As done with previous high-risk battles like Bakhmut, they usually send these poorly trained and motivated conscripts on missions that might almost qualify as suicide missions, with a Stalin-like line of enforcers behind them, ready to shoot those who attempt to surrender to the Russians. There has been some footage of Ukrainian soldiers being shot from behind while moving across the frontline trying to surrender.
There is a militia kernel of around 100,000-150,000 hardcore nationalists, most of whom are kept away from the Russian meat grinder and are there in the cities to make sure that the locals don't rebel, especially in Russophone cities like Kharkov, Odessa or Dnipro, as well as in the capital Kiev. Ukraine did use (and lose) a lot of the reconstituted Azov Battalion in the battle of Bakhmut, but the bulk of these ideologically-compliant militias are used to keep holding the Kiev regime together as the losses mount and potential dissent grows.
Meanwhile Ukrainian true believers are kept on the program through a domestic media propaganda barrage, and the fact that western media is also hiding or massaging the facts is helping the domestic narrative, example:
There are cracks at the top, with for instance longtime Maydan operator and Kiev mayor Klitchko being targeted by the Zelensky regime:
Commander in chief Zaluzhny has as well been sidelined, he was said to be opposed to the conduct of a frontal attack on southern reinforced Russian lines without sufficient air and artillery support.
The results are in 3 weeks into the Counteroffensive, over 10,000 casualties for Ukraine, and they've barely made a dent into the Russian lines of defense:
I would have thought Ukraine could have made some advances towards Tokmak, the key stronghold shown at the bottom of the map here (city within the larger ring of fortifications). Local hub Tokmak is the Bakhmut of the region. It might take Ukraine over 100,000 KIAs to get there at this point, I am not sure if they are ready to embark on an even bigger meat grinder than Bakhmut, especially given that the Russian loss ratio will be even smaller than in Bakhmut as they are well dug-in.
