Voice of Ukraine

From Atlantic Council by Col. John B. Barranco (Ret.): 2021-22 US Marine Corps senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, now executive vice president of Potomac International Partners

Crimea—it’s the location that most often captures international attention when it comes to Ukraine’s fight to regain all its lost territory. But it would be militarily foolish for Ukraine, as part of the counteroffensive that’s now underway, to charge into the peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014. Instead, there are ways for the Ukrainians to render Crimea strategically irrelevant militarily to their Russian foes. 

What to expect: By initially attacking a broad front, with the bulk of the fighting so far concentrated in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts around Bakhmut, Velyka Novosilka, and Orikhiv, the Ukrainians can probe Russian lines and hide their true objective when they determine the weakest point to strike.

Once the Ukrainians reach Russia’s multi-layered defensive fortifications, the most challenging phase of the counteroffensive will begin. Ukrainian combat engineers will need to go through the slow and deadly process of clearing mines and blowing up tank obstacles under the cover of infantry and creeping artillery barrages. While the United States recently sent Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs), mine rollers, and demolition equipment for obstacle clearing, Ukraine will need much more to break through Russian defenses.

If the Ukrainians can exploit the advantage of their superior tanks supplied by NATO members, they can drive deep into the rear area of Russian-occupied territory and split the Russian force in two with a combination of armor and High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) strikes guided by unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). This would enable the Ukrainian military to break the land bridge that Russia has created by occupying a continuous swath of Ukrainian territory from the Russian border to Crimea.

If Ukraine can breach the Russian defensive line of obstacles and minefields in two or three locations, it could provide multiple axes of advance to exploit and keep the Russians off balance—or allow the Ukrainians to at least feint in one or more spots and tie down Russian defenders. At the same time, Ukrainian tanks could rapidly move to exploit their success before the Russians recognize these advances, and ideally penetrate the Russian rear area before they can deploy their reserves. This scenario would offer the Ukrainians the best chance they have had thus far in this war to liberate large swaths of their territory. But it also would likely be a long battle with significant casualties.

What not to expect: What’s unlikely is that this counteroffensive will result in the liberation of Crimea. The narrow isthmus that connects the peninsula to the mainland of Ukraine makes it the most easily defensible piece of Russian-occupied territory. Because the Ukrainian military lacks an amphibious capability, the Russians can concentrate all their forces there, making any attempt at a southward advance extraordinarily deadly.

Yet the Ukrainians are savvy enough to realize that the actual value of Crimea to the Russians is the port of Sevastopol, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim of solidarity with the Russian-speaking population on the peninsula. By deploying advanced naval mines offensively as effectively as they did defensively around the port city of Odesa and employing their Neptune anti-ship missiles as they have done to deadly effect in the past, the Ukrainians can render the strategic value of Crimea moot by making Russia’s Black Sea Fleet pay a high price when it attempts to leave its home port, the Sevastopol Naval Base.

While the Ukrainian counteroffensive is a welcome step toward victory in this war, it will be one of many campaigns over the course of what will likely be a long and arduous struggle.