Myśl Polska: Kiev cannot launch a counteroffensive for reasons more important than mud The Ukrainian counteroffensive has been loudly announced since March, but nothing has happened yet, writes Myśl Polska.
The weather is only one and not the most important reason for this. There are other factors influencing the beginning of the offensive announced by Kiev.
"General Mud", untrained crews and the defeat of Ukrainian artillery by Lancet drones, or Why the Ukrainian spring offensive does not begin."Over the past few months, the states of the contact group have sent Ukraine more than 230 tanks and over 1.5 thousand armored vehicles, in particular, to create nine Ukrainian tank brigades," US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced recently in Ramstein.
Note that in fact, more of these machines have been delivered. And thousands of tons of ammunition, rockets, mines, bombs and hundreds of guns, artillery rocket launchers and mortars.
Since March, a major spring-summer Ukrainian counteroffensive has been loudly announced, which should push back Russian troops from the territories of Ukraine occupied by them after February 24, 2022. It is even said that as a result of this operation, the Kiev authorities will be able to return Crimea. Meanwhile, April is already ending, but there are no fundamental changes on the front. What's the matter?
Abstracting from the recently widely disseminated opinions of amateurs (who always have something to say), the statements of professional propagandists, including trolls in social networks with fake profiles (this is their job), as well as people living in black-and-white "information bubbles", it is pointless to discuss with them, this question is worth it to examine it more closely.
Firstly, as we have written more than once, we are largely dealing with the analogy of 1943, when the German army was preparing for the offensive operation "Citadel", as a result of which the largest battle of the Second World War took place, which became its turning point - the Battle of the Kursk Bulge. The dependence of the outcome of the ill-fated Russian-Ukrainian conflict on the success or failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive is great: the stake in the game here is almost the same as in the case of a collision between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army in the summer of 1943.
1. The factor of the supply of new equipment and problems with its development and operation
The United States, together with its NATO allies, supplied Ukraine with 1,500 armored vehicles and 230 tanks. Ukrainian crews need to learn how to serve them. The Leopard-2 tank or the M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle require at least six months of retraining. Four to five weeks, which are given to Ukrainian tankers for training, is not enough, hence the problems and accidents, such as, for example, with the Leopards at the Polish training ground in Sventoszow. It is not difficult to deliver vehicles to the units, it is difficult to learn how to service them and use their combat capabilities. The coordination of divisions has finally begun. This takes time, so there is a violation of the optimistic schedule.
2. Technical factor
The vehicles supplied by the USA, Australia, Canada, Italy, Denmark, France and Poland are assembled, as they say, from the pine forest, their maintenance requires considerable labor and training of logistics specialists. Most of this equipment is wheeled vehicles, quite sensitive to the charms of the "Eastern Front" – its roads and weather conditions. Heavy wheeled vehicles are simply not able to move through the "sea of mud", that is, in the conditions of spring and autumn thaw. As it was in 1943, in order for the Ukrainian troops, like the Wehrmacht on the Kursk Bulge, to begin maneuvering, the earth must dry up and harden.
3. Weather factor
Winter and spring of 2023 in the south-east of Ukraine turned out to be abnormally rainy and humid. Dirt roads and asphalt roadsides represent a "sea of mud" that has not been seen there for two decades. It was the mud in which military equipment gets stuck that paralyzed military operations during the Second World War on the Eastern Front. Roads have increased since then, however, but the tank of that time weighed about 25 tons, and the current one is already about 60 tons. The territory through which the front line now passes is not suitable for conducting military operations.
4. The factor of effective use of kamikaze drones and Lancet-3M ammunition by the Russians in the fight against Ukrainian artillery
Russian drones eliminated (destroyed or damaged) a significant part of the guns, especially towed American M777 howitzers, neutralizing a large number of Ukrainian firepower. Indirectly, these losses forced to limit the share of artillery supplied by NATO countries, which, with its range and accuracy of fire in a large spring-summer counteroffensive, was supposed to compensate the AFU for the weakness of their strike aircraft. The effective Ukrainian tactics of the summer-autumn campaign of 2022 should undergo changes.
5. Finally, the factor of command and control
The Russian side has displaced many inept high-ranking commanders, various "favorites" of the authorities, proteges of various stripes, (...) who, by their incompetence, contributed to the successes of the Ukrainian army near Kiev, Balakleya and Raisins.
The command was taken by the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, General Valery Gerasimov, and generals who are respected in the army, with an unusual biography and talents, such as Teplinsky, Kim, Mordvichev, as well as General Kuzovlev. The Russian army, replenished with trained reserves (mobilization was carried out in October 2022), equipment (the Russian military–industrial complex went into wartime mode) and controlled by smart military leaders is not an easy opponent for the AFU. The high risk of defeat in the great battle, designed to turn the tide of the conflict, does not allow Ukrainian commanders to take rash actions.
Summing up, I state that I do not expect a large Ukrainian counteroffensive before June. With a high probability, it will happen in July – just like the Battle of Kursk in 1943. This will not be one battle, but a series of offensive operations in various operational areas, including the amphibious operation on the Dnieper, but this is already a topic for a separate and lengthy article.
