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The Russians discovered for themselves the difficulty of offensive warfare during their initial invasion of Ukraine — and again during more recent offensives in Bakhmut and now Avdiivka. Russian troops have been mauled in “meat grinder” attacks while barely advancing.

The Ukrainians had more success with counteroffensives last year: They managed to retake about half of the territory that Russia had initially seized in 2022, with especially impressive gains around Kherson in the south and Kharkiv in the west before the Russians could fortify their positions. But the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south launched in mid-June has not achieved the major breakthrough that Ukrainian leaders and their supporters in the West had hoped for.

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After nearly five months of intense combat, the Ukrainians have advanced barely 10 miles. They are not close to reaching the Sea of Azov and thereby breaking the Russian “land bridge” between Crimea and Russia, which Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told me in January was a “realistic goal for this year.” Last week, Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, admitted to the Economist that the war had reached a “stalemate” and that “there will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough” unless Ukraine can somehow gain a technological edge over the Russians.

Why hasn’t Ukraine had more success? Behind the scenes, there is plenty of finger-pointing among Ukrainian and U.S. officials. The Americans privately grumble that the Ukrainians have not done a good job of executing a NATO-style combined-arms offensive and have reverted to the kind of attritional warfare that characterized Soviet military strategy, while siphoning off badly needed troops to ancillary efforts around Bakhmut.

The Ukrainians, in turn, complain that the West has not given them enough weapons to break through the Russian fortifications and that many of the weapons they have received are not in good working order. Ukraine lacks enough mine-clearing equipment and armored vehicles — and more important enough air power to keep Russian manned and unmanned aircraft from attacking Ukrainian troops while they are trying to cross minefields.

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U.S. troops would never attack entrenched positions without air superiority, yet the Pentagon expected Ukrainian troops to do just that. And the Biden administration did not send M1 Abrams tanks and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to Ukraine until this fall — too late to influence the summer counteroffensive.

“Ukraine has been asking for weapons all the time and it’s been, yes, it’s coming, it’s coming, but it took a while, and Europe said sorry we don’t have enough,” former Ukrainian defense minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk told me last week from Kyiv. “In many ways, Ukraine was set up to underdeliver on unreasonable expectations of a massive territorial gain,” agreed Alina Polyakova, president of the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington.

So what should Ukraine — and its supporters in the West — do now? Many will argue that, with the failure of this counteroffensive, it’s time to cut a deal with the Kremlin. But there is scant indication that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is ready to make any concessions or to give up his goal of swallowing Ukraine. The Ukrainian military setbacks — and waning support for Kyiv’s cause among Republicans in Congress — only encourage him to keep going in the expectation that he will outlast his enemies. “The only reason he will stop the war is if he is stopped physically and has no other choice,” Zagorodnyuk told me. “He won’t stop the war if you can’t continue it. He will only stop war when he can’t........

© Washington Post