April 29, 2026: In mid-2023, Ukrainian troops were operating in southeastern Ukraine region of Novodarivka. The plan was for twelve Ukrainian brigades to advance on a 30 kilometers front and seize the Russian bases area established around the town of Tokmak. For this to work Ukrainian combat engineers had to clear a lane through Russian minefields. The minefields were covered by Russian drones, snipers and machine-guns. The Ukrainian engineers were unable to create a mine-free path. Without the cleared path, nothing could be done.

Against ready defenses, breaching and gap-crossing capacity can decide whether a land force ever gets to test the rest of its campaign strategy. When an effort to penetrate enemy defenses fails, the larger campaign depending on the breach stalls and large quantities of fuel, munitions and other supplies must be redistributed to other units on the front line preparing for major offensive or defensive operations. This can be tricky in Ukraine where both sides have drones ready to attack supply trucks moving near the front line.

Campaign plans often emphasize transportation, logistics support, and munitions because those factors are central to feasibility and can be expressed in definite planning relationships. Campaign plans should emphasize those factors, but a land force can stall earlier. If a land force cannot open a lane through a prepared obstacle belt or sustain a crossing under fire, the follow-on force never gets to the part of the plan where those other calculations matter.

Similar operations in Ukraine already occurred in a similar fashion. A recent Ukrainian military publication article on the 2023 counteroffensive explores how the combined arms breach sat at the center of the campaign’s maneuver-attrition discussion. The undertaking could not continue on schedule once the breach failed.

This means enough is already visible to justify a sharper planning question. Campaign creators should ask what happens if breaching assets are disabled, the first lane does not open, or the crossing cannot be sustained. They should ask that before they become absorbed with what happens after the force passes through.

Before the counteroffensive began, Ukraine’s Orikhiv-Tokmak theory projected twelve brigades breaking through 30 kilometers of frontage, isolating Tokmak within seven days, and then driving south toward the coastal city of Melitopol. Russian defenses on that alignment were deep, layered, and visible to all before the assault. Tempo depended on a successful breach.

At Novodarivka, the breaching company sought to clear a lane, straying under pressure, then being immobilized as soldiers and vehicles were disabled by anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines. To make matters worse, Russian mortar and small arms fire also hit the breaching company.

Russian forces constructed a reasonable defensive position and completed it effectively. The losses among the Ukrainian combat engineers do not explain the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive. Ukrainian troops did not implement the original plan as designed. Equipment arrived late, training time was short, and Russia integrated observation, fires, aviation, and obstacles effectively. The broader explanation, however, strengthens the central point. Once the breach failed, the larger campaign could not unfold on the timetable that gave the original plan its promise.

Russia’s failed attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets river in May 2022 shows the same logic from the other side. Russian forces lost an entire battalion tactical group at the river. Their fuel, ammunition, and manpower elsewhere did not matter because the force at the crossing never secured the opening that would have let those other resources count.

A breach or crossing is not a mere engineering drill. Rather, it is a combined arms operation that requires reconnaissance to find the site, fires to suppress defenders, obscuration to reduce enemy observation, security forces to protect the lane, engineers to reduce obstacles or emplace the crossing, traffic control to move units through in order, and follow-on operations to keep the opening from collapsing. When those actions fall out of sequence, the crossing can stall even when the larger force remains intact.

The practical lesson is simple, treat breaching and crossing capacity as explicit campaign variables. Wargame their loss rates, measure their redundancy, and test whether the exploitation concept persists through disruption at the breach or crossing site. If it does not, then the plan’s concluding point may arrive far earlier than the logistics estimate suggests.