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Its Western allies want success—but not too much
“B
REAK THE spine!” shouts the man in Russian, chiding his colleague. “What, you’ve never cut a head off before?” The video shows what appears to be a knife-wielding Russian soldier beheading a Ukrainian one alive. “Put it in a fucking bag,” demands another voice, “and send it to his commander.” The footage, posted by a popular Russian far-right account on Telegram, a social media site, on April 11th, provoked outrage in Ukraine. “Everyone must react,” said Volodymyr Zelensky, the country’s president. “We are not going to forget anything.” Mr Zelensky’s army will soon have a shot at revenge.A Ukrainian counter-offensive is due in the coming days or weeks. Almost no one knows precisely where or when it will come. Only five officials have all the details, noted Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s security chief, on April 6th. But Russian troops are braced. On April 12th British defence intelligence said that Russia had finished building three layers of defensive lines along 120km (75 miles) of the front line in Zaporizhia province in anticipation of a Ukrainian assault towards Melitopol (see satellite imagery, which depicts dragon’s teeth anti-tank obstacles stretching south-east along the P37 highway from Shyroke). Conquering Melitopol would help Ukraine sever Russia’s land bridge between the occupied regions of Donbas and Crimea.
Ukraine’s offensive force consists of at least a dozen brigades (some sources say up to 18), nine of which have been armed and supplied by Western allies (a brigade tends to be several thousand men). Those nine are due to have more than 200 tanks, 800 other armoured vehicles and 150 pieces of field artillery in total, according to American intelligence documents which leaked onto the internet in early March and widely circulated in April. It is a large force but with some glaring weaknesses.
The majority of its vehicles have little or no armour....