this would be key. part of the plan from the beginning had been to push down to break that land bridge between crimea and eastern ukraine. you and i have talked about this. commanders make the point the rule of thumb is you need a 3 to 1 ratio. particularly positions like this, that they have had months to dig in and mine. u even with good planning and well-trained units breakthrough with a r ratio than that. we ll see. if in fact ukrainians have concentrated forces in a particular area to give them a 3 or 4 or 5 to 1 advantage in that narrow area, they maybe able to break through. things are much easier once you got through the obstacle belt and got through the barriers in the tanks.
i think you have to talk about the ukrainian plan at first. they have a 600-mile defense line they have to breakthrough. so for the last couple weeks, i think the ukrainians have been probing for the soft spots along that 600-meter line. it would appear they may have found a soft spot down in in one region. if they are able to do that and they are able to breakthrough that very, very extensive obstacle belt, that s where the commander is going to consider deploying those eight brigades in reserve. however, the russian commander knows that as well. so you can expect that he s going to be concentrating there as well. so maybe they can breakthrough and commit those eight brigades of western troops to finally conduct that breakthrough.
you see? no, i don t think it is a game-changer. it is important. it adds to the capability of ukrainians to get through that obstacle belt from hell. it is great for going against the troops in bunkers and possibly some of the armored vehicles in the rear, but it is not going to be a game-changer, but lit help. important but not a game-changer, and this is important context for us to understand. general kimmett, can i ask you about the warning from our colleague natasha bertrand that russia could present a false flag operation in the black sea for example. what would that look like? well, it was said earlier they could be floating ukrainian mine near a civilian ship. they could be conducting an attack against a turkish port for instance, but the best thing that could happen is what bill byrnes did which is to ul kate out and reveal it, and if you
significant effect that would have not only for ukraine but for the russian military as well. on the issue of the counteroffensive, ukraine says that this counteroffensive is going very slowly. what does that, and why share that publicly? i think it s obvious to anybody watching this that the ukrainians have lost two of the key elements in the counteroffensive. number one, the element of time. and the element of surprise. this is tough going, as i ve said many times. the obstacle belt that the russians have set up has had months to prepare its multilayered and it s the toughest kind of fighting. i would expect that this counteroffensive would be going on for perhaps months as the ukrainians either where the russians down or find a soft spot in the russian lines to punch through, to the sea.
you have been following the progress of this war extremely closely. tell us what we ve learned about ukraine s capabilities in this counter offense so far and is the slower than expected progress worrisome in your view? it s not, jim. in fact, this morning i looked back through some writings that i made earlier in the year back in february saying when you re talking about a counteroffensive against the kind of obstacle belt that russia had been able to lay over a six-month period of time, having seen this kind of operation in both training and in combat, it takes a long time. everyone who is suggesting it s a slow movement is not taking into consideration how difficult breaching complex obstacles are. that s exactly what ukraine is doing. the enemy also gets a vote.