Counteroffensive has Stalled
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Western media reports say the much hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive has stalled former US official blames the Biden White House
NATO was overly optimistic about the Ukrainian military’s ability to regain ground before its summer counteroffensive, The Times reported on Saturday, citing an unnamed US officer. The British newspaper noted that officials in Kiev had begun blaming their Western backers for their supposed lack of resolve.
In its article penned by Mark Galeotti, the author of more than 20 books on Russia, The Times quoted an anonymous US army officer involved in the training of Ukrainian service members. “Nato expected miracles, and the Ukrainians promised them,” he said, adding that “you can’t run a war on optimism.”
Another US official told the media outlet that “we haven’t quite closed the book on 2023, but we are ramping up our thinking about 2024.”The report claimed that neither Russia nor Ukraine can make any decisive advances at present, with the latter now touting the capture of individual villages as a sign of success.
The author estimates that Kiev has two months at most to turn the tide before autumn rains start making the ground impassable for military hardware in November.
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal published on Sunday, former US national security adviser John Bolton lamented that Kiev’s long-anticipated push, which started in early June, “isn’t making the headway some proponents had forecast,” adding that the disappointing results must become a “wake-up” call for Washington.
The former White House official – widely regarded as a foreign-policy hawk and who has advocated regime changes in Iran, Syria, Libya, and Cuba – insisted in his article that Kiev’s “inability to achieve major advances is the natural result of a US strategy aimed only at staving off Russian conquest,” while he also urged US President Joe Biden to start “vigorously working toward Ukrainian victory.”
“Ukraine’s offensive failures and Russia’s defensive successes share a common cause: the slow, faltering, non-strategic supply of military assistance by the West,” Bolton claimed, adding that the US-led support for Kiev has been hampered further by speculation that Moscow might escalate the conflict.
Bolton, who served in the Trump administration up to 2019, sought to allay those concerns, insisting that “there’s no evidence” that Russia has conventional military capability to threaten NATO or a desire to launch a nuclear strike.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that it adheres to the policy that nuclear war should never be fought, and that it might resort to its atomic arsenal only if the very existence of the state is threatened.
The former national security adviser also dismissed the need for talks between Kiev and Moscow, arguing that these would only benefit Russia. Instead, he suggested that the West and Washington should radically tighten their sanctions regime.
In addition, he called on Washington to slap restrictions directly on China, citing its “enormous support” for Moscow. While Beijing remains Russia’s key trade partner, it has repeatedly denied that it was providing Moscow with military support.
On Monday, the Russian Ministry of Defence said Russian forces delivered multiple strikes by seaborne long-range precision weapons against Ukrainian naval drone production and storage sites, destroying all the designated targets over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces initiated a large-scale offensive against Russian lines over two months ago, after being reinforced by hundreds of Western-supplied tanks and armored vehicles. However, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev has so far failed to gain any significant ground and has lost more than 43,000 service members since the start of the push.
Bolton’s view on the reasons for Ukraine’s difficulties is shared by a number of Ukrainian officials, including President Vladimir Zelensky, who has suggested that without long-range weapons, it’s difficult for Kiev not only to carry out its offensive, but also to hold the frontline.
Moscow has repeatedly warned Western countries against sending military assistance to Kiev, arguing that by doing so, they become engaged in a “proxy war” against Russia.
Source ToL/WSJ/Reuters/RT
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