Offense is hard. You’re making up as you go. Defense, at least at first, is easy; you’re absorbing the enemy into your traps. Which can be very well-laid if you’re good at your job.
For sure things even out once the two sides are well in motion and deep in each other’s shit. The defense’s fixed advantages melt away pretty quickly once pitched battle is joined.
Latest aid package from US. June 9, 2023. This package, which totals up to $2.1 billion and includes critical air defense and ammunition capabilities, is being provided under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). USAI is an authority under which the United States procures capabilities from industry or partners. This announcement represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine. Not from existing stocks; a procurement amount.
The capabilities in this announcement include:
It’s going to be a slow process and it may be a long time before we know if the counter-offensive is going well or not. The Ukrainians will probe for weak spots and try to take advantage of them.
Latest from British intelligence:
It’s best not to look at the counter offensive details too closely. There will be great sucesses and some frustrating setbacks.
No one expects Russia to make this easy for Ukraine. Hopefully the extensive training and new equipment will be enough for Ukraine to regain some territory.
The complete group of trained fighter pilots will be impressive.
Ultimately, it will be a NATO air force in everything but name.
Nice work, Vlad.
That reminds me, I need to change my flag today. This last week it’s been a NATO flag flying at Casa Toad.
Off topic but …
Happy birthday there @Hypno-Toad !!
Yes! Cake for everyone!
I expect Ukraine’s offensive to be the opposite of the last one, which was a quick overwhelming thrust. There will be a lot of probing and feints before any kind of a big push. I’ll sacrifice my slice of cake to assure Ukraine is ready to push thru wherever they find a weakness. 
Not offensive information, but the US says Iran is helping Russia build a drone factory near Moscow. Sounds like a great target for any partisan groups who want to do some damage if it’s true.
I remember after the Kherson counteroffensive was announced last summer, there seem to be slow progress for a while. The counteroffensive was announced on 29 August and the city of Kherson was liberated on 11 November, two and a half months later. The Russians didn’t only leave because of supply problems - the Ukrainians had advanced to the outskirts of the city.
The Kharkiv counteroffensive caught the Russian invaders unawares and the Ukrainians made more rapid progress against poorly-guarded areas.
There’s talk of a small Ukrainian breakthrough in the south. Time will of course tell if this is accurate and/or important
And in another piece of news…
This a potentially significant story. Putin has kept Wagner and the Russian army apart for fear of a single force being controlled by a single person who could use that power to engineer a coup. But it looks like he is tired of the increasingly bitter rivalry between Wagner and the army which was becoming really problematic (assuming this has been rubber stamped by Putin). I don’t think this move will solve the issues though, it might actually create more problems.
Prighozin will be dead, in a Russian prison, or in permanent exile within 24 hours.
Whether any of the lower higher-ups in Wagner have the stomach to be the new public face and honcho of Wagner remains to be seen.
If the troops sent to deal with him are able to deal with Wagner. If Putin tries, it could be the first shots of a genuine civil war within Russia.
Indeed, @Chronos, this raises the question, would the Wagner forces accept being absorbed into the regular army? My sense is they regard those forces with contempt; also that they’re much better paid as mercenaries than as conscripts. They’ve also no doubt observed how ready Russian commanders are to throw bodies into the meat grinder without regard for casualties. Will they tamely submit to all that?
It was actually Wagner that was throwing barely trained and lightly equipped convict recruits into the Bakhmut meat-grinder to scout out Ukrainian firing positions. Indeed they seem to have been a primary practitioner of this tactic.
I think people are giving are giving Wagner wayyyy more respect as a fighting force than they deserve. The number of quality troops they have under arms in Ukraine doesn’t seem to be huge - it’s hard to pin down, but one figure I saw was maybe 10,000 “regulars” outside of the convict dross (estimated at 40,000 in January, but probably rather less now since they seem to have halted that recruitment and have been taking heavy casualties). The Russian military if not compromised by an internal coup would likely crush them like bugs.
Ah, Tamerlane, thank you for explaining all that. Given that situation, and the fact that Wagner Group has forces overseas, would it make more sense for Prighozin to bug out and stick to mercenarying abroad? Or is it Russia that’s paying for those foreign assets as well?
Probably. But I don’t know if he has much choice in the matter at this point. Granted he is barking a lot, but it doesn’t appear he’s the tail wagging the dog. It looks more like he is just the angry tail being wagged.
A hard question to answer. Just about everything about Wagner and its involvement with the Russian state apparatus is kinda murky. That they’re a proxy army is clear, but just how that system operates seems to be about as clear as mud.
Ah, yes, as Winston Churchill put it: “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”