The washington post did a long article today on the failure of the Great Ukrainian Counteroffensive of 2023. The article somewhat allows both sides (US and Ukraine) to make their respective cases.
This is a summary of part of the article that is available for free.
- The US was pushing for a focused single attack with everything Ukraine had through Robotyne to the sea of azov.
- Based on experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military considered that any estimates of Ukrainian losses made by the US would likely be overestimates.
- The Ukrainians preferred a wider offensive along several points on the line.
- The US blamed the following for the failure of the operations
-- The Ukrainians didn't start the counteroffensive early enough. They should have started in April.
-- They didn't properly use smoke and mine=clearing equipment provided by NATO to launch a rapid advance.
-- They overestimated the ability of the Ukrainians to be quickly trained in advanced NATO tactics.
-- They were frustrated with the defense of Bakhmut when they thought the Ukrainians should be going all out for Crimea.
-- Jake Sullivan of the biden administration - attorney and military genius -- according to the story anticipated the difficulty of breaking through the Russian fortifications as early as February 2023. He then talked to the defense secretary and both offered the wise advise that "Ukraine, to be successful, needed to fight in a different way".
-- The US felt that they had provided all the war material Ukraine needed to break through the Russian lines and reach the sea of Azov. "they received about two dozen Mine Clearing Line Charge launchers (MCLCs), more than 40 mine rollers and excavators, 1,000 Bangalore torpedoes, and more than 80,000 smoke grenades."
- Ukraine said:
-- The wargaming used by the US to design the offensive didn't work because of the US lack of experience in large conventional warfare and in particular conventional warfare in which a particular side does not have total air superiority. The expectations of the planning didn't at all match the reality of the battlefield.
-- The Ukrainians expected that a Ukrainian attack all along the front in 2023 would cause problems among Russian's conscript troops. They were uneasy about launching a concentrated attack at a single point.
-- The Ukrainians complained that alot of the vehicles given to them had come out of storage with problems. Many vehicles lacked radios. Other vehicles arrived with mechanical problems in the tracks.
