It was not a year and a half: Ukraine staged an "operational surprise" to the troops of the Russian Federation - ISW
For the last year and a half, due to the considerable openness of the battlefield in Ukraine, this has not succeeded in either one or another. About it writes "Institute of War Study" in the summary of August 8. Ukraine's opportunities to find Russian troops by surprise that the openness of the battlefield, in particular thanks to the sensors, which was secured by both sides of the war, is not yet a guarantee that the battlefield will be completely visible.
The parties that are fighting in Ukraine may not be fully understood by the enemy's operational plans and so achieve the operational suddenness. In the Russian guideline blogosphere, command is criticized for not noticed and did not respond to the Ukrainian forces in a timely manner, which accumulated at the border of the Kursk region.
One of the sources related to the Kremlin argued that the forces of the Russian Federation constantly warned the Russian above command of the accumulation of groups of the Armed Forces along the border of the Kursk region, but the command was not properly prepared for possible offensive. However, American analysts do not agree with this.
"The Ukrainian forces would have successfully concealed their operational intentions to achieve operational suddenness if the assertion of the military man that the Russian forces observed the accumulation of Ukrainian forces in the border areas would be true," - said in ISW. Earlier, the ISW evaluated that the Russian troops did not learn lessons about the difficulties of mechanized maneuver on the seemingly open battlefield.