The Russo-Ukrainian War
A Six Month Retrospective
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 6park.com

Big Serge
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Napoleon quipped that God was always on the side with the best artillery
With
 the Russo-Ukrainian War now rolling on into its seventh month, I 
thought this might be as good a time as any to put together a more 
extensive analysis than the twitter format allows. What follows will be 
my assessment of what exactly the Russian Armed Forces have achieved, 
why they made specific operational choices, and the general shape of the
 battlefield today.
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But
 first, I will indulge in a brief paragraph about myself. Feel free to 
skip this and proceed to the first section heading below.
I am a 
luddite by nature and have never had any sort of social media presence. 
However, when the Russo-Ukrainian War began in February, I was alarmed 
by the amateurish, even clownish levels of analysis that were being 
amplified by the typical establishment channels. Public figures that 
contravened the collective wisdom, like Colonel Douglas MacGregor or 
Scott Ritter, were largely ignored. It seemed to me that the public was 
being memed into believing a story about cartoonish Russian 
incompetence, while what I saw was a lethal and locked-in Russian 
military waging an intelligent war. I will freely confess to having 
Russophilic tendencies, like many American Orthodox Christians. However,
 I will also bluntly say that when you’ve read as much military history 
as I have, you begin to see things a certain way – perhaps this is 
bragging, but I don’t think so. I don’t claim to be smarter than anybody
 else; I did spend the last fifteen years extensively reading in 
subjects that gave me a strong base of knowledge for the current moment,
 but it seems to me that I simply got lucky picking a hobby that would 
one day be so relevant.
So, I created a twitter account hoping to 
contribute to the discussion however I could, as well as to capitalize 
on the current fascination with war to talk about military history. 
People seem to like it, so I’ll try to keep doing it.
Now, let’s 
talk about the war. A great deal has been said, and will be said, about 
the causes of the war and Russia’s motives and aims in Ukraine, but I 
would like to skip this and proceed directly to discussing the operation
 itself.
How I Think About War 6park.com
We
 should begin by acknowledging that the Russo-Ukrainian War is a novel 
experience for humankind. This is the first high intensity war between 
peer states to occur in the social media age. The content and pace of 
the information hitting the internet has therefore from the first moment
 been an aspect of the conflict itself. Ukraine, which is almost 
entirely dependent on foreign financing, intelligence, and weaponry, has
 from the beginning been hard at work shaping the story of a plucky 
underdog showing unexpected resilience against a barbaric invader.
All
 the basic motifs of this story have been well established from early 
on, and have been continuously reinforced with an unending barrage of 
pictures depicting burning vehicles which we are assured are all 
Russian.
Ultimately, Ukraine’s ability to shape the narrative has been aided and abetted by four major facets of the information war:
 Russia has done little to contest Ukraine in the information space.
 Ukraine enthusiasts eagerly propagate Ukrainian claims, no matter how 
absurd, but the information coming from the Russian side mostly takes 
the form of dry briefings from the MOD. Ukraine is playing a Marvel 
movie, Russia is putting on a webinar.
Russia’s operational plans are a secret. This
 very fact allows the Ukrainian side to interpolate their aims, putting 
words in Russia’s mouth, as it were. This is how we got to the claim 
that Russia expected Kiev to fall in three days, but more generally the 
inherent uncertainty in war favors the side with the more aggressive 
propaganda arm.
 People, to put it bluntly, don’t know anything about war.
 They don’t know that armies use up lots of vehicles in a high intensity
 conflict, and so a picture of a burning tank seems very important to 
them. They had never heard of MLRS before this year, so the HIMARS seems
 like a futuristic wonder weapon. They don’t know that ammo dumps are a 
very common target, so videos of big explosions seem like a turning 
point.
Finally, Ukraine has enjoyed the enthusiastic collaboration of western governments, government-controlled “thinktanks” like the Institute for the Study of War, and western media.
Through
 the interaction of these factors, people are being barraged with 
information which they are not equipped to interpret, and the sheer 
noise has convinced most people that Ukraine is, if not winning 
outright, at the very least badly frustrating the Russian army and 
exposing Russian incompetence.
I am not interested in a pictures 
of scrap metal, vehicle wrecks, or flat tires. What I am interested in 
is the ability of armies to deliver sustained and effective firepower, 
and to intelligently plan and implement operations. The basic objective 
in war is to destroy the enemy’s fighting power – it’s not to raise a 
flag in the center of Kiev and it’s not to claim nominal control over 
empty territory. Wars are won by destroying the enemy’s ability to offer
 armed resistance, and my belief is the Russians are prosecuting an 
intelligently designed operation that has them well on course to destroy
 the Ukrainian Army and achieve their political objectives.
