Andere Überschrift: Selenskyj sabotiert sich selbst.
Selbst Russische Propaganda hätte es für zu absurd gehalten das Zelensky Zaluzhny mit Syrksy ersetzen würde.
Wieder ein Beweis mehr das Zelensky ein inkompetenter wannabe-Diktator ist.
Das lustige daran ist, dass durch das leak Zelensky mehr als genügend Daten im Ukrainischen Infospace sammeln konnte wie die Reaktion auf den Tausch ist und nicht nur war die Reaktion “Bitte lass es nicht wahr sein”, sondern sie war speziell “hoffentlich ist Syrsky nicht als Nachfolger geplant”.
Absoluter l-move. Das wird nach hinten losgehen und im Kreml knallen schon die Sektkorken.
Es ist eine Frage der Zeit bis die Bevölkerung und die Militärs aufbegehren. General Zalushny ist beliebter als Präsident Zelensky.
Entscheidungen müssen nachvollziehbar bleiben. Ein Machtkampf während einem Krieg ist fatal für die Moral der Bevölkerung.
Läuft nicht so bei der Ukraine. Erst gestern die Amis und jetzt das.
Traurig und vor allem gefährlich, allem voran für die Ukraine aber auch für Europa/uns.
Ich empfehle die Analyse der Zeit zu der Absetzung, die das ganze sehr viel nachvollziehbarer macht.
Kommt darauf an, wie es wirklich ankommt und wieso.
In WK2 haben die USA ständig Kommandeure gefeuert. Das war Teil der Strategie, um möglichst schnell die richtigen Leute auf die richtigen Posten zu bekommen. Da galt eine Auswechslung auch nicht als Karriereende.
Verallgemeinern lässt sich das zumindest nicht. Evtl braucht es nach zwei Jahren Krieg einen neuen Ansatz. Kommt halt darauf an wie es passiert.
Die Leute tun alle so als ob es unerhört ist den Befehlshaber in einem Laufenden Krieg auszutauschen. Über die Gründe können wir von außen nur spekulieren und ob Syrsky schlechter oder besser als Zalushny ist, ist auch unmöglich für uns zu sagen. Das wird jetzt nicht im Alleingang dafür sorgen das die Ukraine kollabiert.
In gewissen definitiv russisch lehnenden subreddits gingen angebliche leaks rum die protokolle zeigten in denen zalushny absolut kein respekt vor zelensky hatte
Also im sinne von vielen aich teilweise antisemitischen beleidigungen
Das problem ist aber nunmal dass er sehr beliebt ist
Was jetzt wirklich zu dieser Änderung beiträgt ist die fragen
Wenn es verletzter stolz oder machtklammern ist dann gute nacht
Wenn es wirklich Korruptionsbedenken sind dann trotzdem riskant
Es ist kein Skandal Generäle während eines laufenden Krieges auszutauschen. Wo die wahren Gründe für diesen Move liegen, darüber können wir nur spekulieren. Militärisch gesehen lief es in den letzten 12 Monaten aber nicht gut für Ukraine, und das kann man nicht nur auf fehlende Unterstützung des Westens schieben. Insbesondere die “Counteroffensive” hat signifikante Issues innerhalb der ukrainischen Armee offenbart. Demnach ist ein Austausch des Oberbefehlshabers durchaus eine vertretbare Handlung.
– wir haben keine Ahnung wie gut (oder schlecht) Zaluzhny als Armeechef ist. Er ist beliebt, aber das sagt erstmal wenig
– Wir haben genauso keine Ahnung wie gut oder schlecht sein Nachfolger sein wird
– Generäle als unersetzbar zu behandeln ist eine sehr schlechte Idee
– Die Auswirkungen werden sich sehr in Grenzen halten, die größten Probleme der ukrainischen Streitkräfte werden mit oder ohne Zaluzhny weiterhin gleich bleiben
Also ich finde die Kommentare hier etwas übertrieben. Egal wie gut der General ist, wenn er aktiv die Arbeit des Befehlsführers untergräbt, egal wie berechtigt, muss er ausgetauscht werden.
Vielleicht geht es nach hinten los, aber man kann keinen Krieg führen, wenn die zwei Chefs unterschiedlicher Meinung sind. Deswegen gibt es ultimativ nur einen Chef, Zelensky. Ansonsten endet man wie die Römer gegen Hannibal.
