Talks of a renewed Ukrainian counter-offensive have been going on for months. Ever since the
Ukrainian army steamrolled through northern Ukraine to liberate large swathes of territory
near Kharkiv and in their stunning victory in the south against entrenched Russian
positions near Kherson, speculation has been abound for months when the renewed
counter-offensive will take place. Due to various military and geopolitical factors,
it will probably happen before the end of this June, and here's why.
Throughout the late winter and early spring, the US and NATO promised many modern weapon
systems and ammunition. Chief among these most advanced systems includes several hundred Leopard,
Challenger, and M1 Abrams tanks. Ukraine has been asking for modern main battle
tanks for months since these Western tanks have much better survivability, accuracy,
and stopping power than the legacy Soviet systems that formed the core of Ukraine's armored units.
In addition to these tanks, the West also promised a plethora of armored personnel
carriers and fighting vehicles to reconstitute new Ukrainian armored brigades. By the end
of April 1550 of these vehicles, including American Stryker and Bradley Fighting Vehicles,
had been received by Ukrainian units or were about to be shipped from Poland. These new vehicles are
also head and shoulders above outdated Soviet units like the BMP that they would be facing on
the battlefield and are expected to help form the tip of the spear in any renewed counter-offensive.
Manning, these machines are nine newly formed Ukrainian armored brigades. Six of these brigades
were entirely trained by Western allies in their home countries before being sent back to Ukraine,
while three of these were indigenously recruited and trained by Ukrainian forces. All told, these
roughly 40,000 personnel armed with almost 2000 new tanks and armored vehicles are going to be the
main effort in the upcoming counter-offensive. Kyiv would be wise to use these resources soon
since they would not want to waste such training and material fighting pitched,
fruitless battles in positional warfare. Indeed, these soldiers' training focused exclusively on
combined arms tactics, meaning the coordination of infantry, armored, air, and artillery units in
multi-pronged, multi-dimensional warfare. These troops are arguably some of the best trained and
equipped in Ukraine since they have spent months in relative safety receiving training while their
comrades have been holding the line in places like Bakhmut. With fresh, newly equipped units,
these are likely to enter a major offensive soon since each day they would be in the line, or even
in rear areas exposed to long-range fires from Russian forces, their combat effectiveness would
go down due to casualties and equipment losses. Another military aspect about why a
counter-offensive in May or June makes sense is it will occur at the end of the muddy season. Known
locally as Rasputitsa, this Soviet-era holdover is the result of poor road planning. Unlike
places like the United States, which benefit from the Interstate Highway system, countries
like Ukraine still suffer the effects of a lack of adequate roads that plague many countries of
the former Soviet Union, including Russia itself. Due to poor construction or no construction at
all, most of the roads in Ukraine are still not paved. During the spring rainy season,
these unpaved roads become impassable quagmires of mud that bog down even the
strongest of tanks and tracked vehicles, not to mention the trucks that supply them and
the army moving forward in a counter-offensive. Because of this, the Ukrainian army is probably
waiting for ground conditions to be favorable for the kind of lightning offensive they plan
to launch. While some parts of Ukraine see the end of rasputista at the end of April,
other places see poor road conditions through mid-May. Wanting to keep all options on the table
until the last minute, the Ukrainian command authority is likely waiting to ensure that all
parts of Ukraine would favor armored warfare to keep the Russians guessing on where the strike
could come from but also strike before Russia uses favorable road conditions for its own offensive.
But Ukraine is not just on a quick timeline because of its own military;
it is also looking at developments with the Russian army that is likely pushing it to launch
a counter-offensive sooner rather than later. The first of these is the expected surge in manpower
that comes with the spring conscription drive in Russia. Starting during Soviet times, the Russian
Federation has continued to annually draft young men into its military two times a year. The spring
conscription drive lasts from April to July, and the autumn one from October to December.
