Winter Will Change the Rules of the War in Ukraine. The Ukrainians Are Better Equipped Than the Russians to Take Advantage of General Winter.
The low morale of Russian soldiers and their poor equipment will be a major handicap.
While the beginning of autumn had been rather mild in terms of temperature, temperatures have started to drop sharply in Ukraine in recent days. Between December and February, the thermometer will remain on average below zero in Kyiv.
In the North, where a continental climate prevails, it can drop even lower. In the middle of winter 2006, in Luhansk, a record temperature of -30°C was reached. The South is milder but the season remains wet and harsh, with rain and snow. It is the rasputitsa, these showers that turn the earth into mud. Then the land and rivers begin to freeze.
“Weather is a significant factor in any military operation,” commented Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder in October 2022, when asked about the arrival of cold weather on the front lines. “The rain, the snow, the mud, the impact of all of that on the field will add a new level of complexity to an already dynamic battlefield,” he warned, although no one knows when or for how long extreme conditions will be imposed.
Ukrainian soldiers are preparing for this predicted chaos. So are the Russians. By deliberately striking the energy network, Vladimir Putin's army wants to use the climate cruelly against Ukrainians, both military and civilian. To enable Ukraine to win the war, the West delivers weapons, ammunition, fuel ... But also equipment suitable for the coming season.
“The United States has provided approximately 50,000 parkas, 4,700 pants, 39,000 fleece hats, 23,000 boots, 18,000 gloves, and 6,000 tents,” says the Contact Group for the Defense of Ukraine, which coordinates the aid. At the last meeting on October 12, eight countries promised winter supplies. “As part of these ongoing discussions, Ukraine has requested winter equipment to support its efforts,” said a Canadian military official.
Canada will provide 100,000 pieces of equipment from its inventory and purchase 400,000 pieces from Canadian companies. Jackets, pants, boots, and gloves will be delivered “in the next few weeks,” they said. France has also promised 3,000 “cold weather” personal effects. The Western effort is notable.
But the Ukrainian army has more than 150,000 soldiers, and to stand on the front line in the extreme cold requires drastic logistics. “You don't just take off your gloves when it's -20°C,” said a French officer who served in Estonia, where France deployed forces as part of NATO missions. “You have to make sure your gloves stay dry and have a second pair ready at all times. In winter, you need field manners,” the officer added. “There is no substitute for training and experience,” the officer insists.
Projected in Estonia, facing Russia, he studied the opposing equipment and noted “their rustic material.” But the images circulating about the Russian mobilization also suggest a decay of living conditions for Russian soldiers, whose morale is likely to decline as quickly as the hours of sunlight.
In Ukraine, the war will change its rhythm. This is a certainty. With the autumn rasputitsa, we will begin to have a more complicated situation for the attackers, in this case, it is the Ukrainians here in their counter-offensive to free their territory from the presence of the Russian invader. In the spring of 2022, the melting snow delayed and disrupted the Russian attack, whose forces were then on the move.
When it will start to freeze, it will be possible to do maneuvers again. The problem will then be the soldier. The environment will become more hostile and restrictive. Operations will probably be shorter. Even if you are well equipped, waging war in extreme cold becomes more difficult: moving, running, hiding ... Infantry positions must be raised more frequently. Rest periods are getting longer. The need for food increases.
The “Sausage war” provided a painful example. In 1939, the Red Army was on the offensive against Finland. On December 10 and 11, the attackers forced the Finns to leave their camps. But the Russian soldiers, starved by several days of marching in the snow, rushed on the sausages that made the Finnish army's ration: the fat content helped them to hold out in the cold.
The Finns took advantage of the distraction to reorganize and counter-attack victoriously. During this winter war, between November 1939 and March 1940, the Finns, in inferiority, knew how to take advantage of the climatic conditions in front of the exhausted Russians. They applied the Motti tactic to encircle and disorganize their opponent, as in the battle of Suomussalmi where 11,000 Finns won over 45,000 better-armed Russians.
For artillery or tanks, the cold changes little: modern equipment is designed to resist temperature variations. However, the weapons require a little more maintenance to prevent frost from getting into the guns. The engines have to start a little earlier to warm up the machines. But if conditions get extremely bad, tactics will become more complicated.
For example, the CAESAr artillery gun, which has proven its effectiveness at the front, has its limits in the snow. During mobility tests conducted in Norway against other competing artillery pieces, the CAESAr came in last because the truck is mounted on a chassis. Chains can be installed on the wheels, but tracked vehicles are more agile in the snow. Of course, the difficulty will be the same for Russian equipment on wheels.
The impact of the cold can be decisive. In 1941, for example, winter changed the course of the war and the outcome of Operation Barbarossa launched by the Wehrmacht against the USSR. Mud and snow slowed down the German panzers while the Soviet equipment resisted at the gates of Moscow. The winter counter-offensive pushed the Nazi army back more than 200 km from the capital. Further north, the German-Finnish operation Silberfuchs against Murmansk also failed due to the geographical and topographical constraints of the Far North.
In the coming months, both Russian and Ukrainian forces will have to take care of their rear logistics, which may be blocked by snow. Reconnaissance operations by drones may be affected, as drones are blinded by fog. As for the trenches, which are necessary for protection, it is better to have dug them before the ground freezes: the Ukrainian soldiers have already dug a large network of trenches on the front. Engineering operations to cross a river will also be disrupted by the cold and the formation of ice.
To cross a frozen river on foot, the ice cover must be at least 37 cm thick. To this must be added one centimeter per ton. Better not to fall into the water if the ice breaks ... Finally, camouflage operations must also adapt to their environment.
The cold does not prevent the fighting from being severe, on the contrary. The battle of the Chosin Reservoir in Korea was a witness to this. In November 1950, the American forces thought they were winning the war against North Korea, but the entry of the Chinese forces upset the situation.
At -30°C, the fighting around the frozen Chosin Lake led to the American retreat. 10,000 soldiers were wounded during the confrontations and 7,000 suffered the consequences of the climate. On the Chinese side, the losses amounted to 20,000 men during the fighting and 30,000 wounded outside of the fighting, according to figures from the Medal of Honor Museum in the United States. The risk of hypothermia and frostbite was considerably higher.
During the First World War, tens of thousands of soldiers suffered from “trench foot,” a necrotizing cold caused by humidity. During the Falklands War, in 1982, 20% of the soldiers hospitalized were due to the cold.
For several years, Western armies have been preparing again for war in extreme cold. Global warming in the Arctic makes us fear the militarization of the Arctic Circle. Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian threat became more tangible. Since 2006, NATO has regularly organized “Cold Response” exercises in Norway to test its winter capabilities. The last edition, in March 2022, gathered some 30,000 soldiers, twice as many as usual.
Norway is also home to a NATO Center of Excellence on “Cold Weather Operations,” which aims to enable allies to “operate and fight at a level where a cold weather environment will be to our advantage and not to our enemy's.” From Napoleon's campaign in 1812 to World War II, Russia has often taken advantage of this to confuse its enemies. In Ukraine, the test will come to all sides.
Putin believes that General Winter will once again be favorable to Russia. It will be up to the Ukrainian forces to show Putin that once again he was wrong. Better equipped and better prepared Ukrainian forces are more than capable of doing this.
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