Nipate
Forum => Kenya Discussion => Topic started by: RV Pundit on June 13, 2023, 06:08:52 AM
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Stupid Putin wasted himself in Winter - and now in few days - 7 villages have fallen
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Three villages liberated by Ukrainian soldiers as of today......
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Stupid Putin wasted himself in muddy snow - as brilliant Ukrainan just waited to turn him and his weapons into mince meat. Now its summer time - logistics are much easier. Although the trees and vegetation now provide hidding ground - but heavy machinery are able to move faster - and so are the soldiers.
Ukraine just need to get the momentum. Russian have no motivation in this Putin war.
Three villages liberated by Ukrainian soldiers as of today......
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They are hiding on plain site
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This is the wishful thinking we have been always talking about .
People have been fed Western propaganda that it has made them anxious of some sort of positive results .
From Winter offensive to Spring Offensive to Summer offensive then back to Winter offensive.
The reality is when you go for an offensive you have to have three times mightier army than the one defending .
As you can see Ukraine has lost almost 30 % of its equipment within a matter of 4 days and someone here is singing 3 villages have been liberated.
Three villages liberated by Ukrainian soldiers as of today......
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Wewe stick to defending Kenya kwanza government and talking of Mishale .
Werent you the one who predicted a winter offensive then it became spring offensive and now Summer offensive heading to autumn offensive .
Stupid Putin wasted himself in muddy snow - as brilliant Ukrainan just waited to turn him and his weapons into mince meat. Now its summer time - logistics are much easier. Although the trees and vegetation now provide hidding ground - but heavy machinery are able to move faster - and so are the soldiers.
Ukraine just need to get the momentum. Russian have no motivation in this Putin war.
Three villages liberated by Ukrainian soldiers as of today......
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Ukraine has lost hundreds of pieces of Western-supplied hardware – Putin
https://www.rt.com/russia/577964-putin-ukraine-russia-losses/
Ukrainian forces have already lost dozens of tanks and hundreds of armored vehicles in their attacks on Russian positions, President Vladimir Putin told war correspondents on Tuesday. Kiev’s troops have so far failed to achieve success on any of the fronts in their long-touted counteroffensive, he added.
Russian positions have faced attacks in four major directions, the president said during a meeting at the Kremlin. He added that Ukrainian reserves, including those equipped with Western-supplied military hardware, had also been thrown into the fray.
However, the offensive has led to massive losses in personnel and materiel for Kiev, Putin stated. Ukraine has lost “at least 160 tanks and 360 armored vehicles,” and the military hardware destroyed by Russian troops accounts for between 25% and 30% of all Western military equipment supplied to Ukraine, the president estimated.
“There are also losses that we do not see, which are a result of long-range high-precision strikes,” Putin said, claiming that Ukraine’s actual losses are likely higher than the figures he had given. Regarding personnel, Putin said Russian casualties were “ten times lower” than among Ukrainian forces.
The president also reiterated that the “fundamental goals” of the Russian military operation in Ukraine remain the same, and that the Kremlin does not plan to change them. At the same time, Putin maintained that Moscow “sincerely sought” to reach an agreement with Kiev and resolve the differences involving former southeastern Ukrainian regions, which have since joined Russia following a series of referendums in autumn 2022.
Zelensky confirms Ukrainian ‘counteroffensive actions’ underway READ MORE Zelensky confirms Ukrainian ‘counteroffensive actions’ underway
After long touting a counteroffensive, Ukraine finally launched its operation last week, although thus far it has apparently failed to bring about any dramatic changes on the front line.
The Russian Defense Ministry has reported that Ukrainian forces have lost dozens of pieces of military hardware in their attacks, including tanks and armored vehicles supplied by the West. The ministry has also published videos showing Russian forces successfully striking Ukrainian heavy equipment.
On Tuesday, one such video showed Russian soldiers seizing a German-made Leopard 2 main battle tank and US-produced Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. Kiev has demanded more tanks from Berlin amid the intense fighting.
