Ukrainian officials say that Russia has positioned up to 360,000 troops inside Ukraine and that, unlike last fall when Kyiv was able to retake major cities in a two-pronged push, Russia has had time to build up three or four layers of defenses including trenches and other fortifications.
Ukraine also lacks both air superiority and the 3-to-1 offensive to defensive troop ratio that Western militaries typically want for this kind of push.
Ukrainian officials say Russian helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft give the Kremlin another advantage along the line of contact.
Ukrainian forces are navigating giant minefields and mounting initial attacks on Russian positions along a sprawling front line, U.S. and Ukrainian officials said, as Kyiv takes the first, halting steps of what is expected to be a prolonged and punishing counteroffensive campaign.
Ukrainian officials say they have thus far reclaimed at least 130 square kilometers, or about 50 square miles, in the country’s south from Russian forces, which have spent months hardening fortifications and positioning reinforcements in their bid to protect territory seized since President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion.
President Volodymyr Zelensky last week said that the offensive was moving “slower than desired” since it began this month, but that an operation against an adversary with a deeper arsenal and a far larger force shouldn’t be expected to unfold at an action-movie pace.
A U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive battlefield assessments, said Ukraine’s military was now “fighting through the initial security zone” before hurling the bulk of its manpower at Russia’s main lines.
“You don’t commit your whole force until you have an idea of where the areas are where you’re going to find the most success,” the official said. “The Ukrainians have to figure out where the Russian defenses are the weakest and most porous.”
The operation is unfolding as Western officials are assessing the fallout of the stunning weekend rebellion by mercenary leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin, whose forces have played a key role in expanding Russia’s combat power in Ukraine. The incident underscored the deep strains the war has caused within Russia and injected a new element of unpredictability into the conflict’s course.
American officials caution against drawing conclusions in the offensive’s early weeks and say the absence of traditional offensive moves — akin to the advancing armored columns of World War II — does not indicate trouble but rather a new sort of 21st-century maneuver warfare, one that has included probing strikes, sabotage attacks behind enemy lines, and artillery and missile strikes deep into Russian-held areas.
But the recaptured areas, which Ukrainian officials say include at least a half-dozen villages near the borders of the eastern Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, represent a tiny fraction of the vast area the Kremlin controls, which still amounts to roughly a fifth of the country.
The limited scale of the gains to date is a reminder of the challenges Zelensky faces in his effort to force Putin to reconsider his desire to cement control over much of Ukraine. The Russian leader has sought to sow doubts about Ukraine’s battlefield prowess, arguing without evidence that Kyiv has suffered losses exponentially greater than Russia’s and that much of its Western-donated weaponry has already been destroyed.
“Everything with which they fight and everything that they use is brought in from the outside,” he told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in recent days. “You can’t fight for long like that.”
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