Text by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
Expert of the Center for Military-Political Journalism, author of the Telegram channel @boris_rozhin Boris Rozhin, especially for RT
[ColonelCassad] Forty days of the enemy’s offensive in the Zaporozhye direction, allows us to conclude that the initial plans for the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the support of NATO have failed in all directions of the main strikes.
In the Orekhovsky direction, the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine got bogged down in the area of Pyatikhatki and Rabotin, and in the area of the Vremevsky ledge, the enemy got stuck in the area of Priyutnoye, Makarovka, Urozhaynoye and Novodonetsky.
At the same time, most of these settlements, according to leaked operational documents of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, were supposed to be captured on the third - fifth day of the offensive and further develop attacks on Vasilyevka, Tokmak, Pologa, Volnovakha in order to achieve strategic goals related to access to Melitopol and breakthroughs to Berdyansk and Mariupol to cut the land corridor along the coast of the Sea of Azov.
It was under such plans that the Armed Forces of Ukraine transferred huge volumes of weapons during the winter and spring of 2023: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, MRAPs, self-propelled guns, towed artillery, aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles, engineering equipment. For this, for several months in Ukraine and in the West, strategic reserve brigades were trained, which were supposed to break through the Russian front and turn the tide of hostilities in favor of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
But the reality turned out to be different. The heroic and stubborn resistance of the Russian troops, coupled with competent work on the engineering preparation of defensive positions, thwarted the plans of the enemy. The Russian command deliberately gave the initiative to the enemy in the Zaporozhye direction, offering the Armed Forces of Ukraine to try to break through the layered defense in order to wear down and bleed the enemy's strike forces.
To some extent, this has already been done. Kiev has not squandered all the accumulated forces, but part of the shock brigades, assembled with such difficulty with the participation of the West, is already very exhausted, suffered heavy losses in people and materiel, which also led to a decrease in morale.
Moreover, having failed in the Zaporozhye region, which was also recorded in the West, the Armed Forces of Ukraine hastily tried to increase the load on the operation in the Artyomovsky direction, throwing part of the reserves there in order to achieve at least small successes.
Also, part of the reserves, which were supposed to develop success (which did not happen) in Zaporozhye, were thrown into the Svatovskoye and Kupyansk directions, but with a different task - to try to stop the advance of Russian troops to the Oskol River and Kupyansk.
This situation breaks the initial configuration of the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the most important sectors of the front. Of course, all this became so obvious that, following Western military analysts, the mainstream Western press, as well as the Ukrainian military themselves, who see the bloody results of the offensive with insignificant results, started talking about the failure of the June offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
And of course, questions arise for the Ukrainian command, which continues to drive people to “meat” assaults in order to achieve at least a media victory and justify the previous losses (only in the Zaporozhye direction, the irretrievable losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine amounted to almost 30 thousand people).
But in the end, the bloody price of a failed offensive continues to grow, which is especially evident in the battles in the area of the previously little-known village of Pyatikhatki.