Russia is dispersing its forces because it doesn't know where it will be attacked

An official from Ukraine’s Defense Forces of the South claims Russia has dispersed its military along the southern front since it doesn’t know where to expect a counterattack.

Nataliya Humeniuk is a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Southern Defense Forces and while speaking during a national telethon on May 11th she explained the situation at the front. 

"The enemy continues to fire despite the fact that it still feels the pressure from our side and tries to take up positions very carefully because it feels uneasy in this area that we are working on,” Humeniuk said according to a translation from Ukrainska Pravda.

Humeniuk explained that Russian forces were mining the left bank of the Dnipro River to prevent Ukraine from crossing the waterway and gaining a foothold on the other side according to Ukrainska Pravda.

"But their panic is visible and consists in the fact that they do not know from which direction to expect the maximum force of the attack,” Humeniuk said, “and that is why they are dispersing their efforts both on the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson fronts.”

While Humeniuk’s comments are interesting, it’s important to understand them in the context of Ukraine’s larger information war surrounding its coming counter-offensive. 

For months, the Ukrainian government has been playing the same games it did when preparing to launch its 2022 summer counter-offensive in Kherson and Kharkiv Oblasts. 

Much talk has been made about which direction the attack will come from and when it will actually start. But we’ve never been given any real information on the core details of the mission, and that makes a lot of sense. Success will only come from surprise. 

That may be why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently said in an interview on May 11th with public broadcasters in Kyiv that his country needed more time to prepare its counter-offensive.

According to BBC News, Zelensky said Ukraine was ready for the counter-offensive in terms of morale and personnel but still lacked some of the equipment needed for the fight. 

“We can go forward and be successful. But we'd lose a lot of people. I think that's unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time,” Zelensky said according to a translation from The Guardian. 

While Zelensky was making his public remarks about needing more time, Ukrainian forces around the city of Bakhmut were launching their first major counteroffensive in months.

That offensive has led to the liberation of several key areas around Bakhmut as of May 14th according to the Institute for the Study of War, and the offensive is still ongoing. 

What Ukrainian officials say publicly and what unfolds privately don’t always match up and there are almost always several reasons why government officials like Nataliya Humeniuk make public claims like those of Russia dispersing its troops along the front. 

In Humeniuk’s case, her statements could be more high-level propaganda designed to confuse Russian leadership or they could be an attempt to further bolster morale on the homefront ahead of the counteroffensive. But we do know there’s some truth in them. 

Since December 2022, Russian forces have been constructing defensive fortifications all along the front in Ukraine as well as in all of its border regions according to Reuters, which shared thousands of satellite images to reveal the extent of Russian defenses. 

While this might not prove Humenuik’s claims it certainly lends credibility to the idea that Russian commanders don’t really know where Ukraine will strike, which is why they’ve been preparing for every contingency and built fortifications all along the frontlines.