the north face of the box, the Ukrainians have been systematically blowing up bridges across the Seym River. These are both pre-war road bridges and pontoon bridges.

For ease of reference, I’m going to refer to this square of territory as the “Seym River Pocket.” To be clear, this is land where – at present – Russian military supply is difficult but one can’t say it is completely cut off.

One point to this review is that the situation over the past week, whatever it is, just got worse. Probably a good deal worse.

Seven days after people like me noted there might be a militarily significant reason the Ukrainians were clearing civilians out of the Glushkoho region’s border territories, I think it is safe to say that if any Russian operational officer had read my blog or otherwise found grounds to warn his bosses about that potential operational threat across the border, that Russian military professional would now be firmly in a position to tell the boss “I told you so.”

Of course, knowing armies in general and the Russian army in particular, I bet he has to keep his mouth shut about that and stick to the party line.

Events of this week have made it very clear the Russian top military leadership - well- or poorly informed about what the Ukrainians were up to across the border - has decided that Russia will hold the Seym River Pocket rather than evacuate it. The Russian military conclusion has been that Ukrainian force across the border cannot significantly affect further operations in Kursk Oblast.

Most probably, any Russian staff officer warning a potential Ukrainian threat contradicting that got orders to shut up because first that’s not the party line, and second once the Russian offensive against the Sudzha salient kills or destroys all the Ukrainians inside Russia, Ukrainians across the border would become irrelevant. But that’s just me speculating on staff officer logic and the Russian military mindset.

In any case, for me personally, I don’t have to worry about promotion or saluting smartly so my chain of command rates me well on my officer evaluation form. But at minimum, if a dumb and chronically insubordinate civilian journalist sitting in Kyiv was able to flag the threat to Russian operations ex Glushkoho region, professional officers responsible for defending the Russian Federation from an enemy main force invasion should have seen it coming – and they should have been ready.

Another conclusion I think we can draw from the last week of maneuvers and combat in Kursk Oblast, is that the evidence is really piling up that the Russians weren’t prepared to deal with a new incursion via Ukraine’s Glushkoho region. I’m very inclined to the view that we have just seen the Ukrainians’ old school out-general their Russian opponents.

I would of course immediately reiterate, as I have now for years, that this Ukrainian operational success - because that’s what it looks like to me - isn’t an event that will on its own end the war.

Military skill is great, but if Ukraine doesn’t get a whole lot more artillery shells and anti-aircraft missiles, by which I mean millions of the former and thousands of the latter, then Russia can still defeat Ukraine. Brilliant generalship will only get you so far, see the last section and Robert E. Lee.

But, at minimum, right now, I think anyone watching the battles swirling around Kursk Oblast and still thinking the Ukrainian generalship is incompetent and sloppy, has to be an idiot.

I won’t say those Russian generals and the hordes of colonels and majors in their entourages should just read this blog. That would be flippant.

However, any general benefits from reading military history, and I honestly think there are Russian senior officers out there whose professional development could stand a bit more familiarity with the key operational experience of that now-obscure Confederate officer, a man who argued with Robert E. Lee more than a little, a general named James Longstreet.

The Russian counterattack

One of the better, solid write-ups you can find here, it’s by a Hungarian army captain named Mark Takacs. Since he wrote this up before I got around to it, and I agree with most of his conclusions, he deserves credit where credit is due. The map I’ve stuck into this review about the Russian counterattack, I swiped from him:

What appears to have happened is that the Russian military, faced with the Ukrainian army occupying a chunk of Russia around the town of Sudzha, and another chunk of that territory nearly cut off from Russia because of the river system (this is the Seym River Pocket), the army decision was not to cut losses but to double down on holding ground and taking it back.

The solution the Russian generals came up with was to send an airborne infantry regiment and a marine infantry regiment, both reinforced, against the east face of the salient carved out by the Ukrainians around Sudzha. Inherently this was risky as the attack would be launched from logistically unstable territory, again, from INSIDE the Seym River Pocket.

But combat forces can carry a lot of ammunition and food aboard their vehicles and maybe the Ukrainians wouldn’t be expecting an attack from the west, which seems to have been the Russian calculation.

Takacs writes that the 51st Guards Airborne, along with elements of the 155th Marine Infantry and 200th Arctic Infantry, ran a “brilliantly conducted counterattack” launched during the night of Sept. 10. This mounted and in some places dismounted assault struck and forced back at least three Ukrainian formations, reportedly the 103rd Territorial Defense Brigade, the 501st Marine Brigade, and the 33rd Independent Assault Battalion.

