Ukraine has revealed very little about how it intends to retake its Russian-held territories.
It’s a fair game. “Plans love silence,” recalls a recent Ukrainian video showing armed, masked soldiers holding a finger to their lips.
The future of Ukraine is at stake. Kiev must show NATO and the West that it can end the nearly year-long military standoff and break through Russian lines to retake at least part of its territory annexed by Putin.
Everything indicates that the Ukrainian offensive has begun. Although the military analysts, who have access to spy satellites and intercepted communications, are awaiting a decision to get a better idea of the situation.
And the Ukrainian counteroffensive is not limited to conventional military operations. Kyiv is also waging an information war. Russian television and radio programs were pirated. In one such broadcast, a Putin impersonator said that Ukrainian troops had invaded three Russian border regions.
- Listen to Normand Lester’s chronicle QUB radio :
Vulnerabilities in Russian defenses
On the Eastern Front, Ukrainian forces were advancing around Bakhmut, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said, describing the city as the “epicenter of hostilities”.
For his part, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Prigozhin, ridiculed the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement that the Ukrainian advance had been repulsed, calling it “cruelly absurd science fiction”.
In the Donetsk region, a Russian military blogger wrote that the news was becoming more alarming by the hour and claimed that the Ukrainian armed forces are much better organized and coordinated than in the past. A pro-Russian official from the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic even warned that “the enemy managed to put us in a difficult position”.
Analysts believe Ukrainian military leaders in the south are aiming to reach the shores of the Sea of Azov, thereby cutting off the land corridor that Russia has established to the Crimea peninsula, which the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014.
collateral damage
The Ukrainians made gains in Zaporizhia province, where a large dam and hydroelectric power station were severely damaged by an explosion that inundated areas near the front lines. Both sides ordered the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians. Ukraine blames the Russians for blowing up the dam, while the Kremlin claims “Ukrainian sabotage” caused the damage to the structure that caused the flooding.
As for the nearby Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency said there was “no immediate danger” but warned belligerents not to jeopardize its safety.
Either way, as Justin Trudeau said yesterday, it is “another example of the horrific consequences of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
