Talk:2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive

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Text and/or other creative content from this version of 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive was copied or moved into Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with this edit on 2 August 2023. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

Mealie, Daniel; Barros, George; Kagan, Frederick W. (17 September 2023). "Ukraine's Operations in Bakhmut Have Kept Russian Reserves Away from the South". Institute of the Study of War.
"Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine". Washington Post. 4 December 2023.
"In Ukraine, a war of incremental gains as counteroffensive stalls". Washington Post. 4 December 2023.
Biddle, Stephen (29 January 2024). "How Russia Stopped Ukraine's Momentum". Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 29 January 2024.

Battle of Neskuchne was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 12 September 2023 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

Updated Map[edit]

It might be a good idea to have the map at the top of the page to only contain liberated areas in 2023. It could be kind of confusing for people unfamiliar with the war to see all the huge blue areas and then see "Russian defensive victory".

Ukraine just lost Robotyne[edit]

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1761446540785201338 So what is stopping us to change outcome as they don't hold 14 villages any more. Kanikosen (talk) 17:59, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not yet (it seems). And besides, that's off the proper scope of the article. At most, it could be commented as Aftermath. Alexis Coutinho (talk) 19:08, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is what I mean. It's not longer 14 villages taken. Kanikosen (talk) 19:36, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Attacks now are not within the scope of the article. This one is about the failed counteroffensive. Now they are in defense. Mellk (talk) 19:39, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Should be mentioned that Russians reclaimed area? Kanikosen (talk) 00:31, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It wouldn't hurt. It was sequential after all. Alexis Coutinho (talk) 15:23, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is no reliable proof on that. One tweet is not a source. 211.238.95.199 (talk) 14:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess we can say that from today, but only from today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bortak42 (talk • contribs) 16:56, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Characterization as "Russian victory"[edit]

This makes little sense- Ukraine's failure to reach its objectives does not mean a Russian achievement to stop territorial gains completely. I'm aware that the options for the infobox are "X victory" or "inconclusive", so changing the result to "Inconclusive" and specifying the territorial gains in conjunction with the failure to achieve set military objectives makes more sense than discarding the territorial gains made by the Ukrainians and calling the counteroffensive a "Russian victory". - presidentofyes, the super aussa man 20:42, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see it supported by the article body (or sources). ManyAreasExpert (talk) 21:12, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This should be named as "Russian defensive victory". Bortak42 (talk) 12:41, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why are Russian losses in the infobox listed as "heavy"?[edit]

From what i know Russian forces did not suffer from heavy losses given they were able to launch their own offensive almost immediatly afterwards? D1d2d3d29 (talk) 15:59, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or at least they are not nearly as heavy as Ukranian ones given that Ukraine apparently stopped the offensive because they units comitted to it started running out of infantry D1d2d3d29 (talk) 16:13, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It suffered much smaller losses than Ukraine and, overall, probably relatively minor losses, unlike Ukraine, and this was the reason why it was then able to conduct its own offensive. Bortak42 (talk) 16:59, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think Russian losses were minor, Ukraine was throwing everything and the kitchen sink at them (wasn't it something like 10-20 thousand artillery shells a day at one point?), and quite a few villages were lost, but they probably weren't bigger than the Ukranian losses, and probably smaller than the Ukranian losses percentage wise D1d2d3d29 (talk) 21:30, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not only in percentage terms, but also numerically, and several times over. They certainly suffered significant losses. Just as the Russian forces can be said to have suffered significant losses, the Ukrainian forces were literally massacred and few of them remained. Bortak42 (talk) 21:38, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Massacred? They certainly suffered massive losses given that they apparently only stopped the counteroffensive when the units assigned to it started running out of infantry, but the 47th brigade was able to take part in combat related to Avdiivka shortly after the counteroffensive was over so it couldn't have been that bad

I have no idea wheter Russian losses were lower or higher numerically, all we can say for certain right now is they were much lower in percentage terms since Russian forces were almost immeditaly able to start offensive operations (including some in the Robotyne axis) D1d2d3d29 (talk) 21:46, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article should reference the Institute for the Study of War less[edit]

I just did a ctrl+f and found 19 mentions of them in the article, not as a source, but straight up namedropped in the article

The reliance on ISW as a source when so many people in the community consider them a bad source is very worrying to me D1d2d3d29 (talk) 16:10, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ISW is not a reliable source of information, but a neoconservative propaganda mouthpiece. Bortak42 (talk) 17:03, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is not justified to say ISW is "namedropped", as it is precisely because of the nature of the source that its name typically ought to be mentioned in-line, to allow better or quicker distinction from newspapers (etc) as sources. Fewer citations of the ISW in this article would in my view be preferable, although the claim of it being a "bad source" seems insufficiently supported at present. Perhaps Wikipedia admin (rather than contributors) will let their view made known through the guidelines soon.--CRau080 (talk) 19:53, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Name of the article[edit]

The name "2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive" is quite weak. This should be called the " 2023 Kherson-Crimea-Zaporozhia-Donetsk counteroffensive" or "2023 Southeastern counteroffensive". The name should be similar to the previous ones, such as Kharkiv or Kherson, and not Ukrainian, because all of them are Ukrainian, and this concerns the regions affected by the hostilities. Bortak42 (talk) 9:40, 2 May 2024 (UTC)