Analysis: Russian 'Triple Chokehold' Tactic, + Offensive Season Outlook
The Telegraph’s latest article outlines a purported Russian strategy being dubbed the ‘triple chokehold’ which has been responsible for Ukraine’s setbacks and territorial losses of late:
The term and concept appears to actually have been pulled from a Center for European Policy Analysis article from last month, which we’ll get to afterwards. But let’s first cover the Telegraph piece as it at least provides some artwork to better visualize the claimed Russian tactic.
They start with a Ukrainian expert who gives credence to the concept:
There were early signs that Russia was deploying the tactic on the battlefield last year, The Telegraph was told – but Moscow’s armies have significantly increased its use over the last two months along the front line.
“The whole Russian army is using the triangle strategy,” said Serhii Kuzan, the chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre. “We call it the strategy and war of exhaustion.”
Let us also mention that there has been an increased spate of acknowledgments in Ukraine and the West recently that Russia has transitioned to a strategy of attrition—self-evident as it may be to us. Even Zaluzhny was forced to reiterate this in a new interview:
Note his mention of Ukraine’s deteriorating condition, which will play into the later theme of this report:
Under our current conditions — with an enormous shortage of human resources and the catastrophic economic situation we’re facing — we can only talk about a high-tech war of survival. One that uses minimal human resources and minimal economic means to achieve maximum effect. Ukraine is simply incapable of fighting any other kind of war given its demographic and economic realities, and we shouldn’t even entertain that thought,' he said."
Recall that it was Zaluzhny who had advocated for ‘underground plasma bots’ to break the so-called strategic ‘stalemate’ of the front.
The Telegraph again underscores the ‘attritional’ style of warfare model while prefacing their tactical exegesis:
“It’s a very attritional mode of warfare,” explained Nick Reynolds, research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). “These three elements create conflicting imperatives for Ukrainian defenders.”
One might go so far as to invoke the Fabian strategy:
The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection.
Employment of this strategy implies that the side adopting this strategy believes time is on its side, usually because the side employing the strategy is fighting in, or close to, their homeland and the enemy is far from home and by necessity has long and costly supply lines.
The definition above mentions long supply lines, which may imply it is Russia in the unfavorable position. In reality, despite Russia being the ‘attacker’, it’s Ukraine that technically has the longer, slower supply lines: they are forced to import everything from the distant west through the Polish border, without an ability to repair most things on the front—particularly when it comes to Western armor, vehicles, artillery systems, etc., which must all be sent back on long circuitous trips to Western nations.
And recall: though the Fabian strategy might generally refer to smaller forces fighting larger ones, it is Russia that is technically the smaller force in the war; Zelensky himself recently bragged that the AFU is 880,000 in number, while the Russian force in Ukraine is only now approaching 640,000. (In reality, things aren’t so clear: the vast majority of Ukraine’s force consists of non-combat roles, while Russia has more active combat units.)
Getting to the main “triple chokehold” tactic, the Telegraph begins:
The methodical approach begins with ground assaults fighting to pin down Ukrainian troops, forcing them into defensive positions and stalling their ability to manoeuvre.
The continued assaults put heavy pressure on Ukrainian defences.
“By using huge numbers of people and sending them in assaults on Ukrainian positions, they are trying to exhaust our soldiers and our resources,” said Mr Kuzan. “The intensity of the fighting in places like Pokrovsk is very high, with assaults every two hours. This is of course exhausting for our soldiers.”
The key point of the above is: “stalling their ability to maneuver”. What’s important to understand in this is that Russia essentially “screens”—to use a sports analogy—Ukrainian units on a given front, keeping them busy with a constant stream of low-intensity assaults. I.e. these may be small assaults of a few moto-bike units each which continuously flow in and out to attack positions, “freezing” the Ukrainian defensive units by forcing them to dig in.
This keeps them from having the ability to be swiftly and efficiently rerouted to other corridors nearby when an attack occurs—partly due to the “exhaustion” factor mentioned above. Why aren’t Russian units equally exhausted by this? Because they are able to undergo far more rotation, which keeps fresh units coming in through a kind of restless attack ‘carousel’.
Also, as a quick mention—what did I mean by units moving “in and out”? These aren’t simply suicide squads constantly going in and dying, to be replenished by more ‘meat’. In many cases, Russian units attack, hold positions briefly, then roll back. This happened just recently with the assault of the 80th Regiment of the 90th Guards Tank Division. Recall in the last SitRep the mention of the Dnepropetrovsk border being breached from the DPR side: these were the troops of the 80th who briefly captured positions over the border, harried Ukrainian defenders, then fell back. A reliable Russian military-linked analyst confirmed this today:
The guys who broke into the Dnepropetrovsk region, fighters of the 80th regiment of the 90th tank. All are alive, all returned.
Earlier, there was information that everyone died during the retreat.
I was also informed by the 80th tank regiment yesterday that the guys have returned. Well, and the rest, as I described, is just something someone needs to hype up for the sake of fake truth-telling.
This ‘pinning’ action has multiple simultaneous effects on the AFU. But let’s cover the one pertinent to the Telegraph’s explainer.
