Ukraine - U.S. 'Experts' Throw The Towel

 

moon  of alabama

Michael Kofman and Rob Lee are U.S. experts who have visited the Ukrainian front-lines several times to then write positive hopeful pieces, in the sense of the West, about the conflict.

Their latest longer piece, published in Foreign Affairs, deviates from their older ones.

Ukraine’s Gamble
The Risks and Rewards of the Offensive Into Russia’s Kursk Region

They describe the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Kursk oblast and the resulting lack of troops on the eastern Donbas front at some length.

They seem, like many others, not to be sure what it is all about. Neither Ukraine nor the countries that supports it seem to have any theory of victory.

Determining what this operation says about Ukraine’s overall strategy and the implications it has for the broader war effort is essential. In some ways, the offensive raises more questions than answers.
...
For much of 2024, the West has been supporting a Ukrainian strike campaign in Crimea without a good explanation for what was meant to follow. It was serviceable as an end onto itself, degrading Russian air defense and support infrastructure. But that campaign now seems disconnected from Ukraine’s efforts in Kursk and its broader drone strike campaign against economic infrastructure in Russia. A series of disparate efforts do not a strategy make.
...
Since 2023, Washington has been out of ideas for how to successfully end the war on terms favorable to Ukraine. Kyiv, meanwhile, has been focused on stabilizing the frontline, but equally worried about the prevailing gloomy narrative and the sense that Ukraine is losing the war. The Kursk operation helps address the latter at the risk of doing damage to the former. Whether or not Kursk succeeds, at least it is not an attempt to refight the failed 2023 offensive, a set piece battle in which Ukraine held no decisive advantages. That said, Kyiv’s present theory of success remains unclear.

Kofman and Lee are unhappy:

Holding Kursk as a bargaining chip, expanding strikes, and economic pressure on Russia could significantly strengthen Ukraine’s hand, assuming Ukraine can also hold the line, exhaust Russia’s offensive potential, and withstand Russia’s strike campaign this winter. However it ends, the Kursk offensive needs to provide the impetus for Ukraine and its partners to get on the same page—and shake off the current drift.

"Assuming Ukraine can also ..." carries a way too much weight in their closing words.

That becomes obvious when one sees news items like this:

The 152nd Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces has been reorganized into a jager brigade, as announced on the brigade’s official social media channels.

A jager brigade is light infantry. It is specialized in fighting in woods and marshes. It has no armored means. It has no tanks, no infantry fighting vehicles and no heavy artillery. All of what the 152nd once had as a mechanized units has been wasted in the incursion of Kursk.

Ukraine can not sustain either of the three tasks Kofman and Lee are "assuming" it can.

The Donbas line is breaking, Russia's offensive potential is still much larger than anything we have yet seen and Ukraine has no means to defend against or prevent mass missiles strikes against its infrastructure and other military targets.

The Kursk incursion was a political theater piece designed to have a short term propaganda effect. It was paid for with the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. A way too height price for little effect. The mass of Ukrainian material that was destroyed in the campaign means that Ukraine has now thrown away any future attack potential its army still had.

Kofman and Lee know this. But they are still too timid to say so.

Still - its sounds like they have given up on it.

Posted by b on September 2, 2024 at 16:05 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/09/ukraine-us-experts-throw-the-towel.html#more