Ukraine's top general wanted a bold counteroffensive a year earlier that the US thought was too risky. It might have reshaped the war.

• Ukraine and the US disagreed on when and where the counteroffensive against Russia should begin.
• A new book details Zaluzhny's plan for a bold move in 2022.
• If Ukraine had hit Zaporizhzhia then, the war may have looked very different now.

Ukraine's forces slammed against stiff Russian defenses in southern Ukraine this summer, and ultimately, the counteroffensive failed. Unable to get the US onboard earlier, the move in a critical sector of southern Ukraine came a year later than when the country's top general first wanted to make it, a new book reports.

Had it come when he wanted, it might have reshaped the war, for better or worse.

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Gen. Valery Zaluzhny pushed for a bold, and by some observations risky, counteroffensive in 2022 that never came to be, according to the new book "Our Enemies Will Vanish" by Yaroslav Trofimov, the Wall Street Journal's chief foreign-affairs correspondent.

It was a plan to punch through parts of Zaporizhzhia and sever the so-called "land bridge" to isolate Russian forces in Crimea.

During discussions with Western partners of plans for a 2022 counteroffensive, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Zaluzhny, his top general, both advocated for a push down to the Sea of Azov through the Zaporizhzhia region. At that point, Russia had not constructed the extensive minefields and fortifications that would hinder the 2023 counteroffensive there, lightening the breaching demands.

Such an approach would have still been a daunting challenge and a gamble. The penetration would need to not only be deep but also sufficiently wide to prevent the Russians from counterattacking and threatening the flanks of the advancing force.

But if the Ukrainian move worked, it might have allowed the Ukrainians to capitalize on their momentum after the battle for Kyiv and Russian losses elsewhere and, as Trofimov writes, "deprive Moscow of its biggest prize in the war."

Not asking for much

Ukraine didn't come to the US with a major ask. Zaluzhny estimated Ukraine only needed an additional 90 howitzers and a sufficient amount of artillery ammunition to pull it off.

Whether that would have been enough or if Ukraine would have also needed weapons like armored personnel carriers and fighting vehicles, or even tanks, is difficult to assess. But the possibility exists that with a large enough fighting force, Ukraine could've achieved something similar to what it did in Kharkiv in September 2022, when Russian lines collapsed and Ukrainian forces recaptured thousands of square kilometers of territory in its northeast.

The Zaporizhzhia area seemed ripe for a major attack. Unlike the Kherson region, another option further west that was divided by Ukraine's longest river, a successful assault in this area had the potential to allow the Ukrainians to drive farther.

But when the planning was happening, Ukraine hadn't yet demonstrated any offensive prowess, and US officials were wary. There were concerns a push from Berdyansk, to Melitopol, and down to the Azov Sea might create vulnerabilities in the line, especially given uncertainty about whether or not Ukraine could coordinate brigades for an effective offensive.

From the US perspective, Trofimov writes, "failure was likely, and its consequences potentially catastrophic." Such a risky move could result in a strategic loss that could see Russia take the remainder of Zaporizhzhia and, later, Dnipro.

Rather than support the objective Ukraine wanted, the US pushed Ukraine to focus on different target for its southern counteroffensive: Kherson. It was a safer option, and the stakes were lower. The city was an important early Russian war win and one Ukraine would decide to pursue instead of Zaporizhzhia. In that offensive, Ukraine's attacks on bridges shattered the resupply routes Russia needed for its occupiers in Kherson, forcing the Russians to retreat across the Dnipro river.

"The reason we recommended that they do Kherson was that they didn't have the trained personnel and the kit to go south," a senior Pentagon official involved in these discussions told Trofimov, adding that "we thought that if they bit off more than they can chew in the South, they would get routed."

Zaluzhny disagreed, his aides said, telling Trofimov that the general argued Ukraine "must attack where we should, not where we can." But as the US controlled the majority of military aid to Ukraine, there was little arguing. Kherson it was.

In November 2022, the Pentagon called Ukraine's liberation of Kherson, which followed a surprise, sweeping northeastern offensive in the Kharkiv region, a "significant accomplishment and a testament to the grit, determination, and tenacity" of Ukraine. It was, at the time, an impressive move and an indication that Ukraine's rebuffs of Russian forces thus far in the war weren't a fluke.

But as Trofimov writes, Zaluzhny had wanted a high risk, high reward offensive in 2022. That never materialized though, and it is impossible to know for sure how that might have played out.

Ukraine did ultimately launch a counteroffensive in Zaporizhzhia, hoping to cut down to the Sea of Azov, but that came a year later than Zaluzhny had planned, in fall 2023, months after the second Ukrainian counteroffensive had begun. And this time, Russia was more prepared.

The large-scale Ukrainian effort to recapture territory and impose strategic losses on the Russians involved units trained in NATO tactics, such as combined arms warfare, and equipped with armored vehicles and Western tanks, but the offensive ran into major problems, specifically fortified Russian defenses, land mines, anti-tank trenches, and other deadly obstacles.

Russia's defenses are one of several reasons why Ukraine's counteroffensive this year failed to achieve its objectives, and experts and prominent war observers have assessed that had Ukraine launched its counteroffensive earlier, these fortifications wouldn't have been so extensive.

Ukraine waiting to launch its counteroffensive, in other words, bought Russia time to prepare for what was coming. Things are often clearer in hindsight.

Missing opportunities

When Ukraine at last launched its assault in Zaporizhzhia, aiming to cut down past Orikiv toward Melitopol a year after Zaluzhny and Zelenskyy had wanted to do so, there was limited chance of a breakthrough.

Facing tough defenses, Ukraine was forced to shift away from certain NATO-style tactics and even abandon some of its heavy armor and pursue limited advances with small groups of infantry supported by artillery.

Ukraine did manage to breach the formidable Surovikin Line, a complicated network of fortifications in Zaporizhzhia. The plan appeared to be to crack open the initial defensive line and widen the area to allow Western armor to break into occupied territory, but it didn't pan out.

The part in Trofimov's book discussing plans for the 2022 counteroffensive speaks to an element of the war that has received significant criticism: the hesitancy of Ukraine's Western partners to commit to bold plays and provide powerful weapons, the potential cost be damned.

Western supporters raised concerns as Ukraine waded into the "meatgrinder" battle for Bakhmut determined to bleed the Russians for every inch of ground they took, but Kyiv called the shots, opting to stay. Whether that was wise was debatable, and it was unquestionably a gamble. But some argue it paid off.

As Ukraine gears up for a harsh winter and goes on defense, experts continue to critique the West's approach to the war in Ukraine.

"I agree with the overarching critiques that throughout this war Washington has been too conservative when it comes to enabling the Ukrainians to be successful on the battlefield," George Barros, a conflict expert at the Institute for the Study of War, told Business Insider.

"That inopportune timing in Washington has foreclosed some windows of opportunity that Ukrainian forces could have exploited had Western aid been there on time to poise Ukrainian forces to exploit them," he added.

Barros pointed to multiple examples of this, such as the American M1 Abrams tanks only arriving in Ukraine in fall 2023, long-range ATACMS missiles in late 2023, and F-16 fighter jets not coming until 2024, at the earliest, "when they were needed in 2022."