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EpicRandy on 28 August 2023
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crissindahouse said:

Question is what costs more lives. If you "rush" the enemy at some points and lose many soldiers by doing that or if you try it more slowly to lose less soldier per day but you need 5x as long to take some positions and give Russia even more time to build even more and better defensive lines in the rest of the occupied areas. I have no idea what's better but almost not progressing at all like Ukraine the last three months doesn't sound perfect to me either (even Robotyne is just a very small village where less than 500 people lived and the other taken villages in the South were even smaller). Maybe something between their tactics of the last months and some aggressive style others want to see would be the best way but who knows.

Those minefields are obviously a huge problem but it's not as if Russia doesn't use every extra week to place even more mines and build even more trenches. Then you overcome Russia's strongest defensive line but in that time Russia build already two new ones...

Very difficult to answer. There's definitely context in which either can be preferable but the capacity to make the distinction between when 1 is better in any given context requires out-of-this-world skills/intellect/confidence/experience and a fair share of luck. In some scenarios, it can be more or less evident but even then is the evidence a reality or a trap? The US was confident in the Bay of Pigs yet...

Breaching the defense line can lead to panic on the Russian side which may lead to fights against disorganized units, It would provide low casualties for Ukrainians and a high one for Russians all the while enabling Ukrainians to capture lots of Russian, Russian's equipment and territories back. Kharkiv last year was a prime example of it.

But this time defense lines are much harder to breach as they have more stages, yet Russia seems just as or even more disorganized than before. The questions are:

Exactly how costly breaching defense would be?

How much gains can be expected from a total breach of the defense line on 1 axis?

Are we at a point where there's even hope a successful breach of Russian defense deal a death blow to the Russian invasion altogether? 

What will the situation be for Russia with added time, will it fuel instability or will it provide them the means to make it even more difficult for Ukrainians?

and many others...

All questions which we sadly can't answer ourselves and probably no one can answer with all but low confidence probabilities.