Mapping Ukraine’s counteroffensive

Six months after Ukraine launched its summer counteroffensive to take back Russian-occupied territory in the east of the country, Kyiv’s forces have made little progress in the face of entrenched Russian resistance.

Russia’s defensive line — the largest and most fortified in Europe since World War Two — ultimately held, and early prospects of a Ukrainian breakthrough that would sever the land bridge between Russia and occupied Crimea have faded.

With another winter stalemate approaching — if not a renewed Russian attack to take more of eastern Ukraine — these are some of the main factors that left Ukraine’s forces stuck at the front line.

At the heart of the Ukrainian counteroffensive was the Zaporizhzhia front, a battleground considered by military analysts the most direct path to split the Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine. Stretching 80 km (50 miles) from Orikhiv, winding through Tokmak, and meeting at Melitopol, this route aimed to cut off crucial Russian supply lines to Crimea.

Though Kyiv kept its ultimate goals for the counteroffensive close to its chest, in August, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy laid down a marker that Ukraine’s campaign would not stop until Crimea was freed from Russian occupation.

For many Western analysts, the key to that goal was breaking through to the supply lines that connected Crimea to Russia in Zaporizhzhia. But Ukraine’s forces were ultimately split between three axes of attack, including one as far north as Bakhmut in Donetsk, where Ukraine had to reinforce its own defences after Russia went on the attack in October.

The timing of Ukraine’s counteroffensive played a crucial role by allowing Russia time to fortify the front line, particularly in Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine waited months to begin its attack while training troops, shipping in Western arms and debating strategy. Throughout that crucial window, Russia had time to dig trenches and lay mines along strategic areas of the front.

Intelligence gathered from satellite imagery, analysed by Brady Africk of the American Enterprise Institute, uncovered a robust defence strategy. Speaking to Reuters, Africk described Russia's fortifications between the front line and Tokmak as dense and layered, featuring anti-vehicle ditches, obstacles, fighting positions, and strategically placed land mines within treelines and along key roads leading south into occupied Ukraine. Notably, the open, flat terrain in the region made it more difficult for Ukraine to move with any element of surprise.

According to Africk, the Ukrainian army’s modest progress reflects the substantial density of fortifications in the region and the resources at their disposal. Despite six months of intense fighting, Ukraine managed just a 7.5-kilometer advance, reaching the village of Robotyne.

Russia’s defensive line consisted of layer upon layer of static barriers designed to impede tanks, intricate networks of trenches and tunnels, and strategically camouflaged batteries, tanks, and command posts. This multifaceted defence strategy created a formidable challenge for Ukrainian forces attempting to breach the front line. All of this was backed by a constant barrage of Russian artillery.

The satellite images below vividly depict the aftermath of relentless shelling in the region. The landscape near Robotyne is pock-marked by craters.

While neither the Ukrainian nor the Russian armies have officially released casualty data, both sides have incurred significant losses in terms of manpower and resources. Russia pressed poorly trained convicts into “Storm-Z” punishment battalions to reinforce frontline troops, while Ukraine’s high-risk attacks against well-prepared defences with limited, battle-fatigued troops took a major toll on their forces and assets.

Ahead of its troop positions along the front, Russian forces laid a formidable first line of defence: a dense layer of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines.

Clearing paths through Russian mine fields became one of the costliest challenges of the counteroffensive, both in terms of time and men and machinery.

Ukraine employed Western mine-clearance vehicles and armoured columns of tanks and vehicles to traverse the hazardous terrain. But the army’s movements to clear paths through the mines unfolded under the watchful eye of surveillance drones operated by Russia’s new specialised drone units.

These drones meticulously observed the mine-clearance vehicles, feeding targeting information to artillery and attack helicopters. Evolving optical capabilities on the drones also meant they could see through traditional camouflage techniques such as smoke screens that would foil human observers.

As forward mine-clearing tanks and vehicles were targeted and destroyed, Ukrainian attack columns behind them got stuck in a kill zone for Russian artillery, unable to manoeuvre around destroyed vehicles without triggering yet more mines.

Ultimately, mine clearing was left to smaller, slow-moving units rather than larger attack groups to minimise their exposure to artillery.

