When Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered his military commanders to prepare a major counter-offensive, they originally planned “a broad assault across the south to reclaim Kherson and cut off Mariupol from the Russian force in the east,” the NYT wrote, as cited by Polish state news agency PAP.
However, “The Ukrainian generals and American officials believed that such a large-scale attack would incur immense casualties and fail to quickly retake large amounts of territory,” according to the NYT.
Consultations with US, UK officials
The Ukrainian commanders then began working together with American and British military and intelligence officials on the planning for the counter-offensive.
A turning point came in the summer, “during a war game with U.S. and Ukrainian officials aimed at testing the success of a broad offensive across the south,” NYT said.
The exercise, which was reported earlier by the US broadcaster CNN, “suggested such an offensive would fail,” according to the NYT.
The newspaper quoted the Pentagon’s policy chief Colin Kahl as saying: ““We did do some modeling and some tabletop exercises. That set of exercises suggested that certain avenues for a counteroffensive were likely to be more successful than others. We provided that advice, and then the Ukrainians internalised that and made their own decision.”
In addition, intelligence supplied by the US showed “the position of Russian forces, highlighting weaknesses in the Russian lines,” NYT reported.
Moreover, the US intelligence “indicated that Moscow would struggle to quickly reinforce its troops in northeast Ukraine or move troops from the south, even if it detected Ukrainian preparations for the counteroffensive,” the newspaper noted.
Kahl said: “We saw the fact that the Russians actually relocated a lot of their best forces down to the south in preparation for the other counteroffensive that the Ukrainians kicked off.”
He added: “So we had reason to believe that because of the persistent morale challenges, and the pressure of the Ukrainians, that there might be pockets of the Russian military that are a little more brittle than they appear on paper.”
Attack in Kherson and Kharkiv regions
And so instead of one broad counter-offensive, the Ukrainian commanders proposed two, in Kherson and near Kharkiv.
This time, after another war game, officials from Ukraine, the US and UK agreed that the plan “would work — and give Mr. Zelensky what he wanted: a big, clear victory,” NYT wrote.
It “depended entirely on the size and pace of additional military aid from the United States,” the newspaper quoted an officer from Ukraine’s General Staff as saying.
The NYT noted that contrary to reports in some Western media, “The Kherson attack was never a feint or a diversion, according to people briefed on the plan.”
However, that counter-offensive “is moving more slowly given the much higher number of Russian forces there compared with Kharkiv.”
Yet “it has succeeded in forcing Moscow to delay sham votes on whether parts of the Kherson region want to join Russia,” the NYT reported, as cited by the PAP news agency.
Wednesday is day 203 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Source: PAP, nytimes.com