ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 10, 2024

Key Takeaways from the ISW:

• Ukrainian First Deputy Defense Minister Lieutenant General Ivan Havrylyuk stressed that robust Western security assistance will be crucial for Ukraine's ability to contest and seize the battlefield initiative. Havrylyuk also challenged the notion that Russian forces will be able to indefinitely sustain the consistent gradual creeping advances that support Russian President Vladimir Putin's theory of victory for winning a war of attrition in Ukraine.
• Ukrainian forces are already attempting to contest the battlefield initiative in limited and localized counterattacks at the tactical level — emphasizing that the current state of grinding positional warfare along the frontline is not an indefinitely stable one.
• Havrylyuk assessed that Russia will face medium- to long-term economic and equipment challenges that will impede the Russian military's ability to indefinitely retain the theater-wide initiative, sustain consistent offensive pressure that results in gradual creeping advances, and win a war of attrition.
• Putin's articulated theory of a slow, grinding victory in Ukraine is notably premised on accepting continuously high casualty rates, as exemplified by reported Russian losses accrued during two recent offensive efforts.
• NATO allies reaffirmed their commitment to supporting Ukraine and announced new security assistance packages for the Ukrainian war effort at the NATO summit in Washington, DC on July 9 and 10.
• Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev reaffirmed that Russia would not accept or uphold any negotiated peace settlements with Kyiv short of Ukrainian capitulation, the destruction of the entire Ukrainian state, and the full occupation of Ukraine.
• Servicemembers of a Russian motorized rifle regiment that was previously implicated in the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) in late May 2024 reportedly executed two Ukrainian POWs in the same area in western Zaporizhia Oblast in June 2024.
• Select US military bases in Europe have instituted increased alert levels in response to intensified Russian sabotage and hybrid operations against NATO allies over the past several months.
• Russian forces recently advanced in Vovchansk, near Kreminna, and near Toretsk.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed on July 10 that the Russian military trained the first batch of Moscow Military District (MMD) counter-drone instructors at the Alabino training ground in Moscow Oblast.

Authors: Grace Mappes, Angelica Evans, Christina Harward, Riley Bailey, and Frederick W. Kagan.

See the original here.