River crossing needs hours of preparation time followed by assembly. It's like standing in a queue.
The opposite. They control whether the river bed stays dry or not, they control the dam upriver.
Lol. The Russians simply didn't have troops. The Kharkiv region did not even have regular Russian army, just territorial defence. And just 2 or 3 BTGs of them versus many UAF brigades. Kherson also had a handful of BTGs, they were in no way capable of defending against multiple brigades. It just goes to show how badly the UAF were mauled before the fall counteroffensive happened last year, to the point where the Russians were holding large amounts of ground with just a few thousand men. Pretty much all of the RAF strength was concetrated around Donbas and Zapo at the time.
Ukraine took all that land quickly simply because the Russians retreated.
The entire UAF started off with 700k, not counting a nearly million man reserve. Draftees and reserves came in to fill in the losses of the initial 700+k. Most of them domestically trained in both Soviet and NATO doctrine.
NATO trained troops for the counteroffensive are just 60k in total, official.
TDF started small, but swelled massively over the starting months. At least 70k + 100k are known up to May last year. Current numbers are unknown.
