It seemed that the successful autumn campaign of 2022, during which the Ukrainian army managed to liberate significant territories in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, had every chance to continue. Although delayed, the Armed Forces of Ukraine began receiving modern artillery and short-range missiles from the USA and other Western allies. The M142 HIMARS – highly mobile missile systems with satellite guidance – especially proved effective. At that time, until the introduction of guided aerial bombs, the Russians were losing in precision weaponry.
Another advantage for the AFU became FPV drones. First actively used in the summer of 2022, by autumn, these light, maneuverable drones equipped with explosives became almost as significant in combat as artillery. However, the Russians quickly copied this new technology and within a few months reduced the gap in FPV drone usage.
In January 2023, the AFU faced a serious problem. The Russian command changed its combat tactics. This became evident for the first time in the Donbas, during the attacks on the cities of Soledar and Bakhmut. For the assault on Ukrainian positions, the occupiers began using small infantry groups, primarily consisting of former prisoners.
During the battles for Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk in the summer of 2022, the Russian army achieved success due to a multiple superiority in artillery. This tactic was effective but could not last indefinitely. In the first year of combat, Russia spent about 10 million artillery shells while its own production did not exceed 2 million per year. The use of infantry allowed for not depleting artillery stocks to a critical minimum. And since the assault troops were Russian prison inmates, the issue of casualties during the assaults concerned few.
In the new war tactic, Putin was greatly assisted by Yevgeny Prigozhin − a long-time acquaintance from St. Petersburg. Prigozhin had previously performed various delicate assignments for the Kremlin. He owned the infamous “Russian trolls” bot farm in Olgino, which played a significant role in the 2016 US presidential election. Prigozhin also supported the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and African regimes friendly to Russia through his private military company “Wagner”.
For participation in the war against Ukraine, Prigozhin was given almost unlimited authority. To increase the number of Wagner Group personnel, he personally visited penal colonies, urging inmates to sign contracts. A helicopter with Prigozhin on board flew almost all over Russia, including remote Siberian and Far Eastern regions. Thieves, murderers, and rapists were offered freedom after 6 months of participation in combat, and were also promised a monthly payment of 200,000 rubles (about $2,200).
According to Prigozhin, the chance of dying within six months of combat was 15%. Of course, this figure turned out to be significantly understated. On July 19, 2023, one of the Wagner Group commanders with the call sign “Marx” stated on the Telegram channel “Wagner Unload” that out of 78,000 participants in combat actions, 22,000 died by the end of the battles for Bakhmut (May 2023), and another 40,000 were wounded.
Prisoners among the Wagner fighters constituted the majority – 49,000 people. Based on the occupiers’ own data, the mortality rate of Wagner PMC assault troops in Ukraine reached 28%. According to the UK Ministry of Defense, about 50% of the convicts recruited by Prigozhin are still alive.
In attacks on Ukrainian positions, Wagner mercenaries were almost not provided with armored cover and artillery support. This led to heavy losses in assault groups, but some of the survivors reached their objectives. Even if 9 out of 10 “meat assaults” ended in failure, the tenth assault led to success and Ukrainians abandoned their positions.
Wagner Group had another feature: former convicts were prohibited from retreating under threat of execution. Numerous videos have been published on Ukrainian Telegram channels with interrogations of captured Wagner fighters, where they talked about cases when PMC commanders shot or beat their own soldiers to death.
The events under Bakhmut showed that the Ukrainian army could not effectively respond to such tactics of warfare. As a result, for the first time in several months, the AFU began to retreat. On January 12, 2023, Soledar was abandoned, followed by three more months of fierce fighting, after which Ukrainian forces retreated from Bakhmut.
Despite setbacks in the Donbas, overall Ukrainians remained fairly optimistic about the war’s prospects. In April and May 2023, their hopes were tied to an upcoming counteroffensive in the south, in the Zaporizhzhia region. However, as is already known, it ended in failure. After several months of relative calm, in October 2023, the Russians began their own offensive operation: in the area of the city of Avdiivka, 15 km west of Donetsk.
The defense of Avdiivka revealed a new problem for the Ukrainian army: the absence of a well-prepared second line of defense. Unlike the Russians, who in June 2023 successfully repelled the AFU counteroffensive thanks to minefields and multi-kilometer trenches, the Ukrainians had nothing similar. And while the absence of minefields could be attributed to a lack of mines, the absence of trenches for the second and third lines of defense around Avdiivka is hard to explain. They simply were not dug.
Lacking a technological advantage in precision rocket artillery, the Russians began to widely use guided aerial bombs with warheads ranging from 250 to 1500 kilograms. This allowed Russian aviation to conduct bombings from distances over 40 kilometers, without entering the reach of Ukrainian air defense systems.
The outcome of the bloody battles in Avdiivka and nearby villages was the retreat of the AFU to less advantageous positions. After capturing the city on February 17, 2024, the Russians could not break through the front as swiftly as the Ukrainian military had in the Kharkiv region, but overall, the situation significantly worsened. On almost all front sectors, except for the Kherson region, the AFU switched to static defense. In some sectors, the Ukrainian army was forced to retreat 20-30 kilometers. As of early May 2024, no prospects for liberating the occupied territories are visible.