Why is Ukraine being made to try and win the war the hard way?

Forcing Ukraine to take the Russian Army head-on makes no sense.

Winning War the Hard Way or the Smart Way

Looking at the military aid that has been supplied to Ukraine by the USA since February 24, 2022, a particular view of this war reveals itself and through that we can perhaps glimpse the strategic outlook of the Biden Administration. The United States government, it seems, wants Ukraine to win the war—but would prefer it to happen in perhaps the most difficult ways possible. The military aid given to Ukraine, while undoubtedly welcome by the Ukrainians and their armed forces, seems geared to making sure Ukraine has to undertake a large, direct and potentially deadly offensive against the Russian army this summer.

In short, the USA is not providing Ukraine with aid to fight and hopefully win battles, but with the best support to most efficiently win wars.

What do I mean by that? In war there are different ways to defeat an enemy’s forces, but in binary terms they might be broken down into the hard way and the smart way. The hard way is to spend the vast majority of your efforts assaulting enemy forces directly opposed to you. This ‘battle-centric’ idea of war is perhaps the most common idea of war in the common imagination—and its not hard to see why. The idea of battle is central to the portrayal of war from antiquity to today—it provides drama and pathos: heroes and villains. It can involve great debates over generalship (Grant versus Lee, Rommel versus Montgomery), provides stories of blood, sacrifice, heroism and terror. 

A View of the Atonivsky Bridge after Ukrainian Attacks: Kherson Oblast. https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-11-21/ukraine-opens-a-new-front-on-the-dnipro-to-threaten-moscows-rearguard.html