The Long Anticipated Ukraine Counteroffensive Has Begun

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A little more than two weeks before the start of summer, the long anticipated spring counteroffensive in Ukraine has begun.

The New York Times reports, U.S. Officials See Signs of a Counteroffensive in Ukraine (excerpt):

The U.S. and Russia say that a major Ukrainian operation has begun.

Ukrainian forces have stepped up artillery strikes and ground assaults in a flurry of military activity that American officials suggested on Monday could signal that Kyiv’s long-planned counteroffensive against Russia had begun.

The fighting, which began on Sunday, was raging along several points on the front line, but to the east of where many analysts had expected Ukraine’s counteroffensive to begin. Even starting in that eastern area, experts said, would allow Kyiv’s troops to try to accomplish the same goal: Head south toward the Sea of Azov and cut off the land bridge connecting occupied Crimea to mainland Russia.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said on Monday that a major Ukrainian operation had begun at five locations in the eastern Donetsk region and that it had repelled the assaults and inflicted casualties on Ukrainian forces. Moscow’s report could not be independently corroborated.

Ukraine reports more fighting near Bakhmut.

Ukrainian forces are making an advance near the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut which fell to Russian forces more than two weeks ago, two senior Ukrainian defense officials said on Monday.

Tanks from an assault brigade destroyed enemy positions and the forces had made progress in a small wooded area “during an assault on enemy positions in the Bakhmut sector,” the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a brief message posted on the Telegram app. “We continue to move forward,” he added.

Mr. Syrsky did not specify the scale of the fighting, which has in recent days involved a series of relatively limited Ukrainian efforts to move forward on the outskirts of the city.

Pro-Russian military bloggers describe a surge in Ukrainian attacks on the front line with urgency, but not panic.

Russian pro-military bloggers described a surge in fighting all along the front lines in Ukraine with urgency on Monday, but without the sort of panic some expressed last year when Kyiv’s forces made rapid advances in a counterattack that regained large swaths of territory.

The increased fighting — which U.S. officials have said is a possible indication that Kyiv’s long-planned counteroffensive against Russian forces had begun — was narrated by the Telegram accounts of Russian bloggers, who described heavy artillery fire and the movement of Western-made advanced battle tanks supplied by Ukraine’s allies.

Mikhail Zvinchuk, who writes under the pseudonym Rybar and has more than a million followers on the Telegram messaging app, was one of several bloggers who described intense fighting near the village of Novodonetske in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. On Monday evening, he said Ukrainian soldiers in German-made Leopard 2 tanks had seized control of the village, which is near the town of Velyka Novosilka.

A fake Putin speech calling for mobilization and martial law aired on some Russian outlets.

A faked declaration of martial law and military mobilization by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia aired Monday on a number of Russian radio and television networks, an incident that the Kremlin described as a “hack.”

The bogus speech, which was broadcast on the Mir radio station and television networks, said Ukraine had invaded three border regions and urged their residents to evacuate to the Russian heartland.

The clip also depicted Mr. Putin declaring a general mobilization, saying all the power of the country needed to be harnessed to defeat a “dangerous and insidious enemy.”

A Ukrainian counteroffensive would face tough terrain and dug-in Russian troops.

To mount a successful counteroffensive after months of planning, Ukrainian troops will have to navigate mostly flat, unforgiving terrain and staunch Russian defenses.

Military analysts and Western officials have long thought that a counteroffensive would focus on southern Ukraine as part of a strategy by Kyiv to sever the land bridge between western Russia and occupied Crimea. The operation is expected to involve thousands of Ukrainian troops — including many trained by NATO forces and equipped with newer and more advanced Western equipment, like armored personnel carriers and tanks.

But no matter where Ukraine attacks along a front line that stretches for hundreds of miles, Russia’s defenses will be formidable. Moscow’s forces have had months to dig in, lay minefields and prepare entrenchments. Russian formations also have gotten increasingly adept at using drones to help pinpoint targets for artillery strikes. That has made it more challenging for Ukrainian forces, often under withering fire, to coordinate troop movements, tanks and artillery support effectively enough to achieve a breakthrough.

