Counteroffensive Update--One Week In

Ukraine trying to compensate for Russia's defensive advantages.

We are almost one week into the Ukrainian counteroffensive switching into a more aggressive phase as some (but certainly not all) of the brigades that had been trained and equipped specifically for this operation, started appearing on the field of battle. There were the flurry of pictures of destroyed/damaged Ukrainian vehicles from a few days ago, though we have not seen so many of them recently. Its clear that this operation will take a while. Ukraine is trying to do something that has not been successfully accomplished (perhaps ever) before. They are trying to execute a wide-scale offensive with the use of armored vehicles without air supremacy against an entrenched enemy which possesses a large supply of defensive weaponry. Many of the advantages Ukraine was able to use effectively in slowing any Russian advances to slower-than-snail pace over the last 6 months are now with the Russians. The Ukrainians are having to contend with the fact that now they need to send forces forward, including tanks, APCs, and other vehicles, and they must operate in an environment in which they are threatened by a large number of different systems—such as the almost ubiquitous hand-held anti-vehicle missile (a Ukrainian example of which is below).

https://twitter.com/GeneralStaffUA/status/1667914023818461186?s=20

How should we view Ukrainian advances so far? Well, in historical terms, rather modest (though in terms of this war they have been higher than normal).What do I mean by that? Compared to the great armored breakthroughs of the past, this is pretty small beer. So far the Ukrainians, at the furthest, have pushed ahead 5 miles at most. Using the Deep State map (which is definitely conservative and has tended to only make changes when the evidence is strong), you can see the modest advances (areas in blue have recently been liberated by Ukraine and those in grey/white are being contested. Here is the area of greatest Ukrainian success on what might be called the central front (the front stretching from Zaporizhzhia Oblast to Donetsk.