> In Ukraine, a different kind of frustration was building. “When we had a calculated timeline, yes, the plan was to start the operation in May,” said a former senior Ukrainian official who was deeply involved in the effort. “However, many things happened.”
> Promised equipment was delivered late or arrived unfit for combat, the Ukrainians said. “A lot of weapons that are coming in now, they were relevant last year,” the senior Ukrainian military official said, not for the high-tech battles ahead. **Crucially, he said, they had received only 15 percent of items — like the Mine Clearing Line Charge launchers (MCLCs) — needed to execute their plan to remotely cut passages through the minefields.**
> **And yet, the senior Ukrainian military official recalled, the Americans were nagging about a delayed start and still complaining about how many troops Ukraine was devoting to Bakhmut.**
> U.S. officials vehemently denied that the Ukrainians did not get all the weaponry they were promised. Ukraine’s wish list may have been far bigger, the Americans acknowledged, but by the time the offensive began, they had received nearly two dozen MCLCs, more than 40 mine rollers and excavators, 1,000 Bangalore torpedoes, and more than 80,000 smoke grenades. Zaluzhny had requested 1,000 armored vehicles; the Pentagon ultimately delivered 1,500.
> “They got everything they were promised, on time,” one senior U.S. official said. In some cases, the officials said, Ukraine failed to deploy equipment critical to the offensive, holding it in reserve or allocating it to units that weren’t part of the assault.
[..]
> “We’re sorry, but some of the vehicles we received are unfit for combat,” Zabrodskyi told Austin and his aides, according to a former senior Ukrainian official. He said the Bradleys and Leopards had broken or missing tracks. German Marder fighting vehicles lacked radio sets; they were nothing more than iron boxes with tracks — useless if they couldn’t communicate with their units, he said. Ukrainian officials said the units for the counteroffensive lacked sufficient de-mining and evacuation vehicles.
> Austin looked at Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. commander for Europe, and Lt. Gen. Antonio Aguto, head of the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, both sitting next to him. They said they’d check.
> The Pentagon concluded that Ukrainian forces were failing to properly handle and maintain all the equipment after it was received. Austin directed Aguto to work more intensively with his Ukrainian counterparts on maintenance.
> “Even if you deliver 1,300 vehicles that are working fine, there’s going to be some that break between the time that you get them on the ground there and the time they enter combat,” a senior defense official said.
> By June 1, the top echelons at U.S. European Command and the Pentagon were frustrated and felt like they were getting few answers. **Maybe the Ukrainians were daunted by the potential casualties? Perhaps there were political disagreements within the Ukrainian leadership, or problems along the chain of command?**
[..]
> The Ukrainian troops had expected minefields but were blindsided by the density. The ground was carpeted with explosives, so many that some were buried in stacks.** The soldiers had been trained to drive their Bradleys at a facility in Germany, on smooth terrain. But on the mushy soil of the Zaporizhzhia region, in the deafening noise of battle, they struggled to steer through the narrow lanes cleared of mines by advance units.**
> The Russians, positioned on higher ground, immediately started firing antitank missiles. Some vehicles in the convoy were hit, forcing others behind them to veer off the path. Those, in turn, exploded on mines, snarling even more of the convoy. Russian helicopters and drones swooped in and attacked the pileup.
> Troops, some experiencing the shock of combat for the first time, pulled back to regroup — only to attack and retreat, again and again on successive days, with the same bloody results.
> “It was hellfire,” said Oleh Sentsov, a platoon commander in the 47th.
> **By day four, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top commander, had seen enough. Incinerated Western military hardware — American Bradleys, German Leopard tanks, mine-sweeping vehicles — littered the battlefield. The numbers of dead and wounded sapped morale.**
[..]
> Zaluzhny told his troops to pause their assaults before any more of Ukraine’s limited weaponry was obliterated, a senior Ukrainian military official said.
> Rather than try to breach Russian defenses with a massed, mechanized attack and supporting artillery fire, as his American counterparts had advised, Zaluzhny decided that Ukrainian soldiers would go on foot in small groups of about 10 — a process that would save equipment and lives but would be much slower.
[..]
