the war in Ukraine has been raging on for more than 2 and a half years now with little end in sight but just a few weeks ago in the 895 day after Russia launched its initial full-scale invasion of the country the ukrainians did something that is completely changing the course of this entire conflict because on the 6th of August 2024 it was the Ukrainian Army that flipped the script of this war by launching their own invasion of Russia shifting themselves into the role of the invading Army for once after fighting for years on the defensive on their own territory early that morning after weeks to months of quietly preparing and concentrating their forces the Ukrainian Army began crossing the border from Ukraine Sumi province into Russia's KK province in a major surprise attack that is up to this video's writing met Little Resistance since then as many as 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers and hundreds of armored vehicles have invaded Russia's KK Province and they've punched roughly 20 mi deep and 40 Mi wide into the country in only the first 10 days of the attack capturing more than 70 Russian villages in the process and coming to occupy an area roughly 1,000 square kilometers in size and a out of land that's roughly equivalent to the size of Hong Kong and while that might not initially sound like very much that is a lightning fast advancement compared to what's been happening elsewhere in the war over the past 2 years of ATT traditional trench warfare in the East for context in only the first 10 days of their offensive in the KK Province the ukrainians ended up capturing about as much land from Russia as the Russians have captured from Ukraine this entire year to date since the start of January over the past nearly 9 months of Warfare at enormous cost in both lives and Machinery which is all rapidly evolving into a major embarrassment for the Kremlin already nearly 200,000 Russian civilians have been given mandatory evacuation orders to leave their homes for safety further behind the front while the Border provinces of both KK and belgrad have each declared Federal emergencies in light of the attack and as many as two th000 Russian soldiers have already been captured as prisoners of war and taken back across the border to Ukraine this major Ukrainian attack in aers is very historically significant for many reasons but to Only Name a few it is the biggest armed invasion of foreign troops into Russia since the second world war while it is also the first time in history that a nuclear weapons armed state has suffered a major hostile invasion of its Sovereign territory which is testing the very limits of what we understand about escalation in modern 21st century Warfare so what are Ukraine's goals and objectives with launching this unprecedented surprise attack into Russia what does Ukraine hope to achieve by invading and occupying Russian territory how did Russia's intelligence agencies fail to predict this attack and how did Russia's Army failed to adequately prepare for it and how is this whole series of events becoming one of the most significant turning points in the biggest war seen in Europe since 1945 to begin to understand the answers to these questions you first need to understand how the horrible war in Ukraine has been developing for both sides over the past year since the start of 2024 throughout the second half of the previous year in 2023 the Ukrainian Army carried out a major counteroffensive operation against the Russians primarily in the southern zapia province with the ultimate objective of driving across the Russian lines and reaching the coast of the Sea of aav thereby splitting the Russian occupied parts of Ukraine in half in the process they were heavily armed with Western supplied weens for this attack but as the Russians were anticipating a Ukrainian attack in this direction they smashed themselves against very heavily fortified Russian positions in the area and ultimately failed to make very much ground and likely suffered enormous casualties on the process the New York Times reported that as much as 20% of the weapons and vehicles the ukrainians committed to the 2023 counter offensive were destroyed in it while the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the ukrainians suffered more than 990,000 casualties during the whole campaign pain although those numbers are heavily disputed and Western sources like the institute for the study of War consider those losses to be implausibly high regardless Ukraine failed to meet any of its objectives during the 2023 counter offensive and they burned through a huge amount of resources and Manpower even trying which forced them to shift back to the defensive for 2024 and fight against the Russians in a brutal attritional style of warfare instead since then throughout 2024 Ukraine has struggled deeply with both chronic Manpower and Equipment shortages after 2 and A2 years of horrific trench warfare that has likely resulted in a minimum of 200,000 Ukrainian military casualties both killed and wounded since the invasion began finding new volunteers for the Ukrainian Armed Forces voluntarily has become more and more challenging as time has gone on while draft dodging has also become more common as well in November of 2023 the BBC estimated that 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age had fled the country abroad over the past 2 years since the Russian invasion began with most of them having slipped over the Western borders into Poland and Slovakia despite the Ukrainian government's total ban on all fighting age men from