Post Segments
Late in September Ukraine’s special operations forces conducted a successful drone strike against three Russian missile and ammunition storage facilities. One was near Toropets about a hundred miles north of Smolensk. Spectacular secondary detonations went off for hours after the drone strike. Ukraine’s special forces largely destroyed the facility where the Russian Ministry of Defence stores Iskander missiles, Tochka-U ballistic missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, and artillery ammunition. Russian forces also may have stored ammunition for Grad multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), S-300 and S-400 air defence missiles, and North Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles at the same depot.
Russia’s milbloggers accused the detained former Russian Deputy Defence Minister, Army General Dmitri Bulgakov of engaging in corrupt practices leading to poor quality construction at the depot. Photos of the damage at the Toropets and also the Oktyabrskii store in Tver Oblast (west of Moscow and north of Smolensk) and the Tikhoretsk depot in Krasnodar Krai (across the water from eastern Crimea) show the destruction of dozens of ammunition storage buildings, rail cars likely used to transport ammunition to the depots, and masses of probable rocket canisters and other material that Russian forces had left scattered over the open ground. The Institute for the Study of War in Washington DC (ISW) observed how such a vast amount of massed explosives reveals the lack of common sense safety precautions in Russia’s rear supply depots, demonstrating the extent to which Western restrictions prohibiting Ukraine from firing Western-provided weapons into Russia granted the Russian command a huge advantage, sparing them from finding the resources to properly guard their rear areas, while using large rear staging facilities to marshal massed materiel for bombarding Ukraine.
During the summer of 2022 Ukraine’s forces launched a campaign of HIMARS strikes against Russian ammunition depots throughout occupied Ukraine, pushing Russian forces to disperse their ammunition stores and degrading the efficiency of Russian logistics. Repeated strikes against ammunition stores within Russia that cause similar levels of damage to the strike in Toropets may force a similar decision point on the Russian military command to reorganise and disperse support and logistics systems within Russia to reduce the impact of such strikes. Russian forces may not have sorted out their vulnerabilities at many logistics depots within Russia, relying instead on the huge sanctuary space provided by the restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-provided weapons.
More strikes against depots in the Russian rear inevitably could undermine Russia’s capability to launch long range missile strikes into Ukraine. Furthermore, Ukrainian strikes against Russian ammunition and missile storage depots could also destroy a decisive portion of Russia’s materiel reserves. That could impact on Russian offensive capability throughout the European theatre and globally, not only their operations in Ukraine if the latter’s defending forces have the materiel, capabilities, and permission to conduct such a strike campaign against logistics and supports facilities within Russia and at large scale.
Can Russia win a war of Attrition?
Some argue that because Russia has a much larger population – 144 million to 38 million – Ukraine will run out of recruits long before Russia.
ISW reported during August that Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, General Budanov, observed that the Russian military suffers personnel shortages and a decrease in the number of new volunteers signing contracts. This despite recent significant rises in one-time payments to already contracted military personnel of a million rubles ($11,000) or more. Such bottlenecks are likely evidence of mounting costs and difficulties with the Russian military’s ability to continue recruiting personnel. Budanov also said that the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast, coupled with constant Ukrainian strikes into Russian territories, has demoralised Russian citizens and eroded the Russian public’s perception of Russian invincibility. Budanov assessed that mounting issues will force President Putin to make a critical decision: either launch another risky and controversial mobilisation or reduce the intensity of combat operations in Ukraine. Budanov’s assessment implicitly assumes that Western states will maintain support for Ukraine at current levels over the next one to two years.
Putin remains averse to announcing another partial mobilisation out of fear of domestic discontent. He will likely continue ordering the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to pursue ongoing crypto-mobilisation efforts until such efforts begin to fall far short of operational requirements in Ukraine. Putin retains the option to call another round of mobilisation – as he did in autumn 2022 – despite his desire to avoid such action. ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin remains unwilling to begin reducing the intensity of Russian forces’ combat operations because the Kremlin sees maintaining the theatre-wide initiative as a strategic imperative. (Russia has taken a year and many casualties to occupy the small town of Vuhledar in Eastern Ukraine.) It remains unclear whether Putin will respond with another round of mobilisation if faced with another crisis similar to or worse than the crisis the Kremlin faced in Autumn 2022. ISW say that Russia’s investments to grow their force generation system, war economy, and international defence relationships matured over the past two years, and likely will continue to do so through next year and 2026.
Meanwhile….
Presently Ukrainian companies can produce four million drones a year. Already Ukraine has contracted the domestic production of 1.5 million drones (presumably during 2024). Russian President Vladimir Putin recently claimed that Russia plans to increase drone production by tenfold to 1.4 million drones in 2024, a target lower than the two million drones that Ukraine aims to produce in 2024. Ukraine recently conducted a successful flight test for a domestically produced ballistic missile. The EU has agreed multi-billion loans to help Ukraine build up its domestic defence industries – one suspects a timely Trump proofing measure. Early in October, Ukraine’s Defence Minister, Rustem Umerov, said that Ukraine will continue prioritizing domestic production of drones and long-range missiles, including ballistic missiles.
Ukraine increased domestic weapons production by a factor of three in 2023 and by factor of two in the first eight months of 2024. ISW assess these efforts to expand domestic military production will allow Ukraine to reduce its dependence on NATO for military assistance in the long-term, but Ukraine still requires considerable NATO assistance for the next several years in order to defend against Russian aggression and liberate strategically vital areas that Russian forces currently occupy.
