Snake Island: The Start of Ukraine’s Counteroffensive?

Ukraine has reclaimed the island with the help of NATO weaponry.

By
17

Last summer in Kyiv, I wrote an editorial for the Ukraine Business News titled: “Would NATO Fight for Snake Island?”

With Ukraine’s flag rising last week over this strategic Black Sea island near the mouth of the Danube, the answer is: NATO weapons, yes; NATO soldiers, no.

Ukraine’s constitution states that joining NATO is a national goal. But admitting Ukraine is not supported by all NATO’s member countries, soon to be 32 with the upcoming addition of Finland and Sweden. NATO’s rules require candidate countries to settle their border disputes with their neighbors. Ukraine is unlikely to achieve this as long as Vladimir Putin remains in the Kremlin.

In the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine, NATO leaders agreed at the recent summit in Madrid to sharply increase the number of forces NATO keeps at a high readiness level—from 40,000 to 300,000. But that may be more aspiration than reality anytime soon. No NATO boots are expected on the ground in Ukraine.

Create a free account
Access additional articles and newsletters for no cost, no credit card information needed. Continue ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
17
By
Comments (17)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Duane Truitt

    Air superiority is when one force has substantially more or more capable forces then the other. But that is not air dominance where one side is unable to operate in the air or defend against the other side’s air forces.

    Russia has always had air superiority, but due to Unkraine’s air defenses Russia has never had air dominance. Hence they no longer fly manned aircraft over Ukraine controlle territory. Wars are never won with air dominance - it always been necessary to dominate on the ground, always.

    Most certainly Ukraine has vastly superior of ground forces - over one million active duty today in Ukraine and more and more are getting trained and gaining combat experience. Russia never had more than 150 thousand “combat ready” forces in Ukraine, of which at most most half of those were actual combat troops, the rest being rear echelon support, unarmed. That was on February 23 - since then Ukraine has confirmed kills of over 37 thousand Russian combat troops, a large proportion of them one year conscripts with no prior combat experience and given the usual ratio of total casualties to KIA of 3:1, that means total Russian casualties of at least 100+ thousand - which is more than the numbers of combat troops Russia has to start with in February.

    Meaning Russia today has already lost most of their initial invasion force. Reports indicate that most of their replacements are non-Russian mercenaries - the least effective and least motivated of all combat troops. The only reason Russia has not been driven out of Ukraine completely is (was) their large superiority in artillery - a primarily defensive weapon.

    Now that Ukraine is starting to catch up with Russian artillery, the tables are turning. They no longer have to hunker down under Russian bombardment, they are starting to give as good as they get. Eventually their overwhelming advantage in force size along with weapons parity will drive out the Russians, or destroy them. Not immediately, but over the next half year the war will be decided.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Everybody Digs Bill Evans

      I sure hope you're right.

      Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    Bill B

    Fingers crossed.

    Collapse
  3. Avatar photo
    DougAz

    President Joe Biden and his Administration deserve a ton of credit for aid to Ukraine, working to get Turkey on board for NATO admission of Finland and Sweden.

    Guess it's just to partisan to even get a mention. Pretty sad.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      El Duderino

      There have been kudos from the writers on this very site. That said, yes, a lot of people are letting his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal cloud their vision when it comes to his exceptional handling of this crisis. He has done as good a job as the American people could tolerate. He’s gotten NATO to step it up and he’s helped organize a sanctions regime with real bite behind it. I wonder who in his administration has been the real impetus behind the major push

      Collapse
  4. Duane Truitt

    It is entirely normal in any war to have ebb and flow, back and forth, wins and losses for both sides. This is the first extended war between first world powers in the internet era, where the entire world has minute by minute updates via Twitter. So most civilians unfamiliar with how wars are actually fought do not have the perspective or big picture view … and so treat every gain as “winning” and every loss as “losing”.

    In World War Two, the Allie’s lost nearly every battle for the first two years to the Axis powers in both theaters. Then for the next two years the war was essentially a draw that could have gone either way. It was only in the last year of the war that the likely winner was clear, and even then a single failed battle, such as the D-Day invasion of Normandy, or the liberation of the Philippines, could have so frustrated the Allie’s that they would have called for an armistice rather than unconditional surrender.

    We are only 5 months into this war, and while Ukraine is actually in a far stronger position now than Russia, there is still a lot of fighting and dying to come, and it is unknown how long it will take to conclude by Russia cutting their losses and withdrawing.

    Collapse
  5. Avatar photo
    CynthiaW

    I want it to be the start, but oy.

    Collapse
  6. Ben Bobbitt

    Imagine what they could do with a few dozen more HIMARS and a hundred more advanced artillery pieces. Now that they have trained and experienced troops there should be a ramp up of deliveries of this equipment. Hopefully we found a way for those Polish MiiGs to be delivered quietly to UKR.

    There are bleak days ahead for UKR, no doubt, but with our continued and hopefully increased help they can begin to inflict irreparable damage on the war-making capability of Russian forces and eventually push them back across the border. Without enough help they will falter and fail and the West will have missed an historic moment to de-fang Russia at the cost (to the West) of only $$$ instead of lives.

    The quicker Russia is defeated (and hopefully dramatically) the better it will be vis a vis China and Taiwan.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Tracie

      I agree that nothing good can come of giving up on Ukraine. I don't know why I think I know that. Have no expertise.

      What strikes me as particularly dangerous about Putin are his historicism and romanticism, combined with his apparent old school approach to grinding warfare with forces and civilians apparently disposable. This approach and the language used to justify it are so foreign to my mental conception of a just war, that I frequently feel like I'm watching a bad movie with implausible Russian villains when I read Kremlin offcials' statements.