Normally, about 150,000 to 200,000 Russian men are inducted into the army each time,
and they are required to serve 12 months on active duty. However, recent developments in
Russian conscription laws, as well as Russian manpower projections, suggest Russia will send
these troops to the front much sooner than before. At the end of April, Putin signed a decree that
made it legal for Russian men to be served draft notices online. The portal is a common
governmental website that every day people use for a wide range of services, including paying utility
bills, for example. This website will notify Russians they have been selected for the draft and
have one week to report to a recruiting station. The significance of this for the Russian people
and Ukraine is huge since it means that there will no longer be roving patrols of
army recruiters and police serving draft notices in person on the street, at work,
or at vacation hot spots. Instead, the law forces men to come to the army since those who fail to
appear will not be able to get new apartments or jobs, have a valid driver's license, travel,
or have access to loans and credit cards. These coercive measures will likely force more Russian
citizens to recruiting offices than before and speed up the overall process. The manpower Russian
military and police units would have used trying just to enlist people will now be spent solely
on hunting down those who evade the draft. Because Russian force generation efforts
are improving, and Russia has already shown a willingness to curtail the training of its
draftees, this surge of manpower is likely to be sent to the front within a matter of
weeks instead of months like it would have taken before. Even though these troops will
likely still be poorly armed and even more poorly trained, quantity has a quality in of itself. This
massive wave of fresh troops will likely waste limited Ukrainian resources or hold
defensive positions to allow more seasoned troops to launch local counterattacks.
Additionally, changes to Russian law and force generation projections mean that if
a successive wave of conscription ends, those troops will be there to stay for the long run.
For example, the law that conscript soldiers cannot serve outside the territory of Russia
is still on the books, but Putin illegally annexing the occupied regions of Ukraine
gives him the legal ground to send conscripts to Ukraine. Because this territory is now considered
Russian territory under Russian law, these conscripts can now be legally sent to the front.
Conscript service members are also usually forced to sign full-time enlistment contracts, and those
who do cannot leave anyway because Putin never canceled the mobilization order from September
2022. Doing it like this is the only way the Russian army can grow by 400,000 new troops this
year, the number offered by General Shoigu and endorsed by Putin, while simultaneously replacing
losses and not instituting a general mobilization. Another reason why Ukraine seeks to achieve a
decisive military victory before hundreds of thousands of fresh troops arrive at the front
is that each day that goes by is another day that Russian defensive positions throughout
Ukraine grow stronger. Immediately after the fall of Kherson, Russia began defensive preparations
throughout Ukraine in earnest. Between Crimea and Kherson oblast to southern Ukraine up
to Luhansk oblast in the north, Russia has been digging hundreds of miles of trenches
and tank ditches interspersed with thousands of bunkers, dragons' teeth, and minefields.
Satellite imagery has shown that these defensive fortifications are already extensive. US officials
have remarked that the defensive lines Russia has already constructed, combined with the
terrain in southern Ukraine, would mean any future offensive would be very complex and require a ton
of coordination. That means that each passing day Ukraine waits means, another meter of trenches are
dug, another bunker built, or a minefield laid that will only serve to complicate offensive
efforts when the time comes. And the Ukrainian army does not have unlimited time to fix Russians
to their positions in a war of attrition. As brave, courageous, and superhuman as
the individual Ukrainian soldier has demonstrated themselves to be,
they are not infallible to mental and physical exhaustion. Reports from the frontlines continue
to show a common trend that Ukrainian units are simply exhausted from months of hard fighting.
During pitched defensive battles, an army will continually rotate units from the frontlines to
rear areas after several weeks of fighting for a rest and then back to the line, such as the case
in World War One. But Ukraine has not had this luxury. Most units have been at the frontlines
for months, and some have not left combat since the war started. The soldiers in these units
have not had a break sometimes in over a year, and there are already signs that mental and physical
fatigue plague large portions of the military. Ukraine has done its best to address these
problems by embedding psychologists and counselors inside frontline units to treat soldiers where
they are because the Ukrainian government cannot afford to send anyone home. While these measures
have certainly helped, without a major victory where Russian troops are really on the back foot,
Ukrainian units will continue to stay in place and train reinforcements at the frontlines with
few opportunities to go to rear areas for rest. Fatigue will also play a huge factor in the battle
for Bakhmut and what would happen if Ukraine lost this area. Recent reports show that the
battle for Bakhmut is far from over, but it looks bleaker than in previous months. Ukrainian forces
doggedly resist dozens of attacks daily in the city and surrounding countryside. However,
this constant high-intensity fighting takes a mental and physical toll on those brave
defenders. While the battle's outcome still hangs in the air, Ukraine is not in a good spot.
