Despairing Headlines Reveal Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Struggles

by SIMPLICIUS THE THINKER

the despairing article headlines continue to roll in:

 

 

 

 

 

 
The only notable change in the new spate of headlines is that they’re now demonstrating a newfound brazenness in actually naming specifics—what won’t be achieved, what should be done instead. The difference is, before they merely stuck to giving the obvious—the counter-offensive is not going well—but kept things ambiguous under the tactic of hoping people would still maintain belief in its ultimate success. If you vaguely say “it’s not going as well as planned” but don’t mention that the specific objective of reaching the sea, or Melitopol, etc., can’t possibly be completed, then people will keep hope alive.

But now, they’re outright naming the key objectives with the admission that they will not be achieved. One of the main reasons for this switch is that a new “leaked intelligence report” has made this determination:

The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol, people familiar with the classified forecast told The Washington Post, a finding that, should it prove correct, would mean Kyiv won’t fulfill its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push.

The grim assessment is based on Russia’s brutal proficiency in defending occupied territory through a phalanx of minefields and trenches, and is likely to prompt finger pointing inside Kyiv and Western capitals about why a counteroffensive that saw tens of billions of dollars of Western weapons and military equipment fell short of its goals.

But of course nothing in Washington “leaks” without a purpose. So you might be wondering, why the shift in rhetoric, what do they hope to accomplish? It seems that one of the reasonings is by clearly articulating the dire nature of the situation, they hope to steer policy into new escalatory directions. Whereas before their signals of alarm were perhaps more caveat or warning, now they’re prescribing actual directional changes.

 
In the above Newsweek article, the author offers an “innovative” solution to ending the war in Ukraine.

The author argues that, firstly, a “forever war” favors Putin and Russia, not Ukraine or the West, but they’ve discovered a way to “stick it to Putin” by ending the war abruptly and not giving him the “forever war” that he wants. They suggest to give Ukraine funding to continue operations up until July 2024, the date of the next big NATO summit. At the point of that summit, Ukraine should stop all offensive operations and then be given full entry into NATO.

This, they argue, would allow Ukraine to keep and consolidate whatever territory they’ve managed to win back by then, and would protect them from any further Russian advances by way of Article 5. This is no different than giving a divided Germany NATO status after WW2, they argue.

What’s most intriguing about this plan is that the author is actually none other than Democrat congressman Tom Malinowski, and it befits him to oh-so-conveniently militate toward a cessation of hostilities in July 2024, right on the eve of the U.S. presidential elections, whereupon Democrats will need all the help they can get. If a plan could be designed and packaged in a way where it can be sold as a major “victory” then certainly Democrats will attempt to drag it out until the eve of the election to try to use “Biden’s major Ukrainian victory” as a huge final hour boost.

The other intriguing thing is how it dovetails with Lukashenko’s new theory, which he gave during a recent interview, that Ukraine will be inducted into NATO on the basis of Poland occupying its Western territories. He doesn’t spell out the exact mechanisms by which he envisions this to happen, but merely the inference that NATO will have little room to reject Ukraine once a full-fledged NATO member has already politically merged with them.

Though he did impart his opinion that Ukrainians wouldn’t allow this:

Lukashenko believes that Ukrainians will not give Poland western territories “I think that the Ukrainians themselves will not allow it. Zelensky is moving towards this: you made some kind of decision there that either Polish policemen or civil servants are already almost equated with Ukrainian ones. Moreover, units have already been created in Poland – a military unit of assistance to Ukraine. If they come in, you won’t turn them out, because the Americans are standing behind Poland. Well, there will be Polish territory. Why not accept them into NATO? This will be Polish territory. They will lead to it. Therefore, everything is prepared for this. For us, this is unacceptable, as well as for the Russians. In order not to fragment Ukraine and stick it in parts somewhere, we must stop here and do it in such a way as to preserve this integrity of Ukraine. And then talk. You see, this is the first thing you need to do. This is what you need, Ukrainians,” Lukashenka said.

By the way, given Malinowski’s proposal above, as well as the recent one by NATO’s chief of staff Stian Jenssen who likewise proposed a ‘land for peace’ settlement, two things happened. Firstly, NATO was forced to apologize after enraging Ukraine:

 
And secondly, Ukraine is now attempting to codify into law the inadmissibility of settling the conflict by way of any territorial concessions whatsoever. Many deputies put forth a bill into the Verkhovna Rada that would legally oblige Ukraine to “go to the end” and would constitutionally not allow any concessions. The “end” would mean 1991 borders, as per the written bill.

Zelensky even gave a smug answer that the only territorial concession he’s willing to negotiate for NATO entry is the exchange of Russia’s Belgorod region:

 
But getting back to the main proposals: the other side, argued by Edward Luttwak in a new Die Welt article, says that the only way Ukraine can win is by going “total war” mode, a complete societal mobilization of 3 million bayonets.

