Four years after the start of the full-scale war, the Kharkiv offensive operation, launched by the Defense Forces on 6 September 2022, remains the benchmark for the tempo and depth of advance throughout the entire conflict. A great deal has been written about this operation in the genre of memoirs and praise, but far less in the genre of analysis. In a column for RBC-Ukraine, Doctor of Military Sciences Oleksiy Semenenko examines not the fact that the operation succeeded, but under what conditions and thanks to which factors such a result was even possible. The expert's key conclusion is that in the classical arithmetic of an offensive, one variable is missing here — and it is not heroism, but information.
Without Numerical Superiority
The standards of an offensive operation on which much of the officer corps of the post-Soviet school was trained call for a three- to fourfold advantage over the enemy in the breakthrough sector. On the Kharkiv axis, no such advantage existed: the attacking formation was comparable in size to the defending one, and in several sectors even inferior to it. Nevertheless, the defense was breached within a day, and the tempo of advance in the first days exceeded 20 kilometers per day — a figure that Soviet doctrinal provisions allowed only for the development of success by a tank army in the operational depth. It is precisely this discrepancy between the "paper" arithmetic of forces and the actual result that points to the presence of a factor not accounted for in the standard calculation.
A Miscalculation in the Head, Not on the Map
In Semenenko's assessment, the most costly miscalculation by the Russian command was made not on the map, but in the head. By September 2022, Russian assessments had settled on the view of the Ukrainian Defense Forces as an army exhausted by the summer fighting in the Donbas, capable only of local counterattacks and unable to prepare two offensive operations simultaneously. On this misconception the Ukrainian combination was built: Kherson was publicly and loudly prepared as the main direction, where the Russian reserves, including airborne units, were shifted, while the Kharkiv axis was downgraded to a secondary one. At the same time, reconnaissance indicators of the concentration of Ukrainian troops in the Slobozhanshchyna region were recorded; according to testimony from those involved in planning, this information either did not reach the appropriate level of decision-making or was ignored. As the expert notes, underestimating the enemy is essentially an inability to believe the available data when they contradict an already established picture of the world.
Weak Links in the Defense
Next, in Semenenko's words, the errors began to compound one another. The Balakliya — Izium sector was held mainly by Rosgvardia units, subunits of the so-called "corps," and volunteer formations — forces not designed for combined-arms combat, and over the five months of occupation it had not been engineered as a continuous defense. There were no operational reserves in the sector — they had been pulled to the south for the so-called "2022 counteroffensive." At the seams, structures of different subordination operated, so the most vulnerable point of the defense was also an administrative one. Logistics funneled through the Kupyansk railway junction and the fords across the Oskil River, which had been systematically struck by precision weapons as early as July–August, meaning the operational preparation of the operation had effectively taken place before its start. Finally, the rigid vertical of command required "upward" coordination: when the situation changes faster than a report can be passed, the defense collapses without a fight. The expert separately highlights the Izium salient, which was held for the sake of an advance on Sloviansk despite its elongated and poorly protected flanks, turning into a trap for whoever held it.
Asymmetry of Awareness
The Ukrainian side, in Semenenko's assessment, had a detailed picture of the enemy's defense: the composition of the formation, densities, command posts, depots, and seams. This was the result of the joint work of the GUR, the SBU, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the agent network and resistance on occupied territory, signals intelligence, and partner data. Equally important was the reverse — the regime of secrecy: the circle of those in the know was minimal, a significant part of the work was conducted outside digital channels, and units received their tasks at the last moment. For an army fighting in a transparent information environment, such concealment of intent, in the expert's words, is a more difficult task than the offensive itself. As a result, an asymmetry of awareness emerged: one side saw the enemy's defense through and through, while the other did not see the preparation of the strike. It is precisely this asymmetry that is the very variable missing from the arithmetic of the balance of forces.
Lessons for Military Science
Semenenko's analysis boils down to the conclusion that the success of the 2022 Kharkiv operation was not the result of numerical superiority, but the outcome of a combination of intelligence advantage, a regime of secrecy, and the systemic weaknesses of the enemy's defense, compounded by administrative and logistical factors. For military science, in the expert's view, the key lesson is that under modern conditions information and the ability to conceal one's own intent in a transparent information environment become an independent combat factor capable of compensating for the absence of a classical advantage in forces on the axis of attack.
