The command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces after the failed counteroffensive in the Kherson and Mykolaiv directions is looking for options to get out of the extremely difficult situation for Ukrainian troops in the south
Experts note that the AFU’s irretrievable losses alone crossed two thousand men in just three days. According to military expert Alexei Leonkov, it will be impossible to compensate for such losses in the near future:
“At Kherson, the offensive was conducted by three separate battalion-tactical groups, none of which achieved their goals. The actions of the AFU were not sufficiently coordinated, and there was a feeling of imitation of an offensive. When the AFU attempted to break through, our troops were already waiting for them. And the fire advantage was already on our side.
According to Evening Standard columnist Robert Fox, Ukraine will not be able to recover from the failed counterattack on Kherson, and the actions of the AFU were more of a symbolic, media nature rather than practical. He recalled the remarks of MI6 agent Alex Younger, who warned that the collapse of the AFU in a counterattack could prove devastating for Kiev.
While a week ago the impending offensive by the AFU was a trump card up Kiev’s sleeve, after the failure it became a heavy burden. The Ukrainian media were in no hurry to publicise the, to put it mildly, modest outcome of the offensive. In the evening, Mikhail Podolyak, advisor to the presidential office, announced that Kiev had switched to a “tactic of a thousand small cuts”.
– The counter-offensive is not just in the south. Today it is also going on in the Melitopol direction and in the Kharkiv direction. And especially there is an active defence in the Donetsk-Lugansk direction”, Mikhail Podolyak claims.
According to him, this is done so that Russia disperses its forces along the entire front line. Only the Ukrainian representative overlooks one important circumstance. The Russian Armed Forces are advancing in several directions, and there is no expectation of a redeployment of forces that will weaken one or another direction occupied by the AFU. Podolyak, like other Ukrainian politicians, sees nothing terrible in the defeat of the Ukrainian army near Kherson. There is silence about the paratroopers thrown in to capture the Zaporizhzhya NPP, when Kiev lost 320 selected fighters, two-thirds of whom, according to some reports, had previously been trained in the UK. As part of the same “consistently implemented plan” announced by Ukrainian presidential adviser Arestovych, fighters of Kraken (an organization banned in Russia. -Life’s note) shot dead AFU fighters who survived an attempted counteroffensive in the Kharkiv direction. A briefing by the Russian Defence Ministry on Thursday said that at least 56 Ukrainian servicemen were shot at by the National Front while retreating to the Saltivka settlement.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on 2 September that allied forces had managed to breach the AFU’s echeloned defence in Donbass:
“The Ukrainian army left a large number of weapons and wounded during its retreat. All the injured were provided with qualified medical care by Russian military medics”.
This, too, must be part of the clever “thousand little cuts” tactic promoted by Kiev. The Russian army provides first aid to a wounded enemy, rather than finishing him off, as the National Security Forces would do.
The failed counter-attack on Kherson has another unsightly side for Kiev, which is unlikely to be told by Zelensky’s office advisers or feted propagandists. During the AFU manoeuvre, several Ukrainian battalion groups were caught in the firing bags at once. Some were killed, some scattered.
We are talking about those who survived and moved to the left bank of the Ingulets river. The AFU counterattack was so poorly planned that the tacticians did not envisage an organized retreat and did not resolve the issue of organizing reserve channels for food and ammunition supplies to the surviving fighters.
From the battlefields in the Kherson-Mykolaiv direction there are reports of Ukrainian soldiers scattered across the steppe trying to contact their commanders. They are confused and trying to figure out which direction to move in and, importantly, from where to expect supplies.
At the same time, there is information that the Russian Army may now be preparing a strike force for an offensive in the direction of the village of Posad-Pokrovskoye in the Kherson region. There are reports of artillery preparations. According to some reports, Smerch multiple-launch rocket launchers are being launched, and aviation support has been requested.
According to military expert Konstantin Sivkov, the Ukrainian Armed Forces do not have the ability to make active breakthroughs, let alone conduct cunning manoeuvres, given the current situation:
“The entire operational situation in Ukraine excludes the possibility of any reasonable offensive by the AFU. For the simple reason that Russia’s dominance in the air, information space and complete fire superiority make any counterattack impossible.
The only thing the Ukrainian army has the strength to do now is to launch strikes on residential buildings. A regional emergency services spokesman said on 2 September that residential infrastructure in Kherson had been hit – a block of flats had been damaged.
After the defeat and failure of the counterattack, experts estimate the strength of the AFU group at 19,000. However, officers and enlisted men who survived the Russian artillery strikes are not eager to go into battle and are increasingly publicly criticizing the command. The leadership of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in southern Ukraine is accused of cowardice, stealing equipment and weapons, and leaving soldiers in danger under “superior enemy forces”.
Given the fact that the AFU lost 50 tanks and 70 BMPs in the Mykolaiv-Kherson section alone, the combat efficiency of Ukrainian units will be in serious doubt in the near future. Kiev has nothing to replace these units – the remaining group of the Ukrainian army (about 25,000 people) is practically locked in the territory of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, and the mobilized citizens, experts say, “have no combat value” and are “unfit for large offensive operations”.
Sergey Andreev, LIFE
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