(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Quick Explainer: Why the Battle of Chernihiv arguably won the Battle of Kiev [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-03 AFU's 1st Tank Brigade conducting training exercises in 2021 I’d read about how in war, it’s not uncommon that certain events that are more visible and easily accessible are magnified in the popular consciousness. Meanwhile, in retrospect events that are barely recognized or understood turn out to have been of critical importance. This is something I had not experienced first hand, as this is the first war between anything approaching an evenly matched conventional war involving a major power in my lifetime. With the perspective of a year of time since Ukraine’s victory in the decisive Battle of Kiev, what jumps out to me is how at the time, and even to an extent now, discussion of the battle focus on the dramatic events to the northwest of Kiev. A Logistical View of the Battle of Kiev There were 3 thrusts at Kiev, and of the 3, focus naturally focused on the thrust that came closest to capturing the city. That is, the offensive northwest of Kiev. On this front, Zaluzhnyi’s decision to prioritize recapturing Hostomel Airport. The ambush at Bucha that blunted the advance. The 40km convoy and the AFU special forces attacks that disrupted their advance. The defense of the river through Irpin. Especially to those of us who followed the battle in real time, a lot of these key events are seared into our memories, as improbably, the Ukrainians fought off the onrush of the Russian Army. Even at the time, there were intelligence reports and some reporting that the Russians intended to catch Kiev in a pincer from east and west, and that the Russian advance northeast of Kiev had stalled at Chernihiv. The Russians sent some units around the city, and the Russians also attempted to send a force against eastern Kiev by coming all the way from Sumy oblast. But so long as the Ukrainians held Chernihiv, it was difficult to send supplies and reinforcements by bypassing the city. And the Russians didn’t have enough troops to defend the 300+km route from Sumy Oblast to Kiev, and this supply route was subject to attacks by Ukrainian partisans and special forces, largely neutralizing it as a threat. Knowing what we know now about Russian logistical abilities (or lack thereof), it makes a lot of sense that the attack northeast of Kiev failed. I took a map of the Kiev Region created by @WarMapper and highlighted the relevant rail lines in Green. The two main routes of attack that the Russians directed from North of Kiev focused on 2 directions, the Northwest and the Northeast. What immediately should jump out to readers at DKos is that the critical rail lines in this area run through Chernihiv. The Russian offensive from the Northwest of Kiev didn’t start far enough west to secure the rail line that runs in from the northwest. That would have required an additional Russian army sending a thrust 60km west than they did, to secure cities like Ovruch and Korosten. For whatever reasons that probably won’t be clear for decades if and when Russian planning documents from the initial invasion are available for research (if ever), the Russians never attempted such a thrust, apparently believing they could supply the thrust northwest of Kiev by truck and roadway. To DKos readers today, with the benefit of hindsight we know the Russians struggle logistically whenever they are any distance from a railhead, and the Russian attempt to ferry supplies by road 100-120km down the roads would today be a highly predictable failure. The massive 40km traffic jam, the 31 year old tires stamped “made in the USSR” that burst. Broken down supply trucks being abandoned on the roadside. Troops complaining of a lack of ammunition, a lack of fuel, even a lack of food. This is not to take away from the bravery, skill and desperate odds that the AFU fought in these series of battles that literally saved the fate of their nation. Morale, tactics, innovation, western weaponry—these were all crucial elements that made victory possible. But logistics is often vital in deciding battles—the decisive element. Why Chernihiv Was Crucial From that perspective, lets go back to the map to evaluate which thrust by the Russians was most threatening to Kiev. The attack from the Northwest has no logistical railhead to feed the Russian offensive, thus was doomed to failure if the initial onrush could be blunted. Once that was accomplished in the first few days of combat, the offensive was arguably doomed to failure. The attack from Sumy Oblast, covering 300+km, while supported by a railhead was exposed to attacks by partisans. With far more infantry that could be deployed to defend the lengthy supply route, this offensive may have represented more of a real threat, but it did not. By contrast, the rail route from Chernihiv to Kiev runs just 140km, less than half the distance from Sumy Oblast. Capture Chernihiv, and no more major cities or natural obstacles stand on the way to Kiev. According to captured documents indicating initial Russian war plans, the Russians thought they would capture Chernihiv on the first day of the invasion, within a matter of hours. Given the disparity in forces deployed in this area, Russian optimism was arguably warranted. Chernihiv sits just 50km from the Belarussian border, directly along 2 rail lines that intersect at Chernihiv. There would be no problems supplying an offensive. The Russian army devoted the 41st Combined Arms Army (CAA) with 20,000 troops, an estimated 400-500 tanks, and numerous supporting IFVs. APCs and artillery. They would eventually be reinforced by elements of the 36th CAA and the 2nd Guard Motor Rifle Division, and the Russians would devote as many as 25,000 troops to the Battle of Chernihiv. The Armed Forces of Ukraine stationed the elite 1st Tank Brigade to defend Chernihiv, some of the best trained soldiers in the Ukrainian Army. But the 1st TB counted only 2000 soldiers and 100 tanks. They would eventually be reinforced by local elements of the 119th Territorial Defense Brigade—about 1000 reservists and virtually untrained volunteers bringing Ukrainian strength to 3000. The Russians had an approximate 10 to 1 advantage, thus viewed Chernihiv as nothing more than a speed bump on the way to Kiev. However, the Ukrainians had a few crucial advantages in this coming battle. They had highly motivated and well trained core of soldiers for the defense, and they had arguably the best tank in the Ukrainian frontline service—the T-64 BM Bulat. The T-64 BM Bulat is a heavily upgraded T-64, adding greatly improved armor protection, an active protection