CSIS
Center for Strategic and International Studies


Ukraine’s Offensive Operations: Shifting the Offense-Defense Balance
Figure 7: Multilayered Defenses North of Mykhailivka, Ukraine
Photo: Copyright © 2023 by Planet


Table of Contents
Introduction
The Offense-Defense Balance
How Are Russia’s Defenses Organized?
What Obstacles Could a Ukrainian Offensive Face?
Lessons for Ukraine: Shifting the Advantage to the Offense
Next Steps:
Chapter Four- Shifting the Advantage to the Offense
While Russia’s defensive fortifications are impressive in their size and scale—at least in some respects—they are likely insufficient to prevent Ukrainian forces from breaking through Russian lines and retaking territory illegally seized by Russia. In short, Russian defensive actions do not guarantee that the defense has the advantage. Several steps could shift the advantage to the offense.

Weakness of Defensive Forces

Fortifications are only as good as the forces defending them. In the 1930s, France constructed the Maginot Line, which included concrete fortifications, machine guns, anti-tank emplacements, and even underground railways. The Maginot Line had state-of-the-art living conditions for specialist units of infantry, artillery, and engineers—even including air conditioning. But the French military was relatively weak. It had a debilitated air force and a large army that was unprepared for offensive operations, though it had a reasonably strong navy.[19] Germany exploited these French weaknesses during its invasion of France in 1940.

The Russian military—especially the army—has been battered over the past year. Following its February 2022 invasion, Russia failed to achieve many of its objectives in Ukraine because of poor combined arms operations; ineffective joint operations, such as close air support to Russian ground forces; problematic intelligence, including faulty Federal Security Service planning and analysis; significant logistical problems; and low morale. These factors were vital for Ukraine’s lightning offensive in Kharkiv Oblast in 2022, where Ukrainian forces achieved operational surprise, broke through Russian lines, and captured a key logistical hub to trigger a collapse among Russian ground forces and the liberation of more than 12,000 square kilometers of territory.[20]

The deployment of Wagner Group private military contractors to the front lines in eastern Ukraine in 2023 has further highlighted the poor performance of Russian ground forces, as well as the political risks of a full-scale Russian mobilization. Consequently, a partially bruised and demoralized Russian army sits behind the extensive fortifications, which may present opportunities for Ukraine.

Furthermore, the Russian military likely does not have enough high-quality forces to defend all parts of the line. The 70 combat regiments and brigades Russia has in Ukraine will likely not be sufficient to form a large mobile reserve, even if Russia commands enough soldiers to adequately staff its fortifications.[21] The lack of a strong mobile reserve means that Russia will be hard-pressed to surge forces to fill gaps in its lines, station forces in second-echelon defensive positions, and conduct counterattacks according to its defensive doctrine.[22]

Expansive Front Line

Ukraine can use the extensive front line to its advantage. Territory can be important, particularly the size of a front and the territory an attacker is attempting to seize. While the Maginot Line in France covered approximately 450 kilometers, it did not cover every inch of French territory or key parts of France’s border with Belgium and Luxembourg. Germany invaded the Netherlands and Belgium in May 1940. Later that month, German forces penetrated the Maginot Line at a weak part along the Belgian frontier, where France’s defenses had few forces that were of relatively low quality. On May 15, 1940, Heinz Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps broke through the French line and headed west into open country, sealing France’s fate.[23]

One historical lesson for Ukraine and its Western supporters is to continue assessing weak spots in the Russian lines where there are opportunities for penetration, where Russian defenses are poorly constructed or of insufficient depth, and where Russian forces are understaffed or of particularly poor quality.[24] Ukrainian forces know this terrain well, since it is land many of their soldiers grew up on.


The formidable appearance of Russia’s defensive fortifications may also obscure as much as it reveals. Russia has used contractors to dig trenches, many of whom likely lack significant military engineering experience.[25] There have also been reports of Russian mistreatment of these contractors.[26] Lack of expertise or low morale could lead to the fortifications being less effective than they appear in satellite imagery.

Variation in the quality of Russia’s dragon’s teeth is notable, despite the media attention they have generated as a symbol of Russia’s defenses in Ukraine. These obstacles are most effective when connected to one another by concrete linkages underground and partially buried. Some images appear to show dragon’s teeth without underground connections. Other images appear to show dragon’s teeth sitting on top of the earth rather than partially under it. One image posted on several Russian websites also appears to show that some of the dragon’s teeth used by Russia are not entirely made of concrete and are already suffering environmental damage in Ukraine.[27] It is impossible to draw sweeping conclusions about the overall quality of Russia’s defenses from these images, but they are enough to suggest that there are variations in the quality of defenses across the line that can be exploited by Ukraine with good intelligence.

The Ukrainian front covers roughly 1,000 kilometers—more than double the size of the Maginot Line—as it zigzags from the grassy slopes of the northeast, hugs the Dnipro River, and extends to the Black Sea.[28] This large front is likely a major vulnerability for the Russians. As one assessment of the offense-defense balance concludes, “If the attacker is faced with a defender who is protecting a narrow front, the probability that the blitzkrieg will succeed is much less than if the attacker can strike at a defender deployed across a broad front.”[29] This challenge is often called the force-to-space ratio.[30] Russia likely lacks the force-to-space ratio to defend such an expansive territory.

The May 2023 clashes between Russian security forces and fighters in Russia’s Belgorod Oblast, near the Ukrainian border, likely worsened Russia’s deployment problems by forcing the Russian military to move troops to its internationally recognized border with Ukraine.[31] These types of attacks could increase Russia’s force-to-space ratio problems by thinning out its defensive positions in some areas.

