[Skybird]

After weeks of hard fighting, Kiev's troops are slowly but surely approaching the first - and in some places only - Russian defence line on several sections of the front. The advance is coming in spurts, with one village after another being conquered in fierce battles.

Kiev's offensive has been going on for about four weeks now, and if it continues at the current pace without any major breakthroughs, the troops on the border of the Zaporizhzhya and Donetsk regions, for example, would probably have reached the defence line by the end of July. .

Further west, in the village of Robotyne, Ukrainian soldiers are already fighting directly at the Russian bulwark. However, there are two more defence lines in this region behind the first one.

But what are the reasons why the counter-offensive has so far been slow and has suffered heavy losses? Franz-Stefan Gady is Consulting Senior Fellow at the London Institute for International Strategic Studies and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center For New American Security in Washington DC. He is considered one of the most renowned war analysts.

When he gave an interview to the Tagesspiegel three weeks ago on the state of the counter-offensive, he was deliberately reticent, the information was too diffuse and incomplete.

Currently, Gady himself is in Ukraine. And in conversations with non-commissioned officers, officers and a number of brigade commanders as well as high-ranking intelligence and defence officials in Kiev, he received clear answers and a comprehensive picture of the current situation on the front. In writing to the Tagesspiegel, he comments on his first-hand information.

The counter-offensive, he said, is primarily a battle of infantrymen at squad and company level, supported by artillery fire at most sections of the front. Progress is therefore not measured in kilometres, but in metres.

It was often said in the run-up to the offensive that the Western-trained forces would have a great advantage in the duel with the outdated Soviet doctrine of the Russians thanks to their Nato combat crash course. In theory, this may be true, but Gady paints a different picture to the Tagesspiegel.

"The Ukrainian armed forces still do not master operations with combined forces on a large scale," he reports. Operations, he says, are sequential rather than synchronised. For the expert, this is "the main reason for the slow progress". The lack of capabilities would make the Ukrainians vulnerable to Russian fire with anti-tank guided missiles and artillery. "The Russian defence system is not being systematically torn apart," is how Gady describes the situation.

Because this is the case, Ukraine changed tactics after a short time and switched to a war of attrition. According to Gady, however, the character of the offensive will only change if Kiev's soldiers can carry out more systematised attacks. "Otherwise, it will remain a bloody battle of attrition, with reserve units being gradually pushed in," the expert says.

Additional Western arms deliveries, such as ATACMS (short-range ballistic missile), air defence systems, battle tanks or infantry fighting vehicles, are enormously important in his view, but without tactical adjustments by Ukraine they would hardly prove decisive on the battlefield. The same applies to mine-clearing vehicles, he said. "Some Ukrainian attacks were stopped by Russian infantry with anti-tank missiles even before they reached the first Russian minefield," Gady describes the lack of systematic action.

Despite everything, the expert remains cautiously optimistic. "The most important question with regard to further military success for Ukraine in 2023 is whether the Ukrainian military can adapt to larger combined arms operations and regain mobility on the battlefield after having sufficiently weakened the Russian forces with its firepower," he tells the Tagesspiegel. Here, he says, the verdict is not yet in. In his view, the counter-offensive will probably last into the autumn.

His conclusion: "Military success in this counter-offensive is still possible for Ukraine, but will be a major challenge."

Franz-Stefan Gady is an independent defence expert and policy advisor. He is Consulting Senior Fellow at the London Institute for International Strategic Studies and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center For New American Security in Washington DC.

[Tagesspiegel]

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I recall how in the earlier stages of the war the Ukraine was applauded for having adopted NATO doctrines and procedures. Then somebody in this forum posted some months ago the assessment of a Finnish soldier saying that he did not held the Ukrainian's tactics in high esteem and thinks they were not a good army. In the media, Salushny nevertheless was hailed for having brought Ukraine's forces within less than two years before the Russian invasion "to almost Western doctrinal standards".

Not only that many of these forces of the early war no longer exist - it seems that the doctrinal training standard in generla has been either overestimated - or was intentionally talked up to boost morale and public coifidence. But in the past months, the deficits of the training and the fallback to Sovjet era procedures is what dominates in the news.