If Clausewitz is to be believed, killing the enemy army is priority 1, and territory only matters in pursuit of that goal.
Makes sense - if all combatants in the Russian army are dead, there’s no further need to defend territory for Ukraine. A boom with a border guard stamping passports would suffice.
Political goals are always the first priority. Fighting may be exciting, but it may also be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Defeating the enemy is neither necessary nor sufficient for winning the war.
When it gets to that point, the russian army without supply lines will have no other means to stay engaged.
Thus the priority from the very beginning was to disrupt the supply lines and ability to generate resources, meanwhile securing own supply and resources.
Ukraine needs more supply of long range artillery and lot more ammo for it ... yesterday and right now!
Tanks and soldiers are used to occupy territory, but in the face of a well-equipped enemy and/or a motivated populace, they can't hold it.
Not everybody likes wars of attrition. Russia is an outlier in that regard. Copying their doctrine and tactics is a bad idea, as is citing them as a successful example of how to accomplish anything. They are great at beating up on unarmed civilians, but against a modern armed force they wouldn't stand a chance... and no amount of tanks and soldiers will change that.
The line of engagement barely moved in 3 months all the while Ukraine is hopelessly outgunned, Russians are doing quite well indeed /s. In reality UAF wasn't even a really modern army, just more modern than Russia, and all their "NATO" training in effect started in 2014.
Where do people get the impression that Russian army is strong and capable is beyond me, they just throw people into the meat grinder and sit on top of the infinite Soviet arsenal of old equipment.
A properly-sized invasion force given the physical size of Ukraine, and the size of its army, should have been 400,000-600,000 strong. Russia went in with <200,000, with its force structure badly allocated (not enough infantrymen or logistics guys), and has still managed to occupy a land area larger than Portugal + Ireland combined. And they've done that with essentially their peacetime standing forces. From the perspective of how the Russian army is "supposed" to fight (with a massive mobilization to flesh out its units), this invasion is essentially with one hand tied behind its back by improper force design/employment, and the other tied by rampant corruption. Still, Russia is beating Ukraine to death with headbutts...and also suffering a TBI in the process.
"Quantity has a quality all its own". They aren't considered "strong" because individual Russian battalions are expert warfighters per se. They're considered "strong" because the Russian military-industrial complex in its totality is not something that can be idly ignored by anyone except maybe the US or China.
Basically Russia scores high on 3 particular Principles of War: Mass, Offensive, and Simplicity. Not so well on the other 6 though.
The impression I'm under is that the Ukraine forces have the will and the training to succeed, and maybe the manpower and intel, but not the weapons. And for some reason, we (meaning the rest of the civilized world) are dragging our feet on giving/lending them better hardware.
We airlifted M777 howitzers to them in the blink of an eye, by the standards of government/military bureaucracy. Meanwhile out here in the First Island Chain we've been begging for reinforcements/gear/funding for the inevitable fight with China and THAT shit is definitely being slow-walked in comparison.
There are also larger issues to consider beyond just "we want the help the Ukrainians". The best stuff we can send has a bunch of sensitive NATO/US technical information (radio comms, etc.). Do we want to risk that gear falling into Russian hands (and by extension probably getting shared with China)? If the answer is "no", we either have to send alternatives or send the equipment to depot maintenance areas to have the sensitive tech removed. That takes time.
Do we want to risk escalating the war outside of Ukraine, if the Russians respond kinetically to armaments shipments? The answer is again an emphatic "no" from almost every nation except maybe Poland.
Hence the popular snarky refrain: "NATO will fight Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood". Western governments and people will "stand with Ukraine" as long as it doesn't involve them really risking anything (such as themselves being on the receiving end of Russian missiles or artillery).
> Do we want to risk that gear falling into Russian hands (and by extension probably getting shared with China)?
More concerning (imo) is gear, particularly man portable anti-air weapons, sold to terrorist groups either via corruption in the Ukrainian forces, or a Russian op to supply NATO arms to such groups.
No idea if your impression is true or not. But if I was in charge of Ukrainian propaganda, I can’t think of a better story to tell allied nations so they’d donate lots of weapons
