1 Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 4, 2023
Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Angela Howard, and Frederick W. Kagan
February 4, 7:15 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.
Russian decisive offensive operations are unlikely to target Zaporizhia City from the western Donetsk–Zaporizhia
frontline as the Russian military continues to prepare for an offensive in western Luhansk Oblast. Advisor to the
exiled Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andryushenko, stated that Russian soldiers in Mariupol are telling
residents that the Russian military ordered offensive operations against Vuhledar, areas southwest of Bakhmut,
Zaporizhia City and Zaporizhia Oblast.[1] Andryushenko added that Russia is also building up forces at barracks
and settlements on roads leading to frontline positions, and that Russia had brought an extra 10,000–15,000
troops to Mariupol and its outskirts.[2] Andryushenko noted the Russian forces reportedly have 30,000 troops
in the greater Mariupol area. ISW continues to assess that Russia is concentrating troops and military equipment
to stage a decisive offensive on the western Luhansk Oblast and Bakhmut areas.
Western and Ukrainian military officials have repeatedly noted that Russian forces are likely setting conditions
to reach the Luhansk and Donetsk oblast borders — an objective that Russian Chief of General Staff Army General
Valery Gerasimov had also outlined on December 22.[3] ISW continues to observe Russian transfers of military
equipment and elite units and the preparations of logistics in occupied Luhansk Oblast that support Western,
Ukrainian, and Russian forecasts for the western Luhansk Oblast–Bakhmut offensive.[4] Russian forces are also
intensifying attacks on Bakhmut while neglecting frontlines around Donetsk City.[5] The Ukrainian military has
reported that Russian forces have not massed a powerful enough strike group to conduct an offensive in the
Zaporizhia direction.[6]
Russian sources have been claiming Russian forces have been making territorial gains in Zaporizhia Oblast in
late January, claims that ISW assesses were likely an information operation aimed at dispersing Ukrainian forces
ahead of the decisive offensive in the east.[7] Andryushenko had previously stated that Russian officials were
restricting Mariupol residents from accessing non-Russian information and were misrepresenting the situation
on the frontlines, so Russian forces spreading rumors about an attack on Zaporizhia City may be a continuation
of such information operations.[8] Andryushenko has also consistently reported increases of Russian forces in
Mariupol throughout different stages of the war and noted that Russian forces are using the city as a military
base due to its proximity to Russia.[9]
Russia has not shown the capacity to sustain the multiple major offensive operations that would be necessary
to simultaneously reach the Donetsk Oblast administrative borders and take Zaporizhia City. Andryushenko’s
reported Russian troop concentration of 30,000 servicemen in the Mariupol area is not sufficient to attack
Zaporizhia, a city of roughly three-quarters of a million people, while continuing offensive operations to encircle
Bakhmut and launching a new major attack in Luhansk Oblast. Russian conventional forces, reserves, and Wagner
forces have committed tens of thousands of troops to the effort to seize Bakhmut already, reportedly suffering
many thousands of casualties in that effort.[10] Bakhmut had a pre-war population of slightly over 70,000.
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) has launched a series of efforts to restructure and consolidate the
mismatched blend of irregular forces supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine into Russia’s conventional military
