Ukraine War Update 9/7/23 - Crunch Time
4th quarter game six, summer championships.
There was a Drake song where he said: “Watch on my wrist never showed me crunch time, cause I ain't never let it come to that one time”. Cold line, but unfortunately it’s crunch time in Ukraine, September 22nd is the first day of fall.
Inconveniences
For majority of the Summer offensive, Ukraine was slowed down heavily by Russian defenses. But if you read my content, I always say something along the lines of: “Defense no matter how complex is usually just an inconvenience to a competent foe”. Also that playing defense should always be a temporary position.
The war was stuck like this for sometime, the Russians were happy that Ukraine could not penetrate their defenses and rightfully so.
These maps are from the end of July, keep the second one in your brain. While the Russian’s were happy with their defenses. I always knew that if you play defense on a long enough time frame eventually a determined enemy would figure you out. Ukraine was putting pressure on multiple points on the Russian defense lines simultaneously to see if they can find a weak point they can exploit, but for majority of the summer it seems like they were having a hard time finding that point but a few weeks ago something changed, they finally threw the spear. Either the saw the Robotyne area as the weakest point or they got desperate because the summer is about to end.
Ukraine decided to throw one of their best brigades into the fight, the 82nd Air Assault Brigade. Reportedly they have 90 US Strykers, 40 German Marders, 24 M113 infantry carriers, and 14 British Challenger tanks. They’re NATO trained and got plenty of armor and man did these guys do work, within 2 weeks these guys broke through Russian lines and went past the infamous tank ditches.
Crunch Time
Unfortunately for Ukraine their advantage is mobility, getting into a grind with Russia is not really what they want. September 22nd marks the beginning of fall and with that comes the mud season that Ukraine is well known for. Vehicles have a hard time maneuvering in the mud so the best time to fight in Ukraine is in the summertime and when everything freezes in the winter. During the other seasons you’re forced to mostly use roads or risk getting stuck.
For Ukraine’s offensive to be successful they have to make something big happen before the fall. They’ve broken through at Robotyne and that’s great but Russia is quickly relocating one of it’s best units the 76th Guards to defend that line. If you’re Ukraine this is what you want, this is what they wanted from the start. If Russia is redeploying troops it means you’re doing something right. You can use your other reserves to attack the gaps that are left by them. One breakthrough will not be enough though, you Risk getting hit from 3 sides… Ukraine is probably going to have to break another line like they did this one to spread out the Russians.
But unfortunately it’s the end of summer and there are way more defenses to beat, I’m not sure what you can do in a few weeks. But hey, maybe they know something we don’t, I’ll keep you updated.
