Standard military doctrine says that the attacker needs to outnumber the defender at least 3:1 in order to have a good chance of success.

This is one reason why Russia’s drive to capture Kiev in February and March of 2022 was such an abject faillure.

Here are some reasons why a very successful Ukrainian counter-attack is unlikely:

– the Ukrainians have built up an offensive reserve of about 48,000 soldiers. These are equipped with the best offensive weapons at their disposal. That’s not a lot…

– they have received a hodgepodge of western weapon system. Logistically it’s a nightmare to keep such an oddball mix of tanks operational

– the Russians have built very strong defenses all along the front. In many places their defensive works consist of several lines. Even smashing through one line will require overwhelming force, the element of surprise and smooth and complicated cooperation between the different parts of the assault. Mines will have to be sweeped, artillery and rockets will have to take out Russian artillery, tanks will need to protect charging infantry… Extremely challenging against a prepared enemy…

– in many places along the front the terrain favors the defense. Big rivers need to be crossed. In the north east the Russians hold the high ground. Crimea is not easily accessible and to get there the Ukrainians need to first break through in the areas of Cherson or Melitopol. An amphibious assault is even more unlikely.

– this has become a classic war of attrition and the Ukrainians have lost several costly battles by trying to hold on to their cities. Cities of little strategic importance. Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Soedar and Bakhmut. Those cities were destroyed like no European cities have been destroyed since World War II. The Russian lost a lot of men, but so did the Ukrainians. They probably lost some of their more experienced troops defending these cities. These will be missed when it comes to spearheading their counter-attack

– A grieveous mistake made by many strategic planners is to assume the enemy will just calmly sit there and await your moves. The Russians may very well launch an offensive of their own. The Russian strategy seems to have been two-fold: have Ukrainians die defending unimportant cities and trying to make the Ukrainians commit their reserve. So far the Ukrainians have been able to preserve their newly trained and equipped offensive brigades for their counter-attack, but a strong Russian offensive somewhere along the line may require them to pitch in defensively and not offensively.

– the weather is a nasty factor in Ukraine. The weather can easily go from sweltering heat turning roads into dust roads or turning them into mud when it starts raining very heavily. Unfortunate weather conditions could be a very disruptive factor

– For the Ukrainians to win a total victory Russian morale should completely collapse. So far the Russians have never been in high spirits, but their morale has been high enough to keep up their war effort. There are no signs that their morale is about to break completely. They may not be overly enthusiastic, but their defensive lines are not crumbling either

– the offensive will have to be launched without adequate air support, even if Ukraine gets some F-16s, they won’t make much of a difference and they will arrive too late anyway

– The Russians have made many tactical mistakes, but they have been able to adapt. They managed to redeploy their army after their botched attempt to capture Kiev. A retreat in enemy country is not easy, but they managed fairly well. Their initial attack will go down in the history books as one of the dumbest and amateurish military undertakings ever, but their response to their own idiocy was quite effective. The Russians are learning from their mistakes. Slowly, but they are.

The most likely outcome is… more of the same. A stalemate, a war of attrition, more people dying, more cities destroyed.

Unless the Ukrainians get everything they need to win decisively on the battlefield this will continue to be a War World I style fight.

A slow process of seeing who will bleed to death first….

Russia has a much larger population, so unless the Ukrainians receive a vast amount of western offensive materiel or unless Russia sees some kind of revolt that pulls back their war machine the Russians might actually win this. It will just take them a hell of a long time and hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides…