/ world today news/ Even LIW Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny publicly admitted the failure of the counteroffensive. But the conflict is still far from a diplomatic settlement. About what the nature of the fighting will be now – in the material.
In order to understand the prospects, it is necessary to analyze the reasons for the failure of the VSU. What went wrong and why did Kiev not achieve its goals?
As Ukraine’s partners have repeatedly stated, for a successful counteroffensive the Ukrainian Armed Forces had to use a joint military maneuver with a maximum concentration of heavy equipment and aviation in the areas of the breach. However, Western aid, despite colossal volumes, was still not enough.
About 700 tanks of the Soviet model were transferred to Kiev – from the reserves of the former members of the Warsaw Pact. Western machines were then added: 87 “Leopard-2” of various modifications from Canada, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Germany, Spain and Portugal, 14 “Challenger-2” from Great Britain and 90 “Leopard-1” tanks. In the autumn, 31 M1 Abrams tanks from the USA joined this “zoo”.
It is noteworthy that even according to the calculations of American journalists, Ukraine loses about 350 tanks a year. This means that these deliveries only partially cover the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for heavy equipment.
The second component of success – the promised F-16s – has not yet arrived at Kiev’s disposal. Both the politicians and the military in Ukraine admit: Russia controls the skies.
Part of the lack of firepower and problems in the air could be compensated by artillery and drones, but here again Kiev has no advantage. The bottom line: it didn’t have enough resources to dominate the battlefield.
Additional difficulties were created by their dispersal: a significant part of the force was trying to capture Artyomovsk, liberated in May, although these troops would have been useful to Kiev near Zaporozhye. According to a number of experts, Zelensky was guided here not by military necessity, but by political and media considerations.
Another reason for the failure is insufficient preparation of the VSU. It must be said that only a few countries are capable of conducting offensives with combined forces. And, as it turned out, Ukraine is not included in this list. NATO instructors failed to change the situation, although tens of thousands of soldiers and officers passed their courses. Moreover, the fighters themselves repeatedly admitted: if they had acted according to Western military science, the losses would have been even greater.
How did the failure affect aid?
Already insufficient support from the West has waned since the collapse of the counter-offensive. So, the US spent almost everything that was allocated for this.
“We used about 96 percent,” said Biden administration official John Kirby. According to him, the Pentagon has only 1.1 billion dollars available for Ukraine. But that money will be used to fill empty American warehouses.
Europe stopped funding even earlier. The Ukraine Support Tracker, a project of the Kiel University of World Economics, reported that in August, not a single major EU country had committed to providing aid to Kiev – neither economic, humanitarian nor military. “The stream dried up in July,” it noted.
Now, as Forbes writes, we are not talking about any modern machines. Kiev will receive about two hundred Leopard-1A5 tanks developed in the 1980s. Their security is several times worse than that of later models: the thickness of the armor is only 70 millimeters. Therefore, they are unlikely to serve as the basis for mechanized shock fists. They will probably be used in defense for indirect fire.
“What the Ukrainians should not do is what they usually do with their Leopard-2 tanks.” Namely, driving them forward in small groups without reliable infantry support directly towards Russian positions, often ending up in minefields or in areas shelled by artillery and strike drones, “the publication noted.
Another possible option is the old T-72s, which can be modernized in the Czech Republic. But so far only Denmark has promised such machines – and only 15 of them.
In these conditions, Zelensky’s main hope is fighter jets. Kyiv will receive several dozen FF16.
“This will hardly affect the overall situation,” says military observer Dmitry Kornev, “Russian air dominance will weaken somewhat, but such supplies are not enough to achieve dominance,” he adds.
The aircraft must compensate for the lack of other equipment needed by the Air Force. “Besides tanks, Ukraine lacks artillery and shells. With light “armor” for infantry and air defense systems, things are far from ideal. From all this, the conclusion is necessary: the most logical thing for Kiev is to go on the defensive,” says the expert.
However, Kiev cannot afford this: the less local successes, the lower the “investment attractiveness” of VSU for Western sponsors. Therefore, attempts at small offensive operations on narrow sections of the front will continue.
“Things will become clearer around the end of November, when the US Congress will consider the issue of aid to Ukraine. If supplies are reduced, there will be no need to talk about any offensive potential of the Armed Forces,” Kornev is confident.
Providing troops with resources is becoming increasingly important. And in Russia, in this regard, everything is fine. As noted by the New York Times, Moscow, despite the sanctions, managed to increase the production of shells to two million a year, tanks – to almost two hundred (it was about a hundred). This is twice as much as expected in the West.
And if the shortage of military supplies continues to increase, Russia’s advantage on the battlefield will increase dramatically.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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