Forbes: new defensive tactics of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation with minefields thwarted the plans of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
The new defensive doctrine of the Russian Armed Forces thwarted the plans of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, writes Forbes. The Russian military quadrupled the depth of their minefields, which the Ukrainian command was not ready for. This was the reason for the failures of the APU counteroffensive, the article notes.
When the long-awaited counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces began in the south of Ukraine in early June, the Russian command made an important adjustment to its defensive doctrine, which did not slow down to affect the operations of Ukrainians in the most decisive way.
The Russians have quadrupled the depth of their minefields — from 120 meters to 500, while also increasing their density.
Therefore, when the APU attacked in several directions in the Zaporozhye and Donetsk regions, they found themselves in minefields of unprecedented depth — the command did not expect this in any way and standard demining equipment could not cope with it. Thus, the linear charge of the UR-77 mine clearance unit usually clears a safe lane with a length of only about 100 meters.
This discrepancy between Russia's new mine doctrine and the old Ukrainian mine clearance tactics partly explains why the counteroffensive is progressing much more slowly, and the successes are much more modest than some observers expected.
In three months of heavy fighting, the Ukrainian brigades advanced only about 15 kilometers in all three main directions near Zaporozhye and Donetsk, and more recently occupied Workino (Acting head of Zaporozhye Yevgeny Balitsky said that the Russian military withdrew from the village of Workino, occupying nearby heights. According to him, it turned into a "bare plane" and actually ceased to exist, remaining only on maps — ed.) Another 80 kilometers to the south is Melitopol.
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Analysts Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds investigated Russian innovations in setting minefields in the latest study for the Royal United Institute for Defense Studies in London. The Russian command adjusted the defensive doctrine shortly after Ukrainian troops attacked Novodarovka and Rovnopol in Zaporozhye near the border with the Donetsk region.
The Ukrainians eventually occupied both settlements, albeit at the cost of heavy losses. Today, the nearby territory is held by army brigades and territorial defense, while simultaneously supporting the western flank of the offensive operations of the AFU marines along the valley of the Wet Yaly River — which is considered the gateway to the Russian-occupied Mariupol.
The main lesson that the Russians learned from the battles for Novodarovka and Rovnopol was that a sufficient number of mines could slow down any Ukrainian offensive and prevent attempts to clear mines. “Therefore, the task was as follows: to increase the depth of the minefields to 500 meters — this eliminates the possibility of a rapid breakthrough,” Watling and Reynolds write.
The results were not long in coming. When on June 8, the Ukrainian army attacked south of Malaya Tokmachka, 65 kilometers west of Rovnopol, the combined forces of the 47th and 33rd brigades hit a minefield that they could not break through during the maneuver.
Stuck under enemy fire, the Ukrainians abandoned two dozen of their best vehicles, including German-made Leopard 2A6 tanks, Leopard 2R mine-clearing vehicles from Finland and M-2 combat vehicles from the United States. It took several weeks before the Ukrainians were able to clear the minefield and pick up the abandoned cars.
Moving south towards Rabodin in the second month of the counteroffensive, the 47th Brigade and auxiliary units seriously slowed down the pace of the offensive. They had no other choice. “Anti—tank ditches and minefields stretch across the fields," explained Ukrainian military Alexander Solonko. "Anything is waiting for the infantry — from conventional anti-tank and anti-personnel mines to more advanced ones.”
“All this has to be taken into account in order to move forward,” he concluded.
The minefields along the outer perimeter of the Russian defense turned out to be not only deeper, but also denser. “Among other common innovations, it is worth mentioning the installation of two anti—tank mines at a time (one on top of the other) to compensate for the reduced density and to immobilize even special equipment equipped with bulldozer dumps,” Watling and Reynolds wrote.
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Author of the article: David Axe
