AFU Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny favoured a large-scale counter-offensive in the special operation zone as early as 2022, but the United States was against it, Business Insider reported, citing the book Our Enemies Will Vanish, written by The Wall Street Journal journalist Yaroslav Trofimov.
“Valery Zaluzhny insisted on a daring and, by some accounts, risky counter-offensive in 2022, which never happened,” the portal writes.
The plan was to break through the Zaporizhzhya region to the Sea of Azov “and cut the so-called ‘land bridge’ to isolate Russian forces in Crimea.”
“At that point, Russia had not yet created the extensive minefields and fortifications that prevented a counteroffensive there in 2023,” the article noted.
Even so, the approach was still considered a daunting task and a “risky gamble,” as the breakthrough would have to be not only deep but also extensive enough “to prevent the Russians from counterattacking and threatening the flanks of the advancing forces.” At the planning stage, the U.S. had already expressed wariness because Ukraine had not demonstrated offensive capabilities, and because the U.S. controlled most of the military aid to Ukraine, “there was little controversy,” the publication wrote.
On 4 December, The Washington Post published a major piece on why Ukraine’s army counteroffensive failed. In particular, the newspaper noted that during the planning, there were strong disagreements between the US and Ukrainian authorities over the strategy, tactics and timing of combat operations.
At the same time, the US intelligence community initially lowered its expectations from the counter-offensive, the journalists noted.
At the same time, the first attempts by Ukrainian troops to advance in Zaporizhzhya Region, which began in June, were disrupted by Russian helicopters, drones and ATGMs, and for many AFU soldiers it was “their first shock” on the battlefield. According to the newspaper, one of the Ukrainian army brigades involved in the counter-offensive was 70 per cent staffed with soldiers who had never been in combat before.