being able to leave the country and this shrinking pool of Manpower for the Army has been undermining the remaining soldiers morale in multiple ways most notably in terms of troop rotations at the front early on into the war when Ukraine had significantly more volunteers soldiers were able to be rotated out of the front about every 2 weeks and were able to enjoy an entire week off but now in 2024 with fewer numbers Frontline Ukrainian soldiers are endearing an average of a month at the front continually with only four days of rest in between significantly affecting their ability to keep fighting effectively in order to try and address the Manpower shortage the Ukrainian government has already adopted several reforms this year such as by lowering the military draft age for men down from 27 years old to 25 5 years old allowing most of the country's prison population except for the most serious offenders to enlist with the armed forces in exchange for early release and in May of 2024 the Ukrainian government also canceled all of its Consular services for all male Ukrainian citizens abroad aged between 18 and 60 including cancelling all renewals of passports in an attempt to force more Ukrainian men living abroad to return back to the country again and potentially face conscription and in terms of artillery alone the ukrainians were getting outgunned by the Russians in artillery all across the front line by as much as 20 to1 before April of this year when a new $60 billion US military aid package for Ukraine finally passed through the US Congress but even after that as recently as August of 2024 the ukrainians have still been getting out gunned and artillery shells along the front line by a ratio of about 8 to1 these Manpower and supply issues for Ukraine on top of the failure of their 2023 counter offensive shifted the momentum of the war in the eyes of many back over to the Russians again across 2024 and since the start of the year the Russians have managed to continually make slow but steady and methodical gains across the Eastern front with their Superior advantages in both Firepower and Manpower since the start of the year the Russians have thrown hundreds of thousands of their soldiers against the Ukrainian defenses in the Donetsk provin in the East and they've gained nearly 1,200 square kilm of territory in the process including the significant capture of aiva that was accomplished in February of 2024 a major suburb of the city of Donetsk that had a pre-war population of 31,000 people since then the Russians have methodically Advanced at enormous cost across an axis in the dones Province towards the towns of chassi varar kantanka toret and New York in the north and towards the highly strategic town of psk in the center with a pre-war population of around 60,000 residents p is a major town and a highly important logistical center for the Ukrainian Army as it sits precisely on the highway t54 which links several other currently Ukrainian held cities in donat like kantanka and chassi varar and chromator and slavon further to the north as it currently stands as of mid to late August 2024 when I made this video the Russian army has punched a being within only 13 km of pcov and if they succeed in capturing it it will sever one of UK 's primary highways that they use to supply their forces in conifa and chivar and then if the Russians were able to capture those under supplied towns next their path will become fully opened to advance on the major cities of cromor and sloviansk in the north next which are the final two major cities in the donet province that continue to remain under Ukrainian control outside of Russian occupation each of them with pre-war populations of more than a 100,000 people if Russia ultimately succeeds in capturing these final two cities in donet then they will effectively complete their occupation of the entire donet Province and it will become very difficult for the ukrainians to then eject them from it militarily especially when considering that Russia already effectively controls the entirety of the neighboring luhansk Province as well it all starts with Russia's capture of PK and if they're successful there it could eventually lead to Russia's full control and occupation of the entire donbass region next a major wartime goal of the Kremlin and which could then lead to Moscow focusing their Army's next moves on pursuing their other major wartime objectives in the southern theater completing their occupations of the provinces of zapia and hiran too all of which Russia has already unilaterally declared to have annexed and declared to be core russian territories and at the same time as this major Russian push towards prros has been ongoing the Russians also opened up another new front in the war in May of 2024 when they launched A Renewed invasion of Ukraine's Eve province in the north with only moderate gains in success and as a result of all of these huge Russian offensives in 2024 the scale of the fighting that's been going on throughout Ukraine this year has been at its most intense level of the entire War especially across this summer even more so than at the beginning of the invasion in early 2022 Russian casualties alone along the front line are estimated by Western sources to have been more than a thousand soldiers lost per day on average aage since May of this year a rate of losses that is comparable to some of the most ferocious combats seen during the second world war by comparison American forces during the brutal Battle of okanawa against the Japanese in 1945 the bloodiest and fiercest battle