Konstantin Sivkov's article on the Ukrainian counter offensive for the summer of 2023 is rather illuminating and puts a lot of information from many places into one easy source.
Link to the article: tass.com/defense/1750919
It should indeed be very much taken under consideration that the offensive was planned by NATO, staffed largely by men trained by NATO, and mostly equipped with equipment from NATO.
He goes on to make some parallels in manpower and equipment between Operation Citadel I will not bore you with.
But the stated goal of the offensive was very clear.
Whomever decided that the bureaucrats do not know what they are doing and told them men to make the minefields twice as deep as needed is a hero.
This similar attitude by a Japanese engineer saved one Nuclear Power Plant from the Tsunami that hti Fukushima.
10k drone stockpile for the Russians before the offensive even took place. To say nothing of the other munition reserves.
There is a reason the Russians didn't do much for 2023, and that was it was preparing to meet this attack and stop it.
The strong Russian preparations, meant that the feints did not manage to achieve their desired effect of getting Russians to commit reserves in those areas, because the feints got beaten back as soon as they started by the zero line forces.
Yes crew survived is indeed a correct meme. But the not all did. But more importantly the equipment losses sustained by Ukraine were so great they could not be replaced with anything. Since Ukraine makes nothing, and the West already sent their best equipment.
Krynki Spa was a truly braindead move. An amphibious assault like that needs to hit hard and deep, moving heavy equipment into the beachhead to exploit it rapidly. It was known Ukraine lacked that capability, and still they went ahead with the offensive.
13.5k KIA/MIA
It should be noted that when he talks about losses here, he doesn't meant completely destroyed and killed, but rather killed and wounded for personal, destroyed and damaged (no longer combat effective) for equipment.
If we consider the Ukrainian offensive to be half a year, it would be around 25 or so FPV strikes per day. But the most intense fighting was early on, so you can suspect the daily FPV strikes were far more dense the first few days.
These weapons are truly changing warfare.
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