Could Ukraine’s frontlines collapse? Military officials reveal their thoughts

On March 29th, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that his country was in a bad position. He cautioned that his armed forces would need to retreat to more secure positions if Ukraine didn’t receive more aid from the United States. 

“If there is no U.S. support, it means that we have no air defense, no Patriot missiles, no jammers for electronic warfare, no 155-millimeter artillery rounds,” Zelensky said during an exclusive interview with The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. 

“It means we will go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps,” Zelensky continued. The military situation for Ukraine after nearly seven months of no assistance from the United States has left the country in a dire situation on the frontlines. 

“If you need 8,000 rounds a day to defend the front line, but you only have, for example, 2,000 rounds, you have to do less,” Zelensky explained, adding that the easiest way to do more with less was to make the frontlines shorter for Kyiv. 

Zelensky also worried out loud about the possibility that Russia could break its frontline and assault big cities again. “We are trying to find some way not to retreat,” he told the Post and added that the situation was stabilized after the fall of Avdiivka. 

The formerly Ukrainian fortress city of Avdiivka fell at the end of February and there was a real possibility at the time that Russian forces could have breakthrough Ukraine’s lines according to Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. 

In mid-March, Syrskyi warned that Russia was making an effort to break through around Avdiivka, where troops at the time faced intense artillery fire and drone attacks, as well as airstrikes and daily assaults according to The Kyiv Independent. 

An assessment from the British Defense Ministry published on March 14th reported that 60% of Russian attacks in the previous 6 weeks had been focused around the Avdiivka and Marinka axis of the frontline; it was a worrying time in the war. 

However, as Zelensky explained to The Washington Post, Ukrainian forces “stabilized the situation because of smart steps by our military” but that doesn’t mean that Ukraine isn’t still at risk of seeing a collapse of its defenses in the future. 

On April 3rd, Politico reported that high-ranking military officers who worked with former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valrey Zaluzhny were worried that a concentrated attack anywhere on the frontlines could collapse Ukrainian defenses. 

The officers warned that Russia could collapse the Ukrainian line wherever they chose to launch an offensive, thanks in part to new aerial guided bombs that Russia has been using to “penetrate the front line and to crash it in some parts,” the officers said.

“There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us,” one office explained on the condition that they remain anonymous. 

“We don’t have those technologies, and the West doesn’t have them as well in sufficient numbers,” the officer added before saying it was only Ukrainian resilience and errors by Russian commanders that could alter the dynamic of the war. 

Whether or not Ukraine's frontlines can withstand any future Russian offensive has yet to be seen but it does appear as if Moscow may be gearing up to launch a new assault in the future now that the war’s momentum is behind Russia. 

In February, Zelensky told reporters one day after the second anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia was preparing for a new offensive that could be launched as early as May 2024 according to a Reuters report. 

"We will prepare for their assault. Their assault that began on Oct. 8 has not brought any results, I believe. We, for our part, will prepare our plan and follow it," Zelensky explained, adding Ukraine had a plan to counter Russia but he didn’t share any details. 

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