Despite few breakthroughs along the front, Ukraine’s counteroffensive can claim some modest success.

The counteroffensive in Crimea, employing sea drones and targeted long-range missile strikes, forced Russia’s navy on the backfoot in the Black Sea, and a declassified U.S. intelligence report pointed to a cost for Russia’s armed forces of nearly 315,000 dead and wounded troops, or nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began.

Still, the ultimate aim of retaking land in occupied Ukraine failed to materialise, and Kyiv is now scrambling to secure more arms supplies from Western nations as the war drags on.

A senior military commander told Reuters that frontline troops were facing shortages of artillery shells and had scaled back some military operations because of a shortfall of foreign assistance.

Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner forces returned to base after a 36-hour mutiny that saw mercenaries heading toward Moscow and the prospect of bloody confrontations with regular military defending the Russian capital.

A last-minute deal averted the immediate crisis, but the mutiny raised questions about the state of the Russian leadership and the prospect that the long war in Ukraine may be taking its toll on their grip on power at home. The apparent ease with which Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary forces barrelled hundreds of kilometres towards Moscow from Russia’s south, facing little resistance, indicated that Russian reserve forces were so thin they struggled to respond to the threat.

These were the major figures in the biggest challenge to Russia’s military and political leadership in a generation:

The fighting around Bakhmut continues. A month after Russian forces claimed to have taken the city after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war in Ukraine so far, Ukrainian forces have reported modest gains along the nearby frontline.

New analysis by Masae Analytics, a technology & strategy consulting firm, using satellite images and algorithm-based analysis, has measured the severity of the destruction in Bakhmut. The analysis measures damage to buildings, ranked from low to high levels of destruction and shows how broadly devastated the city has been after months of constant shelling and building-to-building combat.

Once a city of 70,000 people, Bakhmut is now mostly depopulated and a landscape of ruins. The most intense destruction can be seen in the western parts of the city, the last to fall under Russian control. The Ukrainian army withdrew slowly, fighting on every street. Nearly every building in this sector is marked by intense Russian bombardment.

This video combines Ukrainian drone footage with a 3D reconstruction of the western part of the city to depict the desolation in this last area seized by the Russians, now a scene of charred walls and broken glass.

Moscow paid for its occupation of Bakhmut with close to 100,000 casualties. Some military analysts regard this battle as the bloodiest of the 21st century, often referring to it as a "meat grinder" and also say the city has no clear strategic value. Now, Ukraine is fighting to regain control over this ruined city, one of the key fronts in its counteroffensive.

Last week, Ukraine began its long awaited counteroffensive against the Russian occupation in the east. While Ukraine’s army reported some initial victories and liberated a handful of occupied towns, the hardened Russian lines are still ahead of them.

About 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the frontline of the counteroffensive stands one of the largest defensive systems constructed in Europe since World War Two, according to analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Visible by satellite, the Russians’ fortified line stretches roughly 2,000 km, running from Russia’s border with Belarus to the Dnipro Delta. About 1,000 km of dense and layered lines are located in Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine’s initial focus of the counteroffensive has been to cut through the centre of the Russian lines. The Ukrainians have broken through initial fighting positions along a broad part of the front but remain some distance from Russia’s main defensive line.

The counterattack has been focused in at least three areas so far:

Russian defences are strategically designed to stymie any Ukrainian breakthrough into the Russian occupied territories and channel Ukrainian forces into areas where defenders have the advantage.

The defensive lines consist of layered networks of trenches, anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines, razor wire, earthen berms and dragon's teeth — concrete pyramids designed to obstruct the movement of main battle tanks and mechanised infantry.

One example of the layers of fortifications the Russians have constructed is on the outskirts of the occupied town of Mykhailivka, situated 25 km south of the frontline at Zaporizhzhia. Three distinct defensive lines and a three-sided position encircling the town await Ukraine’s forces here.

In the more than 475 days since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Ukrainians have endured near constant assault from devastating shelling along the front and missile and drone attacks striking cities far away from the battlefield. Despite an onslaught bigger than any in Europe since World War Two, Ukraine has survived. Kyiv hopes its next counterattack, supported by western weapons and training, can definitively turn the tide.

This is a brief history of what’s led to this moment where Ukraine hopes to decisively strike back: