Russian Winter Offensive in Ukraine (2022–2023)

The Russian Winter Offensive of 2022–2023 was a military campaign executed by Russian troops during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On 22 December 2022, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Valery Gerasimov announced that the Russian army would focus on capturing the Donetsk Oblast. In early February 2023, Russian troops began their winter offensive on the western section of the front in the Donetsk Oblast and on the Kupiansk–Svatove–Kreminna–Lyman line. According to military experts, Russia wanted to quickly break through Ukrainian defenses and seize the Donetsk Oblast. However, the Russian offensive was slow, and according to American and British intelligence estimates, in the winter of 2023 the Russian army managed to achieve only minor progress at the cost of huge losses of its own.

Background
In the fall of 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces successfully launched the Kherson and Kharkiv counteroffensives. 1. 2. 3. 4. After that, a relative stalemate took place in all fronts, which led both partiers regroup their forces and prepare new offensives. At the same time, journalists noted that Donbass was a relatively favorable place for Russia to attack. This was facilitated by the established system of logistics and fortifications in the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Also, the idea of “liberating” or annexing those republics was an understandable motivation for not only for Russian forces, but also for the local people. In November 2022, British Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace called on Ukraine to continue its offensive during the winter months: “Given the advantage the Ukrainians have in training, equipment and quality of fighting manpower against the demoralised, poorly trained, poorly equipped Russians, it is in Ukraine’s interests to maintain the momentum over the winter”.



Donbas


In the winter of 2022–2023, the Ukrainian Armed Forces decided to launch a strategic defense, conducting only local attacks in the area of the city of Kreminna in the Luhansk Oblast. However, Ukraine's actions in the Kreminna area were not particularly successful. According to the Governor of Luhansk Oblast (at that time Serhiy Haidai), one of the main problems for Ukrainian forces in the Kreminna area was the large-scale attacks on this territory by Russian troops. In mid-winter, Russian forces, reinforced by mobilization, made their own attempt at an offensive near Kreminna, but they also did not have much success and by the end of winter the major battles in this direction resulted into stalemates.

Russian forces, although active in various parts of the front, focused their efforts on capturing the Donetsk Oblast. On 16 December 2022, the ISW wrote that the Russians could be preparing an offensive in Donbas in the winter. They wrote that with the onset of cold weather, Russia intensified its actions along the entire front line in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, and pointed to problems in the combat readiness of Russian troops. In particular, British Admiral Tony Radakin then stated: “Russia is facing an acute shortage of artillery ammunition. There is no mystery about this. Putin planned a 30-day war, but Russian guns have been firing for almost 300 days”.

On 22 December 2022, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Valery Gerasimov announced that the Russian army would focus on capturing the Donetsk Oblast. On January 11, 2022, Gerasimov became commander of the joint group of forces in Ukraine, replacing Sergey Surovikin. After he was put in charge, Gerasimov led his first army and immediately got a victory during the Battle of Soledar.

On February 6, 2023, the British Financial Times, citing “very reliable intelligence” from sources in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, wrote that over the next ten days, the Russian army would launch a large–scale offensive in the areas of the cities of Kreminna and Lyman. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also spoke about a new possible Russian offensive on 5 February.

One of the most important and bloody battles that took place was the Battle of Bakhmut, where the Russians took over the village at the cost of abnormous losses (see this section). The main striking force of the Russians in this direction were fighters from the PMC Wagner led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, which included those recruited from among Russian prisoners. Unlike the regular Russian armed forces, which actively used armored vehicles, the Wagner assault squads attacked mainly on land, explaining the huge losses that they suffer. At the beginning of their attacks, the Wagner group artillery sought to "suppress" the positions of the Ukrainian forces and bring the assault groups to their positions. After the Ukrainian forces began to repel the attacks of the group, while they began firing grenade launchers and mortars at the identified Ukrainian firing points. At the same time, different groups of Wagner fighters were coordinated by their commanders using UAVs. By March 2023, Russian forces in this direction managed to capture Soledar and a number of adjacent villages and almost encircling a huge number of Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut and Siversk.

The Winter Offensive was took place also in Avdiivka, where Ukrainian and Russian forces where engaged in fierce clashes since early 2022. Between late 2023 ans early 2024 Russian forces managed to capture the village at the cost of heavy losses. Fierce battles also took place in Marinka where, by March 2023, the city was completely destroyed. The city was also captured by the Russians.

In late January 2023, Russian forces launched an offensive on Vuhledar. The offensive failed and they didn't manage to capture the village, but clashes in the area are still ongoing. Russian armored forces entered Ukrainian anti-tank minefields and were fired upon by Ukrainian artillery, with some Russian vehicles destroyed by ATGMs. According to Oryx, during the offensive on Vuhledar and Avdiivka from 8 to 10 February, the Russian Armed Forces lost 103 vehicles, including 36 tanks, while Ukraine, according to their data, lost five times less during the same period (20 vehicles, including two tanks). Journalists from the BBC Russian Service wrote that, judging by reports from Russian pro-war telegram channels, units of the 40th separate marine brigade, the 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, the 36th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade and the DPR battalion “Kaskad” took part in the Battle of Vuhledar.

