After more than three months of their counteroffensive, Ukraine has just “30 to 45 days” of weather-permitting fighting left, the head of the US military has said.
General Mark Milley, speaking to BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg’, said time is running out for Ukraine’s advancing troops ahead of the winter, when the rain will begin to soak the ground before it later freezes.
Ukraine had been criticised for seemingly-delaying its counteroffensive over fears that this temporal problem would surface but Gen Milley acknowledged that there was a “difference” between “war on paper and real war”, suggesting that the optimal plan is not always available.
But sources inside Ukraine, citing “local knowledge”, appear less concerned with the turning season and how that might affect fighting.
Military experts, meanwhile, have been heavily critical of what are often anonymous US officials going as far as saying the counteroffensive has “failed”, suggesting this is a misread of the developing situation.
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Speaking to Kuenssberg, Gen Milley said: “That offensive kicked off about 90 days ago. It has gone slower than the planners anticipated.
“But that is a difference between what Clausewitz called war on paper and real war. So these are real people in real vehicles that are fighting through real minefields, and there’s real death and destruction, and there’s real friction.”
He added that Ukraine’s counteroffensive probably has a “reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days, worth of fighting weather left”.
Temperatures along much of the frontline, particularly in the southeast, where the main flashpoints of fighting are located, are currently sitting in the mid-to-low 20Cs.
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When those temperatures begin to drop, rain will sodden the ground, disrupting effective mechanised warfare.
It was these damp conditions in spring that contributed to a delay in the counteroffensive as tanks struggled to navigate the boggy terrain.
But Mykola Bielieskov, research fellow at the Kyiv-based National Institute for Strategic Studies, told the Financial Times that “Ukrainian troops will still be able to manoeuvre through the winter” due to a specific-type of soil ahead of the advancing forces.
On either side of Melitopol, the ostensible target of Ukraine’s counter offensive attack down western Zaporizhzhia Oblast, is Arenosol, a well-aerated soil that dries quickly.
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Mr Bielieskov said the soil “remains firm even with rain”, which means that “time is not necessarily the limiting factor some people believe”.
He added that this kind of “local knowledge” was not known by other outside forces and it could prove vital in “determining” the war.
While not mentioning Arenosol, in their three-month summary of the counteroffensive military experts Michael Kofman and Rob Lee suggested that Western officials had fallen victim to short-termism and were wrongly evaluating the attack as a failure.
They claimed that, instead of “pinning hopes on the next capability that will be introduced on the battlefield”, Western governments should “develop a long-term plan to sustain and improve Ukraine’s war effort”.
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