General, what conditions must be met for a spring offensive by the Ukrainians?
Morten Freidel
Political editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
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The weather has to be right. That is the first prerequisite. The second is that the West supplies Ukraine with enough military equipment and trains Ukrainian soldiers on it. Then there are logistical preparations, Ukraine has to put together and train attack units. And finally, it must assess the capabilities of the Russian army as accurately as possible.
What should the weather be like?
At the moment we still have the mud period. It's been going on a little longer than is usually the case in Ukraine. As a result, heavy battle tanks are not yet able to move off the paved roads in the way that would be necessary for an offensive.
What could be the goals of a Ukrainian offensive?
The political goal is to restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The operational goals are obvious: the severing of the land bridge to the Crimea and thus the conquest of the Melitopol region. In the south, the Ukrainian aggressors also have the advantage of operating far from the Russian heartland. This will make Russian supplies difficult. The disadvantage is that the Russians have built up their defensive positions well here. In the north, it's the other way around. There, the defensive positions are weaker, so the Ukrainians have operational advantages. However, Russia is closer. So an offensive would be threatened from the flank or from the rear, just think of Belarus. Lastly, Ukraine can attack in the center, that is, in the Donetsk area. However, there has been fighting there for months, so there is old ammunition lying around and the infrastructure has been destroyed. I don't see much more possibilities than these three in the operational overview. Which path the Ukrainian General Staff chooses, of course, is up to him. Only he has all the necessary information for this.
How well did the Russians prepare?
I am at least skeptical that the Ukrainians will succeed in surprising the Russians this time, as they did in the fall. The Russians now know what their opponent is capable of, namely large-scale operations. Otherwise, they would not build three or four lines of defense in a row. Even in the Crimea, they built some. There is not only speculation behind it, but also knowledge: The Russians assess the forces of Ukraine in such a way that they could succeed in advancing by then.
In recently leaked secret documents, American military planners fear that Ukraine will not be able to achieve its goals in the upcoming offensive. It does not have enough troops and military equipment for this.
I am skeptical about this conclusion. The secret papers I've seen are from the end of February and give a forecast for the next few months. Since then, however, the Western allies have supplied some additional material. That's one thing. The other thing is that we only know a part of these papers. So we don't know the context in which the briefing took place as a whole for the US military leadership.
Do you think that very far-reaching assumptions may have been made, in the sense of a worst-case scenario?
That's right. It is quite common for risk analyses to be presented in such briefings, and none of this is apparent from these fragments.
Could the Ukrainians attack outnumbered Russian positions?
They won't do that. They will try to clarify the weak points of the Russians and see to it that they achieve local superiority.
How devastating would a failure of the offensive be for the further progress of the war?
The military leadership of Ukraine will not approach this in the wrong way, I consider them to be very level-headed. Last autumn, it was very careful not to make its own losses too great and to ensure that it only undertook what it had the means to do.
Real? Because in Bakhmut, despite high losses, the soldiers have to continue to hold out in the village and hold it.