Those discussions included engaging in “war games” with Kyiv, the sources said – analytical exercises intended to help Ukrainian forces understand what levels of force they need to muster to succeed in various scenarios.
Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told CNN that “the United States has a routine multi-level military dialogue with Ukraine. We will not comment on the specifics of these commitments. Broadly speaking, we provide Ukrainians with information to help them better understand the threats they face and defend their country against Russian aggression. Ultimately, the Ukrainians make the final decisions about their operations.”
Officials say they believe there is now increased parity between the Ukrainian and Russian militaries. But Western officials are hesitant to label the nascent Ukrainian operation — which appears to have begun Monday in the southern province of Kherson — as a true “counter-offensive.”
How likely Ukraine is to regain lost territory remains an open question, sources familiar with the latest intelligence told CNN. Ukrainian officials have already said that this offensive is likely to be a slow operation and that punishingly cold winter weather is coming, followed by early spring mud, both of which could force pauses in the fighting.
Still, there is a clear sense among U.S. and Western advisers to Ukraine that the Ukrainian military is on a much more equal footing with Russia than was believed even just a few months ago, multiple officials told CNN. Russia still maintains superiority in total manpower and massive artillery.
But Ukrainian capabilities, backed by sophisticated Western weapons and training, have closed an important gap, officials say — particularly the highly mobile artillery missile systems, or HIMARS, that Ukraine has used to launch attacks behind Russian front lines in recent months.
“It shows you what constant training and the provision of weapons can do when a force is highly motivated and able to operate,” a senior NATO official told CNN.
Another US military source put it more bluntly: Ukraine has offset Russia’s firepower advantage with its “competence.”
Growing momentum
Ukraine has publicly signaled for months that it intends to launch a major counteroffensive to regain territory lost to Russia in the six-month war. And even before Monday, as Ukrainian forces began increasing their artillery and missile fire along the front lines in southern Ukraine, Kyiv was actively disrupting Russian supply and command-and-control efforts in the region.
For weeks, Ukraine has used a mix of guerrillas, long-range fire and special operations forces to launch a series of attacks far behind Russian lines – including in Crimea – that have targeted logistics and command and control centers in preparation for a southern offensive .
“I don’t think it’s yet possible to confirm the extent of the Ukrainian advance, but it has certainly affected Russia’s ability to move north and south through [the Dnieper River] with their attacks on bridges,” the senior NATO official said on Wednesday. “And in terms of future prospects, I would note that Ukraine is much closer to parity in troop numbers in Kherson than it has been in recent weeks” in the eastern provinces of the country where fighting has been going on for months.
The attacks in Crimea were a particularly smart strategy, one official said, because Russia uses the peninsula as a launch pad for its operations in southern Ukraine.
Russia has also been forced to withdraw resources from the east “simply because of reports that the Ukrainians may be moving more toward an attack in the south,” John Kirby, communications coordinator for the National Security Council, said Monday.
“And so they had to deplete certain units…in certain areas east in the Donbass to respond to what they clearly believed was a looming threat of a counteroffensive,” Kirby said.
A narrower mission
U.S. and Ukrainian sources told CNN that earlier plans for the Ukrainian operation were initially broader and included more ambitious efforts to retake other territories lost to Russia’s invasion over the past six months, including the southeastern city of Zaporozhye.
But by Monday, Ukrainian officials appeared focused on capturing the Kherson region.
An administration official told CNN that in recent months, Ukraine has asked the US for weapons specifically suited to its planned southern counteroffensive. The U.S. has met many of those requests — including additional ammunition, artillery and spears — in the course of several presidential withdrawal aid packages granted to Ukraine over the past two months, the official said.
The planning exercise also helped the United States better understand what kind of equipment, munitions or intelligence it could offer that would be most useful to Ukraine. During the war, the US regularly provided Ukraine with military advice and intelligence, along with billions of dollars worth of equipment and weapons.
“Slow Operation to Grind the Enemy”
Officials say Ukraine now appears more evenly matched with Russian forces, not only because of the modern Western weaponry Ukraine is using effectively, but also because the Ukrainians still have the advantage in terms of morale, unit cohesion, tactical acumen and superior ability to improvisation in motion.
They also have another advantage, two officials said: a population that is largely terrified of Russian occupation and willing to engage in guerrilla attacks to drive them out — such as assassinations and sabotage behind enemy lines.
Still, despite a more optimistic assessment of Ukraine’s fighting capabilities, US officials aren’t making any bets that Ukraine will successfully retake Kherson — yet.
“I’m not sure it’s going to be the big, massive counteroffensive that people might expect — it might be smaller forces,” a US military source warned. Much will depend on how well Russia is able to defend newly claimed territory, the source said – something it has yet to be called upon to do in the past six months.
An adviser to the Ukrainian president also warned that the offensive would be a “slow operation to grind down the enemy.”
“This process will not be very fast,” Oleksiy Arestovich, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, said in a statement posted on his Telegram account late Monday, “but it will end with the placement of the Ukrainian flag. over all settlements of Ukraine”.
Add Comment