1 Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment,
August 4
Kateryna Stepanenko, Layne Phillipson, Karolina Hird, Angela Howard, and
Frederick W. Kagan
August 4, 9 pm 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.
Ukraine is likely seizing the strategic initiative and forcing Russia to reallocate
forces and reprioritize efforts in response to Ukrainian counteroffensive
operations. Russian forces are increasingly transferring personnel and equipment to
Kherson and western Zaporizhia Oblasts at the expense of their efforts to seize Slovyansk
and Siversk, which they appear to have abandoned. Russian forces are also redeploying
military equipment – artillery and aviation in particular – to Crimea from elsewhere in
Ukraine. Russian forces have previously withdrawn from or suspended offensive operations
on Kharkiv City and the southern axis to prioritize capturing Luhansk Oblast, but they did
so on their own initiative based on the changing priorities of their commanders. Russian
forces in this case appear to be responding to the Ukrainian counteroffensive threat in
Kherson Oblast rather than deliberately choosing objectives on which to concentrate their
efforts. Even after Ukrainian forces defeated the Russian attempt to seize Kyiv early in the
war, the Russians were able to choose freely to concentrate their operations in the east.
Ukraine’s preparations for the counteroffensive in Kherson and the initial operations in
that counteroffensive combined with the dramatic weakening of Russian forces generally
appear to be allowing Ukraine to begin actively shaping the course of the war for the first
time.
The seriousness of the dilemma facing the Russian high command likely
depends on Ukraine’s ability to sustain significant counteroffensive
operations on multiple axes simultaneously. If Ukraine is able to press hard around
Izyum as it continues rolling into the counteroffensive in Kherson, then Russian forces will
begin confronting very difficult choices. They will likely need to decide either to abandon
their westward positions around Izyum in favor of defending their ground lines of
communications (GLOCs) further north and east or to commit more personnel and
equipment to try to hold the current front line. Such forces would have to come from
another axis, however, putting other Russian gains at risk.
Russian forces are likely operating in five to seven strike groups of unclear size
around Bakhmut, based on the Ukrainian General Staff descriptions of
Russian assaults in the area. Recent Ukrainian General Staff reports have most
frequently identified Vershyna, Soledar, Kodema, Bakhmut, and Yakovlvka as the repeated
targets of localized concentrated Russian efforts around Bakhmut.
