The year of liberation of the south of Ukraine. How can the war of 2024 develop
In February 2022, the Western analytical environment claimed that Ukraine would not last 96 hours, gradually updating its forecasts with other terms, and as a result, almost unanimously to the second half of this difficult year, agree that Russian braid was found on Ukrainian granite. This once again said that any analytical information is due to the fact that the phenomena with which the modern pool of analytics are found to be analyzed for the first time.
With scale, with adaptation of opponents, with the renewal of military and technical potential both in the positive and negative sides. With unpredictability of factors that arise. And from the experience of the events of 2022 and 2023, you can make a number of predictions about how the events will develop in 2024 and even in the next, since the end of the war of next year is not expected. Even with the most favorable schedules.
2024 can be for the Defense Forces of Ukraine (SU) the year of liberation of the South. It is the prerequisites for this development that we can today observe in the war zone. The formation of a bridgehead on the left bank of the Kherson region will continue in 2024, which can lead to priority priority of important logistics. This will force the Russian troops to move more favorable positions deep into the region.
The support line can be the Tavriya-Radensk line, which is not absolutely reliable for long-term maintenance, and therefore its breakthrough is a matter of time. The wedge between Novoprokopivka and Verbov in the Zaporozhye region will not be able to restrain the Russians for a long time, and it will break in the direction of Tokmak, which in combination with the development of events on the left bank will make the Russians depart closer to Melitopol.
In turn, the Russians will continue to try to expand the control zone in Donetsk region. In particular, they will not stop the pressure on Avdiivka, which they are unlikely to occupy for the new year, and in 2024 they will continue their occurrence to obtain the end result. On the other hand, the Avdeevsky direction will deplete their resource, preventing the advance in the old and new directions.
After the presidential election in Russia, another wave of mobilization is possible, which will resolve the issue with the human resource, despite the fact that the problem of technical, mechanized components will not be solved. Russia will continue to exhaust its inheritance inherited from the USSR's weapons and will depend on the supply of a certain nomenclature from Iran and DPRK.
The result of hostilities in Ukraine in 2024 can be a classical positioning war in the East and a number of achievements in the south, which allow to expand the bridgeheads and restrict Russians in logistics. It is premature and inappropriate to talk about the liberation of Crimea in 2024. The sequence of liberation of the territories of Ukraine may look like - Kherson region and Zaporizhzhya region, between the release process of which may develop a wider range of operations against Crimea.
Donetsk and Lugansk region will be the most difficult stage of liberation of the territories of Ukraine. And all this indicates that the war itself will not be temporary. But let's return to where the material began. To the fact that the analysis should always be present not so much constants as the variability of situations. For example, we can both consider and exclude in our analysis the destruction of such a vital logistics artery as the Crimean bridge.
Currently, the Crimean bridge is functioning inferiorly, but it functions. But if the road and railway supply stops, then the situation throughout the south of mainland Ukraine changes sharply, because the system of providing troops is sharply degraded. This, in turn, will affect the degree and possibilities of maintaining the mainland south of Ukraine by Russian troops, and the liberation processes will accelerate sharply. The only question is whether the bridge will function.
There are other points that, at first glance, seem to the Russians who are more beneficial, but which in the future can have a very negative impact on their possibilities of keeping the territories. For example, if we consider the course of hostilities in 2022, the Russian troops retreated in a situation where the retention of the bridgehead was detrimental to them. They escaped from the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy regions during the Sou counterpart at the northern bridgehead.
The counter -offensive of the Sou in the Kharkiv region in general became a separate topic for study in military universities. The arid position of the Russians on the right bank forced them to run to the left. But in 2023, the doctrine "No step back and keeping each meter at any cost" was adopted. And this "any price" is poured into the tremendous losses of the living power of the Russians.
The direct dependence of the maintenance of territories by Russian troops on the number of these troops can play with them a deadly joke. After all, the quantity is not quality, and the amount of qualitatively ensuring is becoming more difficult, and at some point in maintaining the balance will be simply impossible. In 2022, Russia invaded 180 thousand troops into Ukraine. These were elite units that had the maximum staffing and experienced both officers and servicemen.
And then, in a few months, Russia was able to seize large territories of Ukraine, at the cost of large-scale losses, resulting in the second half of 2022 it could not capture any millionaire or region. By the end of 2023, the number of Russian troops in Ukraine exceeds 400 thousand. But despite such numerical growth, the Russian army did not show the tenth of the Russians' achievements of the invasion.