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On the Frontlines of the War That Will Change Europe
As Russia pressed on with its summer offensive in Ukraine’s crucial Donetsk province in late August, a unit of motorized infantry probing the front on Chinese motorbikes detected a gap in Ukraine’s defenses around the besieged city of Pokrovsk. They cautiously moved through the breach in small groups, reaching eleven miles behind Ukrainian lines to cut off one of the last remaining supply routes to the embattled town.
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As two to three hundred Russians gathered in the salient, they were ambushed by the special forces of the 12th Azov Brigade — composed of highly committed Ukrainian nationalists — who largely annihilated them, enabling Pokrovsk’s exhausted garrison to fight another day.
This is what Ukraine’s three-year-old battlefront increasingly looks like: fraying Ukrainian defenses, thinned out by a lack of manpower and mounting casualties, facing encirclement by a Russian army that is numerically superior and better equipped but still seems unable to mass a sufficient force for a decisive breakthrough in the eastern industrial heartland of Donbass.
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The Russians, afraid of exposing large formations of infantry and tanks, which are in short supply, to the swarms of Ukrainian drones that are increasingly programmed with AI to operate autonomously, are relying on small-unit tactics to penetrate Ukraine’s front lines.
The Ukrainians may be adapting by letting groups of Russians move behind their bunkers, where they are prey to elite reserve units that can be rushed up from the rear to neutralize their poorly supported land grabs. American military analyst Paul Warburg, who was recently at the front, says that the Ukrainians are “ deliberately” luring the Russians into “traps.”
Francis Farrell of the Kyiv Independent says that Ukraine’s forward-most positions, which are usually held by small platoons or squads, are under orders not to engage the enemy “unless absolutely necessary” to avoid giving away their location to Russian drones and artillery.
“The Russians are continually moving behind Ukrainian trenches, operating on ground they don’t control,” says Farrell. While there are territorial advances, these are often precarious. “It’s very difficult to tell where the front is anymore. It’s become a grey zone with no clear delineation. We have yet to see if the Russians are able to mass sufficient infantry and armor for a real breakout.”
It’s very unlikely that Russia can take Donetsk’s main industrial city of Kramatorsk this year, which Vladimir Putin wants in his claws before sitting down to negotiate. With a population of almost 200,000, Kramatorsk is the center of an industrial triangle of cities that is known as the “fortress belt,” is rich in coal, iron ore, and titanium, and is home to modern steel mills and engineering facilities. It serves as Ukraine’s main logistical hub for its eroding perimeter in Donbass, the capture of which is a must for Vlad the Impaler.
Putin flew to meet with Donald Trump in Alaska on August 15 in an effort to probe the U.S. president on the possibility of leveraging Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky to hand over the vital northwest corner of Donetsk through peace negotiations.
Russia’s treasury is being drained to pay the high salaries needed to lure recruits into the army’s meat grinder at a time of declining oil revenues and as Western sanctions bite. Russian factories can only produce a fraction of the tanks needed to replace the massive battlefield losses in armor. Fighter jet production is also down, and if it weren’t for North Korea’s until-now steady supply of millions of artillery shells and rockets — as well as troops and slave labor — Russia could not maintain the nine-to-one advantage in artillery ammunition that it has over Ukraine.
While the media made a spectacle of Putin’s Alaska summit with Trump, aided by the White House optics of a red carpet, the B-2 bomber flyover, and the ride in the presidential Beast, discussions appear to have been brief and to the point. Putin turned down Trump’s much-trumpeted insistence on a ceasefire that clearly is not to Russia’s advantage at the present time, and they both went back to their respective capitals empty-handed.
While grinding progress on the front remains painfully slow, recent territorial gains could enable Russia to establish direct lines of fire on Kramatorsk. Russian generals are looking at setting up a fire base on recently captured high ground around Chasiv Yar, which is fifty miles from Kramatorsk and within range of Russia’s more advanced Howitzers and rocket artillery.
The hilltop town, which controls a railway line and industrial canals, was finally cleared of Ukrainian defenders in August by Russian Spetsnaz and airborne troops following a sixteen-month siege that has left it in rubble.
According to Ukrainian military sources, the Azov Brigade and other special units are still fighting around its edges, a further reason why a ceasefire may be premature for Putin. His generals need to have sufficient control over the area to bring up sophisticated BM-30 Smerch and Tornado 300mm rocket systems to pound Kramatorsk before Putin feels comfortable about sitting down to talk peace with Zelensky, as Trump wants him to do.
Zelensky has said that he will not meet with Putin before a ceasefire is reached, and he has turned down invitations to come to Moscow that Putin extended knowing they would be rejected, as Putin made those invitations to deflect blame on Kyiv for lack of progress in negotiations.
Trump has become well aware of Putin’s stalling tactics. His most recent statements indicate that he has lost trust in the Russian leader and decided on a policy of brinksmanship.