Takacs writes the Russian units may have been somewhat understrength but that, in any case, air strikes preceded their advance, they maneuvered to bypass Ukrainian positions as needed and at least one location mounted a company-sized armored assault, which succeeded. It appears the 51st carried out the main effort.

Even at full strength, this means the Russian counterattack on paper was less than 10,000 men and 300 armored vehicles. Almost certainly it was one-half that and given losses (we know the 200th and the 155th have been chopped to bits repeatedly) probably one-third strength at best. Meaning, that when Ukraine invaded Russia, in September 2024, the best the Russian Federation could come up with to defend the holy soil of Mother Russia was a hodge-podge formation roughly the size of a single US Army line combat brigade.

Latvia alone almost certainly could put more troops into the field to defend its sovereign territory from a foreign invader, than Russia is doing right now.

It seems like the 103rd was spread thin and was short of heavy weapons, which is typical for a Territorial outfit. Takacs speculates that the territories lacked the force to defend a contiguous line and that they were deployed in strong points and at road intersections. He notes Russian claims that Russian electronic warfare operators located and targeted the 103rd’s drone units, which kept most Ukrainian attack drones on the ground and helped the Russian attack.

Takacs says, and I certainly agree with this, that it is absolutely sure that Ukrainian intelligence saw the Russians concentrating because they were observing the Seym River bridges over which the Russian paratroopers and marines had to travel, to attack Ukrainians further south.

The assembly areas of those units to the north of the Seym were very likely visible to Ukrainian intelligence and without question to US/NATO intelligence. As anyone who follows European geopolitics knows, the US bans Ukraine from using tactically effective long-range weapons to attack targets “deep in Russia.” Takacs very gently suggests US policy limiting deep Ukrainian strikes is not always overly effective.

Me, I say if you want (another) textbook example of how the US ban on deep Russia strikes juxtaposes with the US influences the way the Ukrainian army fights and suffers casualties, there you go. It is inconceivable the pre-assault assembly areas of the 51st Airborne and 200th Arctic weren’t visible down to a 20-digit grid [1-meter accuracy – ed.] to the US/NATO, and the Ukrainians likely had that data as well. But the assembly areas were “well inside Russia” and so illegal per US policy for the Ukrainians to attack with US weapons specifically designed to destroy targets like troops in an assembly area – which the Ukrainians have and have used successfully in the past.

One Russian video showed five to ten Territorials taken prisoner. A smaller Russian assault, results unknown, was launched to the north of this main attack, around the village of Olgovka.

The upshot of the Russian assault based on multiple sources seems to be that in about 72 hours of fighting this Marine/Airborne Infantry force pushed the Ukrainian back about 5-8 km eastward and liberated 50-100 sq. kilometers of Russia and ten villages.

Takacs points out, and I agree with this also, that there is some evidence the Russians in some places re-occupied places empty of Ukrainian forces, and that by about Sept. 12 the forward progress of the Russian “counterattack” seemed mostly to have stopped.

The Ukrainian counter-counterattack

What follows is based on open-source reports.

On Sept. 12 Ukrainian forces launched a standard conventional warfare counterattack from Glushkoho/Glushkovsky Raion into Russia. The Ukrainian attack went northward, into the effective rear area of the big Russian counterattack some 20 kilometers to the east.

In terms of timing, this attack kicked off almost simultaneously with the slow-down of the Russian offensive against the east face of the Sudzha salient.

As I will explain below, the evidence is overwhelming that the Ukrainian attack was pre-planned, they were expecting to execute a second assault into Russia. It is likely but less confirmable currently, that they attacked exactly where they thought they would, even months before but certainly weeks. I’ve included a nice ISW map that shows the relative locations of the Sudzha salient and the Glushkovsky incursion.

It’s hard to tell the size of the Ukrainian force making this attack but based on videos and Russian mil-bloggers, it’s not a raid. At this point, reports seem to hint toward a conventional force that could not be smaller than a battalion, that probably is at least a brigade, and potentially could be the spear tip of multiple brigades.

If I had to guess, using journo Spidey sense, it looks most to me like the Ukrainians hit Russian border troops who fought but were overpowered quickly.

There are unconfirmed reports that the Ukrainians have occupied the town of Tetkino, even further to the west at the far south-west corner of what I’m calling the Seym River Pocket. The general opinion seems to be the Ukrainians moved about three kilometers into Russia. Right now, I am reading that “heavy battles” are in progress for control of three villages north of the Glushkoho region. Based on the weight of reports, the Ukrainians are attacking, and the Russians are defending.

