Yes it is. You could see it early last week, things had changed -velocity. The only thing I'm a bit surprised by now is...well I won't type that. Anyway, it is clear that instead of 100m a day they are going 1km a day or more.Positive signs:
Ukraine offensive to speed up as forces break through Russia’s strongest line of defence
Russian troops under pressure as Kyiv’s battle in the south takes hold with Western-trained brigades joining in the assaultwww.telegraph.co.uk
Man, absolutely...this conflict is very interesting on my side of the pond but must be maddening for Ukraine command. Overall the opsec from Ukraine has been brilliant. The arm chair generals...not so much.
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This substack nicely articulates my opinion about the current reporting on Ukraine in the major media, including NYT, Wapo, WSJ, and FT. All of those have been running assorted 'stalemate' articles that are not at all well founded, and always based on the anonymous 'analysts' in the US.
My simple observation is that all of the US analysts are terrible at their jobs, and we should not listen very carefully to them because they've been factually wrong on nearly every aspect of the war, and at every turn they underestimate the Ukrainians. Two obvious glaring misses are that the war would be over in a few days, and completely missing the breakthrough in Kherson last year. Also the fact that they all missed how hollow and fake the '2nd-largest' army in the world was.
It is far to soon to say anything meaningful about a stalemate or 'forever-war'. At a minimum, we need to wait until end of next summer before it could be that clear. Any talk otherwise is pretending to know the future, and demonstrates a profound inability to learn when presented with new data.
Ukraine Doesn’t Need Armchair Generals
Anonymous comments by Biden administration officials criticizing the Ukrainian armed forces don’t help anyone.plus.thebulwark.com
There are other ways of solving that problem. In Sweden child care is financed through the tax bill. Parents have to co-pay(?), but these co-pays aren't so 'steep' as to 'inhibit' getting three kids (or more). Wouldn't be surprised if there are similar solutions in the other Nordic countries...
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So we are finally seeing some real maneuver warfare. All the bits and pieces we've seen snippets of recently are being employed.
Minefields: Ukrainian forces are using thermal imaging drones to identify clear paths or the shortest route between safe zones. Troops advance rapidly behind mine clearing charges being laid to take out just the weak points in the mine fields.
Russia did not finish building all the second line (likely due to the arrest of the driving force). Ukraine is now facing areas where flanking and encirclement are possible tactics so they avoided minefields, and are starting to avoid dense fortifications and simply flank the fortifications. Velocity is definitely increasing and we now have the salient moving 4km in less than a week. If you refer to the
Thread by @emilkastehelmi on Thread Reader App
@emilkastehelmi: The Ukrainian offensive in the Robotyne sector has progressed, and the first Russian main defence line has been reached. In this thread we’ll take a closer look at the main defensive line and what m...…
Than this makes much more sense,
My expectation here is that soon we will see the Ukrainians widen the salient. Once that is done Ukrain will be able to bring all the airfields in between the salient and the Sea of Azov under HIMARS range. Cluster GLMRS rounds fired from a MLRS system would completely devastate an airbase, one salvo of 2km by 100m or however they wish to create the geography (1km by 1 km) will take out the helicopter base there in Berdyansk for example.
