Stephen Byren writes, correctly, that the purpose of the Russian offensive towards Kharkiv is to disintegrate the Ukrainian army:
To my mind, Russia’s objective is to force Ukraine’s army to chase after invading Russian units. The idea is to cause heavy casualties on the Ukrainian side and, if all goes according to plan, either to split Ukraine’s army into two, or disintegrate it altogether.
In such a manner the idea is not just to take territory but to destroy Ukraine’s ability to resist. There are many indicators that Russia is having success in the ongoing operation.
General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, (which includes foreign fighters and Nazis units,) agrees to that. He paints an bleak picture (archived):
Like most Ukrainian officials and military experts, General Budanov said he believes the Russian attacks in the northeast are intended to stretch Ukraine’s already thin reserves of soldiers and divert them from fighting elsewhere.
That is exactly what is happening now, he acknowledged. He said the Ukrainian army was trying to redirect troops from other front line areas to shore up its defenses in the northeast, but that it had been difficult to find the personnel.
“All of our forces are either here or in Chasiv Yar,” he said, referring to a Ukrainian stronghold about 120 miles farther south that Russian troops have assaulted in recent weeks. “I’ve used everything we have. Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone else in the reserves.”
The Ukrainian military has pulled out parts of various brigades that are engaged in the east and is moving them north towards the Kharkiv region. This will be a hodgepodge of partly filled battalions without a unified command and with nothing left to stuff any holes elsewhere.
Budanov correctly fears that Russian can and will repeat this game in other places:
General Budanov said he expected the attacks in the Kharkiv region to last another three or four days, after which Russian forces are expected to make a hard push in the direction of Sumy, a city about 90 miles to the northwest of Kharkiv. Ukrainian officials have previously said that Russia had massed troops across the border from Sumy.
Pavlo Velycho, a Ukrainian officer operating near the Russian border in the Sumy region, said that Russian shelling of the outskirts of Sumy had recently increased.
The Russian forces can easily progress because the money allocated for fortifications in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions was paid to fictitious companies without any trenches ever being build (machine translation):
Multi-million contracts for the construction of fortifications, for which they spent a total of 7 billion hryvnias there, were transferred by the Kharkiv OVA to front companies of avatars.
…
It so happened that the department of the Kharkiv OVA for defense purchases chose newly registered no-name firms and FOPs. Moreover, the owners of these firms do not resemble successful businessmen and businesswomen-they have dozens of court cases, from whiskey theft to domestic violence against their husband and mother, some of them are deprived of parental rights and have had enforcement proceedings for loans in banks.Another interesting detail-it seems that these beneficiaries do not even know that they are millionaires. After all, they continue to work in shifts" in the fields " and factories.
The U.S. obviously fears that the Ukrainian army will not be able to hold its lines. Today Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrived on an unannounced visit in Kiev to shore up moral, or probably to arrange for a change in Ukraine's leadership:
Blinken, who arrived in Kyiv by train early on Tuesday morning, hopes to "send a strong signal of reassurance to the Ukrainians who are obviously in a very difficult moment," said a U.S. official who briefed reporters traveling with Blinken on condition of anonymity.
"The Secretary's mission here is really to talk about how our supplemental assistance is going to be executed in a fashion to help shore up their defenses (and) enable them to increasingly take back the initiative on the battlefield," the official said.
…
Blinken will reassure Ukrainian officials including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of enduring U.S. support and deliver a speech focused on Ukraine's future, the official said.
Blinken and Biden need the Ukrainian army to hold until the November election is over. It is unlikely that they can achieve that aim. Some pause on the battlefield would now be convenient but that requires to get rid of Zelenski.
U.S. media are emphasizing the $60 billion package passed by Congress for Ukraine. They neglect to explain that only $14.5 billion of that is actually going to Ukraine, half of it to keep the state solvent and the other half in form of weapons Ukraine might buy once they are build. The other money is designated to refill the U.S. military stockpile.
The real military help for Ukraine during the next months, in form of artillery and anti-air ammunition, will be minuscule.
There is nothing in there that can defend against the FAB glide bombs the Russian military is using in ever growing numbers to break up Ukrainian positions. The last three days have each seen Ukrainian losses at about 1,500 per day – double the usual count – with most of them occurring on the eastern front, not in the Kharkiv direction.
Currently the replacement rate through Ukrainian mobilization is said to be only 25% of the losses that are actually occurring.
Everyone knows that the war is coming to an end. That there will be a victor, Russia, and a lot of losers. The U.S. as well as the EU are now trying to find a face saving way to acknowledge that without admitting it.
The easiest way will be to blame Ukraine, and especially its President Zelenski, for having not listened to western advice during some of the hotter phases of the war (Bakhmut etc). "We gave them a chance and they blew it," will soon become the major tenor of official statements.
But in reality there never was a chance for Ukraine to defeat or even to weaken Russia. All numbers, capacities and people, pointed against that. Despite that fact it was pushed to its death by western delusion.
One hopes that its people, and others, will have learned from it.