Combining their drones, mines, missiles and artillery, the Ukrainian army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade and 92nd Assault Brigade not only resisted a Russian assault on their positions in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast on Friday—they destroyed it, leaving a strip of the forest in the oblast littered with dead Russians.
It was an important victory for the two elite brigades—but a victory that could come with surprising risks. According to one Ukrainian combat veteran who goes by “Constantine,” there’s a dangerous tendency among some Ukrainian commanders to assume units that are effective on the defense are equally ready to attack.
So when a formation such as the 92nd Assault Brigade defends its lines from a Russian assault, some commanders might be tempted to order the unit to leave its fortifications, mass on open ground and move toward Russian lines. But attacking is riskier than defending—and tends to get more troops killed.
The Ukrainian 95th Air Assault Brigade, deployed to Kursk alongside the 92nd Assault Brigade, rediscovered this truism the hard way in early January, when it rapidly shifted from defense to offense and advanced toward the village of Berdin, just north of the main Ukrainian line. A clutch of Russia’s best fiber optic drones blasted the exposed Ukrainian paratroopers, inflicting heavy casualties and defeating the ill-advised attack.
The same thing has happened to the 92nd Assault Brigade more than once. The part of the brigade that has been fighting in Kursk “has had its staff replaced three times over the three years” of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine “due to futile orders to seize a treeline at the cost of an entire companies,” Constantine explained. A company normally has more than 100 troops.
Left unsaid in Constantine’s criticism is an implied endorsement of the most obvious Ukrainian strategy as the wider war grinds into its fourth year. Dug-in Ukrainian brigades with intact supply lines and support from drones and artillery routinely inflict horrific casualties on Russian troops—at times killing or maiming hundreds in a single clash.
The Russians have no choice but to attack, as the Kremlin’s war aims are mostly offensive in nature: primarily, to capture as much of eastern Ukraine as possible, as fast as possible.
The Ukrainians can lay their mines, pre-sight their artillery kill zones and arm their drones—and confidently wait for the Russians to come rolling or marching across the shell-pocked no-man’s land. “Experienced Ukrainian units are highly effective at repelling Russian attacks,” Constantine noted.
By comparison, there’s a Ukrainian definition of winning this war that doesn’t require much in the way of offensive action. Kyiv’s forces can kill so many Russians, destroy so much Russian equipment and inflict such harm on Russian morale that Moscow’s forces collapse. Only then, amid their enemy’s unraveling, would the Ukrainians leave their trenches and advance.
It’s happened before. In the fall of 2022, Russian troops were badly depleted by their failed offensive toward Kyiv that had kicked off the wider war six months earlier. Careful Ukrainian reconnaissance detected weakness in certain stretches of the Russian front line around the northeastern city of Kharkiv. A handful of Ukraine’s best brigades exploited this weakness, breached Russian lines and sparked a panic among the exhausted Russians.
The Russians retreated. The Ukrainians advanced behind them—and quickly liberated almost all of northeastern Ukraine.
The 92nd Assault Brigade, then designated the 92nd Mechanized Brigade, executed one of the most impressive maneuvers of this counteroffensive when it quickly marched more than 50 miles from the village of Pryshyb to the city of Kupyansk. Today the city remains free.
Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive succeeded because it was preceded by a much longer defensive operation that bled Russia pale. By comparison, Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive along the southern front was preceded by a long stalemate that afforded Russian field armies ample time to reinforce their front-line units, dig trenches and lay mines.
It should’ve surprised no one that the 2023 offensive failed.
If the disparate outcomes of Ukraine’s separate 2022 and 2023 counteroffensives tell us anything, it’s that timing is everything. There could come a time when Russia is weak and Ukraine is strong and Ukrainian brigades can go on the attack with reasonable expectations they’ll achieve something meaningful and lasting.
With Russia still holding a significant manpower and firepower advantage over Ukraine despite staggering Russian losses, that time is not now.
The 92nd Assault Brigade is holding defensible ground with effective weapons and inflicting heavy casualties on Russian assault groups. It’s doing what it needs to do to set favorable conditions for some future negotiated peace or, barring that, an eventual Ukrainian attack on the weakened Russians.
In the meantime, “commanders should prioritize preserving the lives of our experienced troops,” Constantine urged. Hold now so they can win later.
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