There is no holiday season in Ukraine, where the fighting continues with no respite. While people celebrated Christmas and the holidays around the world, the Russian military was capturing an important settlement in the Donbas.  

Russian Progress in Kurakhove

“Russian forces have likely seized Kurakhove following two months of intensified offensive operations aimed at seizing the settlement and eliminating the Ukrainian salient north and south of the settlement,” the Institute for the Study of War assessed in its latest estimate of the war.

Nestled in the Donetsk Oblast, in southeastern Ukraine, Kurakhove was an important part of the Ukrainian defensive line. The Russian military had been trying to capture it for several months now, dedicating large numbers of troops and resources to the operation.

To take the settlement and clear the Ukrainian positions to the north and south of Kurakhove, the Russian military concentrated up to 36,000 troops in the area. Although exact numbers are available, the Russian forces very likely suffered heavy casualties in their efforts to capture Kurakhove. This is mainly due to the fact that the Russian military’s preferred method of offensive is mass infantry attacks.

However, taking Kurakhove doesn’t mean that the Russian military is close to an operational breakthrough. On the contrary, the Russian forces are making slow, and costly, gains, but they struggle to achieve more than tactical progress. On the other end, the Ukrainian military usually defends a position for as long as it can before falling back to a better-defended position to continue the fight.

“Russian forces may struggle to advance rapidly further west of Kurakhove along the H-15 Kurakhove-Pokrovske highway should Ukrainian forces choose to defend in the Kurakhivska TPP and Russian forces fail to outflank Ukrainian positions in the TPP near Dachne or Ulakly,” the Institute for the Study of War assessed.

The Russian forces lost a lot of men in their attempt to capture Kurakhove, and that can stem immediate further advances in the region.

Russian Casualties

Meanwhile, the Russian forces continue to take heavy casualties on the ground. Over the past twenty-four hours, the Russian military, paramilitary units, and pro-Russian separatist forces lost approximately 1,650 troops killed or wounded. In addition, the Russian invaders lost around eighty-two tactical vehicles and fuel trucks, twenty-eight unmanned aerial systems, twenty-two artillery guns and multiple launch rocket systems, eighteen infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, fourteen main battle tanks, one air defense weapon system, and one piece of special equipment.

Overall, the Russian forces have lost approximately 785,000 troops in the fighting, with over 200,000 killed and more than 580,000 wounded.

Despite these heavy casualties, Russian president Vladimir Putin and his military leadership have chosen a strategy of attrition. They are content with losing thousands of troops a day and tens of thousands of troops every month as long as that translates into tactical gains on the battlefield. Since the Russian military is incapable of achieving an operational breakthrough via maneuver warfare, attritional tactics, such as human wave attacks, are the Kremlin’s only reasonable option.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.

Image: Dmytro Larin / Shutterstock.com