Ukrainian Armed Forces Reveal Loss of Chance to Take Control of Territory from Russia
(Baonghean.vn) - Newsweek (USA) quoted experts and soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces as saying that the country's army has lost the opportunity to take back territories from Russia. The attack will become useless in the fall and winter.
"Autumn rains and winter cold change everything..." said Major Viktor Tregubov, who serves in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the eastern Donetsk region.
Major Tregubov said the cold weather did not really "make people happier".
"If we talk about combat readiness, autumn rains and winter cold will change everything and limit the offensive capabilities of both sides," said Major Viktor Tregubov.
Newsweek commented that Ukraine’s summer offensive was always a race against time. It is believed that the effort was delayed by nine months because of delays in Western arms supplies. However, the Ukrainian army managed to regain Russian-controlled territory, albeit very little, and with much more difficulty than Ukraine’s political and military leaders had hoped.
Moreover, the weather has changed. Even the arrival of significant US military aid this week is not enough to counter the rain and mud.
“We should now acknowledge that Ukraine no longer has much of a chance of making significant and significant territorial gains as it outlined this summer,” said Frederik Mertens, a strategic analyst at the Hague Center for Security Studies.
Meanwhile, Oleisei Goncharenko, a member of parliament, said: "It's only been a few days since the weather got worse, but it's definitely harder to be in the trenches than in the summer." He said many Ukrainian soldiers had been in the trenches for nearly 20 months and "they're exhausted, tired."
"This is going to be a very harsh winter. We need to accept the truth," Goncharenko said.
Not only rain and heat hinder all operations, but mud also becomes a nightmare for soldiers. "When it starts to get cold and rain makes the ground soft and mushy, logistics become more complicated. But the enemy has the same problem," said Yury Fedorenko, commander of the Achilles drone company of the 92nd Mechanized Brigade based in Kharkov.
Researchers say the mud could choke off the deployment of 31 new Abrams tanks that Ukraine has received from the US. The heavy M1 Abrams tanks, which were donated by the US, will get bogged down with “limited mobility” in the muddy terrain. Other armored vehicles may even be needed to pull them out of the mud./.