17 mar 2023 8:01 am
The West is supplying Ukraine with weapons and training its soldiers so that it can launch an offensive in late spring, Politico reports. The US considers it most likely that the offensive will move into Donbass from the north.
Washington expects Kiev to be ready for a major offensive by May writes the newspaper political citing sources.
US aid packages to Ukraine “for the past four or five months have been focused on what Ukraine needs for this counteroffensive,” a US official told the newspaper.
The interlocutors of the news agency also noted that Kiev has two options for conducting this offensive: from the south to Crimea or from the north to Donbass. The sources of political According to them, the second option is more likely, since Russia has strengthened its defenses on the left bank of the Dnieper.
The start of a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring was already predicted in January by Ukrainian intelligence chief Kirill Budanov. He described Kiev’s goal as restoring the country’s 1991 borders. Mikhail Podoliak, an adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office, claimed in March that Ukrainian forces would be ready for a counteroffensive within two months.
How The Washington Post However, according to a senior Ukrainian official, Kyiv is pessimistic about the offensive. According to the newspaper source, Ukraine lacks weapons and fighters and the offensive requires more resources.
Similar concerns are being raised in the US as well, as political previously reported. In February, sources told the newspaper that Washington was insisting on preparing Kiev for an offensive while the West was easy to send military support to the country.
Reuters pointed out that a spring offensive on either side of the conflict could be hampered by the muddy roads making the routes impassable.
Russia launches offensives near Artemovsk (Bakhmut), DPR, trying to encircle the city. According to Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner group involved in the fighting there, several settlements near the city, Zalisnianskoye and Dubovo-Vasilevka in the north-west, as well as the eastern part of Artemovsk were brought under control in March.
more on the subject – Who, how many and why: RT overview of Ukrainian losses in Artemovsk
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On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would launch a special military operation in Ukraine together with the armed forces of the Donbass republics to protect the population there. The goals are to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Ukraine speaks of a war of aggression. On the same day, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskiy declared a state of war across the country.
The West condemned the attack, reacted with new deliveries of weapons, promised help with reconstruction and imposed sanctions on Russia.
Scores of soldiers and civilians have been killed on both sides of the conflict. Moscow and Kiev have accused each other of various war crimes. Thousands of Ukrainians have now fled their homeland.