And what is up with “Putin’s Chef,” Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Putin’s mercenary Wagner Group? Are we about to see the kind of mutinies that led to the Russian Revolution after Russia suffered heavy losses early in World War I?

Cathy Young writes at The Bulwark, The Rise of the Troll King: How Yevgeny Prigozhin Came to Power (excerpt):

AFTER DRONES mysteriously attacked Moscow late last month—were they from Ukraine, or from pro-Ukraine guerilla units inside Russia? were they a Russian false flag operation?—the reaction from the Russian side that got the most attention was not Vladimir Putin’s nor that of any of his TV propagandists. Rather, it was the colorful, angry, obscenity-laced tirade from Wagner Private Military Company head Yevgeny Prigozhin. In an audio message posted to his Telegram channel, Prigozhin did not lash out at the Ukrainians but at the “stinking animals” from the ministry of defense: “Get your assholes out of the offices where they put you to defend this country! . . . Why the fuck are you letting these drones fly into Moscow?” In an anti-elite jab that has also become his trademark, Prigozhin added that he didn’t care if the mansions in the super-wealthy Rublyovka suburb targeted by the drones went up in flames. It’s hard to say how many Russians heard his rant—Prigozhin is now blacklisted from the state-run television channels where most people in Russia still get their news—but quite a few probably shared the sentiment.

This was just one episode in the extraordinary Prigozhin drama of the last few months, which has included the protracted and horrifyingly bloody battle for the mid-sized Ukrainian town of Bakhmut—a “meat grinder,” in Prigozhin’s own words—and increasingly public and bitter brawls with the defense ministry and the top military brass. In May, this conflict escalated into what many took to be a swipe at his patron Putin: a viral video clip in which Prigozhin slammed an unnamed “happy grandpa” who blissfully ignores war losses and who may be “a total asshole.” Then, after announcing his fighters’ victory in Bakhmut, he gave a shocking interview in which he not only blasted the military leadership for mismanaging the war but seemed to question the war itself and warned of impending disasters. Suddenly, the man once dubbed “Putin’s chef” or “Putin’s cook” for catering Kremlin banquets was being touted as a voice of the opposition—or even as Putin’s prospective rival.

Make no mistake: Prigozhin is an odious figure. The Wagner group, which the United States and the European Union may soon designate as a terrorist group, is known for atrocities not only in Ukraine but in Africa and the Middle East—and not only toward enemy combatants but toward civilians, nosy journalists, and its own errant members. In a widely reported gruesome incident last November, an apparent snuff video showed the sledgehammer bludgeoning of an ex-Wagner fighter who had talked about switching sides while in Ukrainian captivity and had ended up back in Wagner hands; Prigozhin responded with trollish comments alternating between gloating and faux denial.

And speaking of trolling, there is also Prigozhin’s role as the founder of Russia’s infamous “troll factory” whose mission is pro-Kremlin information warfare—a role that got him and three of his companies indicted by a Washington, D.C. grand jury in 2018 as part of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation. The versatile “chef” is, as the Bellingcat investigative group put it in 2020, “the Renaissance man of deniable Russian black ops.”

What’s behind the Kremlin crony’s self-reinvention as a quasi-dissident and a possible contender for Putin’s job? Here, opinions differ wildly. Some think that Prigozhin is a talented psychopath; others that he’s crazy like a fox. Some say he is nothing more than Putin’s loyal attack dog, a useful weapon for bullying the generals and defense officials and keeping them under control. Others believe the attack dog is off the leash and snapping at his former master—either because Prigozhin is in disfavor and fighting for his life, or because the growing instability in Russia is enabling him to claim power in his own right, or because he has powerful backers who are using him in a game of their own.

Russia has been incurring casualties far greater than it suffered in Afghanistan, which led to the fall of the old Soviet Union. Russia’s humiliating losses in Ukraine may very well lead to the the fall of the Putin regime. Putin could easily be replaced by a far worse murderous psychopath.





