What's the purpose of Ukraine announcing counter offensives. When not just make it a surprise?
It was in motion a while ago, but they actually did surprise them. You announce things while doing other things, to mind fukk your opponent. It’s as much psychological as it is physical and logistical. This is why the increase in Himars, fighter/bombers, and personnel increases have happened.
The “front” is extremely long and twisting. There’s constant movement and poking going on. They’ve been building personnel and supplies in multiple places, absorbing and repelling Russian breakthrough attempts, and softening defenses in the north/east/south.
They started slowly cutting off Russians in the south from resupply/reinforcement while simultaneously hammering both the south and east. When they initially announced an interest in moving on Kherson the Russians started to try to reinforce the south but couldn’t really do much to help their forces down there, but that movement alone weakened their defenses and offensive capabilities in the east and north.
They spent the last month playing mind games with the Russians before making a big push a couple of days ago. They knew they were coming but not exactly when, their morale was low, their leadership left them, their supplies and food were cut off, the estimated 25,000 ish Russians sitting on the Kherson region are in a relatively weakened state. There aren’t anymore bridges left aside from those meant for walking.
They want them to feel cornered but still have an avenue of escape and surrender. With luck the Ukrainians should be able to keep cutting through them over the next month or so and be able to scare anyone defending Crimea and Melitopol. Any attempt by Russia to rapidly reinforce with bodies from the east opens up an opportunity for a run on Zapozhrizah and possibly Mariupol, in the long term.
But at the end of the day, our words and posts don’t mean too much. All we can do is watch and see how things go.