08/27/202
Ukraine is in its fourth summer of full-scale war. Despite the Kremlin’s expectations that Ukrainian defenses would fail, the Russian army’s large-scale summer offensive has failed.
Moscow failed to achieve key strategic goals and even revealed serious weaknesses in its own air defense system, Bild reports.
“Fortress” Pokrovsk withstood
Russian troops had been trying to take control of Pokrovsk since January, but all their assaults ended in failure. In early August, the occupiers briefly entered the city center, but within three weeks they were destroyed or captured.
“We are holding the city and have prepared some surprises for the Russians. The military situation is better than it looks on the maps,” the Ukrainian officer noted.
Kursk and Putin’s “buffer zone”
In late March, the Russians managed to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk after eight months of fierce fighting, using thousands of North Korean mercenaries, in an operation the publication called “the greatest disgrace of the Russian war.”
In response, the Kremlin announced the creation of a 600-kilometer “buffer zone” in three Ukrainian border regions. But by the end of the summer, Russia controlled only about 70 kilometers along the border and was under serious pressure. Here, too, Putin’s military forces had completely failed.
Failure in the South
The front remained stable in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, which Russia formally annexed in 2022. Attempts to advance failed, and in August Putin actually offered to scale back the operation in exchange for concessions from Kyiv regarding Donbas.
Ukrainian drones against Russian air defense
The most telling failure of the summer was the helplessness of Russian air defense. Ukrainian drones increasingly carried out strikes up to 1,200 km deep inside Russia, hitting oil refineries and infrastructure. Since the beginning of the year, about 17% of the production capacity of Russian refineries has been destroyed. This has led to fuel shortages, queues at gas stations, and rising prices inside Russia.
According to Bild, over the summer Russia seized only 1,800 sq. km of Ukrainian territory – just 0.3% of the country’s area. These figures were one of the arguments of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his readiness for ceasefire negotiations, but without fulfilling the Kremlin’s ultimatums.
Defense expert Gustav Gressel, in a comment to Bild, emphasized that the Ukrainian army remains combat-ready and is undergoing internal reorganization, while Russian forces are showing signs of exhaustion.
“In winter, when the ground freezes and the leaves fall from the trees, which means less protection from drones, the Russians will try a new offensive,” he warned.
Earlier, OBOZ.UA reported that the day before, ISW stated that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had advanced in the Lyman direction. There, Russia is mainly throwing poorly trained recruits into battle.
It was also reported that analysts doubt that the Russian army controls the territory near Dobropillya. Ukrainian units that arrived in the area to reinforce the units holding the defense there are stabilizing the situation.
I didn’t know their summer offensive had even started. If it was supposed to be in Sumy, that was a total disaster. If it was in the Pokrovsk direction, that didn’t fare much better.
Nothing the cockroaches do is worth a crap.