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This is the wishful thinking we have been always talking about .
People have been fed Western propaganda that it has made them anxious of some sort of positive results .
From Winter offensive to Spring Offensive to Summer offensive then back to Winter offensive.
The reality is when you go for an offensive you have to have three times mightier army than the one defending .
As you can see Ukraine has lost almost 30 % of its equipment within a matter of 4 days and someone here is singing 3 villages have been liberated.
Three villages liberated by Ukrainian soldiers as of today......
As I've always said before. Ukraine has no capacity to liberate their lost territory. This war was lost a long time ago. This offensive will turn into a meat grinder for Ukrainian forces. A negotiated settlement with Russia is the best option!
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/13/war-in-ukraine-so-far-favors-the-defense/b1d70ab8-09a1-11ee-8132-a84600f3bb9b_story.html
War in Ukraine So Far Favors the Defense
A week after the Ukrainian counteroffensive began in earnest, the Russian defenses are largely holding, and it’s clear that the Ukrainian military cannot count on another rapid, sweeping success akin to last fall’s Kharkiv region offensive, which saw up to 12,000 square kilometers of territory liberated.
But now is still a good time to recall the assertion of some military theorists that modern technology has shifted the offense-defense balance in favor of defense. This school of thought provides a ready explanation for Ukraine’s surprising success at repelling the Russian invasion, but also suggests that the much-ridiculed Russian troops may have a natural advantage as they face the current Ukrainian onslaught.
As Seth Jones, Alexander Palmer and Joseph Bermudez point out in a recent brief for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, technological developments that increased mobility historically favored the attacker, and those that boosted firepower helped the defender.
If the introduction of the stirrup in the 8th century didn’t quite bring about feudalism in Europe, as US historian Lynn Townsend White suggested in the 1960s, it did enable crushing cavalry charges that subsequently won many a battle. The tank enabled the most spectacular offensives of World War II. By contrast, the machine gun, the anti-aircraft gun and infantry anti-tank weapons all made it easier to repel attacks.
Most recently, defensive technology has arguably made the greater advances. US military theorist Amos Fox has argued convincingly that maneuver is dead as a military strategy because modern war is increasingly fought in cities and the modern battlefield is saturated with surveillance technology that reduces mobility and the element of surprise. With drones hovering everywhere, it’s hard to move in open terrain without quickly attracting artillery fire.
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These factors have contributed to Ukraine’s successful defensive campaign. So did the abundance of infantry antitank devices such as the US-made Javelin and the UK-produced NLAW, as well as the use of long-range artillery (especially US-made HIMARS with guided missiles) and relatively strong air defenses. Some of these components of success have been relatively cheap: A tank, even a Soviet-made one, costs much more than a Javelin or an entire swarm of commercially available drones.
The relative Russian helplessness in the face of modern defensive technology robbed the invading army of its expected freedom of maneuver, made it appear ponderous where speed was of the essence, and thus enabled the Kharkiv breakthrough. Confused and demoralized by the formidable resistance it met, the Russian military had failed to pay proper attention to its own defenses.
Frank Hoffman of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University has called on the US and NATO to adapt their strategies to these changing technological conditions:
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The massive employment of guided weapons, including rocket and missile artillery, in Ukraine is instructive. The combination of pervasive surveillance and deeper strike systems afford a defensive but operationally relevant advantage that NATO should base its defensive strategy around.
As a direct consequence of the Ukrainian success at defense, however, Russia itself has been put on the defensive as it tries to hold on to captured territory. Now, the advantages afforded by surveillance technology and long-range artillery play into its hands. Russian troops in the field often have been as inventive as their Ukrainian adversaries in putting to use makeshift drone technology, and the Russian artillery is at least no weaker than the opposing side’s. General Sergei Surovikin, who, in his brief time as the Russian military operation’s supreme commander, surrendered the city of Kherson because he correctly assessed it as indefensible, proceeded to spend months planning and constructing several lines of defense, sometimes scaring Russian soldiers by how far into the rear the fortifications were being erected.