Allow me to walk you through my interpretation of the Russian operational scheme.
The Kiev Thunder Run 6park.com
Nothing
 did more to confuse mainstream narratives than Russia’s rapid move to 
the environs of Kiev in the opening days of the war. This remains a 
jumble for most people – the Gostomel airport operation, the 40-mile (or
 was it 4, or 400? Nobody can remember) column of vehicles on the 
highway, the Ukrainians arming the general populace, then claiming that 
the ensuing crossfire was a Russian attempt to storm the city, and 
finally the Russian withdrawal. It’s a clutter of disjointed happenings,
 and the bedrock of the lie that will not die – the “three-day 
operation” meme.
I’ll tell you what I think Russia was attempting to accomplish, and what I think happened.
Let’s
 first dispense with the silly theory that Russia wanted to “capture” 
Kiev. Really, “capture” is one of those buzzwords that get thrown 
casually around without people really thinking about what it means. The 
Kiev metropolitan area is home to nearly 3.5 million people, and as the 
capital it is a stronghold of Ukrainian security organs. Capturing a 
city doesn’t just mean blasting your way to the city center; this isn’t a
 game of tag. Capturing means controlling, policing, countering 
insurgency, and asserting political control. The force that Russia 
brought to bear around Kiev was clearly insufficient for this task. 
Furthermore, in the opening phase of the war, Russian forces 
consistently bypassed urban areas, except for in the south and the east –
 more on that in a bit.
Now, it certainly seems rational to assume
 that the Russians harbored at least some hope that the sudden 
appearance of a substantial Russian forces on the doorstep would spook 
Kiev into surrender, or perhaps political fragmentation. That did not 
happen – in fact, the Ukrainian political center has largely held thanks
 to intensive intervention from western sponsors, who have propped up 
the regime with cash injections and material aid. Let’s clarify what 
this means though – Russia may have hoped for a very short war, but this
 outcome was always contingent on Ukraine lacking the political will to 
fight. There is no evidence that the Russian military believed they 
could “conquer” Ukraine in three days, three weeks, or three months. 
That’s a silly thing to even say.
So, what was the military 
rational for the move on the Kiev region? I believe that in the broadest
 sense the intention was to disrupt Ukrainian deployment, and that the 
Russian army succeeded in this objective. Let’s look at the specifics.
As
 I just mentioned, Russian forces in the opening phase opted to bypass 
urban areas, and never made meaningful attempts to enter or occupy Kiev,
 Kharkov, or Sumy. They did, however, enter cities in the south and the 
east, including Kherson, Melitoipol, Berdyansk, and of course Mariupol. 
The conduct of the war was radically different in the two theaters. In 
the north, Russian forces moved fast and hard, staying out of urban 
areas, and making no attempts to consolidate control of the territories 
they were passing through; in the south, the movements were more 
methodical, urban areas were cleansed, and the Russians actually 
deployed the administrative, humanitarian, and policing tools needed to 
digest and eventually annex captured territory.
It’s very obvious 
that in some parts of Ukraine – Donestk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia, and 
Kherson oblasts, the Russians came to stay, and in others – Kiev, and 
Sumy – they did not. Everything that occurred around Kiev should 
therefore be viewed in light of what happened in the south.
On the
 operational level, what Russia achieved with its drive on Kiev was the 
paralysis of Ukrainian deployment which allowed for the relatively 
unhindered capture of key nodes in other theaters. The early phases of 
Ukrainian mobilization were hectic and scattered, largely because it was
 unclear what the focal point of the Russian operation was. There were 
fears that Kharkov would be taken, that Odessa might come under 
amphibious assault, or that Kiev itself was about to be stormed. 
Zelensky even dramatically told the world that the fate of Kiev was 
about to be decided - but of course, the Russian army never actually 
tried to enter the city.
With multiple axes of advance and missile
 strikes all over Ukraine, the AFU were very clearly paralyzed in the 
opening days of the war. But the Russian presence near Kiev had one 
particularly important implication for Ukrainian mobilization.