> Some of the Ukrainian soldiers thought the American trainers didn’t grasp the scale of the conflict against a more powerful enemy. “The presence of a huge number of drones, fortifications, minefields and so on were not taken into account,” said a soldier in the 47th with the call sign Joker. **Ukrainian soldiers brought their own drones to help hone their skills, he said, but trainers initially rebuffed the request to integrate them because the training programs were predetermined. Drone use was later added following Ukrainian feedback, a U.S. official said.**
> The U.S. program had benefits, Joker said, including advanced cold-weather training and how to adjust artillery fire. But much was discarded once real bullets flew. “We had to improve tactics during the battle itself,” he said. “We couldn’t use it the way we were taught.”
> U.S. and Ukrainian officials said they never expected that two months of training would transform these troops into a NATO-like force. Instead, the intention was to teach them to properly use their new Western tanks and fighting vehicles and “make them literate in the basics of firing and moving,” a U.S. senior military official said.
[..]
> But weeks passed with no order to attack. Many in the unit felt the element of surprise had been lost. The political leadership “shouldn’t have been announcing our counteroffensive for almost a year,” said one unit commander in the 47th. “The enemy knew where we’d be coming from.”
> Milley and other senior U.S. military officers involved in planning the offensive argued for the Ukrainians to mass forces at one key spot in Zaporizhzhia, to help them overcome stiff Russian defenses and ensure a successful breakthrough in the drive to Melitopol and the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainian plan, however, was to push on three axes — south along two distinct paths to the Sea of Azov, as well as in eastern Ukraine around the besieged city of Bakhmut, which the Russians had seized in the spring after a nearly year-long battle.
> Ukrainian military leaders decided that committing too many troops to one point in the south would leave forces in the east vulnerable and enable the Russians to take territory there and, potentially, in Kharkiv to the northeast.
[..]
> To split the Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian marine brigades at the western edge of the neighboring Donetsk region would push south toward the coastal city of Berdyansk. That left the 47th and other brigades, part of what Ukraine referred to as its 9th Corps, to attack along the counteroffensive’s main axis, toward Melitopol.
> The plan called for the 47th, and the 9th Corps, to breach the first Russian line of defense and take Robotyne. Then the 10th Corps, made up of Ukraine’s paratroopers, would join the fight in a second wave pushing south.
> **“We thought it was going to be a simple two-day task” to take Robotyne,** said the commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle who goes by the call sign Frenchman.
[..]
> But assessing Kyiv’s approach and urging changes was a delicate task. One officer who did so was Gen. Christopher Cavoli, who as head of the U.S. European Command oversaw much of the Pentagon’s effort to train and equip Ukraine’s army. Milley, by contrast, often struck a more optimistic, motivational tone.
> **Cavoli, however, couldn’t reach Zaluzhny during part of the summer, a critical phase of the counteroffensive, three people familiar with the matter said.** Cavoli declined to comment on the issue. A senior Ukrainian official noted that Zaluzhny spoke to Milley, his direct counterpart, throughout the campaign.
> **By August, Milley too had begun to air some frustration. He “started saying to Zaluzhny: ‘What are you doing?’” a senior Biden administration official said.**
[..]
> The Ukrainians were insistent that the West simply wasn’t giving them the air power and other weapons needed for a combined arms strategy to succeed. “You want us to proceed with the counteroffensive, you want us to show the brilliant advances on the front line,” said Olha Stefanishyna, deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine. **“But we do not have the fighter jets, meaning that you want us to throw our soldiers, you know, and accept the very fact that we cannot protect them.”**
> When allies said no, she said, “we heard … ‘We are fine that your soldiers will be dying without support from the sky.’”
[..]
> U.S. military officials pressed their case. They said they understood the logic of preoccupying Russian forces at different points on the front, but argued that deep advances would not come unless the Ukrainians massed more forces at a single point to move quickly and decisively.
> Zaluzhny, in response, laid out the challenges in stark terms: no air cover, more mines than expected, and a Russian force that was impressively dug in and moving its reserves around effectively to plug gaps.
16 comments
Andere Überschrift: Selenskyj sabotiert sich selbst.
Selbst Russische Propaganda hätte es für zu absurd gehalten das Zelensky Zaluzhny mit Syrksy ersetzen würde.
Wieder ein Beweis mehr das Zelensky ein inkompetenter wannabe-Diktator ist.