A defending Russian army also brings to bear air defenses that have adapted to Ukraine’s use of Western-made guided missiles and a formidable electronic warfare capability. According to a recent report from the UK Royal United Services Institute,
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Russian electronic warfare (EW) remains potent, with an approximate distribution of at least one major system covering each 10 km of front. These systems are heavily weighted towards the defeat of UAVs and tend not to try and deconflict their effects. Ukrainian UAV losses remain at approximately 10,000 per month. Russian EW is also apparently achieving real time interception and decryption of Ukrainian Motorola 256-bit encrypted tactical communications systems, which are widely employed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In a way, both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries are more in their element when defending rather than attacking. The first week of the long-delayed Ukrainian assault has shown that the Ukrainian military failed to exploit an element of surprise anywhere it tried to apply pressure. Along the 1,000-kilometer front line, they were expected, and while Russian soldiers were apprehensive about the new Western tanks and other armored vehicles newly supplied to Ukraine, the first losses of German-made Leopards and US-made Bradleys have shown these are hardly indestructible.
Demoralized or not, the regular Russian military didn’t run at the sight of the advancing Ukrainians, who had trouble breaking though even the first defensive line. The one significant exception so far is the erstwhile Vremivka Salient that jutted out into Ukrainian-held territory in the southwest of the Donetsk region. According to official Ukrainians reports backed up by Russian Telegram feeds, it has been all but erased as Ukrainians retook several villages, pushing the invaders to their second line of defense. Ukrainian forces also have advanced slightly in the vicinity of the town of Bakhmut, only recently claimed by the Russian forces.
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The Ukrainian military’s only hope of acquiring an element of surprise lies in the rapid terrain changes following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. The Russian defensive plans do not appear to have incorporated such a scenario.
The Russians’ job is to insure themselves against any such surprises and to plug any emerging holes in their defenses by bringing in reserves. The Russian command appears to be relatively comfortable with this mode of operation — otherwise Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu wouldn’t have made a major move against the many irregular and semi-regular units that have fought alongside the Russian military since the invasion began. He has ordered all members of these units to sign contracts with the ministry, decreeing the kind of transformation that Ukraine itself has undergone since the first battles against Russia in 2014: Its volunteer battalions have been fully integrated into the regular military.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary army, responded defiantly, saying his troops would not sign any contracts “with Shoigu.” But then Wagner, exhausted and decimated by a 220-day battle for Bakhmut, doesn’t have a role in the defensive campaign, at least not yet. That gives Shoigu, who has long sought a way to neutralize Prigozhin, confidence to try to sideline him in a mini-counteroffensive of his own. But to be able to consolidate control, the minister needs to thwart the Ukrainian onslaught while relying almost exclusively on regular and obedient forces. In a way, though, these Byzantine intrigues within the Russian command represent Ukraine’s best hope: When the enemy force is not united by a common purpose, it cannot be uniformly strong no matter how it tries.
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In their brief, Jones, Palmer and Bermudez hold up the example of Heinz Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps, which broke through at a single point of France’s supposedly formidable Maginot Line in May 1940, and thus rendered the entire line useless. The Ukrainians appear to be looking for a weak spot to exploit in a similar way — a fortification badly built by a corrupt contractor, a poorly trained or poorly led Russian unit, a breach of discipline caused by commanders’ bickering — to prove that maneuver isn’t, in fact, dead.
More From Bloomberg Opinion:
• Macron Tries a Mea Culpa on NATO and Ukraine: Lionel Laurent
• Putin Repeats Napoleon’s Mistake: Strategy Wins, Not Power: Hal Brands
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• Ukraine’s Survival May Be Decided by the GOP: Andreas Kluth
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
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Pundit here is the first person who gave Putin a punlic office predicting current situation back in 1991
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Vatnik,
Eti heading to 'Autumn offensive'. Stop putting words in forum members' mouths. Putin "special operation" that was to last "6 days" culminating in the fall of Kiev came to naught. Instead Putin gave the order relocating his troops to the east where he made more jokes: fake referendums to justifying annexing 3 whole provinces he only partially controlled. One of them called Kherson he does not even control the capital. Shame!
