The U.S. intelligence community now believes that Ukraine will fail to achieve its key objective of the offensive launched this summer: capturing, or at least besieging, the southern city of Melitopol, The Washington Post reports.

This would mean that Kyiv forces would also not be able to achieve their strategic goal of the offensive: to cut Russian forces in the south of the country and the land corridor to Crimea in half.

Multiple U.S. intelligence sources told The Post that Ukrainian forces trying to advance toward Melitopol are currently fighting around the village of Robotyne, more than 75 kilometers from the city in southern Zaporizhia Oblast.

The American assessment predicts that Kiev’s advance will stop within a few kilometers of Melitopol, the city where the Russian army entered on the second day of the invasion launched by President Vladimir Putin on February 24 last year, advancing from Crimea and separatists. controlled territories in Donetsk region.

Melitopol is a key target of the Ukrainian offensive, as it is considered the “gateway to Crimea” and is located at the intersection of two major highways and a railway, which allows the Russian armed forces to transfer personnel and military equipment between different sections of the front in southern Ukraine.

US intelligence believes that Kyiv’s offensive will be exhausted without reaching the city.

Russian fortifications are the main problem that struck the Ukrainian offensive

Retired Australian general Mick Ryan, one of the most prominent military analysts of the war in Ukraine, since early August, when it became clear that the Ukrainian offensive was not progressing at the expected pace, noted that the Russian defense lines “are far more complex and deadly than any armed forces over the past almost 80 years.”

In an interview with The Economist journalists, he noted that the lines, the depth of which sometimes reaches tens of kilometers, are designed to slow down even the most complex combined military assaults and to separate the advancing units from their logistical support.

Ukrainian forces face a deadly combination of elements: millions of mines, surveillance drones that can transmit their positions to Russian gunners, kamikaze drones that can damage combat vehicles obtained from the West, electronic warfare systems that disable Ukrainian drones, all of which provide support of the Russian defenders in the trenches and fortified positions built here.

Another problem is that even when the Ukrainians manage to cut their way through the minefields, Russian aircraft and artillery manage to scatter new mines behind them, effectively cutting off the vanguard units from reinforcements that could help them strengthen their positions.

Military analyst Rob Lee told The Washington Post that the road to Melitopol is “extremely difficult” and that even capturing cities closer to the contact line between the two armies, such as Tokmak, will be difficult.

“Russia has 3 main defensive lines, and then there are fortified cities,” he states. “The question is not only whether Ukraine will be able to break through one or two of them, but whether it will be able to break through all three and have enough strength to do something noticeable after the losses, for example, to take Tokmak,” he explains.

The Ukrainian army threw its best units into battle

The other day, Forbes noted that the Armed Forces of Ukraine finally threw their most powerful unit into battle – the 82nd Airborne Brigade.

This elite unit has 2,000 paratroopers armed with Marder infantry fighting vehicles, which Ukraine received from Germany, and Stryker armored personnel carriers, delivered by the United States. In addition, the unit is also equipped with Challenger 2 tanks provided by the British Army.

They came into action precisely during the offensive against the village of Robotyne, located in the direction of the attack on Melitopol. According to Forbes, the 82nd Brigade was apparently thrown into the fray this week.

The 82nd Brigade and its sister unit, the 46th Airborne Brigade, were among the last large units held in reserve by the General Staff under General Valery Zaluzhny.

The Ukrainian command has already deployed all 4 marine infantry brigades at its disposal on a 16-kilometer-wide section of the front from the axial direction to the valley of the Mokri Yala River. This deployment of Ukrainian marines benefited Kyiv, they participated in the liberation of several villages.

Recently, they took part in the battles for Urozhaine, one of the villages that defended the road to Mariupol. Ukraine officially announced the liberation of the village this Wednesday.

Throwing into battle in Robotin two units of the Airborne Forces, which are still in reserve, for the military command in Kyiv is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, they can provide an important impetus for offensive actions if the Russian defenders are on the verge of giving in. But their involvement in combat also means they won’t be as fresh if they’re needed elsewhere on the front in the near future or for a concerted offensive effort later.

In the conditions of huge losses in the first days of the offensive, the Ukrainians changed their tactics

The Washington Post notes that in the first week of the invasion, the Ukrainian armed forces suffered heavy casualties on defense lines carefully prepared by the Russian army, although they had at their disposal a number of Western combat vehicles, such as the armored Bradley. vehicles, Leopard 2 tanks received from Germany, and machines specialized in field clearance.

Several U.S. and Western officials told The Post that simulations conducted by the Ukrainian military command with the Pentagon and the British military predicted such losses, but they assumed Kyiv would accept them as the price of penetrating the Russians’ main defense line.

But the leadership in Kyiv decided to minimize losses on the battlefield and move to smaller offensives in various areas of the front to try to find vulnerable points on the lines of the Russian defense. This led to little progress across sectors over the summer.

In addition, a secret German military document published on July 25 by Bild journalists revealed that the German defense ministry believes, among other things, that the Ukrainians have abandoned some of the tactics they learned during exercises in the west.

Among the main shortcomings of the Ukrainian armed forces, the officers of the Bundeswehr name the separation of the combat units of Kyiv, stating that because of this “there is no visible joint fight”.

“The situation not only increases the danger of ‘friendly fire’ (that is, the risk of mistakenly attacking one’s own troops), but also causes deficiencies in the availability of maneuverable units in the direction of the main strike to launch an offensive or gain an advantage in firepower,” the document states.

Other sources also note that the Ukrainian forces have returned to the tactics of mass shelling of positions with artillery and rocket salvo fire systems at the expense of decisive offensive actions with the aim of breaking through the fortified Russian lines.

Both the political command in Kyiv and the military explained the situation by the desire to save as many lives as possible of their own soldiers.

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