Igor Zaytsev's blog

I’ve heard different commentaries, namely made by Alex Cristoforou and Alexander Mercouris on the Duran YT channel. Both sound plausible, but leave even more questions unanswered.

My guess is that the reason for the offensive in Ukraine is the result of Ukrainian strategy of creating a defence line along the Dnepr river. In Kherson, Russians has established a bridgehead across the Dnepr. As long as it remains, Ukrainians cannot make the river their best bet on stopping the Russian advance. That is why they need to push Russian troops back to the Dnepr.

This also explains why Ukrainians are seeming to be willing to weaken their defences in the Donetsk region, in order to support this new offensive. They know Donbass is as good as already lost — it is just a matter of some weeks or months. If Russians will push, Ukrainian troops will gradually retreat towards the Dnepr river, where the new defence line will be prepared in the meanwhile.

This strategy will allow to shorten the supply lines and with the bridges blown off, Russians will have no easy way to cross the Dnepr. Russians are probably see this, and that is why they are delaying the Donbass offensive in order to hold their positions across the Dnepr in the South Ukraine. As a result, the Russian offence have stalled for a time.

That also explains why Ukraine is putting so much effort in taking out the bridges in the South — they are trying to delay Russian supplies and reinforcements in the support of their own offensive operation. The over regions have suddenly become of a secondary importance to them.

But this supposed strategy of the final defence line across the Dnepr river also requires Ukrainians to harden their defences against possible Russian landing operations in the Odessa region, as well as the border with Belarus in the North.

If this will fail, Ukraine will loose its best chance of stopping the Russian offence and will have to continue retreating while trying to hold each city and town as they did before. The main factor now is the casualties among Ukrainian troops. The new strategy is probably a result of Ukrainian and Western realization what those levels of losses cannot be sustained. Even if the money and the weapons will continue to flow into Ukraine, the soldiers are near their limits. The ease with which Russians have captured the Severodvinsk and Lisichansk, have demonstrated this exact point.