Russo-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 428

On May 12 2023 16:25 MJG wrote:
BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65567143

Russia are, of course, denying that a counter-offensive has made any progress.

On May 12 2023 16:25 MJG wrote:
BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65567143

Russia are, of course, denying that a counter-offensive has made any progress.

On May 12 2023 05:43 KwarK wrote:
It also ignores that under Russian law they’ve already occupied a significant amount of Russia including the famously Russian city of Kherson.

On May 12 2023 17:49 zeo wrote:

I'm curious. What's the logic behind using the term 'counter-offensive' if the front lines have been at a relative stalemate for months. The only active sector where land is changing hands would be Bahmut but you can hardly call it a large scale strategic offensive by the Russians. A counter offensive would indicate that there was a Russian offensive right before that but this 'imminent Ukrainian counter-offensive' has been a term used for this operation since last year.

On May 12 2023 18:01 Falling wrote:
If someone breaks into your home and assaults your and you hit them back, what is the logic behind calling it 'self defence'. Couldn't it be called assaulting back?

I don't see why an operational pause during a time of year in which you could not really push ground suddenly makes it so that too much time has passed to call it a counter offensive. It's only been half a year or so since the main Russian offensives have wound down. Now this is offense that is meant to counter the previous Russian invasion. In other words, a counter-offensive. It's not like we are talking about South Korea suddenly attacking North Korea. Such a large gap could legitimately be called propaganda. But counter--offensive is pretty accurate here.

On May 12 2023 19:41 Sbrubbles wrote:
I also find it curious the constant referral to these ukranian actions as counter offensives. I mean, for a WW1 example, the battle of the Somme is referred to as the Somme offensive not the Somme counter offensive despite being carried by French and British over French territory

On May 12 2023 19:23 zeo wrote:

If your neighbor breaks into your home and punches you, you for example call the police but the police can't do anything to them. After a few months you come up to your neighbor and punch them back in the face. You can't call that self defense or a counter attack, you can call it a justified attack though from your perspective.

When you look at WW2, or the Korean/Vietnam War its very clear what an offensive and what a counteroffensive is. Now, Wikipedia as a source is not great, especially with terms that can be manipulated but here is the definition from its article:

An offensive is a military operation that seeks through an aggressive projection of armed forces to occupy or recapture territory, gain an objective or achieve some larger strategic, operational, or tactical goal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_(military)

So, the fact that territory is being recaptured does not make something a counteroffensive. Just type in 'counteroffensive Ukraine' in Google and search news articles, you see articles from December saying Ukraine is getting ready for a 'decisive winter counteroffensive', and then it became Spring, and talks now of Summer counteroffensive. The ship of Theseus comes to mind when talking about this.

EDIT: Using a Starcraft analogy, both of you are Terrans sitting on 5 bases each. The enemy takes out one of your expansions, builds a CC there and then both of you turtle for 10min without anything happening. After 10min you attack that expo and take it back. Now, after 10min of turtling, would any commentator call what you are doing a counter-attack? An attack to take back that expo sure, but a counter-attack?

On May 12 2023 19:57 2_2 wrote:
To be clear, I 100% agree you could call it an offensive too, a counteroffensive is simply a type of an offensive, so it's not wrong. But it's not wrong to call it a counteroffensive either, so of course they're going to call it a counteroffensive.

On May 12 2023 22:51 Manit0u wrote:


If you want to be technical then you can't really have counter-offensive without an offensive. Since it seems like Russians aren't on the offense (outside of Bakhmut at least) and the war has pretty much devolved into positional trench warfare I'm not sure we can call it a "Russian offensive", so it's hard to also call what Ukrainian's are doing a counter-offensive.

It's more like an offensive with an aim to recapture ground that has been occupied by the Russians.