fought during the entirety of the Pacific Theater of the war suffered only around 600 casualties per day in combat on the island which implies that the current state of the war going on in the east of Ukraine is bloodier and more ferocious than even that terrible battle was for the Americans it is truly World War levels of combat that hasn't been seen in Europe in more than 80 years and the fighting has been so brutal here that you can now clearly see the scar across eastern Ukraine from space that marks the current position of the front line and as Russia has continued gaining ground against the ukrainians throughout the year there's become a growing narrative both in Ukraine itself and in the rest of the world that against its much larger opponent Ukraine is supposedly destined to lose eventually in this attritional style of warfare that inherently favors the country with the larger pools of Manpower and equipment to pull from and that as a result Kiev should supposedly sue for peace sooner rather than later in June of 20124 with the momentum seemingly on his side Russia's President Vladimir Putin finally set out his own terms to begin peace negotiations with Ukraine he demanded that all Ukrainian forces withdraw from the territories of luhansk Donetsk zapari and H son just to even start negotiations and that Ukraine would have to agree to permanently seed all of these territories in their administrative entities to Russia despite Russia not yet fully controlling all of the territories he also demanded that Ukraine would have to recognize the loss of Crimea as well and formerly adopt a status of permanent neutrality and irrevocably abandoned its Ambitions to join the NATO alliance this offer was immediately rejected by the Ukrainian government which so far continues to assert that peace will only be possible if and when all Russian forces leave from Ukraine's internationally recognized territory and Ukrainian sovereignty is fully restored across all of its pre-24 borders including Crimea but that doesn't mean that International pressure on Ukraine to begin making concessions to Russia hasn't been growing a month later in July of 2024 the prime minister of Hungary Victor Orban visited Ukraine's president zalinski and Kev and pleaded with him to accept a ceasefire deal with Russia along the current military front line in the country which was again refused the month before that in June Switzerland hosted a major Summit on peace in Ukraine that explicitly didn't invite Russia and that saw 78 countries from all around the world all signing a commun that asserted restoring Ukraine's pre-24 borders was the ultimate basis for any lasting peace in the conflict but many other major countries from around the world did not agree to that and did not sign on to it including all of the brick states besides Russia like Brazil Brazil India China and South Africa in addition of Pakistan Mexico the United Arab Emirates Saudi Arabia Indonesia and Thailand among many others at the same time there's also been growing discontent about continuing to support the ukrainians in the Western World Donald Trump who very well may be elected as America's president again in November has vowed to immediately halt All American military aid to Ukraine if he returns to office again in an attempt to force the ukrainians to negotiate on an end to the war a possibility that the Ukrainian Army has to consider in their ongoing calculations and at the same time as the war has raged on in Ukraine for the past 2 and A2 years now without an end in sight and as the casualties and burdens of the war have continued mounting War weariness within Ukrainian Society has also naturally increased when the Russian invasion began in early 2022 polling data from the Kiev Institute of Sociology found that an overwhelming 82% of ukrainians flatly rejected any consideration that the country should ever surrender any of their territory to Russia in exchange for peace which remained more or less consistent for the next year and a half through October of 2023 but after the failures of the 2023 counter offensive and the grinding attritional war in the East that has taken place since then the numbers of ukrainians saying that they would consider surrendering territory in exchange for peace have increased dramatically to as high as nearly a third of the Ukrainian population by the time of May 2024 and because of all of this pressure building both Within in and outside of Ukraine to surrender land to Russia in exchange for peace and after slowly losing ground all throughout the year to Russia in the East the Ukrainian military leadership likely calculated that they needed to throw down the dice and gamble with a bold attack somewhere to shift this prevailing narrative boost their own morale and to try and reverse their fortunes and sometime this summer they ultimately decided that launching a major attack into Russia itself would be exactly that high state gamble that they needed over the past few years the ukrainians have launched a few crossborder raids into Russia but they were always exactly that raids like the ones launched in May of 2023 and in March of 2024 into Russia's belgrad Province by only a few hundred Fighters each time in Pro Ukrainian militia organizations rather than professional Ukrainian army soldiers that both times only made small territorial gains and attacks before escaping back over across the border again a big Ukrainian attack in Russian territory with the objective of hanging on to that territory had never been attempted but as the Ukrainian military planners