Ukrainian planners will need to keep in mind the old military maxim: never forget the enemy gets a vote
To say Ukraine’s counter-offensive has not progressed as quickly as it had hoped is to state an objective fact.
To say, however, that it has not progressed as quickly as it should have, or that it would have been more successful if only Ukraine had employed “proper” Western tactics, is to reveal to the world one’s utter ignorance of military matters.
That view was one taken by the German military who in a leaked assessment of the counter-offensive earlier this month, lashed out at Kyiv’s alleged failure to adopt the lessons its troops have been learning in Western boot camps.
The fact is, as General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staffs said last month, the task facing Kyiv’s forces in the south is about the hardest a military can undertake: an opposed advance across pre-prepared minefields towards professionally constructed defensive positions, all without command of the air, and all while Russia re-seeds minefields with artillery-launched munitions.