I have read The Maneuver Warfare Handbook. I know what maneuver warfare is. And Simplicius is correct, what we’re seeing in the disastrous invasion of Russia by the Ukrainian Armed Forces is not maneuver warfare:
Ukraine choosing a lightly guarded, strategically trivial rural border area to send a shock fist of their most elite brigades through against a bunch of unarmed conscripts is not the highpoint of “maneuver warfare”, and in no conceivable way heralds its return. Anyone can send a couple light cavalry battalions to go romping through an undefended countryside to temporary effect—but that is not at the heart of maneuver warfare’s basest definition.
The primary importance behind maneuver warfare in operational art revolves around defeating enemy armies. When you’re maneuvering around a place where no army even exists, you’re not really accomplishing much. If Ukraine had truly revived the art then it would have been able to effect this discipline against Russian reserves which subsequently arrived to dig in. But what happened? Ukrainian forces hit a wall and became quickly stalled by the slightest resistance from actual professional troops.
Anyone can “maneuver” around a small token complement of conscripts when they’re outnumbered five to one. The reason maneuver warfare was deemed dead on the main contact lines was because there, both sides are of comparable strength and armament—albeit sometimes asymmetrically.
The Kursk invasion was a move born of political desperation, there was no military justification for it nor was there even the most remote chance of somehow achieving either a tactical or a strategic advantage from it. And now that it has obviously failed, all that is left is attempting to provoke Russia into an escalation that will necessitate the entrance of the USA into a hot war against Russia.
But Russia already knows that, which is why neither Russia nor Iran has been responding in kind to Ukrainian and Israeli provocations.
Ukraine and Israel are trying to spark major regional wars which they believe will solve their own problems at the expense of others, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
When attrition, industrial capacity, and demographics are all on your side, there is no need for escalation.