The counteroffensive is on its way

U.S. Response to Ukraine’s “Offfensive” at the Kremlin, and the Prospect for Foreign Soldiers in the Middle East

Major military operations are normally shrouded in secrecy. But Ukraine’s planned offensive against Russia has been part of a lively public debate for months. This has created a wide range of expectations.

Some analysts say the initial stages of the offensive could already be under way, after a number of surprise small attacks inside Russia.

The drones that hit the Kremlin in Moscow caused only minor damage to the dome of the building, but gave the Russians a psychological shock.

The attacks inside Russia are being kept vague by Ukranian officials. But there’s an almost universal belief Ukraine is responsible, and this is a way of keeping Russia off-balance in advance of the offensive.

Russia has more troops than Ukraine and less equipment, but its military has been proven to be more effective with better tactics, advanced Western weapons and better morale. The counteroffensive is a bet that Ukraine can use those advantages in order to regain territory from Russia.

“It may require multiple offensives on multiple fronts and likely will be conducted over several months rather than days or weeks,” Kofman said.

“I think that Russian forces have to be seen to be decisively beaten in this operation. Ukrainians need to demonstrate in this stage of the war that they are capable of breaking through Russian lines.

If they don’t show much success, it’ll be harder for the seller to justify selling all the weapons. “I think Ukraine could say, if they take back some territory, ‘Look, we’re making progress. It’s very tough. We still need the equipment, the money, and please send us more.'”

He said that he thinks we’ll know it when we see it. It will to some degree be interpreted in differing ways by different capitals of Europe and other Western countries.

Russia has more people than Ukraine, so it has a large pool of young men who can be conscripted.

People will say it’s time to encourage the Ukrainians to negotiate. I don’t agree with that. “I worry about people who are interested in discussing what kind of territory the country should give up to Russia, even though it’s not their territory to give away.”

Satellite photos show the Russians digging fresh trenches to defend possible Ukrainian approaches to Crimea, and Russia has reportedly been sending in additional troops to the region.

The Ukrainian air force needs to learn to fly and maintain American planes, which will take months, as the West pledges to meet their long-standing request for F-16 fighter jets.

In the favorable scenario for Ukraine, a peace deal in which Russia is expelled from everywhere but Crimea and parts of the Donbas region would become plausible. A failed counteroffensive and land bridge would give Putin a psychological victory and a foundation from which to launch future attacks.

The Ukrainians possibly pushed the Russians back to the line on Feb. 23 of last year, before the big Russian invasion began. Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, thinks it would be a huge blow to Moscow.

Most experts do not think that the war will end with Ukrainians regaining control of Donbass, or that it will start again soon. For the counteroffensive to be a success, Ukraine doesn’t need that outcome. Any major progress could cause Putin and his aides to worry that a long war would bring further losses and eventually put Crimea at risk. “The Russian people do care about Crimea,” my colleague Helene Cooper said. For a long time the region was part of Russia.

The counteroffensive may start in multiple places, maybe in the south and the east. Some of those will be bodily fluids. Some will be part of the main efforts.”

Ukraine hopes that its counteroffensive will end this stalemate. Western allies have supplied the Ukrainian military with billions of dollars of equipment and trained its troops at camps in Germany over the past few months. The troops have learned a technique known as combined-arms warfare, in which different parts of the military work together to take territory. Tanks roll over trenches to punch through enemy lines, and infantry spread out to hold the area.