Estimates vary, but Russia controls probably about half the city and has it surrounded on
three sides. The last remaining supply line into the city, known as the Road of Life by Ukrainian
troops, is under constant attack. However, despite these difficulties, Ukraine will likely continue
to hold on for weeks or months to come. But Ukrainian commanders cannot discount the very real
possibility that Bakhmut might fall. This would have very strong strategic implications despite
the area being of no military significance. Bakhmut can be likened to Germany's battle of
Verdun. A carefully calculated war of attrition meant for no other military purpose than to
inflict maximum casualties. Ukraine has decided to give Russia what it wants by defending Bakhmut
to the last man and fixing the Russians in place. Because of the dogged Ukrainian defense,
the city has turned into a political symbol, as Stalingrad did in World War Two, where Ukraine
continues to bait Russia into focusing more attention on the city by continuing to hold it.
Because Bakhmut holds so much political capital, the Russian military is sinking more and more
resources into Bakhmut and neglecting other areas of the front. Because the Ukrainian military is
fixing the Russians in place, they are carefully sending in just enough troops and material to hold
on while offensive preparations begin elsewhere. Since Russian focus is so fixated on Bakhmut,
a counter-offensive that occurs while Russia still attempts to achieve this political victory
will have much more success than if the Russians were not concentrated in the Bakhmut direction.
If Ukraine launched a counter-offensive after Bakhmut falls, if it does at all,
this would complicate matters significantly since it is likely that Russian commanders will redeploy
troops and equipment to other areas of the front. But while Bakhmut remains in Ukrainian hands,
President Zelensky knows where the Russians are and can focus his counter-offensive on other
neglected areas because of Russia's all-or-nothing gamble on Bakhmut.
Beyond the military advantages of launching a counter-offensive soon,
President Zelensky and his staff must consider a host of geopolitical factors. One of these is
the expected mass deportations of Ukrainian citizens from Russian-occupied territory.
Since the invasion, Russian, DPR, and LPR authorities have received several
million Ukrainian civilians. While Russia claims these were all voluntary migrations,
evidence on the ground encapsulated in reports from Human Rights Watch tells a different story.
Ukrainian civilians under Russian occupation face a host of abuses, including arbitrary detention,
torture, theft of property, loss of employment, and other crimes too graphic to list here.
These forced deportations have been thoroughly documented and will now continue in earnest
with a new law Putin just signed at the end of April. The law says that by the summer of 2024,
if Ukrainian civilians do not adopt Russian citizenship, they will be deported to
Russia as foreign agents. Because of this, millions of Ukrainians might be lost forever,
either in Russian prisons, concentration camps, or outright murder, if the military does not liberate
those territories soon. If that were to happen, it would be a huge psychological and political
blow both to the people and the military. Another reason why a counter-offensive will
happen soon but has yet to happen already has to do with the leaked documents from April. While
the documents were only a snapshot in time, they provided detailed and accurate Ukrainian troop
positions for those dates. These documents, though only for single-day periods, when consolidated
with other intelligence Russia might gather on Ukraine, might give them an accurate picture of
how Ukraine deploys and distributes its forces. US military officials already stated that the
document leak caused Ukraine to rethink its counter-offensive plans. Why this happened
because Russia gained valuable insight into how Ukraine has been distributing its forces, and the
Ukrainian military needed more time to figure out a way to move units around, so the intelligence
is of little value. This is because, as mentioned earlier in the video, Ukrainian units often spend
months locked into positions due to the needs of the conflict, necessitating the training of
replacements close to the frontlines and their inability to leave their current positions.
If the document leaks had not occurred, the counter-offensive might have already
taken place. However, because of it, the Ukrainian plans have been delayed by some
time but will not be delayed too much longer so that Ukraine can still hold the strategic
initiative in any future offensive operations. Another reason why Ukraine will have to launch
an offensive soon to maintain the strategic initiative is to prevent Russia from accumulating
enough arms and supplies capable of staving off any future attack. This is because of
the increasing support Russia is getting from countries like Iran, North Korea, and China.
Over the past six months, Iran and North Korea have been providing massive military assistance
to Russia with direct lethal aid. For example, Russian doctrine calls for massive, continuous
artillery strikes to blast enemy positions into oblivion. This constant, around-the-clock
artillery fire eats up a huge number of artillery shells. On average, Russia fires about
20,000 per day, but during periods of intense fighting, these figures have gone up to around
50,000, and some estimates have said up to 80,000 shells of various calibers per day.
