It's not just minefields, but also how easy it is to deploy more minefields. What's behind the minefields they need to penetrate? More minefields.

The Russians just got a lot of time to fortify, and resolved a few of the problems that struck them during the last counteroffensive. They do learn from their mistakes, they've always been "not bad" at that, on the battlefield anyway.

Blitzkrieg won't work again, and the Ukrainians probably guessed that. Fortunately, they're getting enough tools to prepare other strategies. Air power opens a lot of doors.

They need a massive boost to their air capabilities. The hesitation to provide hadn’t made sense in many months.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol, people familiar with the classified forecast told The Washington Post, a finding that, should it prove correct, would mean Kyiv won’t fulfill its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push.

Joint war games conducted by the U.S., British and Ukrainian militaries anticipated such losses but envisioned Kyiv accepting the casualties as the cost of piercing through Russia’s main defensive line, said U.S. and Western officials.

Ukrainian officials have said privately that timing depends on how quickly forces can penetrate the minefields — a difficult process that has strained the military’s mine-clearing resources across a wide swath of territory.

The Ukrainians have for months poured tremendous resources into Bakhmut, including soldiers, ammunition and time, but they have lost control of the city and have made only modest gains in capturing territory around it.

The new intelligence assessment aligns with a secret U.S. forecast from February indicating that shortfalls in equipment and force strength may mean that the counteroffensive will fall “well short” of Ukraine’s goal to sever the land bridge to Crimea by August.

The assessment, detailed in a classified document leaked onto the social media app Discord, identified Melitopol or Mariupol as the objectives “to deny Russian overland access to Crimea.”

The original article contains 1,203 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

There was plenty of evidence that this was the likely outcome of this offensive months before it even started. Why tf did they go ahead with it anyway?

I remember discussing the Russian advantage on reddit back in January, including them building defensive lines and the general imbalance in equipment, especially artillery and ammo, as well as the fact that Russia had caught up in troop numbers by that point. I had western sources for these numbers.

You wouldn't believe the level of hate and name-calling I received for pointing this out and saying they should negotiate. But apparently I was the one spewing propaganda.

Showing a supposedly active duty soldier missing a hand isn't a great look?

The dicktator putin just needs to surrender. He lost already so many months ago. He just hasn't realized how. Like there's no place lon earth where he can go without some sort of security detail protecting his ass. If he was right here at my vacation place, I wouldn't hesitate to grab my beach ⛱️ umbrella and sticking it so far up putin's arse that it got stuck there permanently....it is foldable. How could you think that you are winning when you can never go anywhere ever again? Not that I do any international travel myself, but putin did. He's lost and lost badly. One nice example again is that I come from Mexico and mexico, the government loves putin appearently...go ahead putin, go to Mexico and let us know when. If you do, and I get to meet you, I promise you that I will find you the most beautiful tortoise ornament and do you like that one episode of breaking bad. That's how much welcome you'll be to Mexico. I don't know of any Mexican that thinks differently. I can probably do the Trump thing...plain sight mid day with a dull machete and ten hot glue guns put together with duct tape...right on the turtle ornament. People love turtles in Mexico... either for eating or to protect them. So it will be an ornamental one.