On Thursday, Russian forces thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to land along the Dnipro River towards the Antonovka Bridge, by directing missile strikes through drones and forcing the Ukrainian forces to retreat and withdraw all their equipment from that area.
The Russian response came in light of the faltering Ukrainian counterattack, which prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to repeat the request for Western arms and equipment supplies.
Specialist analysts assess the counterattack, which began on June 4, south of Donetsk and Artyomovsk, and in the directions of Zaporozhye, as “failed moves”, whose results are not commensurate with the financial support, supply and equipment of advanced Western weapons and ammunition.
Belarus and Poland.. Wagner transfers tension to the borders
Russian fortifications
The expert at the Russian National Center for Military Studies, Hoffman Marchenko, believes that the Russian army “did a good job in preparing for the Ukrainian counter-attack, through several schemes and fortifications”, which can be summarized in 4 axes:
• Fortifying defense lines in the south and extensive use of mines.
• The use and development of drone weapons, which thwarted all Ukrainian penetration and progress.
• Resorting to the Chechen Ahmed Brigades on the eastern front, and repelling all attempts to penetrate “Bakhmut” again.
Direct strikes on Ukrainian command and control centers on most fronts.
On the other hand, Marchenko says, in an interview with “Sky News Arabia”, that the Russian army was able to get rid of the crisis of the “Wagner” rebellion, which the Western powers and Ukraine did not improve in exploiting its timing and adapting it to make the counterattack successful and open gaps in the battle lines, and “the evidence is the decline in Western momentum on the issue and on the Kiev attack, which became clear to everyone that it was without any impressive successes.”
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Huge losses
Recent US intelligence assessments indicate that the Ukrainian attack, no matter how long it takes, will most likely only achieve recovery of limited territory from the entrenched Russian forces, and here Marchenko confirms that “Kiev’s losses exceeded 26,000 soldiers, which reinforces the decline in success rates regarding the counter-attack.”
According to American reports, in the first two weeks of the Ukrainian offensive, about 20 percent of the weapons that Kiev sent to the battlefield were destroyed or damaged, including tanks and armored vehicles that the Ukrainians planned to use in combat.
A few days ago, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced detailed losses in the Ukrainian ranks, which included:
• 1244 armored vehicles, including 17 Leopard tanks, 5 French tanks, and 12 American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.
• 43 US-made M777 howitzers and 46 self-propelled guns.
• Russian air defense systems shot down 176 HIMARS missiles, 27 Storm Shadow missiles of the Ukrainian armed forces and 483 drones belonging to the Ukrainian forces.
Hoffman-Marchenko explains that “as long as the Ukrainian side wants more Western weapons, it must fulfill the principle of achieving the well-known return on investment in the American political strategy, and it must achieve military successes in return for generous Western support, which has not been achieved.”
Reasons for failure
In a related context, the academic of international affairs at the Ukrainian University of Tavrisky, Vadim Aristovich, believes that there are 5 main reasons that led to the failure of the counter-attack as expected, namely:
• The inability of the Ukrainian forces to cut off the supply lines across the fighting axes, while sometimes resorting to retaliatory strikes, such as the attack on the Crimean Bridge recently, which may cost them a heavy price and a painful Russian response.
• The Ukrainian army suffered a major depletion in its human and simple weapons capabilities compared to its Russian counterpart, especially during the first weeks of the counterattack on which the United States and Europe relied.
• The Ukrainian forces lack strong air forces to confront the Russian supremacy.
• There are still limits to the West’s aid to Ukraine, although it appears to be an endless supply in the media, especially since Western supplies are governed by the basic issue of the lack of ammunition, as sending more missile systems and other weapons to Kiev has no value without providing shells, bullets and missiles that are consumed by the Ukrainian forces.
• The failure of Ukrainian military planning to distribute ammunition and weapons according to the data and priorities of the stages of the counter-attack, and the consumption of a large part of it in the first days of the attack.
Kyiv directs its compass towards the Crimea
Aristovich added, during his interview with Sky News Arabia, that “although 6 weeks have passed since the start of the Ukrainian counterattack, Ukraine, with the help of the West, did not find an opportunity to overcome the obstacles of the minefields that the forces must cross, which led to the Ukrainian forces advancing only a few miles since the start of the attack.”
He continued, “There are areas between 3 and 10 miles deep in front of the main strongholds of the Russians, which were heavily planted with anti-tank and anti-personnel mines and barbed wire, and these defenses were able to stop the Ukrainian advance.”
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2023-07-20 17:13:46
