[gocard14]

With the caveat that the fog of war is thick right now, does it not seem like the front line is largely stalemated?

I don't think it is "stalemated" as such because Ukraine is still doing things. Supposedly they have committed only 3 of their newly trained combined arms brigades. The question remains, what next? Ukraine has the initiative still. What they do with it is TBD.

My guess is that Ukraine is trying to attrit Russian forces in the region as much as possible prior to launching larger pushes. They’ve launched some RIFs, perhaps with the goal of drawing Russian reserves towards the front lines and into artillery/Himars range. This is supported by both Ukraines published Russian casualties (taken with a grain of salt) and videos showing a lot of Russian arty casualties. They may also be hoping to trigger counterattacks with the idea that they’d rather face the enemy while defending newly taken lines then assaulting those same troops while they play defense. 

This could continue for a while, so long as Ukraine feels that time and attrition is on their side. Eventually they may start to feel the ticking clock in the political need to make meaningful progress before winter or in shrinking stockpiles of shells/ammo. 

Lot of chatter today about increasing new Ukrainian EW tech on the front lines disrupting Russian drones. I have to think they wouldn’t deploy that until something is imminent. my limited understanding of EW is that is often a cat a mouse game, with short lived effects due to software based counters. As such, you would think the Ukrainians would save that ace in the hole for an opportune moment.

[gocard14]

With the caveat that the fog of war is thick right now, does it not seem like the front line is largely stalemated?

I don't think it is "stalemated" as such because Ukraine is still doing things. Supposedly they have committed only 3 of their newly trained combined arms brigades. The question remains, what next? Ukraine has the initiative still. What they do with it is TBD.

My guess is that Ukraine is trying to attrit Russian forces in the region as much as possible prior to launching larger pushes. They’ve launched some RIFs, perhaps with the goal of drawing Russian reserves towards the front lines and into artillery/Himars range. This is supported by both Ukraines published Russian casualties (taken with a grain of salt) and videos showing a lot of Russian arty casualties. They may also be hoping to trigger counterattacks with the idea that they’d rather face the enemy while defending newly taken lines then assaulting those same troops while they play defense. 

This could continue for a while, so long as Ukraine feels that time and attrition is on their side. Eventually they may start to feel the ticking clock in the political need to make meaningful progress before winter or in shrinking stockpiles of shells/ammo. 

Lot of chatter today about increasing new Ukrainian EW tech on the front lines disrupting Russian drones. I have to think they wouldn’t deploy that until something is imminent. my limited understanding of EW is that is often a cat a mouse game, with short lived effects due to software based counters. As such, you would think the Ukrainians would save that ace in the hole for an opportune moment.