John Hudson and Alex Horton – The Washington Post Aug 17, 2023

The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol, people familiar with the classified forecast told The Washington Post, a finding that, should it prove correct, would mean Kyiv won’t fulfill its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push.

The grim assessment is based on Russia’s brutal proficiency in defending occupied territory through a phalanx of minefields and trenches, and is likely to prompt finger pointing inside Kyiv and Western capitals about why a counteroffensive that saw tens of billions of dollars of Western weapons and military equipment fell short of its goals.

Ukraine’s forces, which are pushing toward Melitopol from the town of Robotyne more than 50 miles away, will remain several miles outside of the city, U.S. officials said. U.S., Western and Ukrainian government officials interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

Melitopol is critical to Ukraine’s counteroffensive because it is considered the gateway to Crimea. The city is at the intersection of two important highways and a railroad line that allow Russia to move military personnel and equipment from the peninsula to other occupied territories in southern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s sputtering counteroffensive

Ukraine launched the counteroffensive in early June hoping to replicate its stunning success in last fall’s push through the Kharkiv region.

But in the first week of fighting, Ukraine incurred major casualties against Russia’s well-prepared defenses despite having a range of newly acquired Western equipment, including U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles, German-made Leopard 2 tanks and specialized mine-clearing vehicles.

Joint war games conducted by the U.S., British and Ukrainian militaries anticipated such losses but envisioned Kyiv accepting the casualties as the cost of piercing through Russia’s main defensive line, said U.S. and Western officials.

But Ukraine chose to stem the losses on the battlefield and switch to a tactic of relying on smaller units to push forward across different areas of the front. That resulted in Ukraine making incremental gains in different pockets over the summer.

Kyiv has recently dedicated more reserves to the front, including Stryker and Challenger units, but has yet to break through Russia’s main defensive line.

The path to Melitopol is an extremely challenging one, and even recapturing closer cities such as Tokmak will be difficult, said Rob Lee, a military analyst with the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“Russia has three main defensive lines there and then fortified cities after that,” he said. “It’s not just a question about whether Ukraine can breach one or two of them, but can they breach all three and have enough forces available after taking attrition to achieve something more significant like taking Tokmak or something beyond that.”

The bleak outlook, briefed to some Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, has already prompted a blame game inside closed-door meetings. Some Republicans are now balking at President Biden’s request for an additional $20.6 billion in Ukraine aid given the offensive’s modest results. Other Republicans and, to a lesser extent, hawkish Democrats have faulted the administration for not sending more powerful weapons to Ukraine sooner.

U.S. officials reject criticisms that F-16 fighter jets or longer-range missile systems such as ATACMS would have resulted in a different outcome. “The problem remains piercing Russia’s main defensive line, and there’s no evidence these systems would’ve been a panacea,” a senior administration official said.

In an interview this week, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States has been clear about the difficult task facing Ukraine.

Continues … ( In our opinion what Milley says can be safely ignored)

Commentary – Aug 18, 2023

So there you have it from one of Washington’s prime mouthpieces, to all intents and purposes Ukraine’s long awaited counteroffensive has failed.

This will come as no surprise to regular visitors to this website. Two commentators we regularly feature here, Douglas Macgregor and Scott Ritter were saying as much months ago.

The Western mainstream has only now acknowledged this after months of rattling on about Ukraine’s incremental gains. Recent developments on the battlefield make it clear that those gains never amounted to anything.

Ukrainian Army conscripts. Click to enlarge

However, Ukraine paid a very high price for those strategically worthless gains. The Post makes absolutely no mention of the horrific cost the Ukrainian Army paid for its ill-fated counteroffensive. In a recent interview with Ukrainian journalist Diana Panchenko, Belarus President Lukashenko said that Ukraine had lost as many as 45,000 men, killed or seriously wounded, in the counteroffensive.

Officially the counteroffensive began in early June. So over the past couple of months the Ukrainian Army has sustained on average 600 to 700 men killed or seriously wounded EVERY DAY.

The Post glosses over this without mention. In much the same way that these casualties are hardly ever reported in the western mainstream media. Yet Ukraine simply cannot sustain such losses for any length of time. The warmongers in Washington, Kiev and London may not like it but at some point the Ukrainians are going to have to come to terms with Russia.