People
 following the battles around Kiev in the first month of the war 
probably noticed three place names coming up regularly – Gostomel (the 
site of the airport operation), Irpin, and Bucha. If you aren’t familiar
 with Ukrainian geography, you may not realize that these three cities 
are all suburbs of Kiev that are directly contiguous with each other: 
from the northern tip of Gostomel to the southern edge of Irpin is only 
about seven miles. They make up one continuous urban area, and they 
happen to lay immediately to the north of the E40 highway, which is the 
main east-west arterial of Ukraine. Russian forces sat on this for most 
of March, blocking E40, forcing Ukraine to keep forces tied up around 
Kiev, and totally preventing Ukraine from contesting the capture of key 
objectives. 6park.com


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Let’s briefly talk about the Gostomel airport operation.
 The narrative being spun by the Ukrainian propaganda machine is that 
Russian airborne units attempted to capture the Gostomel airfield so 
that additional units could be brought in by air for an assault on Kiev.
 Furthermore, they maintain that the Russian paratroopers (VDV) were 
annihilated. This is utter nonsense.
For starters, we
 should remember that just a day into the war, the Ukrainians told the 
world that they had destroyed the Russian airborne forces at Gostomel. 
Taking this claim at face value, a CNN news team actually drove out to 
the airport and found… VDV, in control of the perimeter.
 The VDV, knowing that CNN isn’t important, allowed the camera crew to 
hang around for a bit filming them. Yet, despite CNN broadcasting live 
that the Russians were in full control of the airport, people still are 
under the impression that they were annihilated. Very strange. 6park.com


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CNN’s
 prepared chyron identified this as a “Ukraine defensive position” - the
 confused reporter instead found VDV guarding the perimeter 
Furthermore,
 it is absolutely bizarre to believe that the Russians intended to take 
Kiev by landing forces at the airport. It was claimed that Russia had 18
 IL-76 transports loaded up to deposit forces at Gostomel, but these 
planes would not even be sufficient to carry a single Battalion Tactical
 Group. So, why go for the airport?
Red Army operational doctrine 
classically called for targeted paratrooper assaults to be conducted at 
operational depths, for the purpose of paralyzing defenses and tying up 
their reserves. If, as I believe, the main purpose of the drive on Kiev 
was to block the city from the west, obstruct the E40 highway, and 
disrupt Ukrainian deployment, then a paratrooper assault on Gostomel 
makes perfect sense. By inserting forces at the airport, the VDV ensured
 that Ukrainian reserves would be tied up around Kiev itself. Russian 
ground forces needed to make a 60 mile dash south to reach their 
objectives in Kiev’s western suburbs, and the VDV operation at the 
airport prevented Ukraine from deploying forces to block that advance to
 the south. It worked; the VDV held the airport until they were relieved
 by Russian ground forces, who linked up with them on February 25. As an
 added bonus, they managed to destroy the airport itself, rendering 
Ukraine’s primary cargo airfield in the Kiev region inoperable.
During
 the month of March, while the world was fixated on Kiev, Russia 
captured the following major objectives, which collectively had huge 
implications for the future progress of the war:
On March 
2, Kherson surrendered, giving Russia a stable position on the west bank
 of the Dnieper and control of the river’s delta.
On March 12, Volnovakha was captured, creating a secure road connection to Crimea.
On
 March 17, Izyum was captured. This city is critically important, not 
only because it offers a position across the Severodonetsk River, but 
also because it interdicts the E40 highway and rail lines connecting 
Kharkov and Slavyansk. Izyum is always fated to be a critical node in 
any war for eastern Ukraine – in 1943, the Soviets and Germans threw 
whole armies at the narrow sector around Izyum and Barvenkovo for a 
reason.
By March 28, Russian forces had pushed deep into 
Mariupol, breaking continuous Ukrainian resistance and setting the stage
 for the starving out of the Azov men in the Azovstal plant.
In
 other words, by the end of March the Russians had solved their 
potential Crimean problems by securing road and rail links to the 
peninsula, stabilizing the connection to Crimea with a robust land 
corridor. Meanwhile, the capture of Izyum and Kupyansk created the 
northern “shoulder” of the Donbas. They achieved all of this against 
relatively weak resistance (with the exception of Mariupol, where Azov 
fought fiercely to avoid capture and war crimes charges). The AFU would 
surely have loved to deny Russia the capture of the critical transit 
node at Izyum, but they could do little to contest the city’s capture, 
because the E40 highway was blocked, their forces were pinned down 
around Kiev and Kharkov, and their decision making was paralyzed by the 
octopus tentacles reaching into the country from all directions.