Here are the facts: Kiev having survived the winter namely after Russia, against all war norms turned to attacking civilian installations (power grids etc hoping to freeze the Ukrainians). They survived the Winter and moving on to what nations at war do when they have the ability or momentum - they began planning a Spring offensive. You have been making snid remarks here insinuating that the offensive will never come. Well to your horror, that offensive is underway, so that line of propaganda has been overtaken by events. Ukrainian nationhood is the overriding motivation to prosecute this war to its just conclusion. Why talk of Autumn when Zelensky has already said in plain language that the offensive is on! Find another line. To the audience on this forum, Armchair sneering especially from your type is not what is prosecuting the war. Save your breath. This is the age of drones and social media.
Wewe stick to defending Kenya kwanza government and talking of Mishale .
Werent you the one who predicted a winter offensive then it became spring offensive and now Summer offensive heading to autumn offensive .
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Unless you are reporting from Ukraine,check your sources of information.I think Russia has made alot of progress of late.Most of the weapons donated from the west have been destroyed.
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Its funny when you read Nowayaha and his tantrums.
2022
Winter - Russia attack ukraine and take huge territory.
Nobody gives Ukraine any chance.
Spring - Ukraine start to show some remarkable resiliance and get donated weapons
Summer - Ukraine get HIMARs - and kick arse. They kick Russia out of major cities like Kherson.
Autumn - Ukraine continue kicking arse until Nov/Dec.
2023
Winter - Ukraine take a rest knowing it muddy and snowy. Stupid Russia desperate for any win try to take back the initiative.
All the winter - they literally get stuck in the mud and snow - only winning solidar and maybe another village.
In meantime - Ukraine retrain, rest their solders, recruit - and most importantly go for weapon donations.
Spring - Ukraine now have everything - timming still not right - ground is still wet
Desperate Russian finally take Bakhumut - Pyrrhic victory as no a single cat or rat is alive in the city.
Now summer just started.
Ukraine counter offensive is official on for a week now.
First few days - Russian manages to destroy few Leopards and APCs.
Now as we speak Ukraine are kicking Russians all over the south.
Btw now until December - RUSSIAN WILL GET THEIR ARSE KICKED.
A repeat of last year.
Only a desperate moron go on offensive in winter :)
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You nailed the moron on the wall :)
He is claiming Ukraine was to launch winter offensive.
Ukraine kicked Russia from June to Nov/Dec - last year.
On winter - like anyone smart - they took time to rest and plan - knowing weather would work against any offensive.
Stupid russian just got wasted in Winter.
The only delay from ukraine was spring - they kept looking at ground - and it wasnt firm enough - heavy equipment will get stuck in mud.
Now Ukraine are making poor Russian SING>
And they will sing again until DEC. They have Summer and Autum to SING
Vatnik,
Eti heading to 'Autumn offensive'. Stop putting words in forum members' mouths. Putin "special operation" that was to last "6 days" culminating in the fall of Kiev came to naught. Instead Putin gave the order relocating his troops to the east where he made more jokes: fake referendums to justifying annexing 3 whole provinces he only partially controlled. One of them called Kherson he does not even control the capital. Shame!
Here are the facts: Kiev having survived the winter namely after Russia, against all war norms turned to attacking civilian installations (power grids etc hoping to freeze the Ukrainians). They survived the Winter and moving on to what nations at war do when they have the ability or momentum - they began planning a Spring offensive. You have been making snid remarks here insinuating that the offensive will never come. Well to your horror, that offensive is underway, so that line of propaganda has been overtaken by events. Ukrainian nationhood is the overriding motivation to prosecute this war to its just conclusion. Why talk of Autumn when Zelensky has already said in plain language that the offensive is on! Find another line. To the audience on this forum, Armchair sneering especially from your type is not what is prosecuting the war. Save your breath. This is the age of drones and social media.
