Russia's mistake accidentally gives Ukraine advantage on the southern front?

Concentrate on the battle in the South

British and Ukrainian military officials said on August 7 that Russia is strengthening its bases and forces on the southern front of Ukraine to prepare for a major counterattack by Kiev and that Moscow is likely to launch a new attack.

The assessment comes as Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of shelling Zaporizhzhia, Europe's largest nuclear power plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has expressed serious concerns about the attacks.

An armored vehicle of pro-Russian forces parked next to the provincial council headquarters in Kherson. Photo: Reuters

According to a report by the British Ministry of Defense, “Russian troops are massing in the south, waiting to respond to a Ukrainian counter-offensive or preparing for another attack. Russian convoys of trucks, tanks, artillery and other vehicles continue to move from Donbass to the southwest.”

The Guardian quoted a Ukrainian military intelligence source as saying that Russian forces were pouring fire along the front line in the Kherson region to stop the Ukrainian advance, while deploying more units to attack Mykolaiv and the southern Dnipropetrovsk region. The Russian military was also using drones to conduct aerial reconnaissance. Meanwhile, in Zaporizhzhia, Russia was carrying out repeated attacks on Ukrainian positions and adding new units to bolster its numbers.

One of the biggest obstacles to Ukraine’s southern offensive could be the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Energoatom, which operates the plant in southern Ukraine, said parts of the plant had been “seriously damaged” after being hit by shelling and airstrikes, and one of the reactors had to be shut down. Ukrainian President Zelensky has blamed Russia for the attacks and called on the European Union to impose sanctions on Russia’s nuclear industry and nuclear fuel.

According to Kiev, Russia has turned the plant into a “nuclear shield,” making it difficult for Ukraine to target Russian troops and equipment inside the plant. The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Russia is using the nuclear power plant to “play on Western fears of a nuclear disaster in Ukraine in an effort to weaken Western will.”

But the head of the Russian-founded Zaporizhzhia regional government accused Ukraine of attacking the plant, saying Kiev's forces were responsible for "deciding to put all of Europe on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe" by shelling the plant.

Ukraine's Energoatom nuclear energy agency said that spent fuel tanks were hit in the latest shelling, damaging three radiation monitoring sensors and injuring one employee. This makes it difficult to detect radiation leaks from the spent fuel tanks.

The IAEA called for an immediate cessation of all military activity near the plant. The agency’s Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said that due to the plant’s size and importance, the risk of a nuclear accident could threaten public health and the environment not only in Ukraine but also elsewhere.

The British Ministry of Defence predicts that the Russia-Ukraine conflict will soon enter a new phase and that fighting will shift from the Donbass region to a front of about 350km stretching from the southwest near Zaporizhzhia to Kherson.

Currently, the focus of Russia's offensive remains on the remaining areas of eastern Donbass controlled by Ukraine. Moscow is working to achieve its goal of capturing Donbass as soon as possible. Russian troops have captured almost the entire Lugansk region, except for a few small settlements and about half of Donetsk.

According to the Ukrainian General Staff on August 7, Russia is carrying out two offensives to capture the towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Earlier, Moscow took control of the southern part of Pisky, a village in Donetsk near Avdiivka, as well as the small settlement of Travneve, 17.7km south of Bakhmut.

A gunman wearing a Russian flag stands guard at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine on August 4. Photo: Reuters

Russia's mistake?

Some military experts say that Russia is making a mistake by dispersing its forces in many directions in Ukraine instead of focusing on one front, making it difficult to achieve the goals it has set.

“After its success in Lugansk, Russia is having difficulty consolidating its interests in Donetsk,” said Andriy Zagorodniuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister. “We have talked to many analysts and most of them are skeptical about Russia’s ability to gain control over all of Donetsk.”

While Russia has made major advances in Donbass, Ukraine has made some gains in the south, analysts say. Kiev forces have targeted Russia’s land lines of communication and have blocked supply routes across the Dnipro River. Two of the three bridges used by Russia to transport troops, military equipment and supplies have been severely damaged by HIMARS missile strikes. The last bridge to Kherson is now within range of Ukrainian fire.

In response, Russia has deployed a total of nearly 25,000 troops to Kherson, a city on the western bank of the Dnipro River, one of Europe’s longest rivers. Nearly 10,000 of these troops have been redeployed via the Nova Kakhovka route. Russia has also installed numerous pontoon bridges to help troops reach both banks of the river.

The redeployment of airborne units to the south will delay the Russian offensive on Sloviansk, but it will give Moscow an additional layer of defense to its existing defenses in Kherson, ISW said.

For Ukraine, the third phase of the war may be less stressful than the previous two phases, as the country receives most of its support from the West, especially heavy artillery, ammunition and many advanced weapons. However, Ukraine still finds it difficult to surpass Russia in terms of the number of soldiers and artillery firepower.

It’s worth noting that Russia has significant resources that it has yet to mobilize for the war. It has millions of men of military age, a robust defense industry that has defied Western sanctions, hundreds of thousands of active-duty troops, and thousands of armored vehicles of all types. If Putin sees Ukraine starting to gain an advantage in the fighting, he could mobilize a large number of men and materiel ready to overwhelm his opponents on the battlefield, noted Daniel L. Davis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army.