While
 all of this was going on, the Russian forces near Kiev were engaged in a
 series of high intensity battles with units from AFU Command North, 
dishing out extreme levels of punishment. A premature attempt to 
dislodge the Russians from Irpin was badly mauled. Russian forces were 
able to trade at excellent loss ratios around Kiev while serving the 
broader operational purpose of paralyzing Ukraine’s mobilization and 
deployment so that the Azov Coast and the northern shoulder of the 
Donbas could be secured.
It is my view that this was a 
fantastically successful operation that solved the logistical problem of
 a land bridge to Crimea while positioning the Russian armed forces well
 for further success in the east. Once key objectives had been achieved 
on other fronts, the pinning operation was no longer needed and Russian 
forces withdrew for rest and refitting. It is not a coincidence that the
 beginning of the Russian withdraw coincided with the capture of Izyum 
and the beginning of the endgame at Mariupol.
It’s worth noting 
that less than a week before Russia began its withdrawal from the Kiev 
suburbs, the head of the Kiev Regional Military Administration 
explicitly stated that no offensive actions could or would be undertaken
 to eject the Russian army from Bucha. Ukraine was still in a defensive 
stance around Kiev when the Russian withdrawal began. This was a 
voluntary withdrawal prompted by the completion of key objectives 
elsewhere in the country – it was not a retreat forced by Ukrainian 
counterattacks.
Summary: Russia had no 
intention of “storming”, “capturing”, or “encircling” Kiev. The 
objective of this first phase was to block Kiev from the west, in 
particular the E40 highway, disrupting Ukraine’s mobilization and 
preventing the deployment of forces to contest the capture of northern 
Donbas nodes (Izyum) and the land bridge to Crimea. They succeeded and 
inflicted serious casualties on the AFU in the process, before 
withdrawing due to the completion of stage 1 objectives.
The Donbas Grind 6park.com
After
 the completion of the first operational phase, marked by the successful
 consolidation of a land corridor to Crimea and the capture of the 
northern edge of the Donbas salient, Russia enjoyed an operational pause
 to rest, refit, and prepare for the second phase of the war, which has 
focused on liberating the territories of the LNR and DNR and – above all
 – grinding Ukrainian manpower down.
Let’s make a brief note about
 the nature of the Donbas itself. This is a region that is rich in 
natural resources, and during the Soviet era it enjoyed substantial 
investment that built it up into an industrial powerhouse. As a result, 
this is by far the most urbanized and populated region in Ukraine. 
Donetsk Oblast is not only the most populous oblast in Ukraine, it’s a 
full 33% more populous than Dnipropetrovsk, which is next on the list. 
It is also by far the most densely populated oblast. This is a dense web
 of towns, mid-sized cities, factories, mines, and forests – not at all 
like the open fields that characterize Ukraine.
The urbanized 
nature of the Donbas necessitates an attritional, positional approach. 
Ukrainian forces have spent much of the last eight years turning the 
towns around Donetsk into fortresses – many of these towns are long 
devoid of civilian residents and have been transformed into concrete 
strongpoints. Russian operational logic has always dictated that 
progress through the Donbas would be slow and methodical, for a few 
reasons.
First and foremost, Russia is waging an economy of force 
operation, which means making maximally efficient use of infantry – by 
far the scarcest resource in the Russian arsenal. They have augmented 
infantry forces with Wagner Private Military Contractors, DNR and LNR 
forces, and Chechens, using regular Russian infantry only sparingly. 
Instead, they prefer to lean on their massive advantage in artillery to 
shred Ukrainian positions before they even consider an approach.
The most vivid description of the Russian methodology in the Donbas came from Ukrainian war reporter Yuri Butusov, who published the following description of the defense of Piski – a key fortified strongpoint near Donetsk:
“Peski.
 The meat grinder… As I wrote earlier, 6,500 shells on one f**king 
village in less than 24 hours. It’s been like this for six days now, and
 it’s hard to fathom how any number of our infantry remain alive in this
 barrage of fire…. We almost do not respond. There is no counterbattery 
fire at all, the enemy without any problems for himself puts artillery 
shells in our trenches, takes apart very strong, concrete positions in 
mere minutes, without a pause and minimal rest squeezing our line of 
defense… It’s a f**king meat grinder, where the batallion simply holds 
back the assault with its own bodies… huge numbers of our infantry are 
ground up in one day… All the reserves disperse, the military equipment 
goes up in flames, the enemy approaches and takes our positions without 
any problems after another barrage of artillery.”
