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Ukraine: The Kherson "Dog in bed" mini-offensive [1]

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Date: 2023-04-25  

Recently there has been some excitement over Ukraine liberating tiny parts of the left (east) bank of the Dnipro (Ukrainian spelling, Dnieper is Russian). This tiny sliver of land is mostly marsh which makes it even tinnier than some maps depict it. The zone of control is just a mile or two along a single road surrounded by swamps. But I find it an interesting gambit by the Ukrainians. One in which I liken to a dog trying to take over a bed.

This dog in bed theory goes like this. The dog is not allowed to sleep in your bed but has a history of doing so (8 year old children or Maine Cooncats may also be the protagonist instead of the dog). When you go to bed the dog is sleeping on the rug on the floor where you’ve “trained” it to sleep. At some point after you have fallen asleep, the dog moves onto the foot of the bed, mostly out of the way. You may or may not wake up to notice the dog at this point. However, after not too long you do wake up with a sore neck and back after being curled into a weird position as the dog has moved towards the center of the bed. At this point you are faced with the prospect of getting up and dragging this large dog back to the floor. The task is not impossible but requires some effort and you’re really too tired to do it. Instead you push a little space back for yourself and try to get some sleep. In the morning you find yourself cold and miserable on the floor with the dog having taken over the entire bed and at some point pushed you off of it. At any point you could have rallied the energy to move the dog off the bed. But because you choose not to, you find yourself out of it in the morning. (BTW, you are not the hero of this story, the dog is)

While a cute metaphor, the Ukrainian operation is clearly deadly serious. People are correct when they point out there is no good way to supply a large amount of troops across these points and so this does not indicate a large Ukrainian offensive in the works here. So what is this?

This operation is Ukraine taking a section of land on the East bank of the river and testing whether Russia takes the effort to dislodge them. The Ukrainian troops involved are most certainly experienced troops, and likely marines, special ops, or force recon. They will know how to retreat in good order and fade away should Russia counter attack in sufficient strength. It’s obviously extremely dangerous for the Ukrainians but it serves a purpose.

The Ukrainians will receive artillery and maybe even HIMARS support from across the river. So resupply for the small Ukrainian unit is just a small boat or two coming across the river at night. Initially they snuck across and established a small perimeter before Russia even noticed them. Now that they have been noticed, they start pushing at the Russians attempting to find a weak point or wear down the local Russian unit with artillery strikes from across the river. If the Russians hold firm but don’t counter attack, then the Ukrainian unit just harasses them indefinitely. Eventually, the Russians either have to counterattack in force or starts to fall back little by little as they take more casualties.

This could be a creeping offensive. The Ukrainians will slowly take a small position here or there. They will expand the zone of control little by little, never putting too many troops into the area to overburden the near nonexistent supply situation. The goal is to force Russia to commit more troops to the area. Once Russia moves in with a large enough force, the Ukrainians just fade back into the swamp or across the river. If the Russians don’t respond with increasing force is when things get interesting.

If the Ukrainians can expand their zone of control out far enough they can begin to secure more robust means of resupply. Perhaps they take over a small industrial slip big enough that supplies can be brought over by river barge. If they can use a barge, eventually they could start bringing over light vehicles. At first just a few lightly armored APCs. The armored SUV variety. With a few more supplies they can push out the lines a little farther. Eventually they can push out far enough that a pontoon bridge can be built more safely, bringing yet more supplies and allow the Ukrainians to push out further yet.

It’s all a delicate game. Every single Ukrainian soldier going over needs to be able to be evacuated quickly should the Russians finally start to commit to bringing major forces over. What supplies and vehicles Ukraine would lose in the event of a strong Russian counterattack need to be worth losing in exchange for pinning more Russian troops to the river. In the unlikely event Russia never responds strongly enough, then eventually the bridgehead becomes strong enough with multiple pontoon bridge crossings and ferries to support a full on engagement. But that is the threat.

Again, the real goal of this operation is just to occupy as many Russian troops in the area as they can to pull those troops away from the lines to the east. If Russia pulls in too many, then a different part of the line, possibly much father away, is weakened enough that Ukraine attacks at that weak point.

I’m guessing we’re going to see the real offensive start up in the next few weeks. The Ukrainians want to act prior to the Russians winding down operations at Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Ideally those force concentrations mean Russia is weaker than they could be in other parts of the line. And/or the offensive force at Bakhmut represents what should be Russia’s mobile reserve on defense. Should Ukraine attack soon we’ll certainly see those troops around Bakhmut be moved in response. I imagine Ukraine has plans to make that movement difficult through either drone/artillery interdiction of forces moving out, or even a diversionary attack near Bakhmut pinning those forces in place.

But timing is critical. I’m fairly certain the full offensive force has been trained and in place for a few weeks already. The noise about delays and equipment still coming in is most likely just diversionary. The equipment still coming is real, but it represents replacement vehicles, not initial vehicles. I’m thinking the offensive will be soon primarily based on Ukraine can’t rely on the Russian focus on Bakhmut persisting. Clearly the Russians are stupid enough to have been focusing on it for months, but there is always the chance they will finally change course which they have done in prior circumstances (Kyiv, Kherson). The other possibility is that the Ukrainian plan assumes that the Russian Bakhmut forces will be dispersed, but Ukraine has gone to an awful lot of work to keep them there, so I don’t think so. We’ll know soon enough.

By the way, I suck at predicting the timing of these operations (real timing depends upon a lot of on-the-ground information we simply don’t have access to).

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/25/2165768/-Ukraine-The-Kherson-Dog-in-beg-mini-offensive

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