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1 thought on “The Long Anticipated Ukraine Counteroffensive Has Begun”

  1. UPDATE: Politico reports, “Wagner’s feud with Russian army escalates amid reports of not-so-friendly fire”, https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-soldiers-friendly-fire-wagner-group-yevgeny-prigozhin-bakhmut-ukraine-war/

    Russian soldiers shot at Wagner paramilitaries near Bakhmut — the eastern Ukrainian town which has seen brutal attritional battles for territory — destroying a truck, the mercenary group claimed Sunday evening.

    In response, Wagner claimed to have detained the commander of the Russian army’s 72nd brigade, on Monday releasing a video of him appearing to confess to giving the order to fire on the mercenaries’ vehicle, claiming he did so while drunk because he personally disliked the group. The officer, who introduced himself as Lieutenant-Colonel Roman Gennadievich Venivitin, appeared to have been roughed up by his captors.

    The video came after Wagner released a statement, signed by a “commander” of the group, stating that he had received information that members of the official Russian army had been seen “mining the roads in the rear zone” of Wagner’s positions around Opytnoye and Ozarianovka, two towns in the Bakhmut area, on May 17.

    Wagner forces began clearing the mines from the roads, but had to stop after coming under “small arms fire” from a Russian army brigade in Semigorje, a town about 20 kilometers south of Bakhmut, the statement said.

    The incidents appear to be an escalation in Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s ongoing dispute with Russian military leaders, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov.

    Russian oligarch-turned-warlord Prigozhin has repeatedly accused the Kremlin’s high command of withholding ammunition from Wagner forces fighting in Bakhmut, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

    Two weeks ago, Prigozhin said his troops had started handing over their positions in Bakhmut to the Russian military, five days after claiming that Wagner controlled the city — which Kyiv has disputed.

    More fro The Guardian, “Wagner captures Russian commander as Prigozhin feud with army escalates”, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/05/wagner-group-release-video-of-captured-russian-commander

    Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group of mercenaries has captured a Russian commander, as the notorious leader further escalates his feud with the regular army.

    In a video posted on Prigozhin’s social media channels, Lt Col Roman Venevitin, the commander of Russia’s 72nd Brigade, tells an interrogator that, while drunk, he had ordered his troops to fire on a Wagner convoy.

    In the footage, which resembled clips of prisoner of war soldiers, Venevitin said he acted because of his “personal dislike” for Wagner and then apologised.

    Last week, Prigozhin accused the Russian army of trying to blow up his men as they were pulling back from the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut.

    [T]he Russian ministry of defence has yet to comment on the footage.

    Two close family members of Venevitin confirmed to the Guardian that the man filmed in the video was their relative.

    Prigozhin, who has been arguing with top military officials for months, announced last week that his troops had largely pulled back from Bakhmut, most of which they captured last month after taking heavy casualties. The city is now believed to be controlled by the regular Russian forces.

    The latest incident again exposes the rifts in Moscow’s war machine. It also comes amid an increase in fighting along the frontlines in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, leading to speculation that Kyiv has launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive.

    Some nationalist pro-war commentators said Wagner’s arrest of a senior Russian soldier attested to Prigozhin’s growing influence within the Kremlin.

    “Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose subordinates posted a video in which they mock a senior officer and an entire brigade commander … is allowed to do whatever he wants. He is considered as the highest caste!” Igor Strelkov, a retired Russian special operations officer and popular military blogger, wrote on his Telegram channel.

    Prigozhin’s influence grew as his troops gradually captured Bakhmut in recent months, delivering Moscow the first tangible military victory since last summer.

    Since the start of the war, Prigozhin has emerged as one of the most visible power players, frequently using social media to deliver scorching tirades against the defence ministry. His turbulent rise, however, has angered some elements of the Russian elite.

    Last week, Prigozhin received rare public criticism when two close allies of the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, described him as a “hysterical blogger” who undermined Russia’s war effort.

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