Needless
 to say, the Ukrainians lost Peski. It is now in Russian hands. This is 
the process that is being repeated ad infinitum in the Donbas. Ukraine’s
 advantages, as such, are a tremendous edge in human resources 
(Ukrainian manpower probably holds at least a 4 to 1 edge over Russians)
 and the ability to sit in built up defenses. Russia is nullifying this 
with patience and a tremendous edge in all types of firepower, including
 tube artillery, rocketry, and air power.
The final argument by 
the Ukrainians, always, is that even though they are losing key 
positions and even important cities – Mariupol, Severdonestk, 
Lysychansk, and so on – the Russians are taking horrible casualties. 
This simply makes no sense – not to be blunt, but it’s unclear how 
exactly Russians are supposed to be dying in large numbers right now. 
Ukrainian artillery is massively outgunned, and the Ukrainian air force 
is nonexistent over the Donbas. The only way Russia could be taking 
severe casualties would be if they were rushing the assault on intact 
strongpoints, but it’s clear by now that this is not the case – 
Ukrainian reporters and soldiers who manage to evade censorship describe
 being pummeled by days on end of artillery before the Russians advance 
on them.
Russia will continue to grind the Ukrainians down with 
artillery, slowly but surely driving them from the Donbas. This is 
positional, attritional warfare, and it is allowing Russia to trade at 
absolutely absurd loss ratios. It is a simple transaction: Ukrainian 
manpower in exchange for time and Russian artillery shells. This is a 
trade that Russia will happily continue to make.
Slow Burn and the Economic Calculus 6park.com
A
 methodical, firepower heavy approach in the east suits Russia for 
reasons above and beyond the brutal military logic. One of the more 
interesting aspects of the war has been the extent to which the economic
 and financial calculus have boomeranged in Russia’s favor. There are 
two aspects to this; one related to Ukraine, and one to Russia and the 
sanctions against her.
Let’s start with the Ukrainians, and more 
specifically let’s start by remembering that it was not Russia, but 
western agencies that predicted rapid Ukrainian collapse. Ironically, 
this was the low-cost scenario for the west. In the event of a quick 
Ukrainian defeat, the west would be left supporting an insurgency – as 
the Taliban demonstrated, this is a very cost effective way to harass 
and harm a great power. Instead, Ukraine stayed upright for the moment 
and is stuck fighting a costly war of attrition that it cannot win.
This
 is very important – instead of cheaply funding and arming an 
insurgency, helping coordinate acts of sabotage and the like (something 
western intelligence agencies excel at), the west (mostly the United 
States and to a lesser extent the UK) is stuck financing a hemorrhagic 
Ukrainian state and attempting to prop up its armies. This is far more 
costly than an insurgency, both in pure dollar amounts and in the level 
of munitions and equipment that are being poured into Ukraine.
Already,
 we have seen plenty of evidence that the attempt to supply Ukraine is 
draining western inventories. Smaller NATO members have already sent 
much of the capability in their limited arsenals, but even more alarming
 is the acknowledgment that American stockpiles are being depleted. 
Leaked texts have revealed that active duty units are being stripped of 
weaponry for shipment to Ukraine, while a recent Wall Street Journal article claimed that US stockpiles of howitzer ammunition are “uncomfortably low.”
Meanwhile, analysis from the Royal United Services Institute
 (a UK based defense thinktank) came to the sobering conclusion that 
manufacturing in the west is too degraded and too expensive to keep up 
in a war like the one being fought in Ukraine right now. A few 
highlights of that report:
Annual American production of artillery shells is sufficient for only two weeks of combat in Ukraine.
Annual Javelin anti-tank missile production is, at best, sufficient for 8 days of combat.
Russia burned through four years worth of American missile production in the first three months of the war.
Russia
 so far has demonstrated that it can sustain its operations in Ukraine 
with ease; artillery activity in the east remains relentless (even with 
HIMARS systems hitting a few ammo dumps here and there), and the 
Russians have specially made a mockery of the relentless predictions 
that they are almost out of missiles. On Ukrainian Independence Day 
(August 24), the Russians launched the largest and most sustained 
missile attacks of the war, as if to deliberately mock those who 
predicted that the would be out of missiles by the start of summer.
In
 short, because Ukraine has little indigenous production and logistics, 
the west is bearing the actual industrial and financial burden of the 
war for them, and this burden is becoming far heavier than western 
planners expected. The logic of the proxy has been reversed; Ukraine has
 become a vampiric force, draining the west of equipment and munitions.
