The Ukrainian Offensive has Barely Started: And Its Only Been a Short Time Since Feb 2022

Time and War in Perspective

In a predictable, but still depressing move, some of the biggest cheerleaders for forcing Ukraine to make a bad deal with Russia have pronounced the Ukrainian offensive a failure. This included Elon Musk cheerleader David Sacks, who put together one of the silliest tweets of the whole war (which is really saying something) on June 19. I wont link to it, but you can find it easily if you want.

The interesting point of this way of thinking is that it reveals the ignorance of the writer more than anything useful about the Russo-Ukraine War. Indeed looking at wars in the past and comparing it to what we see now, the thing that stands out is how little time has passed both operationally this summer and to be honest, since the the Russian full-scale invasion was launched in February 2022.

The Defense Forces of Ukraine continue to conduct an offensive operation in three directions: Melitopol, Berdyansk, and Lymansk. https://twitter.com/GeneralStaffUA

The Campaign: Its A Short Time, Ukraine is Adjusting, and it might even attack somewhere else. Remember Kherson in 2022.

Of the two ways are looking at this conflict so far, the silliest is that we have any idea of how the Ukrainian campaign this year is going to unfold. It has now been approximately 2 weeks since the first significant western-equipped and trained Ukrainian forces showed up in the front lines (and suffered losses). What have we seen since. Well, the Ukrainians first suffered some losses in engaging with Russian front line forces—though after a few days they changed what they were doing and since then the losses of their most important equipment seems to have slowed significantly. Instead, Ukraine seems to have made the first of what will probably be a number of tactical adjustments this summer. They are now being careful about sending vehicles forward, and instead seem to be focussing on destroying Russian forces from the front lines back to the rear.

It was fascinating to hear President Zelensky say that out loud, during his evening address on June 20th. He said that Ukrainian forces were not only in a phase of ‘destroying’ the Russians, but implied that this would continue for a while.

“Now our warriors in the south and in the east are very actively destroying the enemy, physically clearing Ukraine. This will continue in the future.”

https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1671400405249474565?s=20

Its a very sensible thing to have said. As the campaign is only two weeks old, and moving forward is very difficult, it could take more than a month longer before the Ukrainians have established the kinds of conditions needed to advance. If you think that sounds like a long time, I am going to direct you to this tweet I wrote about Kherson on August 29, 2022.