Ukraine Goes After Russia's Fuel Tanks in Record Hunt

Ukraine's bid to degrade vital Russian supply lines in the occupied south and east of the country is being reflected in the rising number of fuel transport vehicles being reported destroyed in Kyiv's daily battlefield tallies.

Through January, the Ukrainian defense ministry claimed 937 fuel cars and cisterns had been destroyed or damaged beyond repair, the highest monthly tally since the beginning of Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Similar losses in December—931—were the second-highest monthly total of the war, per Kyiv's tallies. The rising attrition rate may be a reflection of Russia's costly offensive activities, which have seen the Kremlin's troops pushing forward in hotspots including Avdiivka in eastern Donetsk Oblast, and on the northeastern front near Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast.

Newsweek could not independently verify the figures and has contacted the Russian defense ministry by email to request comment.

Behind the lines, Ukraine is also launching strikes against Russia's strategic oil industry and broader energy sector. Recent drone attack targets included a St. Petersburg oil terminal, about 620 miles from the Ukrainian border.

Ukrainian forces have largely transitioned to an "active defense" posture all along the 600-mile front, following the failure of Kyiv's 2023 summer counteroffensive effort. Ukrainians are now girding themselves for a difficult 2024, which one senior NATO defense official told Newsweek in December will be a "grind."

As in winter 2022-23, the Ukrainian strategy is to bleed the advancing Russian forces as much as possible while conserving the strength of its own units. Like last winter, this has already required retreats.

The eastern town of Marinka—on the outskirts of Donetsk city—was surrendered in December. Ukrainian forces are still fighting in the fortress city of Avdiivka on the northwestern edge of Donetsk city, but they are being forced to cede ground. The bloody battle there is playing out similarly to the contest over Bakhmut, which ended with a Russian tactical victory in May 2022.

Ukraine's Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) chief, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, said on Tuesday that despite their minor successes, the performance of Russian troops on the eastern front has been "nothing even close" to what Moscow envisioned.

"Their offensive continues," he said. "Somewhere at the beginning of spring, it will be completely exhausted."

Despite their recent gains, the Institute for the Study of War has expressed skepticism that Russian forces can return to the theater-level mechanized operations required to effect a major change to the battlefield situation. Costly offensives will likely produce more local gains, the ISW has said, for example in the fighting around Avdiivka and Kupiansk.

Pavel Luzin, a Russian military analyst and visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Newsweek that Moscow's grinding, high-casualty offensives are a reflection of the military's lack of options following two years of punishing combat.

"They just don't have other options to execute the orders," he said. "And, of course, they don't have the guts to tell the Kremlin that the war cannot be won and must be ended."

Observers have suggested the Kremlin intends to stabilize and slightly expand its partial occupation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson through 2024, as it seeks to outlast Kyiv and its Western partners.

"Stabilizing the lines is an impossible goal," Luzin said. "Ukraine's goal is not liberation of the territory. Ukraine's goal is the elimination of the military threat from Russia, and the liberation of territory would be only a sequence of the main goal."

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