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Opinion | Ukraine war: why the summer offensive is failing
- US and Nato are providing combat training based on recent Middle East battles when Ukraine is fighting a completely different war
- With the counteroffensive sputtering, soldier stress levels rocketing and ammunition in short supply, Nato must start preparing Ukrainians for the right fight
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Russia’s war of attrition has thwarted Ukraine’s summer offensive, rendering its objectives unsuccessful, such as penetrating Russia’s land bridge and reclaiming much of its lost territory. This much-hyped and heavily funded offensive has resulted in minimal gains for Ukraine, and as autumn takes hold, a stalemate ensues.
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The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are determined to continue fighting the Russians, but everything else – from training, arming, strategising and logistics, which are the responsibility of the US and Nato – is unravelling and falling by the wayside.
Crucially, there is a severe disconnect between the combat training given by the Nato instructors and the skills that Ukrainian soldiers require to penetrate Russian positions. To date, 63,000 Ukrainian soldiers have gone through a condensed 35-day basic soldier training course run by the Nato instructors.
The AFU has been trained in combined-arms warfare, which involves coordination between different military units to capture territory. For example, tanks would break through enemy lines by driving through trenches, and the infantry could then secure the area with operations launched from multiple fronts.
In reality, the Ukrainians have become trapped in Russian minefields, allowing Russian artillery, drones and helicopter gunships to pick off targets at will. Ukrainian officials have said that less than 5 per cent of their tanks destroyed are from a direct hit by a Russian tank.
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Unfortunately, mixed in with Washington’s Cold War mentality is a strategic belief that the American way of conducting operations would prove superior to the Russian approach, as long as the Ukrainians were equipped with Western-grade weapons. This stands in contrast to the training the Ukrainians have been asking for: a focus on demining, clearing trenches, throwing grenades and fighting in a relatively flat environment – all relevant to the current battlefield.
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