1 Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment
Frederick W. Kagan, Kateryna Stepanenko, and George Barros
May 28, 7:30pm ET
Russian President Vladimir Putin is inflicting unspeakable suffering on Ukrainians and
demanding horrible sacrifices of his own people in an effort to seize a city that does not
merit the cost, even for him.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine that aimed to seize and occupy the entire country has
become a desperate and bloody offensive to capture a single city in the east while
defending important but limited gains in the south and east. Ukraine has twice forced Putin
to define down his military objectives. Ukraine defeated Russia in the Battle of Kyiv, forcing Putin to
reduce his subsequent military objectives to seizing Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine stopped him from achieving that aim as well, forcing him to focus on completing the seizure of
Luhansk Oblast alone. Putin is now hurling men and munitions at the last remaining major population
center in that oblast, Severodonetsk, as if taking it would win the war for the Kremlin. He is wrong.
When the Battle of Severodonetsk ends, regardless of which side holds the city, the
Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will likely have culminated,
giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push
Russian forces back.
Russian forces are assaulting Severdonetsk even though they have not yet encircled it.
They are making territorial gains and may succeed in taking the city and areas further west. The
Ukrainian military is facing the most serious challenge it has encountered since the isolation of the
Azovstal Plant in Mariupol and may well suffer a significant tactical defeat in the coming days if
Severodonetsk falls, although such an outcome is by no means certain, and the Russian attacks may
well stall again.
The Russians are paying a price for their current tactical success that is out of proportion
to any real operational or strategic benefit they can hope to receive. Severodonetsk itself is
important at this stage in the war primarily because it is the last significant population center in
Luhansk Oblast that the Russians do not control. Seizing it will let Moscow declare that it has secured
Luhansk Oblast fully but will give Russia no other significant military or economic benefit. This is
especially true because Russian forces are destroying the city as they assault it and will control its rubble
if they capture it. Taking Severodonetsk can open a Russian ground line of communication (GLOC) to
support operations to the west, but the Russians have failed to secure much more advantageous GLOCs
from Izyum partly because they have concentrated so much on Severodonetsk.
The Russians continue to make extremely limited progress in their efforts to gain control
of the unoccupied areas of Donetsk Oblast, meanwhile. Russian troops have struggled to
penetrate the pre-February 24 line of contact for weeks, while Russian offensive operations from Izyum
to the south remain largely stalled. The seizure of Severodonetsk could only assist in the conquest of
the rest of Donetsk Oblast if it gave the Russians momentum on which to build successive operations,
but the Battle of Severdonetsk will most likely preclude continued large-scale Russian offensive
operations.