On August 28, the U.S. State Department approved delivery of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munitions (ERAMs), which are among the most advanced air-to-surface high-velocity cruise missiles in the Pentagon’s arsenal. U.S. ambassador to NATO Matt Whittaker says they will give Ukraine “deeper strike capabilities.”
It’s among the most lethal U.S. weaponry supplied to Ukraine in unprecedented quantities, and it is capable of drastically transforming a stagnant front line, one that is immersed in a primitive type of warfare with high-tech tools, into a dynamic twenty-first-century air campaign that could turn the war in weeks — though with dangerous risks of escalation.
Unlike past weapons deliveries by the Biden administration, which took months or even years, the ERAMs are scheduled to be in theater by mid-October in an initial shipment of about 900. They will be mounted on the wings of the thirty-two F-16s so far delivered to Ukraine by Denmark and the Netherlands, which, together with Norway, are funding the ERAM purchase through NATO agreements recently negotiated with Trump, thereby shifting the cost of arming Ukraine to Europe, where French President Emmanuel Macron is telling his people to “prepare for war.”
ERAMs can also be fitted on Ukraine’s fleet of Mikoyan MiG-29s inherited from its Soviet era, of which the air force has greater numbers.
With a 250-mile range, 500-pound explosive warheads, and anti-spoofing navigational modules to guide them toward targets with a margin of error of a few feet, ERAMs could destroy vital networks of Russian command bunkers, fuel armament and resupply depots, and communications and transport hubs supporting operations in Donetsk, seriously degrading the offensive capabilities of the 100,000-strong Russian army deployed there.
One squadron of twelve F-16s can unleash a volley of 144 ERAMs, which would be more than enough to obliterate any artillery positions in Chasiv Yar.
It’s difficult to see how Putin would not reach out to Trump in such a scenario. “If it is possible to reverse Russian gains on the battlefield, Putin may become more pragmatic and at least go for some sort of medium-term ceasefire” says professor Michael Clarke of London’s Royal United Services Institute.
Russia could also respond to devastating air attacks on its forces by further ramping up its intense missile barrages on Ukraine, targeting cities and industrial infrastructure. At the time of this writing, news broke that Russia had unleashed its largest attack on Kyiv yet, with 823 projectiles, including drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.
Until now, the vast majority of projectiles launched at Ukrainian urban centers have been enhanced Russian versions of Iranian HESA Shahed 136 drones, whose strike power still causes limited damage and whose interception rate is around 80 percent.
Few cruise or ballistic missiles are launched, but most of them get through, causing enormous damage to their targets, ranging from port facilities in Odesa to arms factories in Kyiv.
Russia’s missile production is increasing. According to the Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence agency, newly built factories located in remote areas of eastern Russia, out of range of most Ukrainian missiles and drones, are turning out 2,500 high-precision missiles of various types this year. “Russia intends to increase production” says the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine.
Russia could unleash infinitely bigger and more destructive missile strikes, targeting government buildings as well as American and European installations, which have already been hit in recent attacks. Putin has said that he would consider any European “reassurance force” in Ukraine — which France and the U.K. are trying to organize — “a legitimate military target.”
He could resort to his Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, which is armed with multiple warheads and whose ultrahypersonic speed makes it almost impossible for even U.S. Patriot systems to intercept. They could devastate entire cities, and their 3,000-mile range puts much of Europe in their targeting radius.
Putin launched an Oreshnik late last year, leveling an entire Ukrainian industrial complex, presumably in response to Ukrainian strikes on military command centers inside Russia that used the American MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System, which killed several of his high-ranking generals. It’s not been used since, possibly because Russia has few of them. But Putin has ordered Oreshnik to be “mass-produced.”
China has been providing technology, parts, and key industrial materials for Russia’s missile production, the fastest-growing sector of Russia’s arms industry.
Contrary to past speculation that China could mediate between Russia and Ukraine — which it might be well positioned to do, in view of its friendly and important business ties with both governments — Beijing seems to have shown no interest in a peace process.
According to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, China’s foreign minister candidly told her during a recent visit to Beijing that it’s in China’s interest to prolong the war and prevent Russia’s defeat.
The Chinese top diplomat said the war in Ukraine draws Western attention away from China’s conflict zone with Taiwan in the eastern Pacific, according to Kallas.
No Chinese official would admit, of course, that China is receiving significant economic benefits from its assistance to Russia, including special access to Siberia’s rich energy and mineral resources it has long coveted
One may take some comfort from the hot-mic moment that caught Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussing how organ transplants can extend life to 150 years as they watched ICBMs and other Chinese wunder weapons parading past them in Beijing’s World War II victory celebrations. If Xi and Vlad the Impaler are so interested in longevity, they may not want World War III and may prefer to leave Ukraine’s battlelines drawn as they are.
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