Despite the fact that they publicly assure that they are not trying to accelerate the Ukrainian offensive, the Western military is calling on the command in Kyiv to bear greater losses in order to break through the Russian front in the south of the country, writes Business Insider.

Western strategists believe a “full commitment” to the key objective is needed if Ukraine is to reverse the fortunes of the counteroffensive, as casualties are already piling up and the Russian army continues to benefit from the protection of impressive defensive lines it has built in territories occupied since the second half of last year.

The New York Times wrote in an extended report that these Ukrainian losses put some of Kyiv’s most experienced combat units in a difficult position, made worse by the loss of several senior commanders and the return of wounded soldiers to the battlefield.

Several high-ranking officials in Kyiv, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, and General Valery Zaluzhny, chief of the General Staff in Kyiv, said that the Ukrainian offensive should not be viewed by the country’s partners as a “serial” because it has not brought the expected progress. before its launch in early June.

“It annoys me,” Zaluzhny said briefly in an interview with The Washington Post in late June, when Westerners complained about the slow pace of the offensive.

The White House also emphasized that the Ukrainian army should not be in a hurry, given that the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine is “very dynamic.”

“I don’t want to play the general in the room,” Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, said during a panel discussion with reporters this Tuesday.

“I’ve always made it clear that this battlefield is very dynamic, that it’s not like a series where there is one episode where Ukraine only attacks and Russia only defends, and then an episode where Russia only attacks and Ukraine only defends. “, he emphasized.

Western generals want the Ukrainian army to concentrate its forces

But several Western officials told The New York Times that senior American and British generals, including General Mark Milley, the chief of staff in Washington, advised the military leadership in Kyiv during a video conference on Aug. 10 to focus their efforts on an offensive in the south of the country, in the Zaporizhzhia region.

The recommendations come as Western strategists believe that simultaneous attacks to the south and east weaken the Ukrainian military’s ability to strike decisively against Russian defenders through massive concentrations of forces.

But such an offensive would also result in greater casualties, which American and British generals say their counterparts in Ukraine must accept if they do not want the efforts made so far to be in vain.

The video conference between Western and Ukrainian generals came just two days after CNN reported, citing four senior U.S. and Western officials, that this was the most difficult moment of the war for Kyiv and that reports received by Western offices on the development of the offensive were increasingly grim. .

Later, on August 18, The Washington Post, based on sources in the United States intelligence, wrote that it no longer believes that the Ukrainian army will achieve its main offensive goal this year: the capture or at least the siege of the city of Melitopol. in the Zaporizhzhia region, which will then allow blocking Russian forces in the south of the country and the land corridor to Crimea.

“Russia has 3 main lines of defense and then fortified cities behind them,” military analyst Rob Lee told The Post. “The question is not only whether Ukraine can break through one or two of them, but whether they can break through all three and whether there will be enough forces left to do something significant,” he added last week.

Ukraine changed offensive tactics due to heavy losses

For its part, The Post notes that in the first week of the offensive, the Ukrainian armed forces suffered heavy losses against defense lines carefully prepared by the Russian army, even though they had at their disposal a number of Western combat vehicles such as Bradleys. armored vehicles, Leopard 2 tanks and specialized demining machines received from Germany.

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 has decided to minimize losses on the battlefield and move to smaller offensives in various areas of the front to try to find vulnerable points in the Russian defense lines, exactly what was stated in a video conference on August 10 by Western partners. This situation led to little progress in various sectors during the summer.

In addition, a secret German military document published on July 25 by Bild journalists revealed that the German Ministry of Defense believes, in particular, that the Ukrainians have abandoned some of the tactics they learned during their training in the West.

The military command in Kyiv seems to have heeded the West’s recommendations

Less than a week after the debate between Western and Ukrainian generals, Forbes notes that the Ukrainian army has thrown its best unit into battle in an offensive in the south of the country.

Among the successes achieved since then is the capture of the village of Urozhaine, transformed by the Russian army into a real redoubt to protect the road to the Sea of ​​Azov, and the city of Robotyne, for which heavy battles were fought for weeks. .

The Ukrainian military announced the release of Robotîne on Tuesday. In the battles for two localities, Ukrainian troops threw their units into battle, including units of marines and paratroopers, elite troops.

But General Ben Hodges, the former commander of American forces in Europe, also cautions that the offensive should not be rushed.

“The Ukrainians are not on our side. I’m on their launcher. Many expectations, terms and red lines were adopted and imposed by the US on the Ukrainian General Staff,” he told Insider.

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