Three lines of defence
A Washington Post report last week suggested that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is unlikely to reach its key objectives anytime soon.
“The US intelligence community assesses that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol; Kyiv won’t fulfil its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push,” the report says, citing sources.
Such a bleak assessment may cause officials in Kyiv and Western capitals to wonder how a counteroffensive armed with tens of billions of dollars worth of Western weapons and military equipment could fall so short of its goals. What is to blame for Ukraine’s counteroffensive faltering and why is a blitzkrieg unlikely at this point?