Ukraine's Strategy of Victory
Turning the Tide
Maksym Zhorin, deputy to General Andriy Biletskyi and one of the leading figures within Ukraine’s most formidable military formations, the 3rd Army Corps, provides an assessment of current battlefield dynamics, discusses Russia’s spring offensive and Ukraine’s adaptation to evolving Russian tactics, and outlines Ukraine’s broader strategy for achieving victory in the war.
CONTENT
Evolution of Russian Tactics
Killing 50,000 Russian Troops Per Month
Ukrainian Deep Strikes
Russian Spring Offensive and Ukrainian Adaptation
Major Ukrainian Counteroffensive
Ukrainian Theory of Victory
Evolution of Russian Tactics
At the beginning Russian troops started using small assault groups and it became infiltration later — literally only in recent times. The difference is important. Back then, they initially started using the right approach tactically. They launched assaults in small groups, but that is not infiltration. The distinction is that assaults by small groups involve the enemy directly engaging your forward positions — trying to destroy them, capture them, or at least force losses upon them. That is the objective.
Infiltration is different. It also relies on small groups, but instead of engaging frontline positions directly, they avoid contact whenever possible, slipping between positions and penetrating deeper into the rear, where they accumulate and gradually undermine the entire defensive system from within. That is the key difference.
And over roughly the last year and a half, they have tried to employ this tactic on a very large scale. But at that earlier stage, we encountered for the first time what was then an unfamiliar tactic for us — small assault groups. Two or three enemy servicemen would attack your position simultaneously from different directions. And it was relentless: you repel one assault, then another, then a third and fourth.
I remember many fighters at the time were psychologically unprepared for having to eliminate such large numbers of enemy troops in a single day. That was when these parapets of enemy bodies first began appearing in front of positions. For many soldiers, it was difficult even to process emotionally that within a single day they had repelled seven or eight assaults, with enemy bodies lying everywhere, while new attackers kept advancing over the corpses of those already killed. It all unfolded continuously, without pause. At the time, it placed enormous psychological pressure on people.
Later, around a year and a half ago, this whole infiltration approach began to emerge, though it operates according to a somewhat different logic.
Killing 50,000 Russian Troops Per Month
This absolutely has to be one of the main objectives. But I do not believe it should be the only objective. It is entirely realistic — absolutely realistic. However, achieving it will require changes not only in the number of drones being supplied to the Armed Forces, although there are still certain issues even there.
