On June 15, in the conference hall of the NATO headquarters in Brussels, the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, surrounded by high-ranking American commanders, sat at the table with the then Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov, as they were. councilors from Kyiv joined. There was disappointment in the room, The Washington Post reports, News.ro notes.

In his baritone, Lloyd Austin asked then-Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov about Ukraine’s decision-making process in the early days of its long-awaited counter-offensive, urging him to explain why its forces were not using Western-provided demining equipment to enable a larger mechanized assault or not used smoke bombs to hide their advance.

Despite Russia’s fortified defense lines, Austin said, the Kremlin’s forces were not invincible.

Reznikov, a lawyer by profession, told him that these decisions are made by Ukrainian military commanders. But he added that Ukrainian armored vehicles are destroyed by Russian helicopters, drones and artillery at every offensive attempt.

According to him, without air support, the only option is to use artillery to shell the Russian lines, so that the soldiers get out of the targeted vehicles and advance on foot.

“We cannot maneuver due to the density of mines and tank ambushes,” Reznikov explained, according to the official present.

The meeting in Brussels, which took place less than two weeks into the campaign, illustrates how a counteroffensive fueled by optimism has failed to deliver the expected punch, stoking friction and criticism between Washington and Kyiv and raising deeper questions about Ukraine’s ability to retake crucial swaths of territory. Post.

Now, when winter is approaching and the front lines are freezing, the Ukrainian military leadership admits that the war has reached a stalemate.

The USA, deeply involved in the organization of the counteroffensive

Over the course of three months, Washington Post reporters in Washington, London, Brussels and Riga, as well as in Kyiv and near the front lines in Ukraine, spoke with more than 30 senior officials from Ukraine, the United States and European countries to examine the military planning of the counteroffensive and how it contributed to the failure operations in achieving its goals.

The Washington Post also spoke to former Russian servicemen who participated in the war, as well as Russian bloggers and military analysts.

Washington Post reporters, photographers, news correspondents and security advisers traveled hundreds of miles across Ukraine to speak with military and government officials for this investigation.

Journalists have repeatedly visited the front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, including bastions with combat units located less than 8 km from Russian troops.

This analysis of the period leading up to the Ukrainian counteroffensive provides new insight and unprecedented detail into the deep involvement of the United States in the military planning of the counteroffensive and the factors that contributed to its failure.

The second part of this story examines how the battle played out on the ground over the summer and fall, and the growing rift between Washington and Kyiv.

Differences between Ukraine and the USA

The investigation shows that the United States was deeply involved in the military planning of the operation. Ukrainian, American and British military officers organized it all from eight basic war scenarios to create a campaign plan.

But Washington miscalculated the degree to which Ukrainian forces could be transformed into a Western-style fighting force in a short period of time – especially without providing Kyiv with an air force, an integral part of modern armies.

American and Ukrainian officials sometimes sharply disagree on strategy, tactics and timing.

The Pentagon wanted the assault to begin in mid-April to prevent Russia from continuing to fortify its lines.

The Ukrainians hesitated, insisting that they were not ready without additional weapons and additional training. A counteroffensive began in June.

American military officials were confident that a massive, mechanized frontal attack along the direction of southern Ukraine would lead to a decisive breakthrough of the front line. The United States favored a concentrated offensive along this southern axis, but the Ukrainian leadership believed that its forces should attack at three different points along a front stretching more than 1,000 kilometers to the south, both toward Melitopol and toward Berdyansk, on the sea. ​​Azov, and to the east – to the endangered city of Bakhmut.

Ukraine attacked on three axes, believing that this would force Russian troops to disperse. However, Ukraine abandoned massive, mechanized attacks when it suffered heavy losses in the early days of the campaign.

Simulations during the war games showed that, in the best case scenario, Kyiv’s forces could reach the Sea of ​​Azov in southern Ukraine and cut off Russian forces in 60-90 days.

However, Ukrainian troops advanced only 20 kilometers. The Sea of ​​Azov is still far from accessible. And the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine now admits that the war has reached a “stalemate.”

There were also disagreements over the strategy for Bakhmut, where the Ukrainians stubbornly resisted the Russians and suffered heavy casualties for months before the city finally fell to the Russians.

Russia is underestimated. Spies, more skeptical than the military

According to The Washington Post, the U.S. intelligence community took a more pessimistic view than the U.S. military, believing the offensive had only a 50 percent chance of success given the powerful and multi-layered defenses Russia had built up over the winter and spring.

Many in Ukraine and in the West have underestimated Russia’s ability to recover from battlefield disasters and use its perennial strength: manpower, mines and a willingness to sacrifice lives on a scale that few other countries can sustain.

As the expected start of the offensive neared, the Ukrainian military feared that they would suffer catastrophic losses, while American officials believed that the death toll would be higher in the absence of a decisive attack.

Thus, 70 percent of the servicemen of one of the counteroffensive brigades, which were equipped with the latest Western weapons, entered the battle without combat experience, writes WAPO.

Sort out and huge losses

Ukraine’s failures on the battlefield have led to disputes with the United States over how best to penetrate deep into Russia’s defenses.

The commander of US forces in Europe was unable to contact Ukraine’s commander-in-chief for weeks at the start of the campaign amid tensions over American criticism of battlefield decisions.

Each side accused the other of mistakes or miscalculations. U.S. military officials have concluded that Ukraine lacks basic military tactics, including the use of ground reconnaissance to determine the density of minefields.

Ukrainian officials said the Americans don’t seem to understand how attack drones and other technologies have changed the battlefield.

In total, only in 2023, Ukraine won back only about 320 square kilometers of territory, at the cost of thousands of killed and wounded and billions of dollars in military aid from the West.

Almost six months after the counteroffensive began, the campaign turned into a war of little success.

Damp World War I-style trenches criss-cross eastern and southern Ukraine, and the sky is teeming with reconnaissance and attack drones.

Moscow launches missile strikes on civilian targets in Ukrainian cities, while Kyiv uses both Western missiles and domestic technology to strike far behind the front lines in Moscow, Crimea and the Black Sea.

But the territorial boundaries of June 2023 have hardly changed. And Russian President Vladimir Putin – in contrast to the silence he often maintained during the first year of the war – trumpets at every opportunity what he calls the failure of the counteroffensive.

“As for the counteroffensive, which allegedly froze, it has completely failed,” Putin said in October.

Ukrainian victory is much less likely

The year began with the highest determination of the West, with very confident Ukrainian forces, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyi prophesying a decisive victory. But now there is uncertainty on all fronts.

Morale in Ukraine is falling. International attention was drawn to the Middle East. Even among supporters of Ukraine, there is growing political reluctance to make additional contributions to an unreliable cause.

At almost every point on the front, expectations and results diverged, as Ukraine settled into a slow-moving ground struggle that recaptured only scraps of territory.

“We wanted faster results,” Zelensky admitted last week in an interview with the Associated Press agency.

“From this point of view, unfortunately, we did not get the desired results. And this is a fact,” the president noted.

Together, all these factors make a Ukrainian victory much less likely. Instead, years of war and destruction await.

The inconclusive and disappointing first months of the counteroffensive campaign pose sobering questions for Kiev’s Western supporters about the future, as Zelensky, who is supported by the vast majority of Ukrainians, vows to fight until Ukraine restores its 1991 borders, when it gained independence from the Soviet Union. .

“It will take years and a lot of blood,” said a British security official.

The year will end with Russian President Vladimir Putin, more than ever, confident that he will be able to wait out the changing West and completely absorb the Ukrainian territory that his troops have already seized, writes WP.