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ISW continues to assess that material shortages are forcing Ukraine to conserve ammunition and prioritize limited resources to critical sectors of the front, increasing the risk of a Russian breakthrough in other less well-provisioned sectors and making the overall frontline more fragile than the current relatively slow rate of Russian advances suggests.
Ukraine will likely be in a significantly improved operation position by June 2024 and Russian military command will most likely reconsider several aspects of their anticipated 2024 offensive in the Kharkiv region.
Ukrainian forces will likely leverage sufficient US security assistance to blunt Russian offensive operations in June 2024, which Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov recently highlighted as the likely month that Russian forces will launch their expected large-scale summer offensive effort.
The Russian military has likely been assessing that Ukrainian forces would be unable to defend against current and future Russian offensive operations due to delays in or the permanent end of US military assistance. This assumption was likely an integral part of Russia’s operational planning for this summer.
Russian forces have been establishing operational- and strategic-level reserves to support their expected summer offensive effort, but likely have been doing so based on the assumption that even badly-trained and poorly-equipped Russian forces could make advances against Ukrainian forces that lack essential artillery and air defense munitions.
Ukraine is also addressing its own manpower challenges and will likely continue to conduct rotations to rest and replenish degraded units, although it will take time for these efforts to generate large-scale effects.
Ukrainian officials have previously indicated that Russian forces will likely continue to conduct offensive operations this summer focused on seizing the remainder of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts but may also launch an offensive operation to seize Kharkiv City.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov notably signaled on April 19 Russia’s intent to seize Kharkiv City.
The Russian military command may have envisioned that simultaneous offensive efforts towards Kharkiv City and along the current frontline in eastern Ukraine would stretch and overwhelm poorly-provisioned and undermanned Ukrainian forces and allow Russian forces to achieve a major breakthrough in at least one sector of the frontline.
The Ukrainian forces with improving material and manpower supplies that will likely hold the frontline in June 2024 will undermine this operational intent of simultaneous Russian offensive operations across a wider front.
The Russian military command will likely have to consider if the intended areas and objectives of its summer offensive effort are now feasible and if the current means that Russian forces have been concentrating and preparing are sufficient to conduct planned offensive operations considering the expected resumption of US security assistance to Ukraine.
*ISW offers no forecast of the decisions the Russians will make at this time.*
The anticipated resumption of US military aid to Kyiv is a significant turning point in this war, but the Kremlin, the collective West, and Ukraine still have many difficult decisions to make. All of which will help determine the nature and outcome of the fighting.
The Kremlin still retains the ability to further mobilize its economy and population to support its campaign to destroy Ukrainian statehood and identity and may determine to pursue domestically unpopular decisions should it deem them necessary.
Ukraine still faces persisting force generation, sustainment, and defense industrial challenges that will heavily affect the capabilities that it can bring to bear.
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