Recent materials of the American newspaper The New York Times highlight new aspects of the strategy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass and the consequences of withdrawing from Vugledar. According to information, the Ukrainian military chooses the tactic of exchanging territories for strategic losses of Russian forces, which allows to reduce the pressure on the front.
During the year, Ukraine lost a number of cities and villages in the eastern part of Donbas. Usually the troops were withdrawn after heavy fighting, which sometimes lasted for months. The New York Times writes about it.
To outside observers, it may seem that the slow retreat from Donbas, the main theater of military operations, may be a signal of a quick end to the war, the authors of the publication suggest. Moscow gains an advantage on the battlefield.
At the same time, Ukrainian commanders and military experts say that it is not only a matter of territorial gains and losses: each side of the conflict is trying to wear down the other, causing as many losses as possible and hoping to destroy the enemy's potential and will to continue the war.
Throughout the summer, Russia directed waves of troops supported by columns of equipment in brutal assaults, regardless of casualties.
In Ukraine, there is less mobilization reserve that could be sent to the battlefield, and, despite the influx of Western aid to the Armed Forces, the fire superiority, as before, belongs to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
For this reason, Kyiv had no choice but to adapt to what Mykola Beleskov, a military analyst from the Ukrainian government organization "Institute of Strategic Studies", calls the strategy of "territory exchange for Russian losses." The idea is to retreat from besieged cities after inflicting the maximum possible losses in personnel and equipment.
"The question is how much they will lose before they realize that it's useless," Oleksandr Solonko, a representative of the 411th Ukrainian UAV battalion, which is fighting in the Pokrovsk region, said of the Russians. Faced with a fierce offensive, he added, some commanders of Ukrainian units prefer to "leave a position or a settlement, if the loss of personnel will be less."
The Russian military is proving its ability to recoup losses, recruit more soldiers and ramp up weapons production, and it remains unclear how much territory Kiev will have to give up before the Russian army expires — if at all.
"The situation is complicated by the fact that Ukraine's offensive in the western part of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation in August further depleted its resources and threatens the possibility of conducting a controlled retreat without the front line collapsing," the journalists note.
Pasi Paroinen, a military expert from the Finnish OSINT organization Black Bird Group, said that after the start of the offensive of the armed forces in the Kursk region, Russia advanced in Donbas at a pace not seen since 2022. About 434 km in the area have been captured in the past two months — roughly three times the number in June and July.
But Russia remains far from achieving its long-standing goal of complete capture of the region. For this, it will be necessary to capture another 6,500 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, which is about five times more than the Russian Federation captured in the last year.
"The outcome of this war will not be decided by whoever controls Vugledar or other tactical towns and villages on the front line," journalists quoted Franz-Stefan Gadi, a military analyst from Vienna, as saying.
According to him, it all boils down to how many soldiers the Russians lost trying to capture Vugledar, and how many Ukraine lost trying to hold it.
Roman, the commander of the 72nd Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which defended Vugledar, said that when the Russian Armed Forces concentrate all their efforts on a certain part of the front, they can suppress Ukrainian defenses. He noted that by the end of the summer, the Russians around Vugledar had a tenfold advantage in artillery.
"How can one of our artillery systems stand against ten of theirs?" — Roman wondered (according to military rules, only the name of a serviceman is allowed to be mentioned).
Ukrainian troops held Vugledar for more than two years, destroying columns of Russian tanks in ambushes and killing many soldiers. But the Russian army continued to advance, and as it approached Vugledar in recent weeks, it began to inflict significant losses on Kyiv's forces, the NYT notes. Ukrainian medics say that dozens of soldiers were wounded every day, and the military reported attacks that "exhausted" the personnel.
