I saw a youtube video put out by Hindustan Times, that made a lot of sense, about Ukraine. The bias reports for the HT usually are centrist to lean right. I don't see any reason to doubt these conclusions. What they are saying is that all of the prep Russia did the winter before last obviously helped stop Ukraine from advancing in their spring/summer offensive last year. This is what caused it to essentially stall and/or move very slowly. This is not a new fact. What is a new observation though, is that this hasn't been done during that winter, or in the times following that winter, by Ukraine.
The reasons? One, the government didn't have enough equipment to do it very well, nor did they request any of that equipment from the world. And two, they were too focused on the battle front. They didn't think they would ever have to retreat like that in the future. Poor planning to say the least.
Now they are unprepared for this retreat. When the weapons arrive, whether it is too late or not, it will still be too late. Because the weapons and ammo will not allow the many small & necessary retreats caused by this delay, to contain themself. When you don't prepare and fortify the land beforehand with trenches and explosives, a small retreat becomes a bigger and bigger retreat, until you are running for your lives, or laying down arms to surrender.
They are trying to do it desperately now while they are already in small retreats. But they are having soldiers with shovels doing the work that should be being done with bulldozers. They are not digging the ditches deep enough, or fortifying them well enough. They are doing the job at an inordinately slow pace, and not doing the job properly, because they are doing it by hand and doing it too late.
All this, while the # of soldiers are dwindling to not enough for the front lines. While they are having manpower problems, they are having to further delapidate the front lines. They are having to appropriate a very limited # of men to do this work, very close to the front lines, while they are beginning small retreats. This all should have been being done during the last year to year and a half. You really can't wait till the last minute for this type of preparation. It just brings the end more quickly, and more inevitably.
Sounds as if the Marjorie Taylor Greene's & Matt Gaetz's have done their slightly obscured bidding for Putin after all. All due to poor planning on Ukraine's part. They were very ingenuitive in how they attacked, just not in their defense.