Representatives of the Ukrainian Armed Forces called the three-week Battle of Vuhledar the largest tank battle of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a result of these battles, the Russians abandoned frontal attacks on the city with armored vehicles, switching to limited infantry attacks. By the end of winter 2023, Vuhledar turned into a secondary area of combat operations and was never captured by Russian forces.

Kherson and Kharkiv
After the withdrawal of Russian forces from the right section of the Kherson Oblast they occupied due to the 2022 Kherson counteroffensive, the front line in this area stabilized along the Dnieper. The task of fighting along the Dnieper, given the destroyed bridges across the river in this area and the unreliability of ferry or pontoon crossings, was too difficult for both Ukrainian and Russian forces. At the same time, after the Liberation of Kherson from Russian troops, Russian forces began to regularly shell Kherson and neighboring settlements. The goal of the Russian shelling of Kherson was said to be an attempt by the Russians to undermine the morale of Ukrainian society.

In the winter of 2022–2023, a relative calm was established in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast, where mainly isolated skirmishes and artillery exchanges took place. In mid-January, Russian forces tried to advance towards Orikhiv and Huliaipole, but they were unable to achieve any major success.

On February 10, Politico reported that Russia had amassed significant forces near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv Oblast, which was captured by the Russians in February 2022 but was recaptured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive after a a battle that lasted a week. Against this background, rumors were spreading among residents of the Kharkiv region that Russia was preparing a large–scale invasion of the region, with the goal of retaking the lost territories. At the end of February 2023, the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, also spoke about the fact that the Russians could be preparing a powerful offensive in the Kupiansk area. The attempt by Russian forces to regain control of the Kupiansk area and push the Ukrainian group away from Svatove seemed quite logical, but by the end of winter, the Russians had captured only a few villages that were not of great strategic importance.

Since October 2022, Russia has also been conducting an air campaign to destroy Ukrainian energy infrastructure, while attempting to leave Ukrainians without heat and electricity during the winter with the goal to force the Ukrainian government to make concessions. In April 2023, however, the ISW noted that Russia had failed in its attempt to create a humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine.

Threat of invasion from Belarus


The territory of Belarus, a close ally of Russia, has been used as a staging area from which Russian troops have advanced since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, following the retreat of Russian troops from north-eastern Ukraine (including Kyiv) in late March 2022,1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Russia has not made any further attempts to attack Ukraine from Belarus during 2022.

In October 2022, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced the deployment of a regional group of troops from Belarus and Russia.

In December 2022, the Belarusian armed forces suddenly launched military exercises, the largest since the invasion of Ukraine, with several brigades of Belarusian troops moving to the border with Ukraine. On December 19, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Belarus for the first time in three and a half years, sparking a wave of rumors that Russia was trying to drag Belarus into a war with Ukraine.

In December 2022, Ukrainian intelligence and the ISW noted that an invasion from Belarus, although possible, was unlikely.

In early January 2023, there was an increase in the activity of the Russian military in Belarus, the number of which at that time in Belarus was estimated at 13,000 people. Against the backdrop of the Russian winter offensive in Donbas, there was a threat of opening a “second front” against Ukraine from Belarusian territory. However, observers called Russian activity in Belarus an “information operation” aimed at distracting the Ukrainian Armed Forces from other sections of the front.

Results
On M1 March 2023, American military analyst John R. Deni stated: “The vaunted Russian winter offensive has not only begun, it has been going on for a month. And it is not making significant progress. Russia may reach the climax of the offensive and exhaust its offensive potential just as the Ukrainians integrate all those tanks and other armored vehicles that will allow Ukraine to counterattack. If they do that in the spring, they may have a chance of losing the war to Russia”.

Analyzing the Russian winter offensive, military expert Michael Kofman noted that Russian commanders Sergey Surovikin and Valery Gerasimov had radically different strategies for waging war in Ukraine: if Surovikin “chose defense, building up forces, and repelling the Ukrainian Armed Forces offensive in the south”, then Gerasimov “exhausted Russian forces with offensive operations that yielded minimal and by no means strategically important results”.

According to US government estimates from April 2023, at least 20,000 Russian troops were killed during the offensive. About half of these losses were attributed to the PMC Wagner, of which the majority were involved in Bakhmut. John Kirby, the White House National Security Council's Coordinator for Strategic Communications, said that Russia "exhausted its military reserves and armed forces" during this offensive.

However, analysts noted that the winter battles of 2022–2023 were also a difficult test for Ukraine, which suffered significant losses among military personnel and experienced a constant shortage of ammunition.