West looking for anything positive in floundering Ukraine offensive

By David Sole

As battlefield reports keep coming in, Ukraine’s long awaited offensive continues to flounder now in its fifth week. Western media shape their stories to minimize the failure of Ukraine to break through Russian defenses in either the Zaporizhzhya (southern) or Donetsk (eastern) line of contact. The New York Times recently ran a major story about Ukrainian troops seizing a small village overcoming Russian resistance. This minor “victory” had, however, been from the first days of the offensive.

Ukrainian government announcements also are trying to explain away their failure to achieve advances which had been boastfully promised before the offensive got started on June 4. For its part, Ukraine must show serious gains if it wants to be sure that Western heavy armor and funds keep pouring in. The new army now in the field is made up of 50,000 quickly trained Ukrainian recruits along with many hundreds of tanks and armored fighting vehicles from the U.S. and the NATO allies.

Russian sources report that the bulk of the Ukrainian armor has been destroyed already. Fierce fighting on the line of contact has kept Ukrainian forces from making any serious advances, not even reaching the first line of Russian defense lines. Russia has also been successfully targeting Ukrainian troop concentrations, arms depots and command centers with precision missiles and drones, hindering any serious advances.

Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu recently announced that “In the south Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Donetsk directions alone where Ukrainian armed formations are undertaking unsuccessful attacks, the groupings of Russian forces destroyed 15 aircraft,  three helicopters and 920 pieces of armor, including 16 Leopard tanks. This is actually 100% of the tanks of this type supplied by Poland and Portugal.”

The coming weeks will reveal if Ukraine still has enough fighting capacity to make serious gains on the ground.

But with nothing good to report from the frontlines, the Western media is looking for something, anything, to promote its anti-Russia agenda. On July 1 the New York Times wishfully speculated that the short-lived Wagner mutiny in Russia might undermine the China-Russia alliance. The article hopes that China will “hedge a close relationship with Russia that had already exposed Beijing to global criticism and threatened some of its interests abroad.”

Of course U.S. policy is not just aimed to undermine the Russian Federation but also to target China as a major economic and political opponent . It is the common interest of Russia and China which has solidified the close relationship between the two against U.S. hegemony.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also is hoping to salvage something from the failure of the proxy war in Ukraine. CIA Director William Burns made a rare public speech at the Ditchley Foundation in the United Kingdom. Burns predicted that the ongoing Russian special military operation in Ukraine will continuously undermine the leadership of the Russian Federation headed by President Vladimir Putin.

Burns stated “That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at CIA, at our core a human intelligence service. We’re not letting it go to waste.” The CIA hopes to recruit from a Telegram channel set up 2 months ago. “We had 2.5 million views in the first week” the director revealed.

The Ukraine proxy war still has not run its course. The U.S. and NATO allies will continue to supply weaponry and train troops for their client regime. However, it appears that there are no more stockpiles of weapons and ammunition to create endless armies for Ukraine. It is still possible for Ukraine to throw its last reserves into the field, but not likely that they can overcome their limitations shown so far.

Russia, if able to decisively destroy the Ukraine military in the coming weeks, could follow up with a powerful counteroffensive. That would then force the West to either allow Ukraine to negotiate a surrender, or lead to a dangerous escalation by NATO forces intervening.