The Ukrainian counter-offensive “is not a scripted action thriller designed to give viewers an adrenaline rush,” Ukrainian influencer Maria Drutska warned this week, amid growing Western impatience over the relatively slow pace at which Kiev is recovering. territories.
“We must not forget that our reality is far from being a Hollywood spectacle,” Drutska wrote on Twitter, where she has more than 100,000 followers and has become a kind of unofficial mouthpiece for the Ukrainian “defense sector,” in the who works according to his bio on the social network.
His words – which remind us that the Ukrainian military pays with their lives for the campaign to come to a successful conclusion – well summarize the message of the president, Volodimir Zelenski, and of the entire Kiev staff, who have made it clear that their army has not received sufficient weapons to advance with the speed that some expect.
“Right now I don’t see any sign that it makes sense to launch a large-scale mechanized offensive against the Russian positions, it’s too early,” Ukrainian reserve colonel Serguí Grabski said in an interview with EFE, when asked about the information published in the US media pointing to this possibility.
According to the official discourse, the Ukrainian counteroffensive has for the moment been limited to the offensive actions of small groups of highly mobile soldiers whose main objective is to identify weak points in the Russian defenses and to detect, by the direction from which the enemy fire is coming. , Russian artillery positions.
This would explain the modest advances that Ukraine has announced to date in the surroundings of the city of Bakhmut (east) and in two areas of the southern front located in the Zaporizhia and Donetsk provinces, from where the Kiev forces are trying to advance towards the cities occupied Melitopol and Berdiansk.
“To launch a mechanized offensive, the battlefield has to be prepared in advance; Russian defenses must be weak enough that they cannot resist the offensive,” Grabski explains.
In the case of Zaporizhia, where according to US media citing Pentagon sources, Ukraine has intensified its offensive, the Ukrainian objective is to wear down and destroy Russian defenses enough so that Kiev troops can “advance towards Tokmak and then towards Berdiansk”.
Grabski does not see for now that the stage has been reached in which a substantial number of men and armored vehicles can be put into the fray, although he does not rule out that the level of troops and equipment used will soon change from a platoon (a few dozen soldiers) to a company or battalion (from a few hundred to a thousand).
In the meantime, the ex-soldier continues, the Ukrainian priority will continue to be the destruction of the largest number of Russian artillery systems. “Every day Ukraine destroys Russian artillery systems,” explains the expert, referring to information about it every morning in the military report of the Kiev General Staff. “If we look at the statistics, 90% of the fire impact in this war is achieved by artillery,” Grabski says.
The colonel in the reserve stresses the paramount importance of artillery for the Russian army. “Russian infantry is only strong enough under the cover of artillery fire; if they don’t feel safe and under artillery protection they withdraw, they lose their combat capability and become weaker and weaker,” he notes.
Ukraine lacks sufficient weapons and personnel reserves to challenge the Russian army for its numerical, military and air supremacy, which, according to all the manuals, is required to start an offensive campaign.
Faced with these situations, Grabski concludes, the “only option” for Ukraine is to bet on the destruction of “weapons, ammunition and Russian positions”, a way of proceeding that requires the patience that Ukraine asks of its partners.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