begin scanning around their Frontiers over this past summer they noticed a major vulnerability this is a map of current Russian military fortifications that have been built up throughout the front line in Ukraine in the South and the East and along the northern Russo Ukrainian border stretching into bellus this map is sourced from data that's been collected by Brady afre an American analyst who Maps out Russia's defenses on his website Russia's fortification along the front line within Ukraine in the South and the East are strong because they multi-layered lines of trenches minefields and anti-tank defenses that were strong enough to block Ukraine's counter offensive operation here in 2023 but Ukrainian military planners noticed this vulnerability in the northern section along Ukraine's border with Russia's KK Province here there were gaps in between the defensive lines and there were far fewer anti-tank obstacles minefields and anti-tank ditches than elsewhere presum ably just because the Russians weren't anticipating a major Ukrainian attack happening into Russia itself so for months over the summer the ukrainians began quietly redeploying troops and equipment from across the country into their Northern sui Province under the pretense of training and picking up new equipment and slowly built up Mass there for an attack into Russia's more lightly defended cursed province in the process and even though this buildup of forces was being done in total secrecy the higher Ukrainian Troop concentrations in Sumi still didn't exactly go unnoticed by the Russians after the Ukrainian assault took place in August Andre gulov a member of Russia's Parliament and a former high-ranking Russian military officer claimed that a report had been submitted to the Russian military authorities around a month beforehand that read quote forces had been detected and then intelligence indicated preparations for an attack end quote nonetheless as Ukrainian troop movements through the Sumi Province towards the active front lines in harke and the donbass were pretty common Russian intelligence appears to have failed to have ever capitalized on that report and to have anticipated an attack coming from this direction the secrecy surrounding the attack was so great on the Ukrainian side that only a small handful of top Ukrainian leaders even knew about the operation at all while most of the Ukrainian soldiers who would be participating in the attack weren't even informed about the plan until the very last moment some of them only a couple days beforehand the Ukrainian leadership didn't even inform their greatest International supporter the United States about the operation at all which led to officials in Washington waking up to a huge surprise on the morning of the 6th of August when they had learned that hours beforehand thousands of Ukrainian soldiers armed with American supplied weapons had just invaded Russia and now Weeks Later the Second Battle of KK rages on at top of the very same Battlefield that was fought over between the Germans and the Soviets in that Titanic Battle of K in 1943 and just like how that World War II era battle here proved to be a decisive turning point during that war so too could this Second Battle of KK in the ongoing Russo Ukrainian war and while Ukraine's Ultimate Military objectives related to this offensive into K are still fairly secur of we have a lot of room to speculate early on into the attack there was a lot of speculation that one of Ukraine's primary military objectives was going to be the capture of the small town of suja located just across the border because sud strategically contains a gas transfer station that's the only operational entry point for Russian natural gas flowing through their Brotherhood pipeline to customers in Europe control over saja therefore enables the ukrainians to effectively control the flow of gas through the Brotherhood pipeline to Europe but the ukrainians aren't really incentivized to interrupt that flow of gas very much Russia continues to pay Ukraine transmission fees for the gas that moves through the pipeline even during wartime so them taking over suja and shutting off the Taps would ALS shut down a major Revenue source for them as well so that alone doesn't quite explain their advance in this direction another much speculated on Ukrainian military objective here would be for them to advance about 60 km or 37 M deep into Russia towards the KK nuclear power plant which is one of the top three biggest nuclear power plants in Russia Today and one of the top four biggest producers of electricity in the entire country if the ukrainians were hypothetically able to advance far enough to seize control over it they could end up using it as diplomatic leverage against the Russians for their own occupation of the Ukrainian zapia nuclear power plant the largest nuclear power plant in the whole of Europe that's been occupied by Russian forces since the opening days of the invasion for the past 2 and 1/2 years now if Ukraine sees control over Russia's nuclear power plant in kers they might be able to try and trade it during ceasefire negotiations for their own nuclear power plant in zapia back there's also several potential military objectives that thehan may be attempting to achieve with their attack into KK as well president zalinsky of Ukraine said early on into the assault in KK that over the past two months alone since the 1st of June the Russians had used artillery and Kur to Shell Ukrainian border villages in the Sumi Province more than 2,000 times and so the Ukrainian Advance into