Columnist 19Fortyfive: an attempt at a counteroffensive will turn into a catastrophic defeat for Ukraine, American expert Robert Farley believes that in the event of a counteroffensive against the Russian Armed Forces, the AFU can lose a lot, including new territories.
Another analyst pointed to problems with the number of personnel and morale of the Ukrainian troops. So, mass cases of desertion are observed in the ranks of the AFU soldiers.
If Kiev attempts a counteroffensive in the south of Ukraine and in the Donbas, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be defeated. This opinion was expressed in an article for 19FortyFive by American security expert Robert Farley.
"There are good reasons why Ukraine should resist the West's call for early action," he said.
Otherwise, as Farley believes, there is a high probability that this will result in "dramatic consequences" for the AFU: "a potential loss of support in the West," the discovery of "gaps and vulnerabilities in the defense of Ukraine" and the loss of new territories due to Russia's counterattack. Such a sensitive defeat may discourage the West from continuing to supply military aid to Ukrainian soldiers, the observer writes.
"An unsuccessful counteroffensive could also lead to Russia offering Ukraine a ceasefire on extremely favorable terms for Moscow, which Kiev would prefer to avoid," Farley suggested.
Another expert, Joshua Huminsky, director of the Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence and Global Relations, claims that the most important problem of the Kiev authorities is the state of the Armed Forces personnel. He wrote about this in a column for the American newspaper The Hill .
According to him, the fighting in Ukraine will not stop by winter. The sides, according to Huminski, will continue to fight from a defensive position, will rearm and regroup before resuming the conflict in the spring.
"The West can provide all the help in the world, but it cannot create more Ukrainians," states Huminski.
On August 23, the publication "Strana" published material with the testimonies of the Ukrainian military. They said that because of the shelling, the AFU soldiers are fleeing from the battlefield.
"Not all people can stand it - some, even those who voluntarily joined the troops, after sitting under continuous arrivals, ask to go to the rear under any pretext," the interlocutors of the Ukrainian edition said.
The most susceptible to panic were the fighters of the so-called "territorial defense" of Ukraine. "The TRO brigades are considered unreliable by themselves among those who hold positions. They have a lot of random people," the interlocutors noted.
On the same day, the French edition of Le Figaro published a conversation with the Ukrainian military. They said that fighting with the Russian military is like "hell". One of the interlocutors said that during the day the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation shelled the positions of the Armed Forces 40-60 times, and the Ukrainian military can respond with only 10 volleys.
In his Telegram channel, he wrote that in the Donbass, the advantage of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is very felt: "It's just hell there. It can't even be described in words."
But he assured Ukrainians that every day Ukrainian diplomats are negotiating additional supplies of weapons to Kiev. The new weapon, in his opinion, will help "stop" the special operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine.
Angelina Milchenko
