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The Ukrainian counteroffensive, which began in June with much confidence amid expectations that assault brigades equipped with Western military equipment would easily crush Russian defensive lines and reach Crimea, ended with a sobering humiliation as the dreams and aspirations of strategists in Kiev did not survive the harsh reality.
It calls into question why Ukraine is continuing the war, especially since President Volodymyr Zelensky admits that many in Donbass do not want to live under Kiev’s rule.
The former chief of staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Viktor Muzhenko, told Western media that the summer counteroffensive “disappointed many” in Kiev and beyond.
Having admitted that Kiev’s expectations of capturing Russian territory had not translated into reality, Muzhenko advocated a switch to a “strategically active defence” and the creation of a “powerful reserve, not only quantitative, but also qualitative.”
“A quality reserve is the presence of military organisations: a brigade, a corps, and so on. Prepared, equipped, coordinated, with high morale and able to solve problems,” he told Newsweek magazine.
Muzhenko also questioned previous suggestions by Ukrainian generals that Kiev regime forces could force their way into Crimea in just a few months, wondering aloud whether the “Ukrainian side” would “really able to adequately assess the enemy and its capabilities.”
The former chief of staff questioned Ukraine’s military leadership for suggesting that Ukrainian forces could reach Crimea within four months of the counteroffensive, referencing Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, who made remarks in an interview with The Economist in November.
“If you look at NATO’s textbooks and at the maths which we did, four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again,” Zaluzhny said.
In fact, as NBC News wrote on December 3, “With its much-vaunted counteroffensive fizzling into the snow, with little to show for months of planning and billions in allied military support, Kiev is also beset by growing internal wrangling.”
The outlet cited Kiev-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko as saying,
“Many Ukrainians are disappointed that a quick victory was not achieved. There is severe fatigue from the war.”
Besides former military commanders and experts noting the failure and disappointment of the counteroffensive, this acknowledgement is only now beginning to be heard in the upper echelons of Kiev’s leadership.
Speaking to the AP during a visit to the Kharkov region on December 1, Zelensky acknowledged the failure of the counteroffensive, saying that he would have liked to see “faster” results and that “from that perspective, unfortunately, we did not achieve the desired results. And this is a fact.” He attributed the failure of the counteroffensive to the West not sending the weapons that the Ukrainian military needed.
Regarding the weapons he wanted but did not receive, Zelensky claimed that it limited the size of his military force and a quick advance, a ridiculous notion since the US alone has provided more than $43 billion in military aid since February 2022. This is even coming at a political cost for US President Joe Biden, as a recent survey found that nearly half of Americans think too much is being spent on Ukraine aid.
According to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research published on December 2, 45% of Americans say Washington is spending too much on aid to Ukraine in the war against Russia. 38% of Americans believe that current spending is “about the right amount.”
When Zelensky was asked about the poll result, he bluntly replied that “the choice of Americans is the choice of Americans” and falsely claimed that Americans are also helping themselves by helping Ukraine.
“In the case of Ukraine, if resilience fails today due to lack of aid and shortages of weapons and funding, it will mean that Russia will most likely invade NATO countries,” he said. “And then the American children will fight.”
In a lecture to university students in Nikolaev days before the AP interview, Zelensky commented on the situation in Donetsk and Lugansk, which were bombed for eight years by Ukrainian forces, and admitted that the population of the two territories did not express their desire to also become part of Ukraine again.
“I believe that all territories should return, but if people don’t want to, it will be very difficult. Before, there were separatist militants who fought in the contact zone. This means that not all families from Donbass returned. And when Russia fights against us, the separatists are with them,” he said in a video released on Telegram by the El Ojo channel.
It is recalled that the accession of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as the regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson, to the Russian Federation, was decided in referendums that took place in September 2022. The results were indisputable, as 99.23% of people voted in favour of Donetsk’s accession, 98.42% in Lugansk, 87.05% in Kherson and 93.11% in Zaporozhye.
With the counteroffensive having failed, as acknowledged now by every echelon of Ukraine, it brings into question why Zelensky is stubbornly continuing the war, especially since he knows that the people of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye no longer wanted to live under Kiev’s ultranationalist and racist regime.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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