Posen: Ukraine has a breakthrough problem | 2023 | News
Slavian, a former Russian special forces sergeant who now fights for Ukraine after living in the country for a decade with his Ukrainian wife, gestures to keep quiet as he moves along frontline tenches towards a Russian position around 150 metres away, on October 27, 2022 in Zaporizhzhia oblast, Ukraine.
It is the stated policy of the Ukrainian government to retake all of the territory that Russia has seized since 2014, including Crimea. To achieve this goal through military action, the Ukrainian military must accomplish one of the most daunting of military tasks: It must break through dense, well-prepared defensive positions, find some running room, and then either move quickly toward an important geographic objective such as the Sea of Azov, hoping to unravel the remains of the defending Russian army along the way, or quickly attempt to encircle a portion of Russia’s sizable forces in hopes of annihilating them.