https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/17/ukraine-counteroffensive-melitopol/
Thwarted by minefields, Ukrainian forces won’t manage to reach the city of Melitopol, a vital Russian transit hub, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment.
It's not just minefields, but also how easy it is to deploy more minefields. What's behind the minefields they need to penetrate? More minefields.
The Russians just got a lot of time to fortify, and resolved a few of the problems that struck them during the last counteroffensive. They do learn from their mistakes, they've always been "not bad" at that, on the battlefield anyway.
Blitzkrieg won't work again, and the Ukrainians probably guessed that. Fortunately, they're getting enough tools to prepare other strategies. Air power opens a lot of doors.
They need a massive boost to their air capabilities. The hesitation to provide hadn’t made sense in many months.
The hesitation in literally everything screwed them. It makes no sense to me why countries postured and bickered so much on cold war era junk being used in probably the only chance they'll have to be dusted off.
From the article:
U.S. officials reject criticisms that F-16 fighter jets or longer-range missile systems such as ATACMS would have resulted in a different outcome. “The problem remains piercing Russia’s main defensive line, and there’s no evidence these systems would’ve been a panacea,” a senior administration official said.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol, people familiar with the classified forecast told The Washington Post, a finding that, should it prove correct, would mean Kyiv won’t fulfill its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push.
Joint war games conducted by the U.S., British and Ukrainian militaries anticipated such losses but envisioned Kyiv accepting the casualties as the cost of piercing through Russia’s main defensive line, said U.S. and Western officials.
Ukrainian officials have said privately that timing depends on how quickly forces can penetrate the minefields — a difficult process that has strained the military’s mine-clearing resources across a wide swath of territory.
The Ukrainians have for months poured tremendous resources into Bakhmut, including soldiers, ammunition and time, but they have lost control of the city and have made only modest gains in capturing territory around it.
The new intelligence assessment aligns with a secret U.S. forecast from February indicating that shortfalls in equipment and force strength may mean that the counteroffensive will fall “well short” of Ukraine’s goal to sever the land bridge to Crimea by August.
The assessment, detailed in a classified document leaked onto the social media app Discord, identified Melitopol or Mariupol as the objectives “to deny Russian overland access to Crimea.”
The original article contains 1,203 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
There was plenty of evidence that this was the likely outcome of this offensive months before it even started. Why tf did they go ahead with it anyway?
I remember discussing the Russian advantage on reddit back in January, including them building defensive lines and the general imbalance in equipment, especially artillery and ammo, as well as the fact that Russia had caught up in troop numbers by that point. I had western sources for these numbers.
You wouldn't believe the level of hate and name-calling I received for pointing this out and saying they should negotiate. But apparently I was the one spewing propaganda.
Negotiate surrender to a serial invader? I agree that Ukrainians are in poor position but allowing Russia to keep taking more land isn't healthy for world stability.
Russia or China having to only look after itself, it's population, it's secessionist regions was much better for the colllective west. The current goal is to have them do that again. Even if it means manufacturing an economic crisis the west will suffer from too, it's still better that getting our collective ass kicked out of african or southeast asian countries. And if someone must get through suffering, it might as well be Ukrainians rather than germans or poles, so just enough material to have a stable front.
Not my thought but pretty sure it's the one coming up in confidential assessments, and I can't totally fault them if you take out the humanity from considerations.
A negotiated settlement is not surrender. This war is not good for world stability clearly, if it stopped that would be good, no?
You're arguing from a position of "this should not be and therefore cannot be". But it clearly can. You're in denial.
What does settlement look like? Ukraine to surrender it's occupied land? I'm actually curious what you have in mind.
It starts with all ruzzians back in ruzzia out of occupied Ukraine...then putin's balls deep fried on a platter and putin has to eat them.
I mean at this point it doesn't look like Russia wants to give anything back, but who knows. They need to start with a ceasefire and maybe over time they can figure out the rest.
They should have taken the deal from April last year, where Russia had reportedly agreed to go back to the pre-Feb-22 borders. And before that, they should have implemented Minsk actually. The most important things Russia wanted was for Ukraine to be neutral, and to stop attacking the Donbas.
Ukraine's negotiating position just keeps getting worse.
I don't think Ukraine alone can beat Russia back either but I also don't think they should negotiate. Negotiation would only be a huge win for Russia. If they gain any ground they'll see it simply as the price of the land and invade again once they saved enough to pay again.
Honestly, the best bet would be for Ukraine to gain an active ally. Someone who can put boots on the ground and push Russia back. The US could obviously steam roll Russia back but if that happened it'd be likely Russia would trigger a larger war.
You want to send even more conscripts into these defense lines while risking some other country getting bombed? You do realize that this will not magically fix the artillery and ammo shortage, and that Russia can mobilize even more troops as well?
You wouldn't believe the level of hate and name-calling I received for pointing this out and saying they should negotiate.
This has been going on since 2014. Since last year Russia stepped up with genocide. I think it's not so nice you're pretending you were downvoted for two things, while ignoring that negotiation is pretty stupid. Look in the past, Russia often though messed up their initial attack only then to finally become wiser after regrouping.
He’s a tankie, he keeps telling tales about poor Russia being forced into war and that we should make peace with them. Just ignore the white noise, typical German cosplay tankie.
Let's negotiate you sending third of your possessions and I will pinky promise not to take more
I read/heard an interesting conspiracy theory the other day: The west didn't want to fully topple the Putin regime in case the power vacuum brought out something worse (Prighozin and his Nazi's armed with nukes).
Perhaps they held back just to grind down the Russian army at the expense of the UA.
I think the US is pretty open about that. They don't want Ukraine to attack Russia, just defend themselves.
The dicktator putin just needs to surrender. He lost already so many months ago. He just hasn't realized how. Like there's no place lon earth where he can go without some sort of security detail protecting his ass. If he was right here at my vacation place, I wouldn't hesitate to grab my beach ⛱️ umbrella and sticking it so far up putin's arse that it got stuck there permanently....it is foldable. How could you think that you are winning when you can never go anywhere ever again? Not that I do any international travel myself, but putin did. He's lost and lost badly. One nice example again is that I come from Mexico and mexico, the government loves putin appearently...go ahead putin, go to Mexico and let us know when. If you do, and I get to meet you, I promise you that I will find you the most beautiful tortoise ornament and do you like that one episode of breaking bad. That's how much welcome you'll be to Mexico. I don't know of any Mexican that thinks differently. I can probably do the Trump thing...plain sight mid day with a dull machete and ten hot glue guns put together with duct tape...right on the turtle ornament. People love turtles in Mexico... either for eating or to protect them. So it will be an ornamental one.