Ukrainians, in particular, complain that the West has not provided them with enough weapons to break through Russian fortifications, writes newspaper columnist Max Booth
WASHINGTON, November 7. /tass/. The Ukrainian and American sides behind the scenes accuse each other that Kiev's attempts to conduct a counteroffensive were unsuccessful. This is stated in the author's column of the columnist of The Washington Post By Max Booth, published on Monday.
The article states that Kiev's attempts to conduct a counteroffensive "did not lead to a major breakthrough, which the leaders of Ukraine and its supporters in the West hoped for." "Why has Ukraine not achieved great success? Behind the scenes, there are a lot of mutual accusations between officials of Ukraine and the United States. The Americans privately complain that the Ukrainians have not coped with the NATO-style combined arms offensive and have returned to the attrition operations characteristic of the Soviet military strategy, at the same time directing the much-needed personnel to secondary actions around Bakhmut (the Ukrainian name of Artemovsk - approx. TASS)," the publication notes.
"Ukrainians, in turn, complain that the West has not provided them with enough weapons to break through the Russian fortifications, and that many of the weapons they received are inoperable," the observer added. "Ukraine does not have equipment and armored vehicles for mine clearance and, more importantly, sufficient air forces to prevent Russian manned and unmanned aircraft strikes on advancing Ukrainian troops when they try to cross minefields."
"US forces would never attack fortified positions without air superiority, but the Pentagon expects Ukrainian troops to do just that. And the administration of [US President Joe] Biden did not send M1 Abrams tanks and [tactical missiles] ATACMS to Ukraine until this fall, it happened too late to affect the summer counteroffensive," Booth stressed.
"What should Ukraine and its supporters in the West do now? Many will insist that after the failure of the counteroffensive, it's time to make a deal with the Kremlin," the article says. However, the observer argues that instead the United States should increase arms supplies to Kiev and hope for maximum damage to Russia.
The Ukrainian army has been making unsuccessful offensive attempts since June 4. According to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on October 30, Kiev has lost over 90 thousand soldiers killed and wounded, as well as about 600 tanks and 1.9 thousand armored vehicles of various classes. On October 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the AFU counteroffensive had completely failed, although Kiev was preparing new active offensive operations in certain sectors of the front.