Technology and Military Innovation

Technology can impact the offense-defense balance. The offense generally requires mobility.[32] The attacker must first achieve a breakthrough by defeating or destroying a section of the defender’s front, and then it must exploit this breakthrough to advance into the defender’s rear.[33] As noted earlier in this analysis, advances in military mobility have sometimes shifted the balance in favor of the offense.[34]

The Ukrainian military has thus far been innovative in its development and use of technology.[35] Military innovation involves a change in the conduct of warfare intended to improve the ability of a military to generate combat power. A change in the conduct of warfare does not necessarily require a change in military doctrine, but it does involve change at the operational level of war.[36]

The challenge for Ukraine will be to innovatively utilize technology and adapt its conduct of warfare in ways that maximize mobility to exploit Russian vulnerabilities. For example, Ukrainian forces could use a combination of advanced technology and UASs or loitering munitions—including those supplied by the West—to conduct UAS “swarms” against Russian defensive positions. As interviews with Ukrainian military officials indicate, Ukraine is investing significant time and resources into innovations such as swarming tactics designed to maximize target saturation and overwhelm Russian defenses.[39] UASs could also be employed to probe for gaps in Russian lines, locate Russian reserves or artillery systems, or provide artillery-like effects in support of high-mobility units exploiting a breakthrough.

An important technological obstacle to Ukraine’s efforts is Russia’s electronic warfare capabilities. Russia has effectively used electronic warfare to combat Ukrainian UASs.[40] The ability of the Ukrainian military to find and destroy Russian electronic warfare systems, which are now organic to units at multiple levels, will be a key enabler of offensive success.

Strategy, Force Employment, Will to Fight, and Other Intangibles

Attackers can make up for a tough defense with clever strategies, effective force employment, leadership, nationalism, will to fight, combat motivation, morale, and other factors. Force employment, for example, includes how militaries use force on the battlefield—a combination of cover, concealment, dispersion, suppression, small-unit independent maneuver, and combined arms operations.[41] Some also call this “military skill,” which describes a country’s ability to effectively employ military technology, including designing military strategy and assessing adversaries’ forces and strategy.[42]

Will to fight and nationalism can influence the offense-defense balance, and neither have been in short supply among Ukrainians. To the extent that soldiers are motivated by nationalism, they frequently become willing to fight harder for territory that they understand to be part of their national homeland.[43] The Ukrainian military and civilians have shown an extraordinary will to fight since the start of the war.

The reverse is also true: soldiers who are not imbued with a nationalist consciousness may be less willing to fight for territory. Confederate soldiers deserted the Army of Northern Virginia at the Potomac in 1862 because “they felt that they were fighting to defend Virginia’s soil, not to invade the North.”[44] In addition, Hitler was unwilling to risk imposing full war mobilization on Germany until the failure of Operation Barbarossa opened the possibility that Germany’s own homeland security might be threatened.[45]

Despite President Vladimir Putin’s insistence that Ukraine is part of the Russian empire, it is unclear how much this argument has convinced Russian soldiers and contractors. Recent research on absent without leave (AWOL) cases in Russian military courts suggests that an increasing number of Russian military personnel are not convinced. AWOL cases in the first four months of 2023 already surpassed the total number of cases in 2022.[46] It is impossible to say definitively that the rise indicates that Russians in Ukraine have a low will to fight, but it is hardly an indicator of a strongly motivated military.

A clever strategy is also important. Between 1919 and 1945, an evolving offensive doctrine (blitzkrieg) and motorized armor shifted the advantage to the offense and overrode machine guns, trenches, railroads, and barbed wire.[47] As B.H. Liddell Hart explained in analyzing German General Heinz Guderian’s blitzkrieg into France in May 1940:

"It is clear that Guderian and his tankmen pulled the German Army along after them, and thereby produced the most sweeping victory in modern history.
The issue turned on the time factor at stage after stage. French countermovements were repeatedly thrown out of gear because their timing was too slow to catch up with changing situations, and that was due to the fact that the German van kept on moving faster than the German high command had contemplated."

In the 1967 Six Day War, Israel Defense Forces heavily relied on armor and air forces to destroy significant components of the Egyptian and Syrian air forces. Within three days, the Israelis captured the Gaza Strip and all of the Sinai Peninsula up to the east bank of the Suez Canal. Israeli forces then drove Jordanian troops out of East Jerusalem and most of the West Bank and seized the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel developed an effective blitzkrieg strategy that relied on armor to inflict a decisive defeat against its Arab adversaries. As Moshe Dayan explained to Israel’s Ministerial Defense Committee before the war, “If we opened the attack and effected an armored breakthrough into Sinai, the enemy would be forced to fight according to the moves we made.”[49

For Ukraine today, maneuver warfare demands a flexible command structure with soldiers capable of exercising initiative in combat situations. It is not based on a rigid plan that commanders need to follow closely.[50] Ukrainian soldiers at the platoon, company, and battalion levels have already shown a proclivity to taking the initiative. In World War II, the German military developed a doctrine of Auftragstaktik, which dictated that commanders be given a battlefield objective rather than lengthy orders that micromanaged how they do it.[51] This doctrine helped enable implementation of blitzkrieg, which requires lower-level commanders to act quickly and decisively in order to exploit breakthroughs and maintain the momentum required to avoid enemy counterattack.

A clever Ukrainian strategy that penetrates Russian lines could have significant follow-on effects. For example, a major breakthrough in Zaporizhzhia could severely threaten the viability of Russia’s land bridge linking Russia’s Rostov region with Crimea. Even a breakthrough in the less-densely defended Luhansk Oblast could provide significant benefits by proving that Western support for Ukraine continues to bear fruit, removing Russian units from the battlefield, and sowing further dissent within Russia itself.
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