Das lustige daran ist, dass durch das leak Zelensky mehr als genügend Daten im Ukrainischen Infospace sammeln konnte wie die Reaktion auf den Tausch ist und nicht nur war die Reaktion “Bitte lass es nicht wahr sein”, sondern sie war speziell “hoffentlich ist Syrsky nicht als Nachfolger geplant”.
Absoluter l-move. Das wird nach hinten losgehen und im Kreml knallen schon die Sektkorken.
Es ist eine Frage der Zeit bis die Bevölkerung und die Militärs aufbegehren. General Zalushny ist beliebter als Präsident Zelensky.
Entscheidungen müssen nachvollziehbar bleiben. Ein Machtkampf während einem Krieg ist fatal für die Moral der Bevölkerung.
Läuft nicht so bei der Ukraine. Erst gestern die Amis und jetzt das.
Traurig und vor allem gefährlich, allem voran für die Ukraine aber auch für Europa/uns.
Ich empfehle die Analyse der Zeit zu der Absetzung, die das ganze sehr viel nachvollziehbarer macht.
Kommt darauf an, wie es wirklich ankommt und wieso.
In WK2 haben die USA ständig Kommandeure gefeuert. Das war Teil der Strategie, um möglichst schnell die richtigen Leute auf die richtigen Posten zu bekommen. Da galt eine Auswechslung auch nicht als Karriereende.
Verallgemeinern lässt sich das zumindest nicht. Evtl braucht es nach zwei Jahren Krieg einen neuen Ansatz. Kommt halt darauf an wie es passiert.
Schon eine sehr fragwürdige Entscheidung, besonders da Schaluschny recht hat, was es mit der [Anzahl an benötigten Truppen](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/08/ukraine-soldiers-shortage-infantry-russia/?utm_source=reddit.com) auf sich hat.
Die Leute tun alle so als ob es unerhört ist den Befehlshaber in einem Laufenden Krieg auszutauschen. Über die Gründe können wir von außen nur spekulieren und ob Syrsky schlechter oder besser als Zalushny ist, ist auch unmöglich für uns zu sagen. Das wird jetzt nicht im Alleingang dafür sorgen das die Ukraine kollabiert.
In gewissen definitiv russisch lehnenden subreddits gingen angebliche leaks rum die protokolle zeigten in denen zalushny absolut kein respekt vor zelensky hatte
Also im sinne von vielen aich teilweise antisemitischen beleidigungen
Das problem ist aber nunmal dass er sehr beliebt ist
Was jetzt wirklich zu dieser Änderung beiträgt ist die fragen
Wenn es verletzter stolz oder machtklammern ist dann gute nacht
Wenn es wirklich Korruptionsbedenken sind dann trotzdem riskant
Es ist kein Skandal Generäle während eines laufenden Krieges auszutauschen. Wo die wahren Gründe für diesen Move liegen, darüber können wir nur spekulieren. Militärisch gesehen lief es in den letzten 12 Monaten aber nicht gut für Ukraine, und das kann man nicht nur auf fehlende Unterstützung des Westens schieben. Insbesondere die “Counteroffensive” hat signifikante Issues innerhalb der ukrainischen Armee offenbart. Demnach ist ein Austausch des Oberbefehlshabers durchaus eine vertretbare Handlung.
Gibt ein paar schöne Punkte von Tom Cooper dazu auf https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/no-bucks-no-buck-rogers
Kurzum:
– wir haben keine Ahnung wie gut (oder schlecht) Zaluzhny als Armeechef ist. Er ist beliebt, aber das sagt erstmal wenig
– Wir haben genauso keine Ahnung wie gut oder schlecht sein Nachfolger sein wird
– Generäle als unersetzbar zu behandeln ist eine sehr schlechte Idee
– Die Auswirkungen werden sich sehr in Grenzen halten, die größten Probleme der ukrainischen Streitkräfte werden mit oder ohne Zaluzhny weiterhin gleich bleiben
Also ich finde die Kommentare hier etwas übertrieben. Egal wie gut der General ist, wenn er aktiv die Arbeit des Befehlsführers untergräbt, egal wie berechtigt, muss er ausgetauscht werden.
Vielleicht geht es nach hinten los, aber man kann keinen Krieg führen, wenn die zwei Chefs unterschiedlicher Meinung sind. Deswegen gibt es ultimativ nur einen Chef, Zelensky. Ansonsten endet man wie die Römer gegen Hannibal.