system, an improved autoloader, the TAKO-621 antitank missile system firing the Ukrainian Kombat missile, and digitized encrypted military radios that actually worked. But arguably most importantly, the Bulat has the 1A45 Irtysh fire control system including laser range finding and high quality thermal optics for night and low-light combat. While the Russians had a vast advantage in their number of troops and tanks, the 41st CAA had exclusively T72s, many of which were older variants lacking the most modern fire control systems (FCS)—meaning they had lower effective combat ranges and often lacked high quality low-light/night combat equipment. Many reportedly did not have working radios. The Battle of Chernihiv The battle in effect opened in the opening hour of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, as Russia launched a massive cruise missile strike aimed at crippling the Ukrainian military. Having received western intelligence warning of this possibility, the 1st TB was dispersed, staying away from it’s permanent barracks and base, thus the Russian missile strike was ineffective. The Russian missile strike destroyed empty buildings. Unaware of this failure, the Russian 41st CAA began advancing south from its staging area in Belarus straight down the E95 highway towards Chernihiv. Along this route are numerous open fields and forests. the 1st TB set a series of ambushes and defensive positions in these forests to blunt the 41st CAA’s advance. These forests represented a tactical advantage for the Ukrainian defenders. The forests served to break up the Russian vanguard—without strong radio communications, the Russian units had a harder time coordinating their movements in reduced visibility conditions. The 1st TB’s modern military radios and knowledge of the terrain allowed them to coordinate their movements and ambush the Russian forces effectively. Combat in the forests were often low light, and the AFU pressed attacks at night to maximize their advantage with their thermal sighting FCSs. The AFU also made frequent use of their Kombat missiles, which boast a 90% hit rate and a range of 3500m, allowing them to outrange older Russian T72s with ease. But much of the fighting at this stage is described as chaotic and at extreme close ranges. A study of the battle by the Royal United Services Institute in London describes the fighting as “ numerous meeting engagements in forests at around [110-to-220-yard] range, where restricted movement limited the Russian ability to bring their mass to bear against a specific tactical situation.” The Russians poured forces into the battle, the 1st TB fell back by the second day into the area immediately surrounding the city. Lightly armed and trained TDB troops served the critical screening role for the 1st TB’s armored troops, forcing the Russians to settle into a siege. The Russians, perhaps believing the city would fall quickly, sent ahead some elements of their troops towards Kiev, bypassing the city. But without capturing the city, the Ukrainians continued to hold the key rail junctures and highways that could serve to supply a major offensive against Eastern Kiev. Critically, the Russian forces made an extreme unforced blunder, as they failed to block off a road that ran northwest out of Chernihiv to the Dnipro river—permitting the Ukrainians to run supplies up the river by boat, to then deliver critical ammunition and supplies to the besieged city. The 1st TB and the 119th TDB, despite the vast numerical disparity, beat back 6 weeks of nearly continuous Russian attacks on their positions. On March 16th, the AFU began a counteroffensive, primarily Northwest of Kiev, as AFU forces began pressing back Russian forces from the suburbs northwest of Kiev. As the counteroffensive began gaining momentum, the AFU began making attacks aimed at lifting the siege of Chernihiv on March 25 on the eastern side of Kiev. On March 29th, Deputy Minister of Defense Alexander Fomin formally announced a withdrawal from Kiev and Chernihiv areas, and by March 31st, the AFU announced that they had recaptured the E95 highway from Kiev to Chernihiv. The siege had been lifted, and Ukraine had won the Battle of Chernihiv. The 1st TB paid dearly for this victory, reportedly suffering severe casualties. The 1st TB would be taken out of action for about 5 months, when having received some of the first batches of Ukrainian trainees with 6 months of training, the 1st TB would reenter the fight in time to spearhead the AFU offensive during the Battle of Kherson. The Importance of Chernihiv To understand the importance of the Battle of Chernihiv, it’s useful to understand just how many troops the 1st TB had managed to occupy for this 6 week stretch. Most estimates of the Russian strength in this siege believe that the Russian threw somewhere around 20,000 -25,000 troops at this objective. By contrast, the Russian advance from the northwest of the Kiev is estimated to have involved only slightly more troops: around 30,000 soldiers. Ukrainian defenders included an estimated 18,000 regular army troops and reservists, along with thousands of volunteers that were mobilized in defense of the capitol as ad hoc militia units. If, hypothetically, Chernihiv had indeed fallen in the first days of the war, the Russians would have had nearly an identically sized army as the one that struck Kiev from the northwest bearing down on Kiev from the Northeast and the East—worse, that attack could have been fed by Russian trains, giving them a real logistical basis to crush the Ukrainian defense. Because Chernihiv held out through the duration of the battle, the Russians were barely able to mount more than token offensive against the eastern suburbs of Kiev, allowing the AFU to focus their best troops, and especially their artillery at the Russian thrust from the Northwest. Because Chernihiv held out, the Russians fed more and more troops down the narrow roads northwest of Kiev, resulting in the massive traffic jams and logistical problems that entailed. And the lack of supplies would doom their efforts to try to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses it is never easy to game out the consequences of a change to history. Had the Ukrainian defenses at Chernihiv collapsed early, it’s hard to know what contingency plans General Zaluzhnyi and the AFU General Staff had, or how they would have countered such a Russian advance. But it’s not hard to imagine that had the Russian been able to achieve a real pincer advance on either side of Kiev, one with a rail line to feed the offensive, that the Battle of Kiev may have had a very different outcome. 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