Frost hit Ukraine: how it can affect the course of hostilities
According to military analysts, the January frosts, which replaced a rather warm December and the beginning of the new year, contribute to offensive actions in winter.
Already on January 9, according to the Ukrainian hydrometeorological center, near Bakhmut it will be -15 degrees at night, near Svatovoy -14 degrees. This can significantly affect the further course of the war.
In its article, BBC Ukraine ponders whether the troops will go on the attack on the fields of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
In 1993, the US Army Corps of Engineers published a book that detailed the specifics of ground forces conducting combat operations in winter. Its author was George Svintsov, a native of Russia, who was interned in Germany during World War II and then moved to the United States.
According to a common point of view, the activity of hostilities subsides in winter. However, as Svintsov writes, since winter makes it difficult for both sides to act on the front, the one that feels more confident should take advantage.
– Keeping and controlling the territory means stability. In winter it means real estate. And real estate in winter is a delayed defeat in which the territory loses its strategic value, – the book author says.
The only productive approach in such a situation, according to him, is to act as flexibly as possible, without fear of losing some part of the territory, to capture and immediately use the enemy’s weapons, ammunition and equipment.
At the same time, he admits that a winter offensive is possible with a five- to six-fold advantage in manpower. If there is no such advantage in the balance of forces on a large area, it must be created locally.
— We expect an intensification of hostilities. Frosts hit, at night down to -17, our heavy equipment will finally be able to advance faster, – said on January 8, the head of Luhansk RMA Serhiy Haidai.
According to Haidai, such weather can be good for both sides. He also said that the Russian army is now transferring forces from the Bakhmut direction to Kreminna.
Ukrainian troops are already fighting 5 km from this city in the Luhansk region and are trying to encircle it by cutting the supply routes from Severodonetsk and Svatovo.
In an interview with the Italian Corriere della Sera, GUR representative Vadym Skibitskyi said that the Russian Federation is preparing a new missile strike against the Ukrainian energy infrastructure against the backdrop of a drop in temperature, and will also try to attack some areas in the East.
— We see increasing pressure in the Donetsk region… They will probably start a new attack on the Zaporizhzhia region as well. And in the Kharkiv direction they will try to stop our counteroffensive. And they will try to maintain their positions in Kherson, where they are building up their defenses, as well as on the Crimean peninsula, which is especially strategic for them.
BBC Ukraine also quotes OP adviser Oleksiy Arestovych, who predicts that Russia will be the first to conduct an offensive operation. In his opinion, this can happen on the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia directions.