💥 Ukraine needs to mobilize 3 million people to succeed in the conflict with Russia. So says an article in Die Welt.

“There is only one way forward: to wage the war with the seriousness befitting a national liberation struggle. Ukraine’s population has shrunk, it is true, but it is still more than 30 million people, so the total number of armed forces could be as high as 3 million. With such a military force, Ukraine could win battles and liberate its territory the old-fashioned way – in a war of attrition, like most European wars of independence,” the author believes.

“As for the Russian economy, the news is grim, but not grim enough. The war will not end because of Russia’s economic capitulation,” the author says, pointing out that unlike China, Russia is able to provide its own food and fuel, and generally produce almost everything it needs.

Until the last Ukrainian! It seems like Die Welt tries to impose a well-known Nazi concept of “Totalen Krieg” on modern Ukraine.

And it seems, ironically enough, that Zelensky has recently signaled interest more in this plan rather than the opposing one. Twice now in the past week or two alone, Zelensky has eerily posted videos chastising Ukrainian society for ignoring the war and imploring that “everyone” should be assisting in the war effort in one way or another.

Other Ukrainian officials have similarly began to signal such a direction. I recently posted one such official who stated that “all Ukraine” may have to be mobilized in the future.

The other ‘well-timed’ release making the rounds was the new NYTimes article with the “bombshell” revelation that over 500k casualties have been suffered in the war thus far:

 
Of course, as usual they couch these figures with the fact that it’s Russia still taking the lion’s share of the losses:

Russia’s military casualties are approaching 300,000, including as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injuries, the newspaper reported. Ukrainian deaths were close to 70,000, with 100,000 to 120,000 wounded, it added.

But we know in reality this is their way of signaling Ukraine’s losses without causing too much of a panic. If they had merely come out and said that Ukraine has 200k total casualties, it could overturn the apple cart. The Russian figures are completely made up nonsense, the Ukrainian figures are likely trimmed down quite a bit, but at least they’re beginning to slowly leak the truth to the public. Acknowledging 190-200k total casualties for Ukraine is a start, and is their way of very gradually conditioning the public for the harsh realities to follow.

Discussion continues to turn to what comes next. More and more we’re hearing reports that Ukraine is simply terrified of stopping active offensive operations, no matter how costly they are in losses, because they suspect that Russia may launch its own offensive as soon as it senses Ukraine weakening and backing off. Thus, they believe that they’re fending off the coming locomotive by distracting it with their own flailing, but ultimately meaningless, actions.

The truth is though, it’s easy to see how the conflict can be a very confusing one for the uninitiated. Both sides claim to be winning and inflicting massive casualties on the other, but the actual battle lines have not changed much in many months. It’s a sort of Schrodinger’s War run on the power of belief and blind religious faith in one side or the other. And while I know the truth of what’s really going on behind the smokescreens, I don’t claim as my mission the intent to ‘convince’ my followers of the truth of one side or the other. To actively vie for ‘convincing’ people would appear a bit desperate, and I think the truth is self-evident enough that it will come out in time, such that I don’t need to go overboard in proselytizing anyone, apart from merely reporting the facts as I see them. But there are many things difficult to report because they cannot be reduced down to bite-sized morsels but are infact the byproduct of years of experience and subtle understanding of reading between the lines and proper analysis of information.

At the end of the day, there’s only one side from whom we’re seeing massive cemeteries being tracked from space due to their size, and daily urgent calls for more body bags, coffins, graves, crematoriums, etc.

Take this new AFU order for instance:

🇺🇦The order of the commander of the 123 brigade of Territorial Defense of Ukraine appeared on the web.

So, according to this document, the commander of the A-7052 unit (123 brigade of the TERO) ordered his deputy in the rear to get mobile crematoriums, and the battalion commanders to collect receipts from the AFU militants to be cremated, writes the Kherson Bulletin.👌

Apparently, the mobilization is going “according to plan” and no one wants to bother with transporting the bodies of the AFU militants, but simply burn them and scatter the ashes on the field.

Or this Ukrainian volunteer begging for body bags for a number of AFU battalions:

 
Also, from one of the ABC articles whose headline I posted earlier, we’re told that American mercenaries in the AFU have reported their units taking 85% casualties:

One of the men, a former U.S. soldier from Texas who goes by the callsign “Tango,” said his unit of “dozens” of men took “85% casualties” and that two of their comrades were killed when the team was ambushed whilst advancing into Russian-occupied territory. Forty percent of the unit was so badly injured they were rendered “combat ineffective,” he said.

It goes on and on:

A third mercenary, from an unidentified Western nation, told the network that he had been seriously injured in the early days of the counteroffensive, and that around 80% of his battalion had since been wounded.

Not to mention the fact they praise Russian professionalism:

“It was definitely a very professional force that we were fighting against,” the U.S. army veteran from Alaska said.

