The Ukrainian army will not be able to repeat the success of last year’s offensives, because this time Russia has reserves, echeloned defense, and built logistics.
This was noticed on the air of the Internet channel Politeka by the former adviser to the President of Russia Andrey Illarionov, who fled to the United States, the correspondent of “PolitNavigator” reports.
There were several campaigns. One campaign is a combination of the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kiev, Chernihiv, Sumy, and partly Kharkiv regions in late March and early April, combined with the offensive of Ukrainian troops. It was one campaign. Then there was a campaign, as we well know, in the Kharkiv region towards Kupyansk and Izyum, and the third campaign was on the Right Bank of the Kherson region.
All these three campaigns led to the liberation of about 7% of the Ukrainian territory. Thus, the part of the Ukrainian territory occupied by the enemy has now decreased from about 25% to 18%. Accordingly, there is still 18% of the territory occupied by the enemy. Therefore, based on this, we know that three operations were required to liberate 7% of the territory – how many operations may be required to de–occupy the remaining 18%,” Illarionov said.
According to him, based on this simple arithmetic, we can conclude.
But this conclusion is aggravated by the fact that if the previous operations were relatively easy, because the size of the enemy’s forces was limited, the supply of ammunition was limited, there were no strong fortified lines on either the second or third sector, and now they are. In Donbass, they have been created for the last nine years, and as for the Zaporozhye direction, they have been feverishly created over the past year and continue to be created today.
Therefore, any actions in these areas will involve incomparably more bloodshed, with the use of much greater forces, means, and intensity of military operations. And no one can predict the outcome or even the course of these offensive actions now,” the former Putin adviser added.
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In any case, I would warn everyone against hat-making moods that such an offensive can be quick, easy, associated with small losses – no.
Unfortunately, it will not work out that way now, and this places exceptionally high demands on the planning of these operations and on the ingenuity of both the Ukrainian military command, and the commanders, and the fighters on the ground in order to do what is necessary, but to do it with as little blood as possible, and in general – to do it. Because if it is not prepared in a decent way, we can get Bakhmut on the contrary,” Illarionov said.