Pages

17 September 2024

Dig for Victory — Ukraine Must Fortify in the East

Dyveke Undertun Aarhus and Michael C. DiCianna

There’s always a worry in war that things will suddenly turn against you; that the enemy will advance and that you will lose. Ask Winston Churchill or George Washington.

Ukraine, like 20th-century Britain and 18th-century revolutionary America, is fighting for its existence against a more heavily armed power. The key battleground is Donbas, in the east around towns like Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar, where its forces are losing ground against relentless Russian attacks. That’s not to say that all is lost; far from it.

Fortified defensive positions and grinding, attritional offensives have become a defining feature of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The mechanized Ukrainian counter-offensives — and faster Russian retreats — that liberated Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022 saw no echoes in 2023, as Ukraine’s summer offensive smashed into the walls of the Prigozhin line.

No comments:

Post a Comment