Ukraine is conducting an offensive it is more comfortable and perhaps more capable of carrying out. This contradicts the Western belief that its aid could enable a fast-moving Ukrainian offensive to end this war sooner rather than later.
I want to believe that Russia's defenses are a crust vulnerable to shattering if hit hard enough:
The report finds that the magnitude of Russian equipment losses and ammunition usage in Ukraine is having a major negative effect on the Kremlin’s ability to prosecute the war. ...
Resulting shifts in the balance of forces are creating a window of opportunity for Ukraine to renew its counteroffensive and recover additional territory.
Strategypage thinks the Ukrainian tactics are working, saying Ukraine "uses its superiority in weapons, training and leadership so the Ukrainians are defeating the Russians in many smaller battles, where the Ukrainians make sure they have the advantage before attacking. This takes advantage of the poor morale, leadership and training most Russian troops have."
But does Ukraine have the military power to exploit the weaknesses developing on the Russian side?
Following the war is a flood of news with little useful information. I suppose if I could aggregate all the information coming out of the war and synthesize it to digestible daily or even weekly chunks, I might get a more solid feel for the flow of the war.
I assume ChatGPT is several generations away from that capability. Honestly, I find it is mostly crap after testing it on issues with a smaller scope of synthesis. It is only useful if you have enough knowledge to write about the issue yourself and you can fact check the "AI" output.
But I digress.
ISW assesses that Russia is compelled to reinforce threatened sectors of the front laterally. That is, by pulling units from a quiet sector to meet Ukrainian attacks.
On the other hand, Ukraine has reserve units that they can rotate into the front to give combat units a break to rest and recover while maintaining a significant reserve to exploit success. That might eventually become significant operationally and allow Ukraine to advance rapidly somewhere.
Right now I can only at least substantially guess at how much of each side's fighting capacity is bluff and how much is real. Could the outcome depend on persuading the other side (including their backers) that your own bluff is real enough to justify making concessions to end the war before worse things happen?
Ukraine expresses confidence. I say, bolster their confidence with our own public statements. Ukraine could be right--or maybe Russia can be convinced Ukraine is right.
I keep telling myself that sometimes attrition is necessary to create the conditions for mobile warfare--even with old Soviet-style tactics. For now, I will assume that is what Ukraine is trying to achieve.
UPDATE (Monday): Very related thoughts.
Ukraine needs a Russian-style OPFOR in their own national training center to learn how to fight like a modern Western army.
UPDATE (Thursday): A couple weeks ago it seemed to me that Ukraine had begun to gain more ground. I'm getting more of that feeling now. Is this because the Russians are getting thin on the ground from losses? Has Ukraine committed reserves to achieve this? And if the latter, is that premature? Does this mean Ukraine will lack enough reserves to exploit a hole if it appears?
NOTE: ISW coverage of the war continues here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