      Collapse
  7. Avatar photo
    Jason Gibson

    Nice to hear some good news again. Things were starting to feel kind of bleak

    Collapse
    1. Duane Truitt

      Actually there was always good news but our media did very little reporting of it. Russian forces had regrouped and stopped losing ground, but ground is not the point. Russians made headlines whenever they ruble-ized a Ukrainian small town, but the Ukrainians kept on destroying Russian forces day by day in a war of attrition that only Ukraine could win, given that they vastly outnumber Russian forces in country, by more than 5:1.

      Ukraine had to deal with dug-in Russian forces in the east, armed with lots of artillery. They could have continued their counter-offensive against those positions but only with heavy losses, similar to World War One style warfare. That was never acceptable. So Ukraine bided their time, kept grinding away at the Russians, and waited until they finally had the offensive weaponry to drive the Russians out of their country.

      That kind of “boring” stuff doesn’t make for big headlines on CNN or the Post.

      What has recently changed is that the continuing delivery of large numbers of modern offensive weapons is finally enabling Ukraine to go on the offensive again in the east without suffering unacceptably large numbers of casualties.

      Collapse
      1. Egal.Fabrice

        Agreed. Artillery barrages have done little to solve Russia's big problem, which is that fresh Ukrainian conscripts, equiped with US weapons and with strong morale, will join the fight in the hundreds of thousands before the end of the year. This has been the long term perspective since the Ukrainian stopped the drive on Kiev, or at least since Biden announced billion-dollars packages. Putin refused to fully mobilize, so he has no clear solution.

        Collapse
      2. Avatar photo
        Bill B

        Well, depending on the media and viewership the definition of "good news" and "boring" stuff can be relative or rank differently. All "media" stopped reporting the news and started filtering and curating it some time ago; that is as true of MSNBC as it is of FOX, of the Post as much as the Washington Examiner.

        Collapse
  8. Avatar photo
    MatthewRobin

    I don't think we can extrapolate Ukraine’s performance on a tiny remote island (Snake Island) to territory that Russia can resupply via rail (Kherson).

    I predict the Frontline remaining static until either Russia or Ukraine neutralizes their opponents air defense systems.

    I wonder if Russia plans to use their newly acquired Iranian drones to take out Ukraine’s air defenses.

    Ukrainians pilots are begging for F-16s to take on Russian air defense. Personally I expect F-16s to not be able to penetrate Russian air defense, but I would love to be proven wrong.

    Lastly, a big gamechanger sitting on the sidelines is Israel's Harop suicide drone. That drone is built primarily for Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD).

    Collapse
    1. Duane Truitt

      The key to victory is in destruction of Russia’s forces and their supply lines and their will to fight, not air defenses. Wars are won mostly on the ground or by ground based weapons and soldiers. Ukraine’s newfound ability to destroy Russian ammo dumps with artillery including HIMARS is huge, a much more important victory than retaking Snake Island. The benefits include depriving Russia of the artillery fire that allowed them to stop Ukrainian advances in the east; killing more Russian leadership incl. generals and colonels; and destroying Russian troop morale.

      Russian troops actually can be and will be deprived of supplies, and they will eventually be cut off and either surrender or be killed. Ukraines forces vastly outnumber Russian forces. Now they have the weapons to fight a peer war with Russia, and Ukraine has always had more motivated soldiers than any conscripted or mercenary force will ever have.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        MatthewRobin

        I want to create a situation where Ukraine has the military advantage over Russia. Russia would then have to come to the negotiating table and the plan should be to get them to withdraw to the February 23 borders.

        I believe there are flaws in your analysis.
        1. Air superiority is not about controlling the air for the sake of it. Controlling the air allows a military to strike ground targets from the air.

        2. Militaries react to new situations on the ground. Ukraine has only recently been using the HIMARS in battle so Russia did not have to plan for this. One should expect them to react and position their vulnerable assets as far away from the frontlines as possible, preferably inside Russian territory itself.

        3. While I am glad to see Ukraine take out ammunition storage I am not sure if they are taking out a significant amount of ammunition or is the ammunition they are destroying merely a drop in the bucket.

        4. Based on current battlefield conditions I have not seen evidence that would make me confident that Russia will be eventually cut off and deprived of supplies.

        5. Ukrainians do not outnumber Russians. According to the Austrian military Ukraine has less Battalion Tactical Groups (BTG) in field today compared to 2022/06/26 while Russia has more. The UK is now training Ukrainian troops, so hopefully that helps, but to paraphrase Clausewitz, in a war of attrition bet on the bigger guy (Russia).
        [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEbLuAPobao][BTG discussion begins at 7:13]

        As I have written in my substack, both sides are using air defense well with the effect of denying both sides access to the air. Most Russian aircraft fire missiles at Ukraine from within Russian territory and Ukrainians are wary of using their airpower against Russia's air defense. Degrading Russia's air defense over Ukraine will open up the skies to Ukrainian aircraft to engage in Close Air Support (CAS). What would that look like? Ukraine can then call in airstrikes from Bayraktar TB2 drones and SU-25 aircraft to attack Russian artillery positions.

        The breakthrough I described has the potential of ending the war. Russia's biggest advantage is their artillery so effective SEAD missions would lead to Ukraine being able to use CAS to neutralize Russian artillery. In this situation Ukraine can actually contemplate launching an offensive and driving Russia backwards. This new battlefield reality will lead to Ukrainian gains until Russia sues for peace.

        Collapse
  9. Avatar photo
    Adicesa14

    Rosy picture. Hope you're right.

    Collapse