With the fall of Vuhledar, one more city in the Donbas comes under Russian control. The city, one of the Ukraine’s most well defended over the past two years, fell after Russia changed the way it conducts its warfare in the Donbas. Whereas previously Russia engaged in ‘mass frontal assaults’ or, as the Western experts claims, ‘human wave attacks,’ Russia’s decision to encircle Vuhledar represents a fundamental shift.

During the Ukrainian ‘Spring’ counteroffensive, many began to doubt whether Russia could engage in effective offense. One of the Arabic news media, AlArabiya, for instance, published an article, explaining how Russia failed to advance but could trench well.[1] The New York Times would later echo these thoughts. In an article published in February, the Times wrote: “Russia’s losses around Vuhledar renew questions about its ability to sustain a fresh offensive.”[2]

No less than two weeks after the article in the Times appeared, Russia lost an ‘epic’ tank battle. “A three-week battle on a plain near the coal-mining town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine” produced what the Times described as ” a stinging setback for the Russians.” At the time, the Times attributed Russia’s failure to its decision to deploy tanks “thrusting forward in columns” headed straight for Ukrainians, if not “advancing columns into ambushes” straightaway. These attacks, right on the forehead of Ukrainian defenses, met a quick demise: “Blown up on mines, hit with artillery or obliterated by anti-tank missiles, the charred hulks of Russian armored vehicles now litter farm fields all about Vuhledar.”

Politico, one of Washington’s most well read newspapers, declared that Russia “may have lost an entire elite brigade near a Donetsk coal-mining town,” the town of Vuhledar. These stagger losses, the authors argued, derived primarily from “tank columns along narrow roads” headed forward in a single line in a frontal attack.[3]

David Axe, one of NATO’s sharpest propaganda axes, wrote a hit piece. In his article, Axe stated: “Russia’s Winter Offensive Just Ground To A Halt Outside Vuhledar.” He described a situation in which a “Russian formation rolled into dense minefields” head first, while “vehicle commanders crowded so tightly behind the smoke-generating tanks that Ukrainian artillery, cued by drones, could score hits by firing at the head of the smoke.”

These losses, Axe wrote, are from “incompetence.” It “leads to even greater losses, which prompts the army to double down: draft more green troops, train them even less and hurry them to the front even faster than it did the previous recruits.”

Alongside Axe’s comments on Russian incompetence, are other criticisms. In an interview with Politico, a former Russian paramilitary commander, Igor Girkin, called Russian generals “complete morons, who don’t learn from their own mistakes.”

It would seem that for the Russians, all was lost on the eastern front, competence, elite brigades, columns of tanks went up in smoke, flame, or moronic mistakes, none of which the Russian military, a lethargic, bearish imbecile, could ever think to remedy. Brought down a peg, Russia, the NATO allies thought, could no longer sustain offense than protect its own borders.

So the Ukrainian proxy force under the command of U.S-led NATO gambled on a Kursk incursion, the likes of which the Ukrainians sought to extend far beyond Russian frontiers to its gas transit or nuclear power plants. Ukraine dashed through enemy centers of resistance, bypassing major Russian obstacles, claiming scores of villages on its way to carving out a large, unprecedented piece of Russia’s own territory, a piece of land Ukraine hoped could leverage in future negotiations.

The Russians, however, watched, analyzed, produced lessons. These lessons, the Russian analysts perceived, were not only for defense but for offense. Alongside a study of its failures in Vuhledar with mass frontal attacks, Russia derived the best work from Ukraine’s storms and assaults. It applied these lessons elsewhere. In the Donbas, the “complete morons, who don’t learn from their own mistakes” began to turn the tables on the Ukrainians, utilizing storm, assault, or infiltration tactics from the Kursk incursion on their intellectually superior enemies.

The lethargic imbeciles began to apply these lessons to the siege of major cities, villages, or settlements, collecting, as one might imagine, handfuls of these Ukrainian residencies strategically. Ukrainian military bloggers, who receive as much cocaine from the Central Intelligence Agency as money to party, began to raise alarm bells. The party was over. DeepStateUA, for instance, as early as the end of August, began to notice a different Russian crawling across the Ukrainian steppes. Reality began to dawn.

