![]() ![]() For some time, Gerasimov has shown an aptitude for making strategic mistakes,” not least with the ill-conceived initial assault in February 2022. The Ukrainians will be hoping that the Russian military command under Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, now in direct command of forces in Ukraine, will get some calls wrong.Īs Mick Ryan, a former general in the Australian armed forces observes: “There is an old saying that ‘when your enemy is making mistakes, don’t get in their way’. “Only a quarter or so of the total Ukrainian force is apparently engaged, what are the rest doing? Are the Russians confused about where they’ll be used?” “Are the Russians reacting strategically? Are they moving troops and supplies as though they see the current focus of the fighting as the main thrust?” he says. Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven, agrees there are more questions than answers at this early stage. “Ukraine has not yet committed the vast majority of its counteroffensive forces and Russian defenses are not uniformly strong along all sectors of the front line,” it said this week. The Institute for the Study of War also cautions that it’s far too early for take-aways. ![]() Yan Dobronosov/Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images The Russians have had months to fortify defenses here there was never a chance that the Ukrainians would make the sort of lightning advances they enjoyed in Kharkiv last fall.ĭestruction in the city of Bakhmut after hostilities on June 1, 2023. Still it is a formidable task: in the south especially, Ukrainian forces must conduct a frontal assault against deeply prepared defensive positions, and critically they lack air superiority. The Ukrainians have the luxury of picking areas to attack the Russians must try to defend a meandering front-line nearly 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) long, with some units that have already been mauled and patched up. Perhaps more surprisingly, there are indications that the Ukrainians are on the front foot near the city of Donetsk, long a frozen line of contact, and further south around what has been the equally static but highly kinetic Vuhledar front. On Friday, the commander of Ukrainian Land Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said the Russians “continue to move some of the most combat-ready units to the Bakhmut direction.” This has included fresh assault operations around Bakhmut designed to force the Russians to send more units to defend a city they took more than six months to destroy and occupy. “At the same time,” he said, Ukrainian units are “testing to see which areas are the weakest.” On Thursday, an adviser to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, Mykhailo Podolyak, said the first goal was to wipe out as many Russian draftee units as possible and “increase the psychological pressure on the Russian army.” ![]()
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