the Kur province has already pushed Russian Artillery far enough back to be out of range of these Northern Villages that have been under constant fire for months now moreover the ukrainians are also probably interested in destroying the Russian Air Force's ability to utilize their air bases across KK to bomb positions in Ukraine the closest Russian Air Base to the Border here is the helino airbase located within the city of KK itself home to the Russian Air Force's 14th guards fighter Aviation regiment and their 24 suy su3 fighter jets that have repeatedly carried 3 ton Glide bombs across the boorder to bomb Targets in Ukraine the ukrainians have attacked this base multiple times all throughout the war with drones and cruise missiles that have only caused light damage but the recent Ukrainian advances into K now enable them to potentially move us supplied High Mars rocket systems to being within range of the base which could Pummel the base hard enough to potentially knock it out of commission for the rest of the war but at the same time Ukraine has precious few himar systems available to spare and it's unclear if they would ever risk them by moving them into occupied Russian territory where they would be at a greater risk of getting themselves destroyed some Ukrainian military officials have also stated that their KK attack is intended to complicate the flow of Russian soldiers and equipment from other parts of Russia moving to the front line in the donet province where Russia has been concentrating its own offensive energy for months now but this isn't very likely to succeed if that's truly the aim because there aren't really very many Rail and Road lines from where they've attacked that connect to the front line in donet if Ukraine really wanted to complicate the flow of Russia's Logistics into donat they would have to capture the town of aluki hundreds of kilometers to the east of where they actually attacked from so instead of complicating the flow of Russia's Logistics onto the front line in donat the Ukrainian attack in aers is probably more designed to draw Russian soldiers themselves away from the front line in donat in order to relieve the crushing pressure that has been mounting on the Ukrainian front line there it's also probably designed to force Putin himself into making a very uncomfortable and politically risky decision because Ukraine isn't the only country in this war that's been suffering from chronic Manpower shortages throughout this past summer the Russian army has been able to slowly and methodically Advance against the Ukrainian positions in the donat province and gain more ground because they've been throwing huge numbers of their soldiers into combat and paying in blood with an average of more than 1,000 casualties every day Russia has been losing approximately 30,000 soldiers a month in Ukraine recently and so just in order to maintain their current troop numbers along the front the r Russians have been having to replenish their troop numbers with at least 30,000 new recruits a month and Russia is continuing to build up their forces in Ukraine even further in July of 2024 Ukraine's commander-in-chief General Alexander siriri said during an interview that he believed there were approximately 520,000 Russian soldiers currently deployed on Ukrainian territory along the front line and that by the end of 2024 he believed the Russians would increase that number to around 690 ,000 troops on the front Russia's total military size at least officially is currently only 1. 15 million active duty personnel which means that around half of the entire Russian military's active duty Manpower is currently deployed to the front in Ukraine leaving little room left over for their ability to respond and react to other crises developing in other theaters like Ukraine's surprise incursion into the Cur province in order to continue sustaining their objectives in Ukraine in the pace of their attacks the Russian military has announced plans to expand the Personnel in their Armed Forces up to 1. 5 million or by another 350,000 or so troops while Bloomberg's economics Russia Economist Alex isakov has suggested that Russia will need to recruit around 500,000 more people into their Armed Forces over the next 12 months just in order to sustain their current levels of attrition and maintain their current tempo of heavy attacks and Russia will simply struggle with acquiring that many people for service back in September of 2022 after the last successful Ukrainian counter offensive overran swaths of Russian occupied territory in the harke and hiran provinces Putin ordered a limited mobilization of 300,000 Russian reservists that sparked a huge uptick and anxiety in the country and led to as many as a million people rapidly fleeing from the country in order to avoid potentially getting called up for service in Ukraine since then the Russian authorities have learned to rely more on the carrot than the stick in order to acquire more manpower for the Armed Services offering to pay well above Market salaries and bonuses to new recruits who enlist new recruits who enlist with the Russian armed forces in Moscow with various bonuses all baked in now stand to earn roughly $59,000 in their first year of service in Ukraine assuming that they survive which is about three times the average annual salary in Moscow and about five times the average annual Russian salary Nationwide for a poor Russian peasant from the back country somewhere with little other prospects gaining 5 years worth of income and only one year in Ukraine can be a highly tempting