(gun fires)
- [Narrator] In June, Ukraine began
its long awaited counter-offensive.
(rocket fires)
The hope then was that Ukrainian soldiers
equipped with modern Western weapons would recapture
territory taken by the Russians.
(rocket fires)
But that plan has not worked.
Despite breaches of Russian defenses near Robotyne,
Ukraine has liberated just a fraction
of the territory that Russia occupied in June.
- Ukraine is a long way from achieving
a big and significant breakthrough.
- The counter offensive up to this point
has been disappointing both for the Ukrainians
and for the West.
(explosives fire)
- [Narrator] But recently, things have been going better
for Ukraine elsewhere.
After ramping up missile and drone strikes
on the Crimean Peninsula, the important Russian supply route
over the Kerch Bridge was disrupted,
and Russia was forced to withdraw its Black Sea Fleet
from its base in Sevastopol.
(rocket fires)
Now, with winter approaching,
(rocket fires)
focus has turned to what's next for the biggest war
on European soil in nearly eight decades.
(gun fires)
(piano music)
- So what are we seeing right now?
Slow movement near Bakhmut, Robotyne, and Kherson.
- [Narrator] Mark Kimmitt is retired
US Army Brigadier General who served
in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq.
- They are continuing their ground offensive
to try to reach down into the Sea of Asov.
Mariupol is probably the target for this northern axis.
Berdiansk, Melitopol, the center axis,
and from Kherson, of course,
cutting off the Crimean Bridge, the Crimean Peninsula
from Donbas, what we call cutting the land bridge.
The Russians, by contrast, they are continuing to defend
along these lines and their number one objective
is to hold those lines as long as they can,
but while they're using their ground forces to go
against either defend or counter attack
against the Ukrainian forces, they're also using
their long range missiles to attack civilian targets.
(foreign language)
Here, military targets.
Here, civilian and infrastructure targets.
So the Russians are truly fighting a total war
against soldiers and against the civilians.
- [Narrator] While progress in the north
of the country has been slow-going,
General Kimmitt believes the Ukrainians
have recently seen more success in Crimea.
- They've started attacking down here in Crimea
where here they've been trying to fight ground maneuver
to take ground and get to the sea of Asov.
Down here, it's more of a air and naval fight.
If you take a look at the targets,
they've been attacking Sevastopol,
which is the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
They've also been attacking the airfield of Saky,
the air defense sites of Yevpatoriya,
and also in the Boyko oil platforms and radar platforms
that they have out in the Black Sea.
Kerch Bridge, you knock that out,
you stop the logistics flow into Crimea.
You take out that bridge and you're forced to resupply
by sea and by air, and that's very, very tough.
You can't get the quantities of material
to support the types of artillery war
that the Russians are fighting.
- This bridge will certainly continue to be
a major target for Ukraine in this war.
One of the difficulties with defending the bridge
is the variety of the attacks that the Ukrainians have used
against it and the different options that they have.
First of all, they've used a truck bomb.
Second, they used naval drones.
There's also a possibility that if their forces
in the southeast of the country are able to drive
further south, they will put the bridge in range
of the missiles that Ukraine has.
Ukraine is also asking the West for further missiles
which have a longer range
and would therefore be able to strike the bridge.
(missile roars)
- [Narrator] In September, President Biden said the US
is willing to provide advanced long range
surface to surface ATACMS missiles
to help Kiev with its counter-offensive.
- I believe bringing in the ATACMS
will make a tremendous difference.
The longest range weapons system
that the Ukrainians have right now
are their own rockets and HIMARS.
This line, this little bar,
represents about a hundred kilometers, 60 miles.
That's the range of the HIMARS.
It's usually doctrine that you put your artillery
and your missiles about one third
of the way behind the front lines.
So in this case, you would see
that in all of these formations,
in all these attack routes, you can reach to some
but not all of the Russian attack areas and rear areas.
When you bring in the ATACMS, everything changes.
(missile roars)
It has a range of about 300 kilometers
and has no problem reaching
all of the ground in those attack routes.
So all of the logistics, all of the command posts,
all of the resupply dumps are in peril
and as importantly, so is Crimea.
You can see that if you bring the HIMARS close enough
to the front line and you bring the ATACMS ammunition,
you can generally reach everything in Crimea.
- [Narrator] Recently, Russia withdrew the bulk
of its Black Sea Fleet from its main Crimean base
in Sevastopol, following a series
of drone and missile strikes by Ukraine.
- Ukraine, to all intents and purposes, does not have a Navy
and so it's all the more astonishing
that they have been able to launch attacks on Russia
which has one of its most powerful fleets
based in Sevastopol.
Ukraine has already managed to sink its flagship
and constantly carries out attacks on other boats.
(foreign language)
- [Narrator] Going forward, General Kimmitt
sees three potential options.
- I think the three options for the counter-offensive
before we go into the fighting season,
are that the Ukrainians achieve some breakthrough.
(gun fires)
And they will try to then break out,
perhaps get all the way through a area
of the defensive lines
and pour as many troops through that formation as possible.
I think the second option would simply be
that we are where we are as we settle into the winter
and the formations, either on the Russian side
or the Ukrainian sides, have local counter attacks
but don't make a significant amount of progress.
The third option, which I think is the most unlikely,
is that the additional equipment that is brought in
by the west and the fact that we are now
in somewhat of a battle of exhaustion may cause a rethinking
of the purpose of this war,
and it could very well be that the Ukrainians
are pushed to begin diplomatic negotiations.
- [Narrator] Last July, General Kimmitt wrote
a WSJ editorial about what he saw as the most likely option.
(gun fires)
- At that time, I believed that the war would eventually
reach this type of World War I stalemate
and trench warfare, artillery warfare.
Unfortunately, I was right and I stand by my conclusion
that not only will this be the case in 2023
but could very well be the case in 2024.
(foreign language)
(tense music)