Russia’s Victory Day Offensive In Northern Ukraine Might Be An Elaborate Feint. Will Ukraine Fall For It?

May 9 is Victory Day in Russia, the day Russians celebrate the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

It’s an intensely symbolic date for Russian nationalists—so much so that, for months ahead of this year’s Victory Day celebrations, analysts anticipated Russian forces would launch a new offensive in Ukraine on May 9, regardless of the overall conditions along the 600-mile front of Russia’s 27-month wider war on Ukraine.

The Russians’ apparent goal: to ensure that, on Victory Day, “there will be something to present to [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin,” explained Artur Rehi, an Estonian soldier and analyst.

Sure enough, on Thursday, Russian troops launched an attack along a new vector in northern Ukraine—probing the village of Pylna, 17 miles north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-most-populous city. “Today, Russian troops tried to expand operations against Ukraine,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky announced.

The problem with planning an offensive around a symbolic date is that everyone has access to the same calendars. The Ukrainians knew the Russians were coming on May 9. It didn’t help that the Russian air force intensified its bombing north of Kharkiv in the days before the ground assault, further telegraphing the Kremlin’s next move.

“We understand the scope of the occupier's forces, we see his plan,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian territorial forces’ 125th Territorial Defense Brigades holds the line around Pylna, but it seems elements from the army’s 42nd Mechanized Brigade—including the brigade’s “Perun” drone team—reinforced the territorials.

When a Russian mechanized force, possibly from the 11th or 44th Army Corps or the 138th Motor Rifle Brigade, rolled into Pylna in broad daylight, Ukrainian troops were waiting.

“Our soldiers, our artillery, our drones respond to the occupier,” Zelensky said. The Perun team’s first-person-view drones knocked out four Russian BMP fighting vehicles “along with personnel,” according to the 42nd Mechanized Brigade.

Russian propagandist Alexander Igorevich Kots claimed the Russians advanced several miles south of Pylna, but there’s no evidence to back up his claim. Whatever the Russians attempted to accomplish on Victory Day, they didn’t devote a lot of forces to it—and their gains on that day at best amounted to a few streets in a tiny village.

Finnish analyst Joni Askola was skeptical the 400,000-person Russian force in Ukraine could spare the troops for a Kharkiv offensive while it was also trying to advance west of Avdiivka and east of Chasiv Yar—twin eastern campaigns that have been costing the Kremlin a thousand casualties a day for months, if official estimates from Kyiv are accurate.

In light of Thursday’s modest assault on Pylna, Askola weighed the possibilities. “There are two potential scenarios for a significant Russian offensive from the north,” he wrote. “Either they have a larger number of troops than anticipated, or they are on the brink of initiating a mobilization. Both options are within the realm of possibility.”

But there’s a third possibility. “It is also possible, and quite likely, that the operations in the north are intended to compel Ukraine to redeploy troops to that area, thereby reducing the availability of reserves to counter Russia's primary offensive in the east.”

In other words, maybe the talk of a Victory Day offensive—and that small-scale Russian attack on one village just across the border—was meant to frighten the Ukrainians into shifting troops to the north and away from Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar.

Maybe the Victory Day offensive was actually a Victory Day feint.

The Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies endorsed Askola’s feint theory. The Russians’ goal is “to distract the Ukrainian defense forces’ command and prevent the use of reserves, especially strategic ones, in more critical areas.”

If that’s the Russian strategy, it’s working to some extent. “To strengthen the defense on this part of the front [around Pylna], reserve units have been sent,” Zelensky announced.

But to significantly weaken the Ukrainian positions around Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar, the Russians will need to compel commanders in Kyiv to shift entire brigades. There’s no sign the Ukrainians plan to do that.

And unless they do, the Victory Day feint might amount to nothing for Russia except a few burned BMPs and some dead soldiers—and the diversion of just a few Ukrainian reservists.