offer which is so far how the Kremlin has continued maintaining a steady stream of about 30,000 new recruits a month to replenish their ranks in Ukraine for a while now but as the war continues dragging on and as the casualties have mounted to as many as 500,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded in total since the invasion began now the payments and incentives to to attract new soldiers are having to get higher and higher and they may soon reach a point of becoming fiscally implausible in order to gain the 500,000 new recruits that may be required for the Russian army over the next 12 months carrots and payments alone will probably not be enough and so Russia will probably have to revert back to using the stick again and call up another politically unpopular round of mobilization the way the Ukraine was able to just walk across the border in the K Province and rapid East seiz a th000 square kilm of lightly defended Russian territory and take as many as 2,000 Russian soldiers as prisoners with only light resistance lays bare the current issues with Manpower that Russia is facing and the lack of their defensive reserves and the longer it takes for the Russians to respond to the attack and push them out the worse their Manpower shortage will appear to look like and what kind of a message does that send to Russia's other enemies if the country doesn't even have enough latent Manpower left over to kick out the ukrainians from kers then would they have enough to kick out other incursions or invasions by other forces at other locations it puts Russia into a position where it almost has to consider ordering another round of military mobilization just to be able to adequately defend their own borders and to continue appearing strong and just like the last time they tried that back in September of 2022 it will inevitably prove to be deeply unpopular as the cost of the war in Ukraine will reach even greater numbers of Russian civilians by attacking into K successfully the ukrainians have narrowed down Putin's choices for continuing the war considerably while the attack is also fundamentally embarrassed Putin personally by challenging his regime's perception of strength the attack shows that the war's consequences are not only limited to Ukraine and they can be expanded Beyond Ukraine's borders to affect thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Russians too nearly 200,000 Russian civilians have been given evacuation orders since the K Invasion began and the whole operation also fundamentally undermines both Putin's and orban's peace proposals that they each suggested only a few months ago how can orban's peace proposal of freezing the front lines where they currently stand be tolerable to Russia if it means freezing the front line in the KK Province too with a swath of territory under Ukrainian military occupation how can Putin negotiate the Ukraine surrender territories in the East while this chunk of Russian territory is still under Ukrainian occupation it is for this reason that Ukraine's attack into the curs province makes the most strategic sense as a sort of bargaining chip by taking over and occupying a bunch of Russian territory Ukraine has just gained a lot of Leverage in potential ceasefire negotiations with the Russians that they didn't have beforehand and they can try and offer a land forland style peace in which Ukraine will give up its occupied territories in kers in exchange for the Russians giving up their occupied territories in Ukraine so long as the ukrainians can continue holding on to the Terr teritory in kers and to their credit they appear to be trying to hang on to the land in kers for the Long Haul as they've already started digging out trenches and building fortifications in the area as they await the inevitable eventual Russian Counterattack against them the attack in aers in their seizure of about as much land in a couple of weeks as Russia taken throughout the entire year has also completely shifted The Narrative of this entire War by showing that Russia does not in fact hold all of the cards when going into a negotiation and the attack has showed Ukraine's military supporter in the western world that even after the failure of their counter offensive in 2023 the ukrainians are still determined to continue fighting and are capable of actually winning and achieving breakthroughs if given the right equipment there's previously been quite a lot of debate within the US the UK and Germany about where exactly Russia's red lines are in the Ukraine conflict that could trigger an uncontrollable escalation towards World War III and Global nuclear Army get in because the West doesn't want to get itself involved in a direct shooting war with Russia the West has been extremely cautious with providing Ukraine with certain powerful military equipment like long-range missiles and fighter jets out of this deep fear of military escalation with Russia another one of these much Fred about red lines in the Ukraine conflict for years has been Ukrainian troops marching across the border and attacking and occupying Sovereign Russian territory with Western supplied weapons but now that that supposed red line has been crossed by the ukrainians and a major assault and occupation of Russian territory did not in fact lead to a nuclear escalation Ukraine has demonstrated that Russia's supposed red lines are fewer than many expected and they will use that example to make the case clear that other supposed Kremlin red lines can be crossed as well such as the West supplying Ukraine with longer range missiles