Ukraine's "Big Push" Results in Big Losses as Offensive Nears 2 Months (TheNewAtlas)

- Ukraine's "big push" over the past week has resulted in minimum gains and massive losses;

- Ukraine's "big push" followed weeks of exercising an alleged "artillery advantage" used to soften Russian defenses;

- Western analysts used the same flawed process to assess Ukraine's artillery capabilities they used to assess the supposed likelihood NATO armor would cut through Russian defenses;

- The US rushing M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine by fall will make no difference on the battlefield, they are too few in number and no more capable than the German Leopard 2 tanks Ukraine has used in a so-far failed offensive;

- Russian defenses are layered specifically to absorb Ukrainian advances and preserve Russian manpower and equipment as they move back to successive lines of defenses;

- Ukraine's attempt to gain territory amid a war of attrition is only accelerating its own defeat;

- A German army report blaming Ukrainian soldiers for the poor outcomes of the offensive is an unfair attempt to shift blame away from NATO;



Very good analysis from The New Atlas. The flawed Western view that Ukraine is doing well comes from Western propaganda that has reported huge Russian losses - such as the alleged destruction  of 2000 Russian tanks and more than one hundred thousand soldiers killed. It makes it look like Ukraine is fighting effectively and that the Russians are incompetent. This is a lie.

It is clearly true that the Ukrainian side is suffering a disproportionate amount of losses going from the plethora of online combat videos. It is the Ukrainians that have lost hundreds of thousands killed with admissions that whole brigades have been rebuilt due to their high casualty rates (50-80% or higher). 

The clip does a good job of picking apart how the West is deluded about what is happening. Presently the Ukrainian Army is throwing itself against the defense lines of the Russians without enough artillery, drone and air support and they are being ground down. The idea that US tanks, due to arrive soon, will tip the balance in the fighting is more of the same deluded thinking. US M1 tanks will be as vulnerable as any other tank in this type of fighting going by recent examples of M1 losses in Yemen, which is a much lower intensity theatre than Ukraine. 

When it comes to soldier training the clip points out that is takes years to train officers and NCOs and the Ukrainians are sending people into battle with not enough training to successfully employ NATO tactics. If you were a student of the Art of War you would know that sometimes, when the situation is unfavourable, that it is sometimes better not to fight - and certainly not a good idea to launch offensives when defending might be the better option. The Ukrainian side would have done a lot better, considering their disadvantages, to build their own huge set defensive positions (which is what the Russians have done, likely as a contingency for possible full scale NATO intervention). 

Why post clips like this one? It shows up the lies of the MSM. Don't trust what's on the TV. They give you hints about what is happening and then spin some BS stories that perpetuates the fighting that gets more people killed. And if they lie about this then what else are they lying about?

[Posted at the SpookyWeather2 blog, August 1, 2023.]