Ich werfe mal SiPol Blogger Ryan McBeth seinen Take rein… [Ist ne andere Phase, es benötigt andere Leute.](https://youtube.com/shorts/7HiQrGb3RQ8?si=YNJVFaC4PLS8dQUv)
Mal schauen ob’s stimmt. Wird man später im Jahr sehen können.
Wololodymyr
[Kann nur jeden den tollen WAPO Report über die Offensive empfehlen.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/04/ukraine-counteroffensive-us-planning-russia-war/).
> In Ukraine, a different kind of frustration was building. “When we had a calculated timeline, yes, the plan was to start the operation in May,” said a former senior Ukrainian official who was deeply involved in the effort. “However, many things happened.”
> Promised equipment was delivered late or arrived unfit for combat, the Ukrainians said. “A lot of weapons that are coming in now, they were relevant last year,” the senior Ukrainian military official said, not for the high-tech battles ahead. **Crucially, he said, they had received only 15 percent of items — like the Mine Clearing Line Charge launchers (MCLCs) — needed to execute their plan to remotely cut passages through the minefields.**
> **And yet, the senior Ukrainian military official recalled, the Americans were nagging about a delayed start and still complaining about how many troops Ukraine was devoting to Bakhmut.**
> U.S. officials vehemently denied that the Ukrainians did not get all the weaponry they were promised. Ukraine’s wish list may have been far bigger, the Americans acknowledged, but by the time the offensive began, they had received nearly two dozen MCLCs, more than 40 mine rollers and excavators, 1,000 Bangalore torpedoes, and more than 80,000 smoke grenades. Zaluzhny had requested 1,000 armored vehicles; the Pentagon ultimately delivered 1,500.
> “They got everything they were promised, on time,” one senior U.S. official said. In some cases, the officials said, Ukraine failed to deploy equipment critical to the offensive, holding it in reserve or allocating it to units that weren’t part of the assault.
[..]
> “We’re sorry, but some of the vehicles we received are unfit for combat,” Zabrodskyi told Austin and his aides, according to a former senior Ukrainian official. He said the Bradleys and Leopards had broken or missing tracks. German Marder fighting vehicles lacked radio sets; they were nothing more than iron boxes with tracks — useless if they couldn’t communicate with their units, he said. Ukrainian officials said the units for the counteroffensive lacked sufficient de-mining and evacuation vehicles.
> Austin looked at Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. commander for Europe, and Lt. Gen. Antonio Aguto, head of the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, both sitting next to him. They said they’d check.
> The Pentagon concluded that Ukrainian forces were failing to properly handle and maintain all the equipment after it was received. Austin directed Aguto to work more intensively with his Ukrainian counterparts on maintenance.
> “Even if you deliver 1,300 vehicles that are working fine, there’s going to be some that break between the time that you get them on the ground there and the time they enter combat,” a senior defense official said.
> By June 1, the top echelons at U.S. European Command and the Pentagon were frustrated and felt like they were getting few answers. **Maybe the Ukrainians were daunted by the potential casualties? Perhaps there were political disagreements within the Ukrainian leadership, or problems along the chain of command?**
[..]
> The Ukrainian troops had expected minefields but were blindsided by the density. The ground was carpeted with explosives, so many that some were buried in stacks.** The soldiers had been trained to drive their Bradleys at a facility in Germany, on smooth terrain. But on the mushy soil of the Zaporizhzhia region, in the deafening noise of battle, they struggled to steer through the narrow lanes cleared of mines by advance units.**
> The Russians, positioned on higher ground, immediately started firing antitank missiles. Some vehicles in the convoy were hit, forcing others behind them to veer off the path. Those, in turn, exploded on mines, snarling even more of the convoy. Russian helicopters and drones swooped in and attacked the pileup.
> Troops, some experiencing the shock of combat for the first time, pulled back to regroup — only to attack and retreat, again and again on successive days, with the same bloody results.
> “It was hellfire,” said Oleh Sentsov, a platoon commander in the 47th.
> **By day four, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top commander, had seen enough. Incinerated Western military hardware — American Bradleys, German Leopard tanks, mine-sweeping vehicles — littered the battlefield. The numbers of dead and wounded sapped morale.**
[..]
> Zaluzhny told his troops to pause their assaults before any more of Ukraine’s limited weaponry was obliterated, a senior Ukrainian military official said.