Ring a bell?

 
But all that said, I can see how the current situation may very well look like a ‘stalemate’ from the outside, and I don’t blame anyone for thinking it so. On the surface it very much appears a stalemate, but looking past the smokescreens we can see one side is clinging for survival while the other merely bides its time and gets stronger by the day.

In his new interview with Ukrainian dissident journalist Diana Panchenko, Lukashenko made a few revealing statements, one of which he even prefaced with “I don’t know if I should be telling you this”, implying the intimation of a state secret:

 
He states that Russia has raised a 250,000 strong volunteer force, which is larger than the entire force Russia is currently using in the war. Recall I’ve been the only analyst accurately tracking the true troop counts on the front, and have repeatedly stated that Russia started the war with only 70-80k men, not the “250k” everyone thought.

Presumably Lukashenko here is referring to Shoigu’s new army, which Medvedev recently reported had already been 230k+ in number as of early August.

 
More importantly, he seems to believe Russia will use this huge new army (which grows by the day) in active combat to completely eviscerate the remainder of Ukraine. It’s possible—we don’t know yet the exact intention behind the creation of this army, besides, for now at least, being a reserve to deter NATO aggression.

But there have been other indications they may use these forces, though it’s difficult to say. There was even rumor that Putin is considering completely demobilizing all the 300k previously mobilized forces from September 2022 and replacing them with the newly raised men. Some may think this is crazy, but it would be a huge morale boost to men who’ve now been fighting for almost a full year to know that they are going home to their families. It will give other servicemen something to fight for, knowing that their military term will be limited and not “until death.” Plus, many would stay on anyway and giving them the option of going home would merely be an added morale boost.

This likely won’t happen though. But now there’s talk on the pro-Russian side of what kind of offensive we may see. One theory that’s gotten buzz is this video from WeebUnion who very intricately outlines what he believes will be Russia’s war-ending offensive, with Wagner coming down from the north:

 
It’s interesting to think about, but personally I don’t rate the chances of it as high, at least for now. One of the reasons is that I’m not sure that Russia will ever launch a “big arrow” offensive of this magnitude ever again because the high-tech nature of the modern war—particularly in the second half of the SMO thus far—has evolved to a place where I’m not sure either army can make those WW2-style pushes most people have come to expect. I think Russia’s tactic for the foreseeable future will continue to be the slow pressure on all fronts to wear down the AFU by way of artillery, then advancing only in places where it’s most agreeable.

Some think you can’t advance without major risk, barreling straight into enemy held territory—but that’s not true. We see from both sides presently that artillery and drone warfare has gotten accurate enough that artillery alone (corrected by drones) is often enough to dislodge an enemy from a settlement (currently happening in Rabotino for the AFU and in Sinkovka, near Kupyansk, for Russia), allowing friendly troops to move into it while minimally contested.

The fact is, in previous eras of war, the type of ISR we see today simply didn’t exist, which meant that all advances/offensives had to partially if not majorly rely on brute forcing your way into a contested area. Sure, there was recon-by-fire and other forms of recon which allowed you to get the gist of enemy positions and concentrations. But it’s nothing like we see today, where every enemy position down to the individual troops can be pinpointed in a given sector.

Thus, what we’re seeing in this modern style drone-assisted war is that advances can in fact be incrementally made by way of allowing artillery to clear your path very gradually, then moving into the vacated area.

I’ve written on it before, but one tactic both sides are currently using is simply hammering the enemy’s positions to such an extent that all defensive structures have been destroyed to the point where the troops lack any cover and are forced to retreat. Meaning, their trenches, dugouts, fortifications, are all blasted apart such that they become unusable. And since you can’t dig trenches in an active contact line, having no recourse, they have no choice but to retreat to the 2nd echelon line 3-5km back. The advancing force then moves up and rinses and repeats on this new line and continually forces you back.

Of course, one can argue that this isn’t much different than even WW1 warfare. Sure, they didn’t have the same ISR resultant accuracy, but they made up for that with sheer number of munitions expended, and yet there were stalemates for years when neither side could move. I think one of the differences is the sheer density of troops is much lower in Ukraine and oddly enough—as many have pointed out—the quality of trenches actually pales in comparison to WW1 designs. Most Ukrainian trenches would have gotten their builders court martialed in WW1, crude earthworks incomparable to the standardized and meticulously constructed examples from WW1:

 
Much of Ukraine’s trenchworks are just crude dirt walls that take one artillery blast and crumble, burying everyone inside. Compare WW1 trenchworks to this.

Incidentally, for those interested, one historian believes the 1944 battles in the hedgerows and fields of Normandy are a far better comparison to the current Ukrainian conflict.

Either way, there’s a continuation of rumors about Ukraine needing a mass new mobilization this fall/winter as more and more key officials articulate their belief that Russia is preparing for a mass Spring 2024 offensive.

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