Takšna (proti)ofenziva preprosto nima smisla. Razen če je njen namen zadovoljiti zahteve donatorjev po (protiofenzivi) in pri tem čimprej v staro železje spremeniti najbolj sodobna oklepna vozila donatorjev in žrtvovati življenja deset tisočev mladih fantov. Brez kakršnekoli zračne podpore, kaj šele premoči v zraku, brez protizračne obrambe, v valovih prek čistine pošiljati tanke in mlade fante, ki jih nato na čistini tolčejo ruska artilerija, helikopterji in letala, je popoln vojaški samomor.

Vojaški samomor ne samo v tej bitki, ki bo novi Kursk 2.0, pač pa v vojni. Kajti ukrajinsko vodstvo se mora zavedati, da če v tej protiofenzivi izgubi večino oklepne mehanizacije in človeške sile, ne bodo imeli s čim braniti Kijeva, ko bodo ruske sile prešle v ofenzivo. Kar bodo, kot je napovedal nekdanji ruski predsednik Medvedev. Kdorkoli svetuje ukrajinskemu vodstvu glede strategije, je Ukrajini kot državi naredil usodno medvedjo uslugo. Katastrofa.

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ANALYSIS UKRAINIAN COUNTEROFFENSIVE ZAPORIZHIA, AFTERNOON JUNE 9

Hard fighting continues along the Zaporizhia front, but with no Ukrainian breakthrough. Sometimes UkrAF makes small gains and then RuAF retakes the lost territories. But all fighting are still being conducted in the gray area in front of the russian main defence lines (map 3)

I will not go into details about attacks and counterattacks, but the main areas of fighting has been centred around Lobkove to the west, and Robotino to the south, of Orikhiv. Lobkove was captured a short while by ukrainian forces, but later they retreated due to intense Russian bombardments.

In Robotino russian forces retreated to the second line of forward positions closer to the settlement, then russian forces retook the lost positions and presently ukrainian forces has taken them a second time and now russian forces try to retake the first line a second time. But still the ukrainians has not reached the settlement of Robotino and they are fighting an uphill battle in open terrain (see topographical map 2) through russian minefields and might have to withdraw a second time to their original positions.

The ukrainian forces doesn’t seem to sweep mines in advance of the attack. They do it with a couple of mine clearing vehicles when they attack and behind them the ukrainian armour advance in a column that is an easy target for russian AT assets. In a way it resembles the russian armour columns in the beginning of the war. Columns that took catastrophic losses to ukrainan AT weapons, a history now repeated by the ukrainans.

In advance of an offensive, the attacking side must secure air and artillery superiority, so they can shield their mine clearing operations and troop concentrations. And at the same time destroy the defenders command structures and logistical hubs. Finally when they attack their air and artillery superiority can be utilised to severely hurt and slow down enemy reserves to secure breakthroughs. This becomes even more important if the enemy has large reserves and a defence in depth.

On the Zaporizhia front the situation is the opposite, so ukrainian forces hasn’t many choices how to act. One method is to achieve strategic surprise as in the Kharkiv offensive last autumn. That option doesn’t exist on the Zaporizhia front. In general I would say that an attack towards an enemy who has all the benefits RuAF has on the Zaporizhia front is suicidal.

The only way ukrainian (and western) commanders even could have contemplated that such an offensive could succeed was if 1, western weapons was much superior to russian weapons, 2, western trained soldiers much superior to russian soldiers and 3, russian morale was dismal. If all these factors where true, UkrAF might have had a chance to succeed, but nothing seems to corroborate those assumptions.

Many on the ukrainian and western side had anticipated hard initial resistance from RuAF, but after 2-3 days fighting and advances of around 6-8 km, they expected an increasing collapse of russian morale and the real breakthroughs would come. Nothing of this seems to be other than wishful thinking, since fighting still are in the grey zone and russian resistance are unbroken. At the same time ukrainian forces take heavy casulties both in soldiers and vehicles.

The offensive isn’t over yet and the main ukrainian attack fist remains with probably over 600 tanks and as many IFVs around Orikhiv. But the future for the ukrainian offensive looks bleak if their vanguard is destroyed before they reach the russian main defencelines. The probability is large that Ukraine has to use up their main force to get through a couple of the russian defencelines and then they will run out of forces to exploit any successes and be forced to withdraw.

To summarise, the most likely outcome of the ukrainian offensive is minor territorial gains at a horrendous cost. As I’ve said before it seems to be Kursk 2.0.

Vir: Mikael Valtersson*, via Twitter

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* Former officer Swedish Armed Forces/Air Defence, former defence politician and chief of staff Sweden Democrats. Current political and military analyst.