> Rather than try to breach Russian defenses with a massed, mechanized attack and supporting artillery fire, as his American counterparts had advised, Zaluzhny decided that Ukrainian soldiers would go on foot in small groups of about 10 — a process that would save equipment and lives but would be much slower.
[..]
> Some of the Ukrainian soldiers thought the American trainers didn’t grasp the scale of the conflict against a more powerful enemy. “The presence of a huge number of drones, fortifications, minefields and so on were not taken into account,” said a soldier in the 47th with the call sign Joker. **Ukrainian soldiers brought their own drones to help hone their skills, he said, but trainers initially rebuffed the request to integrate them because the training programs were predetermined. Drone use was later added following Ukrainian feedback, a U.S. official said.**
> The U.S. program had benefits, Joker said, including advanced cold-weather training and how to adjust artillery fire. But much was discarded once real bullets flew. “We had to improve tactics during the battle itself,” he said. “We couldn’t use it the way we were taught.”
> U.S. and Ukrainian officials said they never expected that two months of training would transform these troops into a NATO-like force. Instead, the intention was to teach them to properly use their new Western tanks and fighting vehicles and “make them literate in the basics of firing and moving,” a U.S. senior military official said.
[..]
> But weeks passed with no order to attack. Many in the unit felt the element of surprise had been lost. The political leadership “shouldn’t have been announcing our counteroffensive for almost a year,” said one unit commander in the 47th. “The enemy knew where we’d be coming from.”
> Milley and other senior U.S. military officers involved in planning the offensive argued for the Ukrainians to mass forces at one key spot in Zaporizhzhia, to help them overcome stiff Russian defenses and ensure a successful breakthrough in the drive to Melitopol and the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainian plan, however, was to push on three axes — south along two distinct paths to the Sea of Azov, as well as in eastern Ukraine around the besieged city of Bakhmut, which the Russians had seized in the spring after a nearly year-long battle.
> Ukrainian military leaders decided that committing too many troops to one point in the south would leave forces in the east vulnerable and enable the Russians to take territory there and, potentially, in Kharkiv to the northeast.
[..]
> To split the Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian marine brigades at the western edge of the neighboring Donetsk region would push south toward the coastal city of Berdyansk. That left the 47th and other brigades, part of what Ukraine referred to as its 9th Corps, to attack along the counteroffensive’s main axis, toward Melitopol.
> The plan called for the 47th, and the 9th Corps, to breach the first Russian line of defense and take Robotyne. Then the 10th Corps, made up of Ukraine’s paratroopers, would join the fight in a second wave pushing south.
> **“We thought it was going to be a simple two-day task” to take Robotyne,** said the commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle who goes by the call sign Frenchman.
[..]
> But assessing Kyiv’s approach and urging changes was a delicate task. One officer who did so was Gen. Christopher Cavoli, who as head of the U.S. European Command oversaw much of the Pentagon’s effort to train and equip Ukraine’s army. Milley, by contrast, often struck a more optimistic, motivational tone.
> **Cavoli, however, couldn’t reach Zaluzhny during part of the summer, a critical phase of the counteroffensive, three people familiar with the matter said.** Cavoli declined to comment on the issue. A senior Ukrainian official noted that Zaluzhny spoke to Milley, his direct counterpart, throughout the campaign.
> **By August, Milley too had begun to air some frustration. He “started saying to Zaluzhny: ‘What are you doing?’” a senior Biden administration official said.**
[..]
> The Ukrainians were insistent that the West simply wasn’t giving them the air power and other weapons needed for a combined arms strategy to succeed. “You want us to proceed with the counteroffensive, you want us to show the brilliant advances on the front line,” said Olha Stefanishyna, deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine. **“But we do not have the fighter jets, meaning that you want us to throw our soldiers, you know, and accept the very fact that we cannot protect them.”**
> When allies said no, she said, “we heard … ‘We are fine that your soldiers will be dying without support from the sky.’”
[..]
> U.S. military officials pressed their case. They said they understood the logic of preoccupying Russian forces at different points on the front, but argued that deep advances would not come unless the Ukrainians massed more forces at a single point to move quickly and decisively.
> Zaluzhny, in response, laid out the challenges in stark terms: no air cover, more mines than expected, and a Russian force that was impressively dug in and moving its reserves around effectively to plug gaps.