1 Institute for the Study of War & AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 1
Kateryna Stepanenko, Karolina Hird, Layne Philipson, George Barros, and Mason
Clark
September 1, 11pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is
updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his false framing of Russia’s unprovoked
invasion of Ukraine as a defensive operation to protect Russia on September 1. During a
meeting with schoolchildren in Kaliningrad, Putin stated that the purpose of the “special military
operation” is to eliminate the “anti-Russian enclave” that is forming in Ukraine and is an existential
threat to the Russian state.
Putin similarly invoked the concept of an “anti-Russia” in his February 24
speech declaring a “special operation” in Ukraine.
Putin’s reiteration of an “anti-Russian” entity that
must be defeated militarily to defend Russia reaffirms his maximalist intentions for Ukraine and is
likely intended to set the information conditions to call for further Russian efforts and force generation
going into the fall and winter of this year.
Russian milbloggers continued attempts to claim that Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the
south has already failed. Igor Girkin, a Russian nationalist and former commander of militants in
the 2014 fighting in Donbas, stated that Ukrainian forces are continuing to attack after the “failure of
the first attack”—falsely portraying ongoing Ukrainian operations as separate attacks after an initial
failure—and reiterated the common Russian narrative that what he claims are Ukraine’s “Western
handlers” pushed Ukraine to conduct a counteroffensive.
Girkin additionally stated that Ukraine’s
Western partners poorly planned for the counteroffensive, underestimated Russian capabilities and
assumed Russians are incompetent, and principally accounted for political—not military—
considerations.
One milblogger stated that Ukraine’s defeat in the south will be the strongest
psychological blow to Kyiv and that this failure will have a continued long-term psychological effect on
Ukraine’s morale.
The Russian milbloggers are increasingly centrally describing Ukrainian attacks as
tactless and “suicidal” rushes.
As ISW has reported, military operations on the scale of the ongoing Ukrainian
counteroffensive do not succeed or fail in a day or a week.
Ukrainians and the West should
not fall for Russian information operations portraying the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson
Oblast as having failed almost instantly or that depict Ukraine as a helpless puppet of Western masters
for launching it at this time.
The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin has extended
the deadline for Russian forces to capture Donetsk Oblast from August 31 to the still
highly unlikely target date of September 15, and Russian forces are conducting several
redeployments to meet this goal.
Deputy Chief of the Ukrainian Main Operational Department
Oleksiy Gromov stated that Russian forces are regrouping elements of the Central Military District
(CMD) operating in the Luhansk-Donetsk Oblast directions in an effort to increase the number of
troops west of Donetsk City.
Gromov added that Russian forces deployed two battalion tactical groups
(BTGs) in the direction of the western Zaporizhia Oblast frontline from Belgorod Oblast, which he noted
might support resumed Russian offensive operations in Donbas.
Gromov stated that Russian military
officials are continuing to form the 3rd Army Corps to deploy to Donetsk Oblast, also likely to resume
offensive operations in the Donetsk operational area.
Gromov noted that it is unclear if all mobilized
3rd Army Corps servicemen have undergone military training.
Russian forces also reportedly
introduced one BTG each to the Slovyansk and Mykolaiv directions.
RFE/RL’s footage also shows that
