Battles of attrition in West Asia & Ukraine

If 2024 was the year when war returned with a vengeance to the centre of inter-State relations, it also witnessed some critical developments in warfare, featuring attrition, manoeuvre, and adaptation.

- Harsh V Pant Kartik Bommakanti

The Russia-Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas wars underscore some fundamental truths about the nature of warfighting.

One key shift was how the Ukrainians changed their operational strategy by moving away from attrition-based war to manoeuvre by attacking inside Russia and occupying a large part of the Kursk region in August this year. Kursk was an ideal target for a manoeuvre-based breakthrough because it was thinly defended with poorly trained Russian conscripts. For the Ukrainians, it was precipitated by a convergence between opportunity and necessity. To relieve pressure on their territory, the Ukrainians exploited a fleeting opportunity to compel the Russians to redeploy their forces away from the main front in Kharkiv and Donbas. Ukraine's breakthrough was largely executed by its best fighting and battle-hardened units, such as the 82nd Air Assault brigade in Kharkiv and forces drawn from other parts of the front. Yet this breakthrough also came about due to prior attrition and careful assessment of the weakest areas in Russia's defences.

Yet Ukrainian forces have done well, so far, by way of efficiency in that they have managed to do more with less. In close-quarter engagements, they have performed better, but platoon and company strength action, which has resulted in fewer Ukrainian casualties, has also prevented significant and rapid breakthroughs notwithstanding the gains in Kursk.