and fighter jets that can help them fight more effectively and perhaps most importantly the ukrainians needed to give their own soldiers and people a major morale Boost after the past year plus of significant setbacks they've been forced to endear from the failure of their counter offense in 2023 to the steady loss of territory in the donbass to the Russians to their mounting casualties on the front line and to the frequent Russian bombings of Ukrainian cities and civilian targets across the country such as the huge missile attack that Russia launched all across Ukraine in July then included missile strikes on the okad Children's Hospital in central Kio the largest Children's Hospital in the country that terrorized countless Ukrainian children and their families Ukraine's soldiers and civilians both needed a victory somewhere to help keep themselves going in the fight and to give them any sense of hope that all of the horrors of 21st century Warfare that they've been endearing for years will not be for nothing but that doesn't mean that the Ukrainian attack in Aur is not without significant risk either Ukraine's armed forces have had aull thousands of Highly experienced veteran soldiers away from the pressing front line in the east in order to carry out the attack in ksk and all is Russia continues massing soldiers in the East and continues to gain ground there Ukraine reducing their Troop group numbers along this front for the attack in K could prove to enable the Russians to advance in the East even more easily especially if Russia doesn't end up diverting very many troops away from the Eastern front in order to deal with them in kers and relies on pulling troops into K from other locations across Russia instead indeed since the Ukrainian offensive inur began the Russian Zone advance towards the Strategic town of pcrk in the donet province has only continued and kept on gaining ground there's also the fear that a major attack on Russian territory the result in the occupation of parts of Russia proper could end up energizing Russia's population to become more proar and drive up Russian military recruitment in the process which is an effect that won't really be well understood until months later and then there's also the risk that Ukraine's forces in K could end up becoming too aggressive and Advance too deeply into Russian territory and extend their own supply lines from the border too far in the process which could end up stalling their Advance out and leaving their soldiers there under supplied which could then open them up to a major Russian Counterattack if the Russians end up smashing the Ukrainian advanc and kers in a major military action that drives them all back over the Border again with high casualties all as the Russians simultaneously continue their steady Advance on the Eastern Front then the psychological blow dealt to the ukrainians and their Western supporters will be enormous and it would then become widely interpreted that diverting so many experienced soldiers from the Eastern Front was a grave mistake in order to avoid that possible outcome once the Russians inevitably start deploying more capable troops to K Ukraine really has only three options going forward with their attack here they could try to continue advancing more aggressively in order to take over more territory and expand their leverage and bargaining position in the process but that approach will risk them overextending their supply lines and eventually getting themselves smashed in the process so it's the highest risk highest reward option they could choose the lower risk choice would be to fall back to more defensible positions in K and dig themselves in and prepare for the Russian Counterattack trying to hang on to a small gain in kers that they could still use as leverage and still show to the outside world as evidence of their success the second option right now appears to be the most realistic approach that the ukrainians will actually attempt while the final lowest risk option that they could do would be to basically pull back across the border into Ukraine in a controlled orderly fashion and preserve as many troops vehicles and supplies as possible in the process for a potential major counteroffensive operation again next year in 2025 showing that they can still surprise and hit Russia hard and undermining The Narrative of their supposedly Inevitable Defeat in the process it's ultimately all a huge gamble for the ukrainians to have taken but after the way the war has progressed over the past year they didn't really have very many choices to consider regardless if the ukrainians can hang on to their gains in kers or not this has been a decisive moment in the war and one of the most historically significant events to have happened in European history this Century now there's a lot of data that goes into producing these kinds of videos whether it's showing the scale of the territory Ukraine is seized in KK to the area of Hong Kong visually showing how much territory in eastern Ukraine that Russia has taken since the start of the year or showing why the Ukrainian town of prros is such a strategically important place for the Russians and ukrainians to control in this war the ability to actually visualize raw data like this instead of just reading about it in text format is exactly what makes learning about these kinds of things so fascinating to me and it's why the exploring data visually course is one of my favorite courses that I've ever taken with this video sponsor brilliant.
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