Wewe stick to defending Kenya kwanza government and talking of Mishale .
Werent you the one who predicted a winter offensive then it became spring offensive and now Summer offensive heading to autumn offensive .
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https://www.rt.com/russia/577940-russia-captured-leopard-ukraine/
The video released on Tuesday appears to show an excited Russian soldier circling several damaged pieces of equipment, including a German-made Leopard 2 main battle tank and US-produced Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. He remarked that some of their engines were still running.
“This [explicit] hardware is not as scary as it seemed,” the man is heard saying.
The ministry, which shared the clip on social media, called the Western vehicles “our trophies” and argued that the condition in which they were found “indicates the rapid pace of the engagement and the abandonment of the battle-ready hardware by the Ukrainian armed forces.
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https://youtube.com/shorts/VW_GKYZ78KM?feature=share
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Invalid Tweet ID
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Nowayaha - are you okay?
One two many updates?
Russia arse being kicked and you're showing captured equipments?
We want to see Russia capture territory.
Summer is here and it wont be pretty for Mr Putin.
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Im more than fine .
Updates to debunk the myths you are peddling .
pundit lay off the western media propaganda kool aid …….
Nowayaha - are you okay?
One two many updates?
Russia arse being kicked and you're showing captured equipments?
We want to see Russia capture territory.
Summer is here and it wont be pretty for Mr Putin.
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Truth will prevail.
Im more than fine .
Updates to debunk the myths you are peddling .
pundit lay off the western media propaganda kool aid …….
Nowayaha - are you okay?
One two many updates?
Russia arse being kicked and you're showing captured equipments?
We want to see Russia capture territory.
Summer is here and it wont be pretty for Mr Putin.
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...... Still a long way to go!
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One way you can tell Russia is getting a kichapo is by the amount of gibberish Noway posts.
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Ukraine counter-offensive
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Ramaphosa leads a group of African clowns to Ukraine to "discuss solutions to the war". Maybe Zelensky had the time for them, but I have only seen them meeting some other functionaries.
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Wajinga. This Ramaphosa I thought with his billions he was bright. Kumbe he likely got illicit money. His leadership is worse
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When you see CNN a propaganda machine for western nations acknowledging thing are tough. You ignore the local pundits and fake
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/17/europe/ukraine-counteroffensive-explained-hnk-intl/index.html
CNN
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Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces has not yet gained the momentum that some overly optimistic observers anticipated. So far it feels like the prelude to a more expansive act.
Offensive operations so far have yielded modest gains in the southern regions like Zaporizhzhia with multi-layered Russian defenses proving tough to crack. The area is seen as a major target for Ukraine as it would mean breaking Russia’s land-bridge between annexed Crimea and eastern Donetsk.
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But there are also signs that Ukrainian forces are spreading their bets, looking to pare back Russian gains around Bakhmut and exploiting what they perceive as vulnerabilities elsewhere in the east.
Rather than a display of overwhelming force that concentrates newly-formed brigades in one direction, the Ukrainians appear to be trying to pull Russian units in different directions, working out which might be weak or exploiting lines separating different battalions.
Ukrainian servicemen of the 43rd Artillery Brigade fire a howitzer toward Russian positions near Bakhmut on June 15.
Ukrainian servicemen of the 43rd Artillery Brigade fire a howitzer toward Russian positions near Bakhmut on June 15.
Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images
On Thursday, an adviser to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, Mykhailo Podolyak, said the first goal was to wipe out as many Russian draftee units as possible and “increase the psychological pressure on the Russian army.”
“At the same time,” he said, Ukrainian units are “testing to see which areas are the weakest.”
