Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
Wish them better luck than the last two times media reported a breakthrough and a beachhead - since these reports not much more news from these places.
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This latest landing at Kherson again was anything but a breakthrough operation, but a limited commando raid with the intention to make prisoners and to give the Russians food for thought and forcing them to bring back troops from the Saporishshja front to Kherson to defend it. A distraction manouver that Russia cannot ignore because three kilometers behind the village near to which the Ukrainians landed is the street that serves the Russians as their supply line. They MUST send reinforcements that then are not available elsewhere.
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The Russian counteroffensive at Kupjansk is pressing, Ukraine has ordered evacuation of 37 villages in the region, and slowly falls back.
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FOCUS:
The Ukrainian army has changed tactics in its counteroffensive. The Russian army is to be worn down. But Ukraine can barely retake territory. "We don't know exactly how much the Russian troops have already been worn down," military expert Michael Kofman told the Tagesspiegel newspaper in an interview. So recaptures by Ukraine are still possible, "but at a slower pace. That would be the optimistic view."
On the pessimistic side, Kofman said Ukraine had deployed the second squadron of U.S.-trained brigades. "If, after two months of fighting and attrition, the dynamics on the battlefield don't change greatly in the next few weeks, you have to wonder if that's it and it stays with smaller territorial gains," Kofman said.
Kofman sees three criteria for success for the Ukrainian offensive: liberation of much of the territory, at best as far as the Sea of Azov; the impression of a defeated Russian army; and proof that Ukraine could wage war efficiently with Western-trained brigades without relying solely on attrition.
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I stick to what I say sinc elong time: a war of attrition Ukriane necessarily must lose. Thats why Russia tries all it can to enforce this kind of warfare, and prevents Ukraine from conducting mobile warfare.
No breakthrough in sight anywhere. Where it was reported Ukraine had reached Russia's first defence line (usually unconfirmed reports), you hear nothing anymore.
I was pessimistic about the chances of this offensive from beginnign on and have not hidden it, but truth is it even runs worse than even I had expected. The onyl way I see left open is that they advance at elast so far that they can bring the railway along the coast intzo reahc of their artllery and so if not taking can bring down artillery of Russia's supply line there. Still, while that would immensely hurt it would not translate into a Russian defeat and withdawel in the region.
That Ukraine sees no other way anymore than to agree to a kind of warfare that Russia wants and that is immensely disadvantagous for Ukraine, tells volumes. While the ywra coul,.d ligne ron for years, I think we currently see the decisive phase of the war that predicts the final outcome.
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Rheinmetall is about to deliver 50 Leopard-1A5s, and asks Germany to allow delivery of a further 30. Germany is about to deliver two more Patriots, two engineer tanks, and some more stuff.