Max Boot
As the war in Ukraine settled into a stalemate, two assumptions became prevalent among analysts: First, that it is nearly impossible to achieve any surprise on a battlefield blanketed by drones. Second, that it is nearly impossible to mount fast-moving offensive operations, given the extensive defenses erected by both sides. Ukraine has challenged both assumptions over the past few days with its surprise, lightning-fast thrust into Russia’s Kursk region — an area familiar to military historians as the site, during World War II, of the biggest tank battle in history.
The Ukrainian military shocked the entire world — and the Russian defenders — when it sent an armored column on Tuesday across the border from Ukraine’s Sumy region. There had been cross-border raids by Ukraine before, but those were much smaller operations conducted by Russian volunteers. This was something much more ambitious: a combined-arms offensive utilizing armored vehicles (some of them German- and U.S.-made), infantry, artillery and electronic-warfare equipment. Ukraine reportedly committed elements of four elite brigades to the operation.
This was, in fact, the kind of well-planned, well-executed assault that the Ukrainians had hoped to pull off last year, on a much grander scale, when their objective was to slice through Russian lines in southern Ukraine and break the land bridge between Crimea and Russia. That offensive failed against well-prepared Russian defenses full of mines and trenches, all covered by heavy artillery fire and large numbers of drones.
No comments:
Post a Comment