Russian mil-bloggers are already pointing (meaning probably the front-line troops have already complained about it to them) that Russian pontoon bridges across the Seym are only about 8 km. to the north of Tetkino. They already were in HIMARS range but, with the Ukrainians able to shove infantry into Tetkino and adjacent villages, the Ukrainians can, or soon may be able to, launch tactical drones in big numbers all the way to the Seym.

Were the Ukrainians able to get to a position like that, then, Ukrainian FPV drones would be in range of most if not all the pontoon bridges left across the Seym.

Do you want an example of how modern warfare has changed? This is one: one army is attempting to cut off portions of another army operationally, in a major conventional war, and the weapons system that will make or break that attempt isn’t loitering A-10s, or M109s firing FASCAM or loitering Apache gunships, or even precision-guided missiles.

It’s down to unshaven, skinny guys in vans crammed with drones that carry anti-tank grenades, and to whether they can manage to fly their drones over river crossings 10-20 kilometers away that one army critically needs to use. It is very, very hard to supply military forces across bridges under bombardment because you need to use soft-skinned trucks to carry ammunition, fuel, reinforcements and to evacuate casualties.

That’s not counting conventional artillery across the border in Ukraine which will become extremely dangerous, because its fires along the Seym can be adjusted not just by long-range, expensive, easy-to-shoot-down drones, but cheap, throwaway Mavic drones or something like them.

If the Ukrainians do have substantial infantry in Tetkino sufficient to allow drone teams to operate from there then, if I were a member of the 51st Airborne, 200th Arctic, or 155th Naval Infantry, I would be more than a little worried. If I knew the Ukrainians had big numbers of drone teams to deploy in the sector – and I don’t, it’s just logical the Ukrainians would try very hard to do it – then I would be seriously worried.

I am obliged to note that there is another view out there, that the Glushkoho attack has stalled and overall failed to stop Russian attacks against the Sudzha salient. Russian media is full of a Forbes article to that effect.

Not an accident

What we do know for sure is that all of this was part of a quite sophisticated Ukrainian plan. One way we know this is because the Ukrainians themselves, both milbloggers and the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine], were relatively quick to publish and confirm video geo-located to the Russian border by the Glushkoho region, showing Ukrainian combat engineers breaching Russian fortifications (dragon’s teeth and minefields, apparently) and Ukrainian armor tooling through the gap.

We can draw a lot of conclusions since we know the Ukrainians encountered a Russian barrier system along the Russian border, broke a hole in it, and motored their way past it.

• Breaching a fortification system is a complicated conventional warfare task that typically no army attempts without a lot of reconnaissance and practice runs.
• Meaning, it is pretty much guaranteed that the Ukrainians had been planning to do this for at least a month and probably more, and the units that did the breaching work must have had weeks to practice.
• It’s a military law that an army must, under all circumstances, cover its defensive obstacles with fire, and if it does not almost any obstacle no matter how big or fluffy pretty much becomes a mere speed bump. The Russian obstacles along Ukraine’s Glukhiv region weren’t covered by enough fire to stop the Ukrainians. It is extremely unlikely the Ukrainians got into that situation by accident.
• We don’t know how much the Russians fired, if at all. There is precedent and hard evidence - the invasion of Russia to the east around Sudzha a month ago, that Russian border watch units aren’t well-commanded, they are often spread thin over too much terrain, and they will crack if hit hard.
• But we can be sure that when the Ukrainian ground force reached the Russian frontier, whatever border troops the Russians had there didn’t stop the advance. Perhaps the Ukrainian military simply concentrated overwhelming firepower and blasted the Russians. It could be the Ukrainian military figured out the Russians had so effective troops in that area that their defenses amounted to wet paper. Either way, it was proof positive that the Ukrainian military could do the pre-battle legwork so that a mobile, attack operation once kicked off succeeds. Screen grab from one of several videos covering the obstacle breaching attached.
• We also know that this Ukrainian push isn’t happening in isolation, it’s directly tied to the Ukrainian incursion past Sudzha to the east. We know this because we have seen the Ukrainians systematically and relentlessly attacking Russian attempts to push force into the Seym River Pocket. This also couldn’t have happened without planning and staff work.
• Specifically, it meant keeping drones in the air in enemy air space to watch the river crossings, having HIMARS and/or M270 launchers on hand to fire precision-guided rockets at the crossing points, and organizing things like replacement aircraft and camouflaged ammo depots (and keeping them topped off) so that pressure on those river crossings could be constant.
• By conservative counts, strikes by those weapons have smashed the only three road bridges and five pontoon bridges used by the Russians to move forces into and out of the pocket. It’s one thing to plan an attack, and it’s another thing to plan to sustain an offensive and a long-range bombardment to so support that offensive, for weeks. In the video, the Ukrainians crush a target with two kinds of munitions, at night. For that to have happened, someone had to impose operational competence on units involved: Reconnaissance, communications, command, and logistics all had to do their jobs right, on time, more than a month into a real war conventional combat operation.

Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet and the Ukrainians

The military history buffs among you will already know this, please bear with me. If you want to skip this tangent, the short version is that it looks to me like the Ukrainian military leadership has come to the same conclusion that James Longstreet did by the second year of the US Civil War, to wit that the way to fight a modern war is on the operational offensive and the tactical defensive.

During the US Civil War - known to some in the last century as the War Between the States - the losers, the Confederate South, overall fielded somewhat better-motivated, better-commanded units, but were defeated by increasing skill on the part of Union/Northern forces, along with an overwhelming material advantage eventually brought to bear by the north.

The South’s most famous general, and by most measures one of the most skilled American commanders in a war, ever, was Robert E. Lee. He was a risk-taker, and highly aggressive, and his understanding of his opponent’s weaknesses and his own officers’ and soldiers’ ability to get results if given initiative, according to some historians (not all) bordered on military genius. He sought and frequently won field battles against heavy odds.

One of Lee’s most famous victories was at a place in Virginia called Fredericksburg where, in simple terms, Lee maneuvered his army into a strong defensive position and crushed Union attempts to attack it. They didn’t have to attack but Lee calculated political pressure and bad intelligence would lead the Northern generals into a mistake, and it did, and that’s why the Battle of Fredericksburg in a lot of ways was a precursor to World War One, troops out in the open getting wiped out by troops in trenches operating a newly introduced weapons system that made old-style assault tactics really, really bloody.

Lee’s most famous defeat was at Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania, where Lee calculated, incorrectly, that a Southern assault on a Northern position not fully entrenched and spread out along a long line of hills would succeed. It failed because Union artillery and infantry atop the hills fought a lot harder and had more firepower and ability to use it effectively than Lee expected.

Lee’s subordinate, and the Corps commander who led the main Southern assault on the second day of the battle, was James Longstreet. As pretty much any US Civil War enthusiast knows, Longstreet opposed attacking the Union army at Gettysburg. He wanted to set up a strong position somewhere and let the Union attack him. This point of view was influenced heavily by the fact that Longstreet was the field commander at Fredericksburg and saw exactly how powerful defensive firepower had become in modern war.

As far as Longstreet was concerned, the attack Lee ordered his Corps to execute at Gettysburg was ill-advised and driven by old-fashioned thinking. Longstreet told Lee so, but Lee insisted, and Longstreet was a good soldier and executed the orders.

On the second day of the Russian counter-offensive, no less than President Zelensky in his first comments on the Russian attacks said, in public, and it was repeated all over Ukrainian media, “Everything is going according to our plan,” and went on to say the task now was to destroy Russian forces. This was a bold statement to make by the President of a very small country whose army had just invaded no less than the Russian Federation, and now the Kremlin had unleashed no less than the Russian Army in counterattack.

Fast forward to now, and there is no hard, absolute proof, but the evidence that the Ukrainians planned for the Russians to counterattack against the Sudzha salient is nearly undeniable. The outcome is very much anyone’s guess, but the Ukrainian approach and the tactics, operational technique, and overall strategy they are using is easy to see, and by even the highest standards of generalship, it is the opposite of incompetent.

The scale and complexity of what the Ukrainians have pulled off so far, and their actions to present, look most like their strategy is to grab key terrain and stand overall on the defensive.

It would be interesting to know if Oleksandr Syrsky has ever heard of James Longstreet. It’s a long distance from the 1860s to the 2020s. Rifled muskets fired out of trenches are far from observation robot aircraft calling in precision-guided rocket strikes and FPV drones on an enemy. But the AFU strategy and the Longstreet strategy even with that space in time are arguably identical: Maneuver troops offensively to set them up to fight a defensive battle, and then take tactical advantage of modern weaponry to kill and wound the maximum number of enemy soldiers.

The long-term strategy is this: Kill enough of the enemy and the war will take care of itself.

One can debate whether that’s a suitable approach for Ukraine, Russia has a lot of firepower and of course, the Confederacy got a lot of people killed before it accepted the inevitable and surrendered.

But one thing is for sure: How the Ukrainians are fighting the Russians, is not accidental, it’s calculated.

Reprinted from Kyiv Post's Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak's blog. You can find the original here. 

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.