This has included fresh assault operations around Bakhmut designed to force the Russians to send more units to defend a city they took more than six months to destroy and occupy. On Friday, the commander of Ukrainian Land Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said the Russians “continue to move some of the most combat-ready units to the Bakhmut direction.”
Perhaps more surprisingly, there are indications that the Ukrainians are on the front foot near the city of Donetsk, long a frozen line of contact, and further south around what has been the equally static but highly kinetic Vuhledar front.
The Ukrainians have the luxury of picking areas to attack; the Russians must try to defend a meandering front-line nearly 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) long, with some units that have already been mauled and patched up.
Still it is a formidable task: in the south especially, Ukrainian forces must conduct a frontal assault against deeply prepared defensive positions, and critically they lack air superiority. The Russians have had months to fortify defenses here; there was never a chance that the Ukrainians would make the sort of lightning advances they enjoyed in Kharkiv last fall.
Destruction in the city of Bakhmut after hostilities on June 1, 2023.
Destruction in the city of Bakhmut after hostilities on June 1, 2023.
Yan Dobronosov/Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images
The Institute for the Study of War also cautions that it’s far too early for take-aways.
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“Ukraine has not yet committed the vast majority of its counteroffensive forces and Russian defenses are not uniformly strong along all sectors of the front line,” it said this week.
Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven, agrees there are more questions than answers at this early stage.
“Are the Russians reacting strategically? Are they moving troops and supplies as though they see the current focus of the fighting as the main thrust?” he says.
“Only a quarter or so of the total Ukrainian force is apparently engaged, what are the rest doing? Are the Russians confused about where they’ll be used?”
The Ukrainians will be hoping that the Russian military command under Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, now in direct command of forces in Ukraine, will get some calls wrong.
As Mick Ryan, a former general in the Australian armed forces observes: “There is an old saying that ‘when your enemy is making mistakes, don’t get in their way’. For some time, Gerasimov has shown an aptitude for making strategic mistakes,” not least with the ill-conceived initial assault in February 2022.
Ukrainian soldiers lie on a roadside during training for an operation near Bakhmut on June 1.
Ukrainian soldiers lie on a roadside during training for an operation near Bakhmut on June 1.
Valentyna Polishchuk/Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images
So far the Russian approach to defending their lines in the south appears to have worked relatively well, with the Ukrainians losing mine-clearing tanks and other armor that have become prey to artillery and aerial attack as they try to break through. Available open-source video suggests high use of anti-tank munitions is taking a toll on Ukrainian front-line units.
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“A first [Russian] echelon of forces repels or slows attacking forces before a second echelon of forces counterattacks against any enemy breakthrough,” says the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
One Ukrainian officer has acknowledged the challenge, writing that “While obstacles can be effectively bypassed using mine-clearing vehicles, bulldozers, mine plows, and other engineering equipment, it becomes challenging to do so with the presence of drones” which provide real-time data to enemy artillery and aviation.
It’s worth noting that Russian units in one heavily-contested area – belonging to the 58th Combined Arms Army – are among the most effective in the military.
After a lackluster performance to date, the Russian air force may be a critical factor in the weeks to come, says Matthew Schmidt, associate professor at the University of New Haven. “That will depend on whether they are effectively employing glide bombs. Are their rotary aircraft able to safely operate? In other words, is their Air Force back in the mix because they’ve learned how to counter Ukrainian air defense measures?”
A Russian service member stands guard at a checkpoint near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Russian-controlled Ukraine on June 15.
A Russian service member stands guard at a checkpoint near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Russian-controlled Ukraine on June 15.
Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
A senior Ukrainian officer acknowledged to CNN Friday that Russian air strikes and artillery were making it hard to advance.
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“Their aviation works in waves, as it was in Vietnam, Afghanistan. Continuously, all day long, they work either by helicopters or by airplanes and they work all day,” a deputy battalion commander with the Separate Territorial Defense Brigade told a CNN team near Zaporizhzhia.
