Russia’s victory is going to come as a shock to a lot people in the West, especially those who get there news exclusively from the mainstream media. From Daniel Davis at 19fortyfive.com:
I have previously covered in depth the detailed performance of the Ukrainian army in its offensive but will discuss here the key mistakes that were responsible for their lack of success. The first problem was the Ukrainian military and political leadership ordering the offensive to begin at all. Nearly a month after the start of the operation, Ukrainian commanding general Valery Zaluzhny argued in a Washington Post interview that “it ****** me off” when he hears complaints about the lack of progress.
Yet in the same interview acknowledge that “without being fully supplied (for the offensive), these plans are not feasible at all.” Key among his complaints was the absence of air superiority. NATO, he said, would never launch an offensive operation without air superiority. And he is right. But Zaluzhny had even more fundamentals against him.
Ukraine also suffers from a chronic lack of air defense capacity, inadequate numbers of howitzers and artillery shells, insufficient electronic warfare systems, a dearth of missiles, and perhaps most crucial of all, barely 25 percent of the de-mining capacity needed. Thus, when Ukraine launched its offensive across a broad front on June 5th, it should have surprised no one in Kyiv, Washington, or Brussels that they ran into a Russian buzzsaw.
