1 Institute for the Study of War and The Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 3
Mason Clark, George Barros, and Kateryna Stepanenko
March 3, 4:00 pm EST
The Russian military has continued its unsuccessful attempts to encircle Kyiv and
capture Kharkiv. The Russians continued to attack piecemeal, committing a few
battalion tactical groups at a time rather than concentrating overwhelming force to
achieve decisive effects. Russian commanders appear to prefer opening up new lines of advance for
regiment-sized operations but have been unable to achieve meaningful synergies between efforts along
different axes toward the same objectives. They have also continued conducting operations in southern
Ukraine along three diverging axes rather than concentrating on one or attempting mutually supporting
efforts. These failures of basic operational art—long a strong suit of the Soviet military and heavily
studied at Russian military academies—remain inexplicable as does the Russian military’s failure to
gain air superiority or at least to ground the Ukrainian Air Force. The Russian conventional military
continues to underperform badly, although it may still wear down and defeat the conventional
Ukrainian military by sheer force of numbers and brutality. Initial indications that Russia is mobilizing
reinforcements from as far away as the Pacific Ocean are concerning in this respect. Those indications
also suggest, however, that the Russian General Staff has concluded that the forces it initially
concentrated for the invasion of Ukraine will be insufficient to achieve Moscow’s military objectives.
Operations to envelop Kyiv remain Russia’s main effort. Russian troops are also continuing three
supporting efforts, one to seize Kharkiv, one to take Mariupol and secure the “land bridge” connecting
Rostov-on-Don to Crimea, and one to secure Kherson and set conditions for a drive west toward
Mykolayiv and Odesa.
The Russian attack on Kyiv likely consists of a main effort aimed at enveloping and ultimately encircling
the city from the west and a supporting effort along the axes from Chernihiv and Sumy to encircle it
from the east.
Russian forces in the south resumed offensive operations toward Mykolayiv on March 3 after securing
Kherson on March 2, but do not appear to pose an imminent danger to Odesa. Russian forces likely
seek to force Mariupol to capitulate by destroying critical civilian infrastructure and killing civilians to
create a humanitarian catastrophe—an approach Russian forces have repeatedly taken in Syria.
Key Takeaways
• Russian forces opened a new line of advance from Belarus south toward Zhytomyr
Oblast, west of Kyiv, as Russian forces attempting to encircle Kyiv from the
northwest were driven further west by determined Ukrainian resistance and
counterattacks. Russian forces will struggle to complete an encirclement of Kyiv at
all if they have to advance along ring roads as far from the city center as those they
are now using.
• Russian forces on the east bank of the Dnipro River remain unable to secure the
important town of Chernihiv or to break through Ukrainian defenses in the
northeastern outskirts of Kyiv.
• Russian ground forces have remained relatively static near Kharkiv as Russian
artillery, air, and missile bombardments wreak devastation in the city. The
Ukrainian military indicates that a regiment-sized Russian formation will try to
envelop or bypass Kharkiv in the coming days. Similar Russian attempts at such