He also underlined Ukraine’s lack of aerial assets.
“Aviation support is sorely lacking,” he said.
Ukrainian units in the area have had to adapt, often breaking down into smaller groups that are less easily detected.
Russian servicemen stand guard near the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine on June 15.
Russian servicemen stand guard near the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine on June 15.
Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images
Schmidt says the Ukrainians will have to learn fast. “Are troops learning the tricks they need to successfully breach Russian lines so they can teach and lead the next wave of the offensive? This learning effect is crucial to the success of the main thrust of the counteroffensive.”
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The Ukrainian commander told CNN, “We are advancing, knocking the enemy out of positions, not as quickly as we would like, but we are moving forward. In places, the enemy is already panicking, throwing reserves [in] here.”
If this is true and widely replicated, Russian forces may be pulled in too many directions to sustain a coherent defense.
Early Days
For sure, the Russians have learned some hard lessons in nearly 18 months of conflict. Russian military bloggers, who are frequently critical of the military’s performance, have commended the use of electronic warfare capabilities that have disrupted Ukrainian communications and targeting, because precision-guided munitions require GPS coordinates.
The Institute for the Study of War said this week that it’s “unclear if continued successful Russian EW tactics are a result of superior capacities or improved Russian employment of these systems,” but there’s some evidence that they have become a priority target for the Ukrainians.
But a lot of what matters in the coming weeks will depend on events far from the front lines. Ukrainian targeting of rear positions – command centers, ammunition and fuel dumps – will impact Russian capabilities, as will the decisions and survival of mid- and senior officers on both sides.
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Mick Ryan, who also writes the blog Futura Doctrina and follows the conflict in detail, says that “if they can limit fuel and ammunition availability for Russian combat forces, the Ukrainians will restrict Russian responses to their tactical or operational penetrations and constrain the mobility of Russian reserves.”
Nor will we able to see the counteroffensive evolve in real time. There will be scraps of information, geolocatable video that’s often several days old, but secrecy will be paramount for both sides. Added to which, as one Ukrainian officer says: “Operational success isn’t just capturing positions, but also maintaining momentum and advancing after breaching enemy defenses.”
Call sign Marat prepares the explosive his unit will attempt to drop on Russian positions
'From Ukraine with love:' The elite night-time drone units bombing Russian military
Where that momentum develops will be the story of Ukraine’s initiative to wrest control. How far it develops may well change the path of the conflict and influence how it ends.
Foreign policy veterans Richard Haas and Charles Kupchan suggest that “by the time Ukraine’s anticipated offensive is over, Kyiv may also warm to the idea of a negotiated settlement, having given its best shot on the battlefield and facing growing constraints on both its own manpower and help from abroad.”
“Even if the West steps up its military assistance, Ukraine is poised to fall well short of vanquishing Russian forces,” they say.
Others say that Ukraine has no option but to deliver a stunning blow to the Kremlin that ultimately includes regaining Crimea (or at least turning it into purgatory for the Russians).
While some observers see this as a dangerous fantasy, others argue that only such a humiliation will dissuade the Kremlin from a fresh bout of aggression.
Bottom line: few would contend that this is the last battle.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukrainian Foreign Minister, has said that if the offensive succeeds in expelling Russian forces from Ukrainian land, “It will be the last. If not, there will be more. If our weapons supplies get cut off, Ukraine will just shift to lower intensity war.”
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One way you can tell Russia is getting a kichapo is by the amount of gibberish Noway posts.
Are we on the same page now terminator or do you still hold on to your beliefs that Ukraine will win this war?
Pundit..... Ukraine is currently forcing conscription of persons including the elderly, 60 yr olds, sending mail to those who left the country illegally and not to be left behind, women. This is desperation!
There comes a time in war when peace is the better option. Before even the war began, peace was the only meaningful option for Ukraine, but they chose to listen to the US. The same us leadership is now looking for a way out to try and save face.
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