Yes but note that russia has optimized its frontlines for maximum small unit infiltration along as wide of a front as possible, they have formed their land army into a film around Ukraine’s broad defensive lines which has caused Ukraine serious problems but it also has the drawback, I would argue quite catastrophically for russia, of setting their land army up to be chopped into useless disconnected pieces by smaller, better equipped, more mobile and aware mechanized armored units who can consistently rely on resupply in a way nobody fighting for russia can.

My point is that in order to encircle and dismantle the russian frontlines Ukraine wouldn’t necessarily need to strike that deep at any one point of the frontlines, again russia has chosen to optimize for maximum dispersion, which means that Ukraine wouldn’t have to abandon much of its pre-existing winter shelter infrastructure set up for the current position of the frontlines. Additionally Ukraine wouldn’t expose itself politically to more sabotage by Trump/Vance with a series of shallow encirclements as they wouldn’t appear on the map as major movements of the frontlines until the bulk of russia’s actually effective fighting forces had been taken out of the fight.

The ground hardening has its drawbacks but for armored vehicles and highly motivated fighters I am not so sure they aren’t outweighed by advantages. I don’t know the region’s climate and landscape well enough to really decisively say either way, but I can say you should expect their to be a lot of nuance here.

Russia has desperately needed foliage during the summer and into fall for their tactics to succeed at a general level, Ukraine does not as Ukraine has demonstrated repeatedly it is capable of conducting combined arms maneuvers at the most dangerous parts of russia’s frontlines and moving Ukrainian infantry into position with armored vehicles, foliage not required.

I don’t know what Ukraine is planning or what pace is desired for the winter but here is the thing, Trump and Putin clearly set up Ukrainian citizens to have a hellish winter with the hopes that it will pummel Ukraine into submission (and Trump did his part by making sure to fire as many ballistic missile interceptors as possible in his war of choice with Iran)… but this is to distract from the fact that in the landwar Ukraine and russia are in a ground grapple (again russia chose this through pushing maximum dispersion and small unit infiltration tactics) and russia cannot just get up and run away. From the perspective of a Ukrainian fighter, what then does that motivate you to do?

Sure Ukraine is the smaller opponent in this landwar/grapple but russia is recovering more slowly from each and every blow/grapple it fends off and Ukraine is becoming better at recovering and using energy efficiently… and further even when russia lands damaging blows on Ukraine it almost always comes at great cost from Ukrainian defenses and counter attacks, the opposite is not so for when Ukraine strikes…

Russia is desperately trying to distract from this by committing acts of mass terrorism against Ukrainian civilians with ballistic missiles and flying jet bombs.