Kharkiv offensivens beslutsprocess

This study investigates how Ukraine accomplished the Kharkiv counter-offensive (2022). Ukraine lost the Kharkiv region in the early beginning of the invasion. After a few months, they started to plan a counter-offensive against Kharkiv and Kherson. The counter-offensive was quickly executed and successful. The purpose of this study is to understand the case by answering the research question: how can the outcome of the counter-offensive in Kharkiv be understood using the OODA-loop? The study also aims to highlight modern manoeuvre warfare and deception in a war with a transparent fog of war. The mythology used in this study is a qualitative text analysis. The purpose of the methodology was to understand the case and not the theory. The data used consisted of second-hand sources because the war was still going on, and it was hard to conduct when soldiers were still not able to tell their stories. The overall conclusion of the study is that Ukraine enabled the initiative by accomplishing its decision-making faster than Russia. Factors that are head components to their fast decision-making are their fast manoeuvring, use of light vehicles to strike in-depth, and deception. In other words, Russia acted on Ukraine’s initiative. This study contributes to increasing the understanding of modern manoeuvre warfare, deception, asymmetric warfare, and decision-making processes.