How do you invade somewhere and not have contingencies for being denied the use of major roads? That's in the top three essential (and obvious!) things the defending force will do. For a Russian force you'd also think dealing with a post-winter thaw would be part of their general military strategy, it's not like Ukraine has a vastly different climate than Russia after all.
When would be a good time for an invasion? Not when the snow thaws. Ok. How about when its ice cold? That option sounds even harder, though I guess the vehicles don't get stuck as badly. How about waiting until summer? That sounds like a more conventional military strategy, though I don't know enough Ukrainian geography to tell if its a sound option. Is there ever a "good" time for an invasion? If so, why did Putin jump the gun? If not, the current situation was inevitable in some form or other.
Weather: An invasion that begins in January or February would have the advantage of frozen ground to support the cross-country movement of a large mechanized force. It would also mean operating in conditions of freezing cold and limited visibility. January is usually the coldest and snowiest month of the year in Ukraine, averaging 8.5 hours of daylight during the month and increasing to 10 hours by February.8 This would put a premium on night fighting capabilities to keep an advance moving forward. Should fighting continue into March, mechanized forces would have to deal with the infamous Rasputitsa, or thaw. In October, Rasputitsa turns firm ground into mud. In March, the frozen steppes thaw, and the land again becomes at best a bog, and at worst a sea of mud. Winter weather is also less than optimal for reliable close air support operations. From: https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-possible-invasion-ukra...
The problem with the mud is that it FORCES the use of highway infrastructure. It’s not that the Ukraine doesn’t have a ton of paved roads. It’s that you have to use them, just like the Netherlands
It’s pretty easy to defend against an invading force if they have to all go nose to tail in one line on infrastructure that you know everything about. You can further limit where they go by disabling choke points like bridges, and just destroying the roads faster than the engineers can repair them.
I've already seen some photos of tanks stuck in mud. The good news for the Russians is that Ukraine has plenty of roads between the major objectives. It would be a totally different situation if the Russians had to cross a lot of wilderness.
I've been thinking about what can the Russians do?
Seize a part of Ukraine and force the Ukrainian government into a peace treaty that hands over the territories. What those territories are is hard to predict.
Overthrow the government and put a puppet one in its place. This would require some sort of occupation to keep that puppet regime in power, and the Russian forces would be constantly harassed and attacked by guerrilla style tactics (as in Iraq but probably better trained and equipped).
Unless Russia has additional hundreds of thousands of troops they can't effectively occupy a country as big as the Ukraine. That leaves limited objectives.
They also have a limited timeframe before the ground thaws, limiting operational activities with heavy equipment to be along roads. The famous mud country side of eastern Europe is staring soon and will continue for some months making major tank manoeuvres more difficult.
If you are in the Ukraine.
- Ensure you have at least 1 week of food and water.
- Make a bug out bag if you need to leave at a moments notice (including basic medical supplies).
- Have an escape plan that DOES NOT include major roads to get out of the city.
- Cash is king and anything else of value you can trade for supplies.
- If you have a Dacha (or a friend has one) that might be a good place to wait it out if you have to get out of the city.
It's not terrain you ever want to be invading through, though.
Check out the "winter war". Invading would be a crapshoot both ways.
The Ukrainian border has no geographic features that would impede an invasion though, and would let NATO cut Russia off from its oil fields, form a land bridge to the caspian sea and cut Russia off from the black sea entirely all within about a day.
Its strategic significance cant be underestimated.
Hmm, I think another reason for this to happen now, is that the border between Belorussia and the Ukraine is covered by the Pripet Marches, that are neary impassible by heavy equipment when not frozen. Without access that way, Russia would have to fight their way from the east, and forced to cross the Dneipr river, which forms a very significant obstacle. This could delay an invasion by a month or more.
I was shocked that Ukraine can't go into a counteroffensive because of mud. Mud as an impediment to warfare in 2023!
In the Netherlands you could drive an entire armored division straight into the capital over the many highways. Some of them you could land a Boeing 747 on.
Roads are important Infrastructure that you take for granted like power and clean water.
Ukraine doesn't really have the firepower to hit back. All territories it loses are really hard to recover. Russia is also sprinting to take the Dniepr river which would make any counter-attack nearly impossible.
They are also going for encirclement of areas they can't capture east of the river, breaking out of a modern siege is also really hard.
Russian strategy would be to encircle the cities and Ukrainian forces, demand surrender or shell otherwise.
A viable counter step would be to deny Russia air superiority in Ukraine and to attack any troops crossing the border from Belarus, for example. Not to go and attack the capital of Russia.
Invading the entire country would be very costly. Russia has a superior military but Ukraine’s is still very large, and the attacker needs superior numbers to begin with (a general principle). And they would have to deal with a lot more insurgency warfare as they move into the west of the country.
I think Russia might possibly have ambitions of conquering the east of the Ukraine up to Dnieper but no further. Which is still a large area, to be sure.
It's really not obvious what Russia's end goal is here. they have some roads, and even if they were some how able to take Kyiv, I'm not sure the Ukrainian people would capitulate.
One of the biggest reasons for the Russian military offensive is to establish borders that Russia considers defensible, which always indicated that Russia would push up to the Carpathians because it vastly narrows the attack surface on the northern European plane. Ukraine anchors Russia in the Carpathians and a loss basically opens the entire south up to Volgograd and Moscow. Just conquering Donetsk and Luhansk has fairly limited military value.
It would make sense that russia has ability to destroy roads, and airbases, but why aren't they using these effectively when attacking Ukraine? It's a lot smaller than all of Europe, should be easier to figure it out.
It was clear by then that the Russian military was building up on the Ukrainian border. Additionally the ground in Ukraine is usually thawed by April, making an armored invasion much trickier. Assuming it would take the Russians one more month to make preparations, a person in December could have predicted that the Russians would invade in February or early March, if at all.
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