Although disappointing, not entirely unexpected. Assaulting and defending are two different things and without air or artillery superiority, the assault phase is even more difficult. So these lads are pressing in on well prepared defensive lines without a ton of battle space preparation. Hopefully, they can perform well enough, and violently enough to overcome the typical 3:1 requirement for beaching and destroying fortified positions.
Ukraine is doing great. I know Russia is a meme, but they do have far more resources and man power. These guys are working with tech they just got trained on. Russia is well fortified. Keep in mind, the counter offensive is still developing. Often things are said publicly to skew the other side.
Yeah. this is still in the "probing" and "shaping" phase, the Ukrainians are launching attacks to see which bits of the front are softest and to force the Russians to commit their reserves so that when a breakthrough happens they have fewer options to respond with.
Just today the big news was about Ukraine blowing up a vital bridge the Russians need for resupplying their lines, for example. And yesterday I was reading an interesting analysis about how the Ukrainians might actually be able to attack across the former Kakhovka reservoir now that the Russians blew up the dam and drained it. Even if they don't do that it might make sense for them to look like they're considering it so that the Russians have yet more front lines they need to reinforce.
People have been spoiled by reading history books in which they can take in a summary of a years-long war in a paragraph or two, or by Desert Storm which was rather a different sort of war than this one. This offensive could take months, and it doesn't have to have a clear "beginning" and "end" moment where one side captures a flag and declares victory over the other.
I really don't think it's just in the probing stage. Ukraine has had a lot of losses trying to punch through Russian lines and have even publicly stated they have called for an operational pause to re-evaluate their tactics.
The tactical/strategic reserves just haven't been deployed because a breakthrough hasn't happened yet.
Could you link a source on those Ukranian wins you mention? I'm interested to read on those.
The only one I mentioned specifically was bombing the Chonhar bridge. Not sure how you missed that, Russian media has reported on it and Russian politicians are making threats of retaliation over it.
Now, watch this drive
Mission accomplished
The imperial managers are looking for a way out, so they're slowly allowing mainstream media to report some semblance of the truth, namely that Ukraine has absolutely no chance without participating in peace negotiations in good faith.
Big problem is the Russian air force has been holding off for just this moment. Low flying helicopters and drones are hard to hit and doing significant work defending the lines. It's why we've seen a lot of helicopters downed in the last week too.
Give it time, there'll be a solution eventually.
Sad for Ukraine. I wonder whether we're back to WWI with long, static defensive lines and grinding, awful, slow advances.
It's also a factor of Russia not competently executing the initial invasion and got themselves bogged down. Similar to the Germans in WW1 on the western front, they got bogged down before they could take their key objectives, but the eastern front remained mostly mobile during the war because of the vast size of the front, and they eventually won on that front. Because you either win by our maneuvering your enemy an encircling them, or attriting the hell out of them till they have nothing left, and I think the pendulum has swung again towards a defensive advantage, especially with UAVs and remote mine laying systems, and precision artillery munitions.
It's a big part of why US doctrine is so focused on quick fast and overwhelming assaults and a strike first mentality. Even in Desert Storm they were severely worried about being bogged down by the Iraqi Army and starting a prolonged conflict with massive American losses. So it was imperative to flank the Iraqi Army from the western desert by the French Armored Corps.
We now know that Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement back in March, and Russia pulled back as a show of good faith. Then the west told Ukraine that the agreement was unacceptable and that's how we got where we are today.
Do you have links that to sources about how that unfolded?
They should try advance through minefields as vast as an ocean and then criticize.
It's understandably difficult when the Ukrainians fail to make gains, but it's Russian incompetence when they do it?
What nonsense is this? They are doing a great job. Assaulting heavily fortified positions is extremely hard, whoever thinks Ukraine is not fast enough probably knows nothing about shit. Just look at the Allies offensives in Europe during WW2, especially the beach landings. It took months to break the lines of defense.
Interesting. With how poorly Russia has done so far, I think the expectation was for the counter offense to be fast and severe. I wonder if their training is better suited to holding land, if they were holding back their more competent troops from the front line, or if the soldiers are more invested in their defense than the offense.
Russia did a shit tonne of work putting in mines, trenches, and structures everywhere. They might not fight for shit, but they can dig holes and place dragon teeth. Doesn’t really require much advanced thought or tech.
Also, while the morale of russian front-line soldiers is shit, their artillery in combination with minefields are responsible for most Ukrainian losses.
Well, the quality of some of that work leaves much to be desired, in some cases. But even if it's all crap there still is an awful lot of it so it'll take time to clear a path.
As long as the dragon teeth aren’t hollow
That may have been the case in meme-circles, but anyone looking at the war objectively knew it was going to be slower. The Kharkiv counteroffensive only was so brutally effective, because the russian defensive lines were so weak and they didn't have any secodary defensive lines to fall back on. Meaning that once the defense was breached, Ukrainian Humvees could just keep driving and pursiung fleeing russians.
Kherson had a better defense setup, but with the bridges over the Dnipro cut, russia couldn't supply them.
Now, russia had time to create layered defensives and their logistics are harder to cut. The push towards the south is the most difficult offensive Ukraine has undertaken so far, so it's only logical for it to take the longest.
There is also a difference in tactics: While russia employs zerg rushes of convicts and mobilized into fortified Ukrainian positions, Ukraine tries to achieve local supperiorities of firepower and taking russian positions into pockets. That lowers your own casualties, but makes offensive operations more difficult.
I think the expectation was for the counter offense to be fast and severe.
Only if you've been chugging western propaganda. It was pretty clear beforehand, and has been very clear since it "started".
Offense has been losing to defensive technology since after WW2 the major exception being ICBMs of course.
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