The Hill: Ukraine battles sky-high expectations ahead of counteroffensive
Ukraine is facing sky-high expectations ahead of its upcoming counteroffensive, raising a litany of dangers if Kyiv fails to make major advances against entrenched Russian forces.
Lackluster results could hurt Ukraine’s international support moving forward, embolden critics of continued military support and ultimately benefit Russia.
Ukraine has received nearly all of the promised military aid from Western allies, including infantry fighting vehicles and main battle tanks, all of which are upping the global pressure for Ukrainians to succeed.
But victory is far from assured.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: Before the invasion Ukraine spent almost 8 years, backed heavily by the West, in waging war against the two rebellious provinces in the Donbas .... and failed to conquer them. And now we are being told that this counter-offensive will be the first step not only in expelling Russian military forces in Ukraine, but also recapturing Crimea?!?!?!?
Since the start of the war Ukraine has loss almost half of its population. 20% of its territory. An economy and government that is totally dependent on Western aid. And an army that when the war started has been decimated through attrition, and is now made up by survivors, volunteers, and conscripts, that need regular and constant Western supplies to function.
So yeah. There are sky-high expectations ahead of Ukraine's counteroffensive.
11 comments:
So now the ukie rah rahs will come out and say WNU is a putin spy and pro russian.
NO , HE IS JUST STATING THE OBVIOUS.
TOO bad that does not fit your opinion, but opinion does not change facts.
The offensive will fail unless the ukies pull a surprise. Think MOAB.
If they try to do this with conventional methods it will, be short lived, they may take some ground, but all that will happen In the end is ....They will end up back in the meat grinder.
Ows really how sure?
The "offensive" seems like a carrot to dangle in front of rich western idiot politicians in order to fish for more donations and loans.
"We can't start the offensive unless... You give us six dozen F-16's"
"We can't start the offensive unless... You give us cruise missiles"
Maybe they're just building up stockpiles for a future Western Azovstan, such that Hungary and Poland can't simply tear it apart after the bear has decapitated it.
WNU Editor is again making strange claims. Like always, he includes some truth while not reporting any facts that would undermine his politics to create something that seems initially plausible until you look at it more closely.
While the West certainly helped Ukraine since 2014, Ukraine certainly was not "heavily backed". Some training did happen. Military reforms were supported. But relatively few weapons were provided. And Western military aid was not geared towards enabling Ukraine to seize the areas of the Donbas under Russian occupation, but to prevent Russian forces from expanding their control. Western diplomatic efforts were to make it a frozen conflict while preventing Ukraine from being subjected by Russia, but this was always undermined by Franco-German efforts to keep Putin happy because of German business ties and French political ambitions. There was no serious attempt by Ukraine or the West to allow Ukraine to retake the Donbas during those years.
Ukrainian forces would have eliminated the Donbas rebels in 2014 except that Russia began massive artillery shelling from within its borders to prevent it. That and massive Russian backing was what allowed the Donbas rebels (which included a huge number of Russian proxies and leaders like Igor Girkin) to survive and retake a lot of lost ground. Since Ukrainians knew they could not eliminate Russian control of the border and artillery support, at that point the Ukrainians simply wanted to contain the rebels while waiting for diplomatic conditions to change. So WNU Editor is inverting the actual situation.
It is true that Ukraine has suffered major losses in the war. But almost everything it has lost happened in the first few weeks of the Russian offensive in February-March. Russia reached its high water mark in April. Since then Russia has consistently loss territory overall - Russia lost about half of the lands it had initially occupied from the beginning of the war, and I think a fifth if you don't include all the northern territory it abandoned. The relatively meager gains Russia made over the summer was more than compensated by the much larger Ukrainian advances after September. And Russia's failed spring offensive indicates Russia may have lost the ability to conduct major offensives.
One cannot predict how successful the Ukrainian counteroffensive will be. Obviously WNU Editor (and the Russian trolls here) thinks it will be a complete failure - but he's been usually completely wrong in his military predictions. I think there's a good chance that Ukraine will at least achieve gains along the scale of Kharkhiv and Kherson, but with the potential it could be greater. We'll only know when it happens.
But the Ukrainians do not need to make much of an advance in order to place the entire supply route to Crimea under indirect fire. So there's a good chance it can cut off the land route entirely, and even possibly destroy major sections of the Crimean bridge if they can reach the Sea of Azov. If that happens, all Russian forces in Crimea and southwestern Ukraine will be effectively cut off and their supply situation highly degraded. If that happens, their defeat will only be a matter of time.
Ukraine is clearly in the early pre-offensive battlefield preparations phase right now. So the offensive will likely begin in the next 1-2 weeks, but might last a bit longer. We'll likely know by August the results.
Chris
Chris,
WNUs comments and opinion are based on captions only. I am sorry he cannot reply to your editorial like opinion.
yours biput
It does not matter. Chris is blathering again. He has not been right on most of what he says. As an example, he was a big supporter of the Fortress Bakhmut fantasy and also the Russians have no tanks narrative.
His latest is
the russians "spring offensive". what the hell is that? there was no offensive.
Russians have no tanks.. they are using T55s. Then why do the CinC Europe just say the opposite?
and this a big lie:
His words
While the West certainly helped Ukraine since 2014, Ukraine certainly was not "heavily backed". Some training did happen. Military reforms were supported. But relatively few weapons were provided
This is a total lie. Look at the DoD expenditure in Ukraine and also look at the EU expenditures.
This was a huge investment.
You are not convincing either, sounds like a troll.sounds like wnu.
7:22 laughable
Yes 842. It is laughable . These guys promote the CNN version of the facts or make up shit as they go along because they work for the blob.
Chris and his ilk are probably gov employees who work in some kind of psy ops section.
Because any thing they say you can get from ISW or cnn.
Sick little creeps
9:49 more laughable
That's right sonny. The hits just keep on coming
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