With such a massive requirement for ammunition, both Iran and North Korea
have sent millions of artillery shells between the two to supply Russian guns. In addition,
Iran has sent thousands of drones and has inked a deal to provide long-range ballistic missiles, but
these are not believed to have been delivered yet. While China has continued to say it will not
supply either side in the conflict, the leaked papers from several weeks ago suggest that China
has already signed a deal with Russia to provide lethal aid that is either dual-use or disguised
as civilian goods. This claim seems to be very accurate since recent reporting has proven China
has already sent about a thousand assault rifles labeled as "hunting rifles," along
with body armor and drone parts. China, of course, denies it has done this but
will likely continue to send dual-use goods like computers, electronics, and drones that have
legitimate civilian purposes but that Russia will immediately repurpose for military use.
With China now backing Russia in this war, the Ukrainian command authority knows it is only a
matter of time before even more arms and supplies arrive daily from Iran, North Korea, and China.
These shipments will help shore up Russia's crippled defense industrial base by providing
critical items like artillery shells, drones, and missiles to allow Russia to continue blasting
Ukraine with long-range fires. A counter-offensive is needed soon before Russia receives enough aid
to give it an advantage in this war. But Ukraine is focusing on more than
just the aid Russia receives; it also worries about the integrity of its own aid the country
receives from the West. Ever since the beginning of the war, media reports have claimed that the US
has held private talks with President Zelensky and his staff and that US and Western aid is
not indefinite. At some point, the literal fire hose of money and support will stop,
and if the war continues for years, Ukraine will have to make do with what it has left.
Adding proof that Western aid as it stands right now is not infinite is that US and
NATO allies have had great difficulties sourcing aid with the size of their current
defense industries. While weapons like the Javelin, NLAW(pronounced N-LAW), Stinger,
and anti-air systems have dominated the media, even less glamorous items like spare tank parts
for legacy Soviet vehicles have been a problem to source for Ukraine. Because Ukraine still relies
heavily on Soviet systems, the Western Alliance has been struggling to get European countries
that still possess these weapons to donate them to Ukraine in exchange for newer systems.
While countries like the US, UK, and France might be able to support smaller NATO countries in fully
equipping their militaries with modern equipment, the time it would take to fully equip and train
the Ukrainian military while still actively engaged in combat is going to take a lot longer.
As a result, as stocks of older Soviet weapons and ammunition dry up among NATO countries,
Ukraine will have to be fully converted to modern Western equipment. Such a move will be
slow going unless Western countries dramatically increase defense spending on their domestic arms
industries, which is a gamble that might not pay off for Ukraine if the war lasts for years.
But the war may not be able to be politically supported long enough for Western defense
manufacturers to fully meet the demand of arming and equipping Ukraine with new equipment. This
speculation has been publicly backed up by countries like France and Germany, who though
they may support Ukraine, have also expressed interest in their desire to see a diplomatic
solution to the fighting. President Zelensky, for his part, at the beginning of the conflict,
expressed a willingness to maybe negotiate. But now, with his military having an advantage over
Russia, he has repeatedly claimed the war will not be over until every last inch of Ukrainian
territory is liberated, Crimea included. But of course, the weapons, material,
and money needed to finance such a campaign is going to be enormous, and US military officials
have even cast doubt as to whether this goal is even realistic. But it's not just the US military
that has cast doubt on Ukraine's ability to regain its territory; anti-ukraine sentiment among EU and
American politicians and the public is growing. As of the making of this video, about half of the
American public supports continued aid to Ukraine, about a quarter do not,
and a quarter are indifferent. This is less than European support; where about 70% want aid to
continue to Ukraine. Among US politicians, there is a small minority who is vehemently opposed to
even a single penny more for Ukraine. While the number of politicians who feel this way is not
more than several dozen, the fact that this exists at all is alarming to pro-Ukraine supporters.
President Zelensky knows that even if he still has overwhelming support for his cause, a long,
protracted war will mean less and less aid will flow in the future. But even if the aid
continues to come to his country, the growing anti-Ukraine minorities will do everything in
their power to delay and obfuscate the process enough that his forces might be gapped critical
weapons and supplies when they need them the most. So, because of this, Ukraine must launch an epic,
all-in counter-offensive soon to prove to their Western supporters that Ukraine can
and will win this war militarily and not have some kind of forever war with Russia.