JRL NEWSWATCH: “Ukraine’s War Effort Is Stuck. This Heroic Battlefield Failure Shows Why.” – WSJ
“Rout of elite Ukraine forces in counteroffensive is a lesson in why the war effort is stalled”
“… Because the West had dithered for months over the provision of tanks and other armored vehicles, the Russians were ready. They had dug in on the flat [southeastern] farmland … laying hundreds of thousands of mines and setting up firing positions for machine guns and antitank missiles. … Ukraine … turned the world’s expectation on its head in 2022 … repelling a Russian assault on Kyiv and reclaiming some lost territory. The failure of its [2023] counteroffensive … has led to … bleak realizations …. Ukraine is insufficiently armed to penetrate Russian defenses. The U.S. and allies were willing to provide armored vehicles for the counteroffensive — but not modern fighter jets … central to the way Western militaries attack. That left Ukraine mismatched …. [D]erring-do … is no longer enough against entrenched defenses. …”