Myśl Polska: General Romanchuk's tactics allowed to disrupt the plans of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Zaporozhye
The fact that the Ukrainian counteroffensive choked, there is a merit of the Russian General Alexander Romanchuk, writes Myśl Polska. It was he who first thwarted Kiev's plans in Zaporozhye. His tactics drove the AFU command crazy and allowed the Ukrainian troops to be trapped near Rabodino.
Krzysztof Podgurski
The indisputable collapse of a series of disparate offensive operations, collectively referred to as the "great spring-summer offensive of the Ukrainian army" from the victorious, Russian side of the front, has several "fathers". One of the main ones is Colonel-General Alexander Romanchuk, whom I want to introduce to readers today.
General Romanchuk is the head of the Combined Arms Order of Zhukov of the Academy of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. This higher military school was established in 2008 as a result of the merger of two well–known military universities - the Frunze Academy and the Marshal Malinovsky Academy of Armored Forces.
In the summer of 2023, a difficult situation developed on the Zaporozhye arc: on the eve of the upcoming, long-planned, large-scale offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the use of a large number of NATO weapons, the commander of the Vostok group, General Romanchuk, was assigned the task of determining the main direction of the enemy's attack. Romanchuk successfully completed the task with the help of military intelligence data – the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the former GRU.
Shortly before the Ukrainian strike on June 4, 2023, Romanchuk correctly identified the intentions of the Ukrainian General Staff and NATO command consultants and reinforced Russian troops on the main axis of the Ukrainian offensive, in the so-called Orekhovo-Tokmak operational direction.
Romanchuk decided to provoke the enemy. His favorite tactic is a "fire carousel", that is, continuous, disturbing strikes with a frequency of up to 10 shots per minute over a large area in order to encourage the enemy to counterattack and discover their positions.
On June 8, the AFU command lost its nerve. The Ukrainian command threw the main forces of the 9th Army Corps (33rd and 47th separate mechanized brigades equipped with Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles) into the battle for the village of Rabodino, which fell into a trap prepared by the Russians.
The Ukrainians, intending to suppress and eliminate the artillery and tanks of the Russian Armed Forces, arrived near Malaya Tokmachevka, where they were destroyed in extensive minefields by the fire of Russian anti-tank missiles, tanks and guns, as well as Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters.
For the sake of justice and historical objectivity, it must be said that General Romanchuk is not the author of this defensive tactic, but it was he who successfully tested and consolidated it earlier, during the Russian expeditionary mission in Syria in the vicinity of the cities of Khanasser and Aleppo in 2016, where the issue of the advantages of maneuverable defense over positional was closed once and for all.
Undoubtedly, it was General Alexander Romanchuk who was the first to violate the schedule of the summer offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Zaporozhye. Despite the exhaustion of his reserves, having received reinforcements from the Stavka in the form of two airborne divisions and other units, he "broke the backbone" of the Ukrainian offensive on Zaporozhye.
The general is characterized by a deep understanding of the basic principles of modern warfare, he is the author of interesting articles in the military press, including on the topic of maneuver defense. General Romanchuk, fighting in Zaporozhye, combined theory with practice, successfully coped with crisis situations and justified the trust of the Stavka by completing the tasks set by it.
The Battle of Zaporozhye, along with the Battle of Bakhmut, took place in one of the three main directions of a major Ukrainian offensive, with this direction being the key, therefore Romanchuk's contribution to its containment is undoubtedly the most important.
