I think we may have gotten spoiled by Ukraine’s successful counteroffensives near Kharkiv and Kherson, and that has caused many folks to wonder why the Ukrainians are having such a hard time with their counteroffensive now. After all, didn’t they rout the Russians at Kharkiv and Kherson? Why can’t they just do that again? Do they need air superiority? Do they need more training in Combined Arms warfare? Is their counteroffensive in serious trouble? What’s the problem?
Ukraine is in for a harder slog this time. That does not mean they will lose, but it is a different type of battle, and will evolve differently. The Ukrainians surprised the Russians near Kharkiv, and they were able to win at Kherson because the Russians were overexposed logistically, being too dependent on one bridge across the Dnipro River. This made Ukraine’s victories in these two situations look easy. These conditions do not apply any more. The Russians know the areas where the Ukrainians are likely to attack, and have spent the last nine months fortifying those areas. Overcoming these defenses will require a lot of hard fighting, much of it trench by trench, and there is no “magic bullet” that will avoid that.
The current fighting reminds me of the British and American experience in the period after the Normandy invasion. After we established our beachhead at Normandy the British and Americans launched attack after attack against the Germans, only to be frustrated by how stubborn and effective the German defense was. The British launched several massive attacks on the city of Caen, only to be beaten back time and again by the Germans, as that was where most of the German troops and fortifications were. The Americans faced a different problem, as the hedgerow farming region of Normandy turned every farmer’s field into a defensive stronghold, making progress in the area a bloody affair involving a long series of small-scale infantry attacks. And despite heavy fighting this stalemate continued for almost two months, causing Allied morale to plummet. The Allied high command was concerned that the Germans could seal off our position in Normandy all the way into the fall, and with fall rain and winter weather the stalemate could continue indefinitely.
What no one realized was that the German defense was hard, but brittle. Two months of heavy fighting had exhausted the Germans and their position had become dire. Finally, in late July of 1944 the Americans launched a major attack at the west end of the Normandy front and punched thru the German lines, causing the entire German position to collapse. Whereas the previous two months had been a stalemate, the next two months saw British and American troops run riot everywhere, liberating all of France and chasing the Germans all the way to the German border. The only reason the Allied drive stalled was because we outran our supply lines.
I don’t know if events in Ukraine will play out the same way things did in Normandy, but I think many of the same issues apply. It took two months of hard fighting to weaken the Germans enough to where a breakout was possible. Ukraine faces many of the same issues. We need to be patient and see how things will play out.