What Ukrainian Counteroffensive?

By David Sole

Day in and day out the western corporate mass media had been proclaiming the long awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces in the south of Ukraine. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines a counteroffensive as “A large-scale military offensive undertaken by a force previously on the defensive”. Ukraine clearly has been on the defensive ever since Russia unleashed its Special Military Operation on February 24, 2022.

For several months Ukraine officials have promised a counteroffensive to drive back the Russian Federation troops who currently occupy about 20% of Ukraine territory.

However nothing resembling a major push by Ukraine’s forces has occurred. The media are beginning to question whether Ukraine is in any position to reverse its losses to date. The Washington Post reported on August 18 an interview with Ukraine’s Defense Minister who stated “Ukraine’s conventional forces lack the weapons and ammunition needed to launch a full-scale ground offensive to retake territory from the Russians.”

The Defense Minister, Oleksii Reznikov turned his attention to recent sabotage attacks on Russian Federation military bases and supply depots by Ukrainian special forces teams. Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to Ukraine’s President Zelensky, admitted that

“Western backers have been involved in training the special forces that are responsible for the attacks. NATO partners have provided trainers to show the Ukrainians how to operate behind Russian lines.”

Other Ukraine tactics, widely reported in the press, have been the arrest of hundreds of “collaborators with Russia” and the assassination of so-called collaborators in Ukraine controlled areas.

But sabotage and assassination, no matter how widespread, do not constitute a counteroffensive. YahooNews admits that

“the successful strikes have not been followed by significant forward advancement on the ground. Indeed there has been little movement of Ukrainian land forces around the Kherson region, with some reports saying [Ukrainian] troops remain pinned down in the trenches by Russian shelling.”

If Ukraine can’t launch a serious counteroffensive on the ground, Ukrainian officials are determined to talk up the idea in order to keep their population at home supporting their losing efforts. And, perhaps more importantly, promise of a counteroffensive has kept the tens of billions of dollars in U.S. and NATO supplies flowing. CBS, until recently, had been airing a documentary that exposed that 70% of military weapons sent to Ukraine never got to the front lines. On August 7 CBS deleted access to this film from its website.

Many fortunes are being made by corrupt Ukrainian officials by keeping this war going and refusing to negotiate a peace deal with the Russian Federation. Of course the United States government is happy to keep the war going in order to fulfill the goal expressed by Secretary of State Blinken “to weaken Russia.”