“Останні дні противник активізувався на двох ділянках — західніше Павлівки та біля Водяного. Ціль даної акції зрозуміла — обійти Вугледар і взяти його в кільце, бо кількість невдалих спроб ворога штурмувати у фронт вимірюється вже сотнями разів.”

After hitting a few lines by the keyboard, the imaginative juices began to flow! [8] The Ukrainian military bloggers suddenly received mentally heightened visions of the reality on the battlefields. They began to see not the “eye of Sauron” in impassable Tactical Reconnaissance Strike Complexes the ISW computes with a brick walls the Ukrainians magically tore down on the way Sudzha[5] but rings (i.e., кільцo)! The Russians suddenly became Lords of Encirclement.

The exact moment Russians began to maneuver on the flanks of Ukraine’s defense is not immediately discernible from any particular point in time but the encirclement of Vuhledar, predicted well in advance, became clear as soon as August. Within less than a year, the Russians managed to implement a brand new way of warfare, restoring maneuver in the Donbas at a time when most of the fighting, described as ‘positional’ by many Western experts, continued to gridlock.

The encirclement of Vuhledar followed the encirclement of Selidove, a Ukrainian village outside of Netailove, the lowest prong in Russia’s two prong advance on Pokrovsk. Shortly thereafter, Russia began to encircle Tsukuryne. Kurakhivka followed suit. Villages from one end of the Donbas to the other suddenly became subject to pincers, approaching on the flanks of Ukrainian defenses. Eventually, the Russians expanded control over Ukrainian territory by approximately 467.7 km², the largest monthly gain for Russia since March 2022, in no more than September, and a time when General Syrsky, the leader of the Kursk incursion, claimed Russia had not advanced a single kilometer.[6]

How the Russians changed warfare on the eastern front with the restoration of maneuver is certainly not the subject of genre fiction. While many of the terms military analysts employ for observations such as strategy, tactics, or operations bears a similarity to the rigid templates of science fiction, the change in the Russian military came almost entirely from its flexible, forward-looking general staff. The recipient of praise from the Wall Street Journal [7] in the past, the Russian general staff, which is composed of thousands of military specialists concentrated in a single point, managed to pull the sword out of the stone in Vuhledar. Wait, Ugledar. Now it might be due for more.

[1] – [“,أوكرانيا-الروس-يفشلون-في-التقدم-لكنهم-متحصنون-جيدا ” AlArabiya,  03 أغسطس ,2023]

[2] – [“Russia’s losses around Vuhledar renew questions about its ability to sustain a fresh offensive,” New York Times, February 15th, 2024]

[3] – [“Russia may have lost an entire elite brigade near a Donetsk coal-mining town,” Politico, February 12th, 2024]

[4] – [DeepStateUA :20215]

[5] – [“UKRAINE AND THE PROBLEM OF RESTORING MANEUVER IN CONTEMPORARY WAR,” ISW, August 12th, 2024]

[6] – [“أوكرانيا: عملية كورسك ناجحة.. وروسيا لم تتقدم بالشرق منذ أيام,” AlArabiya]

“وقال سيرسكي في مقابلة مع شبكة “سي. إن. إن” إن التقدم الروسي توقف. وأضاف “خلال الأيام الستة الماضية لم يتقدم العدو مترا واحدا باتجاه بوكروفسك. وبعبارة أخرى، نقول إن استراتيجيتنا ناجحة.”

[7] – [“Russia’s Army Learns From Its Mistakes in Ukraine,” WSJ, September 24th, 2024]

[8] – [“Путин рассказал о предпочтении работать с теми, у кого «нос в кокаине»,” Газета.ру] ~ «Сейчас нос в кокаине, да? Но неважно, с такими проще. А с умными сложнее, они опаснее, потому что они влияют на сознание общества, в том числе и нашего», — добавил Путин.