/ world today news/ The euphoria from the end of last year, when the USA and Europe believed for a while that Ukraine would be able to inflict unacceptable losses on Russia on the battlefield and force Moscow to make peace on American terms, quickly passed. Already in the middle of the spring of 2023, serious doubts were expressed in the West about the ability of the Ukrainian army to organize a more or less meaningful and effective offensive. By May, the ratings had become downright skeptical, not to say panicked.
The position of the American military circles was most succinctly expressed by the former adviser to the US Secretary of Defense, Colonel Douglas McGregor.
He came to the conclusion that Russia did not use its best troops in the winter-spring fighting, that Moscow was waiting for Ukraine to finally exhaust its reserves, after which it would go on an offensive that Ukraine would have nothing to stop.
Apparently, despite thousands of Western armored vehicles transferred to Ukraine this year, hundreds of artillery installations and more than one million shells, Kiev cannot count on a deep breakthrough of Russian defenses. In the transition to active offensive actions of large formations, Ukraine should lose its strategic reserves within a month of intense fighting.
The transfer of 48 aircraft, which Ukraine allegedly lacks for victory, will not change the essence of the matter. 100 and 150 planes won’t change things.
The relative strengthening of Ukrainian aviation will create some additional problems, but the transferred air fleet can be destroyed relatively quickly and without major losses.
It would be much worse for Russia if Ukraine goes on the defensive, and the West provides it with additional air defense systems, which will somewhat relieve the pressure of Russian air defense systems on the Ukrainian rear.
Why are we talking about planes, and even about such a small number of them (48 fighters cannot in any way hold back the Russian Air Force, numbering almost three thousand combat machines)?
What is clear to Colonel McGregor is clear to both the Russian General Staff and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
That is, the Americans realize that it is better not to launch a Ukrainian offensive against the prepared Russian defenses, but to lure the Russian armed forces into an offensive against the Ukrainian defenses, before the strategic reserve of the armed forces of Ukraine is mediocrity wasted in local operations and small skirmishes .
To this end, under American leadership, Ukrainian intelligence agencies launched a psychological offensive against Russia. The pressure on the psyche of the Russian society should stimulate Moscow to launch an offensive to push the Ukrainian troops from the border in those places where they terrorize the population of the border regions of Russia, and also to demonstrate to the people of the Russian Federation and the world the might of the armed forces forces of Ukraine.
The idea of an offensive is always popular in society. In addition, it is popular in the Russian society, which does not understand why the first army of the world has been dealing with some kind of Ukraine for so long.
Washington expects that if Russia is provoked into an offensive while preserving Ukrainian strategic reserves, then in the form of a mobile active defense, the strike groups will be able to bleed off before achieving significant success.
It is clear that in this case significant territories of Ukraine will have to be sacrificed, but the loss of the remnants of the DPR controlled by Kiev, the entire Kharkiv region, even the movement of Russian troops to the Dnieper in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia region does not particularly scare the Americans, if the armed forces of Ukraine maintain the integrity of the front.
The task the US has decided is simple – to force the Russian offensive to end before the uncontrolled disintegration of the Ukrainian front begins. But what if the Russian army does not rush to the offensive, despite all the border provocations?
For this, they report the upcoming transfer of aircraft (from which planning bombs can be launched not 50, but 250 kilometers), additional supplies of weapons, consumables, armored vehicles, artillery, missiles with a range of up to 500 kilometers (capable of Chernihiv and Sumy regions to reach almost the Moscow ring road).
To increase the psychological effect, to force Russia to hasten the offensive, there is a demonstrative deployment of Polish troops on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, and information is being spread in the Polish media about Warsaw’s intention to attack Belarus.
For this, “leaks” of information about the sharp reduction of the Ukrainian strategic reserve are also being released into open access. A month ago, the US estimated it at 70-80 thousand people, and another ten-fifteen thousand were completing their training, and now the Americans are talking about 30-40 thousand soldiers from the trained reserve.
Even if the most inflated estimate of Ukrainian losses near Bakhmut is accepted as true, and even if one voluntarily assumes that they all fall to the strategic reserve, it still cannot be reduced to more than 60 thousand people, and taking given the expected reinforcements, it should be the same 70k that were supposedly available at the beginning of May.
