You are talking about this Ukrainian advance (map below)? Yeah, 6 miles due South is a massive offensive movement. They have this war won! Look at the map and what is to their South, East, and West. They have another 95 miles due South to conquer. Are tanks getting in there? How many Ukrainians died to take that 'small' amount of ground? How many Ukrainian soldiers are still left to fight in this conflict. ...and the Russian counteroffensive:
The Elastic defense:
In the current Russian defensive approach, a front line of troops most often meets the initial attack but then falls back to prepared defensive positions manned with other Russian troops.
The Ukrainians generally advance several hundred meters or up to a kilometer or so, taking losses from mines, artillery, and helicopter and/or drone strikes, and getting tired as they do. When the local Russian commander judges the moment to be right, Russian forces then launch a counterattack to push the Ukrainians back to their original positions, which often succeeds. This approach is generally optimal as it causes the attack to expend much of its power making initial small-scale gains against limited numbers of Russian defenders such that the Russian counter-attacking forces have a relatively easier time pushing them back. Russian forces have in some instances – particularly in early June – repelled Ukrainian attacks without needing to temporarily fall back, most often through the devastating use of anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) fired both by ground forces and Russian attack helicopters.
The elastic defense is tactically effective, but it puts a significant burden on the defenders. They have to receive the brunt of a prepared Ukrainian attack each time, withdraw in good order in the face of it, and then either motivate themselves or have a second line of forces motivated enough to launch and press a counterattack. The tactical engagement thus ebbs and flows in a very dynamic manner with a lot of moving and fighting that is concealed by the fact that the control lines on the map remain the same at the end of the day as they were at the start.
The elastic defense exhausts the attackers, as it is meant to, and inflicts losses on them without allowing them to make permanent gains. But it also takes a heavy toll on the defenders, who must remain motivated and able to continue to launch counterattacks from prepared and defensible positions each time. Exhaustion, losses, and demoralization can all undermine the willingness and ability of defenders to continue launching those counterattacks, especially when the same units and same soldiers have to keep doing it for weeks and months on end without relief, as is the case here because of the current Russian rotational policies.
* Get back to me when the Ukrainian Army runs out of soldiers in this conflict.