On
 the other side of the coin, the logic of sanctions rebounded strongly 
against the west. Western governments hoped that a rapid, all-in 
sanctions regime against Russia would crush the Russian economy and turn
 the Russian people against the war. The second part of this assumption 
was always silly – Russians blame the west, not Putin, for sanctions. 
Even more importantly, however, it is clear that Russia’s economic 
planning for this war bore tremendous fruit.
At the risk of 
massively oversimplifying the economics, the Eurasian vs Western 
economic rift that is emerging is a contest between a bloc that is rich 
in materials and a bloc rich in dollars. Attempts to financially 
strangulate Russia have so far failed, both due to the competence of 
Russia’s central bank, and due to the basic fact (which should be 
trivially obvious) that a county which makes its own energy, food, and 
weapons will always be difficult to pressure. The western sanctions 
regime was largely doomed from the start, because Europe simply cannot 
embargo the energy products that are the main source of Russian revenue.
Russia’s
 energy weapon remains the bomb in the heart of the EU. With all the 
“winter is coming” memes floating around, it can be easy to write this 
off as simply a figment of the internet. Far from it – small businesses around the EU are already closing in the face of crushing energy bills, energy intensive industrial sectors like smelting are shutting plants
 entirely. Europe is facing a perfect economic storm, as the Federal 
Reserve hikes rates, leading to a general tightening of financial 
conditions, energy prices explode into the stratosphere, and export 
markets dry up amid a global economic slowdown.
All of this
 is likely to tip over into a cataclysm over the winter. I would not be 
surprised to see a financial collapse and unemployment in the EU in 
excess of 30%. Given the fact that the EU is notoriously bad at solving 
problems of any kind, there’s a non-negligible chance more countries try
 to leave the EU. Spexit anyone?
Based purely on the economic 
trajectory, I believe Russia has absolutely no interest in ending the 
war this year. They are attriting Ukrainian manpower and dragging the EU
 to the precipice of the largest economic crisis since the Great 
Depression. America will be far better off, simply because it has its 
own indigenous energy supply and is generally wealthier and more robust 
than Europe in every way. But even if Americans won’t freeze and starve,
 contagion from European collapse promises economic difficulty for 
Americans already struggling under inflation. And in the end, because 
Ukraine is at this point completely dependent on the west for financial 
and material, a major economic blow to the west would also be 
catastrophic for the Ukrainian pseudo-state.
What Comes Next 6park.com
My
 overall prognosis is very simple: I believe that Russia has degraded 
Ukraine’s military capabilities beyond repair, and is now doing the 
methodical work of grinding away the rest, while forcing the west to 
bear the unexpected burden of propping up the Ukrainian state and army.
The
 actual intricacies of Russia’s operational plan of course remain a 
secret, but I believe there is a good chance that most of Ukraine east 
of the Dnieper will be annexed, as well as the entire Black Sea 
littoral. 6park.com


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The Big Serge Annexation Map
At
 a certain point, two things will happen that will accelerated the pace 
of Russia’s gains. First, Ukrainian military capability will be attrited
 to the point where they can no longer effectively offer static defense,
 as they are doing now in the Donbas. Secondly, western support for 
Ukraine will begin to dry up, at which point Ukraine will be exposed as a
 failed state that cannot function independently.
I have voiced my
 opinion that Ukraine would launch some sort of counteroffensive at some
 point, simply because the political logic dictates it. Ukraine is under
 intense pressure to prove that it can retake territory; if it cannot, 
then this entire war is, at best, an attempt to force a stalemate of 
sorts and limit the extent of territorial losses. Western sponsorship 
demands that Ukraine retake territory, and as of this writing they are 
attempting to do just that around Kherson.
Ukraine simply has no 
hope of success waging a successful, full scale offensive. For one 
thing, offensive actions are hard. It’s difficult to successfully 
coordinate multi-brigade action - so far in Kherson, they are struggling
 to concentrate more than a battalion at critical points. Russia has 
combined armed reserves, artillery advantages, and a tremendous edge in 
airpower. Ukraine cannot achieve strategic objectives - all they can do 
is trade the lives of their men for temporary tactical successes that 
can be spun into wins by their propaganda arm. 
The failure of the
 Kherson counteroffensive will accelerate progress towards the two 
tipping points, both by degrading the Ukrainian army further, and 
souring westerners on continuing to support Ukraine. Winter and the 
ensuing economic chaos will do the rest.