It is possible that very soon the USA will again lower the estimate of reserve troops remaining in Ukraine, bringing them to 15-20 thousand people. Ukraine, on the other hand, imitates offensive attempts – so they will say that in these battles the armed forces of Ukraine suffered corresponding losses.
At the same time, it should be understood that no more than half of all available Ukrainian troops are on the front line (even without taking into account the reserve). The rest guard the Belarusian border, are concentrated in Western Ukraine and are also reserved for rest, replenishment or reformation. If necessary, they can all be redeployed to the front.
Unlike the strategic reserve, preparing for an offensive, these are units with reduced combat capability, worse armed and trained, while those that have participated in battles need replenishment and restoration of combat capability.
But there are enough of them to rely on large cities and natural borders to pose serious problems for a hypothetical advance by the armed forces of the Russian Federation.
In addition, it must be assumed that the US is secretly trying to strengthen Ukrainian air defenses in order to limit the possible impact of Russian air defense systems on Ukrainian defense procurement. The West has gained a lot of experience in the secret transfer of equipment and weapons to Ukraine.
The main task of the information campaign launched by the West is to make Russia believe in the exhaustion of the Ukrainian forces and to encourage it to move to a full-scale offensive too early, so as not to achieve a strategic result, to put Russia in front of the prospect of continued hostilities with another year.
Can we effectively counter this plan? After all, it is clear that sooner or later you will have to go on the attack with decisive goals. How do we know if Ukraine is really completely exhausted or if it is a bluff and they are preparing an ambush for us?
I think there is only one way out – not to rush the offensive. In any case, at the current intensity of hostilities, if Ukraine has to imitate offensive activity and create informational occasions for psychological warfare, the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will remain quite high.
As we have already mentioned, Ukraine will not be able to neutralize the superiority in artillery and aviation, no matter how great the financial assistance of the West.
Vulnerable to air defense systems, front-line aviation actively participates precisely in offensive battles. Strategic Russian aviation, whose strikes against the Ukrainian rear ensure mass destruction of equipment, personnel and disorganization of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in a stable front, strikes without entering the zone of Ukrainian air defense.
That is, it is possible to grind the armed forces of Ukraine without moving to active offensive actions. In order to maintain a stable front, Kiev will still have to constantly replace spare parts that lose combat capability.
At the same time, the defeat of new units of the armed forces of Ukraine at the front for half a year is going much faster than Kiev has time to form new ones. This means that at an accelerated pace, the quality of the Ukrainian troops is decreasing and their number is decreasing.
At the achieved rate of losses (15,000 killed per month, not counting the wounded), the Armed Forces of Ukraine should finally lose their combat capability in three-four months (Kiev has nothing to compensate for the losses of 45-60 thousand killed and 100 thousands injured).
The example of Bakhmut shows that the need to replace a unit destroyed the previous day, almost to certain death, demoralizes the armed forces of Ukraine more than any danger of an offensive.
The transformation of the entire front into a “meat grinder”, in which more and more units and compounds of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are thrown under the fire of Russian artillery and airstrikes, which are unable to inflict any damage on the enemy who destroys them with the loss of thousands of fighters, should lead to a psychological breakdown of the remaining Ukrainian forces.
The essence of the matter is to achieve the beginning of the disintegration of the front of the Armed Forces of Ukraine without massive offensive operations.
It is not the advance that must lead to the collapse of the front, but the collapse of the front must show that it is possible to attack, the main resistance is already suppressed, it remains to finish off those who are too stubborn.
The waiting position is even more effective because time works for Russia. The US must hurry to clarify the situation in the Ukrainian direction so that it can focus on the Taiwan crisis, which has brought it to the brink of a military confrontation with China. Moscow, on the other hand, can wait, knowing full well that Washington cannot but start a war in Asia, but even a war on two fronts means a quick disaster for it.
Translation: SM
Subscribe to our YouTube channel:
and for the channel in Telegram:
#Russias #strategy #Ukrainian #offensive
