Thank you for the excellent response. My only concern was that I recall well the summer of 2022. Everything was going very well for the Russian forces. We were "Grinding" the Ukrainians down, a lot of POW's, destroyed and captured equipment. Although there we no big territorial gains, it appeared that the Ukrainian army was a spent force…
Thank you for the excellent response. My only concern was that I recall well the summer of 2022. Everything was going very well for the Russian forces. We were "Grinding" the Ukrainians down, a lot of POW's, destroyed and captured equipment. Although there we no big territorial gains, it appeared that the Ukrainian army was a spent force. Then Kharkov offensive seems to have come out of nowhere.
I am not looking for a big arrow offensive. I think they are very risky and thwart with problems. With American satellites, AWACS, Drones, anything big gets immediately spotted. However, a limited offensive from Luhansk, Sumy or Kharkov region seems appropriate. If I had to choose, I would go with Sumy. This is very hard region for the Ukrainians to defend. The logistics is a nightmare. As everything Ukraine does is for PR they could not possibly countenance the loss of a city the size of Sumy. Ukraine would be forced to send reserves there. Russia need not try to occupy the city, merely threaten it.
On one hand it's true about the Kharkov offensive, but one must remember that the Kharkov offensive resulted in no real losses. Even Ukrainians at their highest estimates claimed to have captured somewhere in the range of 20-50 tanks (from my memory) and this was wildly inflated by a few fake videos showing a disused Crimean tank base which they tried to pass off as an entire base full of 'abandoned vehicles'. The retreat from Kharkov region had almost no attritional effect on Russian forces whatsoever, and in fact the Russian side claims AFU lost thousands in their push. Even if we assume for argument's sake that that's exaggeration and let's just say to play devil's advocate that neither side lost much--all we're left with is a hand over of territory. And if you read my original article https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/the-coming-russian-offensive-2023
you'll know why it happened, because Russia so far has used a FAR tinier force in the SMO than most people think (less than 100k) and so there were certain 'crumple zones' that were simply indefensible and were held only on hope that no strikes would come there.
Now the Russian army has reached rough numerical parity (plus or minus a few) and so such lopsided overruns are not really possible anymore. Of course there's some remote possibility that Kiev has stealth-mobilized a far larger force in the west of the country than any of us can imagine, and some do claim this (I've heard 1.2 million 'rumors' now, etc), but of course the chances of that are very low.
Thank you for the excellent response. My only concern was that I recall well the summer of 2022. Everything was going very well for the Russian forces. We were "Grinding" the Ukrainians down, a lot of POW's, destroyed and captured equipment. Although there we no big territorial gains, it appeared that the Ukrainian army was a spent force. Then Kharkov offensive seems to have come out of nowhere.
I am not looking for a big arrow offensive. I think they are very risky and thwart with problems. With American satellites, AWACS, Drones, anything big gets immediately spotted. However, a limited offensive from Luhansk, Sumy or Kharkov region seems appropriate. If I had to choose, I would go with Sumy. This is very hard region for the Ukrainians to defend. The logistics is a nightmare. As everything Ukraine does is for PR they could not possibly countenance the loss of a city the size of Sumy. Ukraine would be forced to send reserves there. Russia need not try to occupy the city, merely threaten it.
On one hand it's true about the Kharkov offensive, but one must remember that the Kharkov offensive resulted in no real losses. Even Ukrainians at their highest estimates claimed to have captured somewhere in the range of 20-50 tanks (from my memory) and this was wildly inflated by a few fake videos showing a disused Crimean tank base which they tried to pass off as an entire base full of 'abandoned vehicles'. The retreat from Kharkov region had almost no attritional effect on Russian forces whatsoever, and in fact the Russian side claims AFU lost thousands in their push. Even if we assume for argument's sake that that's exaggeration and let's just say to play devil's advocate that neither side lost much--all we're left with is a hand over of territory. And if you read my original article https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/the-coming-russian-offensive-2023
you'll know why it happened, because Russia so far has used a FAR tinier force in the SMO than most people think (less than 100k) and so there were certain 'crumple zones' that were simply indefensible and were held only on hope that no strikes would come there.
Now the Russian army has reached rough numerical parity (plus or minus a few) and so such lopsided overruns are not really possible anymore. Of course there's some remote possibility that Kiev has stealth-mobilized a far larger force in the west of the country than any of us can imagine, and some do claim this (I've heard 1.2 million 'rumors' now, etc), but of course the chances of that are very low.