Up front, after studying so many, I consider any war for a completely unnecessary tragedy.
Thus, when you ask if this operation is making sense.... sigh... the first thing coming to my mind is that it's not worth a single life…
Up front, after studying so many, I consider any war for a completely unnecessary tragedy.
Thus, when you ask if this operation is making sense.... sigh... the first thing coming to my mind is that it's not worth a single life that's lost, smashed, wounded, driven into madness or else.
But, sadly, under the given cirumstances.... yes, it's necessary, and it's feasible. One reason is that it's next to never that battles are fought under ideal circumstances, when everything is ready, all the troops perfectly trained, all the equipment and gear available etc.
This is happening so rarely, that one can forget about that.
Then, is it feasible in terms of troop strength?
Yes, because a single battalion of the Ukrainian Army packs more firepower than two BTGs of the Russian. While this single ZSU battalion has more situational awareness and better commanders than an entire combined arms amry of the VSRF. Thus, while it's not 'advisable' to run operations under given conditions, Ukrainians do have enough troops, do have enough situational awareness, to recover Kherson. I'm only not entirely sure if I'm in agreement with the way this operation is run, i.e. with places where the ZSU has attacked (if at all, only the drive on Tomyna Balka was something I would've done), but it's going to be long before we might get the information about its reasoning. Thus, right now I can't say this was 'good' and this 'bad'.
Re. exhaustion: on the contrary. Your troops are more likely to 'get bored' if 'doing nothing' for weeks and then months, than if they're sent to fight.
In this regards, one should not forget that every single month, the ZSU is reinforced by 5,000-12,000 troops either trained abroad or at home, by NATO-partners. The Russians aren't: they're meanwhile short even on truck drivers, not to talk about experienced logisticians, repair personnel, artillerists etc.. Plus, by kicking the Russians out of their fortifications, where they are well-protected, and forcing them to counterattack and thus to expose themselves, and suffer attrition, it's the ZSU that's imposing attrition upon the VSRF, not the other way around.
Related to the above, keep in mind the imperialist mindsets of the Russians - which are exactly like those of Americans (and/or the British, and French, and Austrians etc., at earlier times) -: there is no way of making it clear to them that they're wrong and can't win - but through (virtual) forcing them to hit that wall with their foreheads, dozens and hundreds of times. They have to seriously hurt their brains in order to get reasonable and accept a few cold facts about Ukraine. Nothing else works.
Furthermore, nope, I do not consider this operation for that much 'risky'. Yes, it's truth: regardless how much 'reinforced', the VSRF in Kherson was not in a position to run a major offensive operation. It was no threat. And yes, the ZSU was 'quite well prepared', but not 'perfectly/ideally'. However, letting the Russians in place for much longer would've become even more damaging - politically and militarily.
Finally, for operations still ahead of Ukraine the ZSU must start sorting out its commanders. It's simply so that some commanders are good at defence, others on offensive:, and in the future the ZSU is going to need much more of 'offensive/aggressive' commanders, than those excelling in defence (which dominated its operations the last six months). Sadly, there's no better way of finding out but through combat operations.