The U.S. military is continuing its criticism of Ukraine's military strategy.
Ukraine’s Forces and Firepower Are Misallocated, U.S. Officials Say – NY Times
The main goal of the counteroffensive is to cut off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine by severing the so-called land bridge between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula. But instead of focusing on that, Ukrainian commanders have divided troops and firepower roughly equally between the east and the south, the U.S. officials said.
As a result, more Ukrainian forces are near Bakhmut and other cities in the east than are near Melitopol and Berdiansk in the south, both far more strategically significant fronts, officials say.
American planners have advised Ukraine to concentrate on the front driving toward Melitopol, Kyiv’s top priority, and on punching through Russian minefields and other defenses, even if the Ukrainians lose more soldiers and equipment in the process.
The criticism is correct. The attempt to regain Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) is wrong. But the conclusion from it, to push more forces towards the south, is – in my view – false.
The Deployment Map shows that there are significantly more Ukrainian units in the east than in the south.
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It was wrong for Ukraine to defend Bakhmut, a low laying road and rail center surrounded by hills. As soon as the hills had been taken by Wagner fighters Bakhmut was destined to fall into their hands. For months the government in Kiev pressed its military to hold the city. There was even some pop-song published that said "Bakhmut will hold". According to Wagner the Ukrainian lost some 70,000 men in the hopeless defense of Bakhmut. Wagner lost some 40,000 while taking it. A high price for both sides. But paying it could have been avoided by Ukraine if it had pulled back just a few miles to the west where a chain of hills around Chasiv Yar would have been a much more favorite defensive position.
To combine the much ballyhooed counter-offensive towards the south with a new push to regain Bakhmut was a serious mistake. The leadership of Ukraine had fallen for the sunk cost fallacy:
The sunk cost fallacy is the tendency for people to continue an endeavor or course of action even when abandoning it would be more beneficial. Because we have invested our time, energy, or other resources, we feel that it would all have been for nothing if we quit.
As a result, we make irrational or suboptimal decisions. The sunk cost fallacy can be observed in various contexts, such as business, relationships, and day-to-day decisions.
President Zelensky had promised that Bakhmut will not fall. After it had fallen he promised to regain it. But despite the high amount of forces used in both attempts there has been no progress. The Russian defense lines have held up. During 11 weeks of fighting only one small town near Bakhmut, Klichivka, has been retaken by Ukrainian troops. What the U.S. military wants Ukraine to do is to concentrate all forces on the southern front:
Only with a change of tactics and a dramatic move can the tempo of the counteroffensive change, said one U.S. official, who like the other half a dozen Western officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Another U.S. official said the Ukrainians were too spread out and needed to consolidate their combat power in one place.
Nearly three months into the counteroffensive, the Ukrainians may be taking the advice to heart, especially as casualties continue to mount and Russia still holds an edge in troops and equipment.
In a video teleconference on Aug. 10, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; his British counterpart, Adm. Sir Tony Radakin; and Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. commander in Europe, urged Ukraine’s most senior military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, to focus on one main front. And, according to two officials briefed on the call, General Zaluzhnyi agreed.
I smell another sunk cost fallacy here, this time by the U.S. military. It has invested in 'combined arms' thinking for more than 30 years. It pushed Ukraine to use this form of fighting in its southern attempts. That failed with high losses because Ukraine does not have air supremacy and too few means to break through the wide Russian mine fields. The U.S. military is now pushing for a new attempt that will again apply the already failed strategy with more troops.
The Ukrainian attacks around Bakhmut are to stop. Ukraine must concentrate on defending Chasiv Yar and the chain of hills around it. That will certainly relieve some troops which can be moved elsewhere. There are for example currently four artillery brigades near Bakhmut but only two on each of the two attempts in the southern direction. Adding two from Bakhmut might well help.
However, the progress on both attempts in the south is small. The length of the frontline that allow for breakthroughs and where fighting occurs is just a few miles. There are only few towns in the area that can accommodate and hide deployed forces. Pushing more forces down south will create dangerous concentrations that will be easy for the Russians to detect and to bomb and destroy.
I had previously explained why combined arms had become the favorite U.S. tactic and why it only works against forces that have a lack of air defenses. Combined arms attacks necessitate air supremacy. There is no way for Ukraine to achieve that.
The troops who are now around Bakhmut are not the best equipped of the Ukrainian army. They all have been fighting for months and with significant losses. To push these units, which lack arms and men, into a combined arms attack is a serious mistake.
There are military alternatives to attacking Russian defense lines.
The best is for Ukraine to move towards defense. Build multiple strong defensive lines along chains of hills and other favorite landscape features. Put roving commando troops in front of the lines to harass any attackers before they reach the defense line. Put the rest of the troops into the defense line and into reserve. It would be a mirror of Russia's current strategy that has worked so well for it.
Russia wants to take Donets. Defending it is the best way for Ukraine to make that costly. Running attacks against well prepared Russian defense lines is falling for a Russian attrition strategy. It will only decimate Ukrainian troops and equipment.
There are other alternatives which are even better.
Try to get to to a ceasefire or at least start negotiations for peace. A forever war is what the U.S. might want but it is the worst situation for Ukraine to be in:
Even if Kyiv does stage a successful operation against Russian forces in the future, it’s not clear it will lead to an end of the war. For one, Moscow may decide to launch its own counter-offensive to erase whatever gains Ukrainian forces have made, starting perhaps an endless cycle of military toing-and-froing. Or we could have a repeat of last fall, when Kyiv and its NATO backers, emboldened by the major gains made in Ukraine’s September counter-offensive, rejected the idea of talks to instead pursue “total victory,” at ultimately disastrous cost.
Even now, Ukrainian leaders and many of its Western supporters still maintain the maximalist goals of restoring the country’s pre-2014 borders, which includes retaking Crimea.
Ironically, a prolonged war is exactly what at least some NATO officials had hoped for from the start in order to trap Russia in its own Afghanistan-like blunder, with the New York Times reporting in March 2022 that the administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire.”
But a prolonged war will not be good for Ukraine, which has already suffered breathtakingly vast human and economic costs from a protracted war, and which falls further and further into debt with every month. And it will not be good for the rest of the world either, feeding into worldwide cost-of-living shocks while carrying the already twice-averted possibility of a catastrophic NATO-Russia war that could turn nuclear.
To push more troops into the southern attacks will, as the U.S. military admits, create many more losses in material and men. Ukraine can afford neither. While such an attack might make minor gains a chance to break through the prepared Russian defense lines, which it still has not reached, is hardly there.
An alternative is to change the strategy to do defensive actions.
An even better way is to sue for peace.
But the U.S. will not allow for that. The Biden administration has fallen for its own sunk cost fallacy. It has invested so much into its proxy war against Russia, in money, material and psychologically, that it will continue to invest more even when that is unlikely to lead to a better outcome.
Peace negotiations are inevitable. Delaying them increases the cost of the inevitable defeat.
