Will Ukraine's planned counter-offensive work?

Ukraine's grand plan to launch a mighty counter-offensive and seize back Russian-occupied territory, perhaps even Crimea, is still awaited. The problem is, everyone, including the Russians of course, knows it is going to happen at some point soon. There is no element of surprise which is always so important in military strategy. What we do know is that the counter-offensive is going to involve German Leopard 2 tanks, British Challenger 2 tanks and American Bradley armoured fighting vehicles. The long-awaited US Abrams M1A1 battle tanks won't be ready for operations until the autumn, too late for Ukraine's big move to strike hard at the Russian positions. What is crucial for the Kyiv government will be the presence and usability of the Patriot anti-missile systems which have now arrived in Ukraine but are not yet combat-ready. I think Kyiv will wait unto the Patriots are fully deployed because without them the Ukrainian forces are going to be too vulnerable to Russian ground-attack aircraft and cruise missiles. We know, thanks to the leaked Pentagon documents, that Ukraine is running short of medium-range anti-air missiles. The Patriots will fill that gap. I don't think any Ukrainian commander will want to launch the counter-offensive without the Patriots to back up their troop advances. But with Patriots and the western tanks and American armoured fighting vehicles there is a good chance that the Ukrainian forces will be able to make serious inroads into the Russian defensive positions in the east and south. I doubt they will ever be in a position to drive all the Russian troops out of Ukraine but they could cause such heavy blows to the Russian occupied positions that Putin back home safely in the Kremlin might be forced to seek a settlement in order to hang on to whatever territory is left under Russian control. There is one exception to this. If Ukraine were to manage to seize back Crimea, unlikely though that is, that could force Putin to do something very dangerous, like turn to nuclear or chemical weapons. Putin cannot afford to suffer the humiliation of losing Crimea. It's a high-risk, dangerous moment in this Putin war.