Originally Posted by
Obba
Might be an Elephant in the room question:
But if the Russian forces are being shown to be incompetent (as seen by many videos in this forum), and are under supplied with poor equipment - why hasn't Ukraine with all its 'new' tech weapons, good supplies, intel and high morale been making far more progress?
Ukraine hasn't seemed to be on any more large offensives lately since that last one a month ago.
First of all, the Kharkiv offensive was NOT a month ago. The Kharkiv offensive started on September 7th, 18 days ago, and they advanced extremely quickly until September 13th, just 12 days ago.
Second, usually attacking is a few times harder than defending. You can easily need 3 times more power to conduct an attack optimally, maybe even more. And as others mentioned, after such a quick progress, that almost nobody anticipated, they had to secure the areas they liberated, organize supply lines, the troops need rest, etc. You can't continually advance at full speed.
Third, the Russians were a bit taken by surprise by that offensive. Now the element of surprise and the panic among the Russians is less of a factor, so it's harder to progress.
Fourth, the rainy season started, which creates mud, so it's harder to attack over fields, forests, etc. They have to travel mostly on the roads, which makes things easier for the defenders.
Fifth, even in the last 12 days, the advances in Kharkiv, and northern Donetsk have not been negligible. At the moment they seem to have managed to almost completely encircle Lyman, the last important city in northern Donetsk.
And finally, Ukraine didn't receive as much equipment as they would have wanted from the west. In many categories, the main supplier of equipment for Ukraine so far has been Russia, considering all the abandoned or captured Russian equipment in this war.