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In the first week of fighting, Ukraine incurred major casualties against Russia's well-prepared defences despite having a range of newly acquired Western equipment, including U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles, German-made Leopard 2 tanks and specialized mine-clearing vehicles.
Joint war games conducted by the U.S., British and Ukrainian militaries anticipated such losses but envisioned Kyiv accepting the casualties as the cost of piercing through Russia's main defensive line, said U.S. and Western officials.
But Ukraine chose to stem the losses on the battlefield and switch to a tactic of relying on smaller units to push forward across different areas of the front. That resulted in Ukraine making incremental gains in different pockets over the summer.
Ukraine Offensive Will Fail to Reach Melitopol, U.S. Intelligence Says - The Washington Post
As expected/what most have been saying, it is clear that everyone underestimated the scale of Russia's minefields, Ukraine at the beginning of the offensive seemed to try to rush the Russians but there's mines literally fucking everywhere and it resulted in that big loss we seen at the start, that alongside demining technology being fairly outdated and Ukraine not having much demining equipment to begin with caused a change in tactics.
Now the new tactic appears to be attrition, Ukraine over the past few weeks have been absolutely decimating Russia's artillery with counter battery fire. Once Russia's artillery suffers enough of a setback then Ukraine can progress more safely through the minefields and I don't believe Russia will be able to keep up with replacing them after a certain point.
Unfortunately that means far slower progress, we're likely looking at another few counteroffensives in the future at least. OTOH Ukraine is making the tactically smart decision, they shouldn't rush anything just for the West's benefit, they absolutely should prioritise their soldiers lives and not do any Normandy style rush into a minefield like some in the West seem to want.
Sadly there are those in the West and media included who only care about colours on a map and not the finer details of what is the tactically smart decision so Ukraine runs the risk of some in the West eventually turning on them, especially in countries which keep fucking up their economy independent of Ukraine and they then without any thought blame Ukraine because it's the easy target, I don't believe it will be enough though, only the idiots.
Russia's tactic also appears to be that, their entire tactic now seems to be to hold what they have and hope that the West gets bored or Trump/DeSantis wins the US Presidency. It's very obvious that Putin is terrified by the prospect of having to do a full scale mobilisation. Maybe that would be a benefit to Ukraine and finally be the final straw for Russian's to revolt, they can already barely supply what they currently have on the field.
I for one would actually be happy with Ukraine just reaching Tokmak though or putting the coast of Azov within range of HIMARS, I even wonder if they should just ignore Melitopol for now and go straight down to Berdyans'k as it's way less fortified but I don't know what the best thing would be to do, regardless, it's fine if Ukraine doesn't take Melitopol in this offensive.
