The Second Great Ukrainian Counter Offensive

The Battlefields

There have been significant Russian missile and drone attacks on central Ukraine within the past 48 hours that are reported by Dima of the Military Summary Channel to have targeted airfields that would be likely recipients of F-16s, when these begin to arrive sometime during this summer. Of course, it has long been argued by anti-NATO critics that Ukraine has few, if any, airfields suitable, or at least ideal for F-16s.

It has long been observed, by myself included, that these would need to be positioned in Poland or Romania or some other NATO member state - very likely, therefore, inviting Russia to bomb them in situ which, to be fair, it would have to do, given Russian uncertainty that the missiles that nuclear-capable F-16s would carry were not, indeed, nuclear. That Ukraine’s Western sponsors have clearly given the green light to F-16s being used to fire long-range missiles at Russian targets in or over Russian territory, further consolidates Russian preparedness to shoot them down, even if to do so requires Russian attacks on NATO territory.

But now, suddenly, even more imminently grave forebodings of catastrophe, as the luckless General Syrsky (for whom no number of lives to sacrifice is too many) is ordered to sort out Kharkiv in 45 days, even as measures are taken that suggest that much more than Kharkiv is at stake. These measures include the establishment of an air-bridge for war materiel between the US and Poland. Note that the latest US offer of a Patriot interceptor system to Ukraine is one that is currently protecting US troops in Poland, a clear sign of the depletion in US stockpiles of Patriots as well as of other missile systems.

Other measures include the shipping to Ukraine of Swedish, Italian, and German tanks from Romania and Bulgaria; readying of Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles; setting up of underground repair shops under shopping malls in Kherson and Dniepro; sending of Danish and British military doctors to staff field hospitals in Odessa, Dnieper, Kharkiv and Nikoleav sufficient for 30,000 soldiers (in the expectation, presumably, of 30,000 casualties); the sending of 2,300 military doctors and medics from Italy, Croatia, Belgium and the Netherlands; the supply of military specialists from Finland and the Baltic countries to protect the field hospitals from the air, and to organize electronic warfare. Today, Belarus reports a significant concentration of Ukrainian forces along the border with Belarus

Much of this activity is already in motion with a view to Ukrainian launch of its second major counteroffensive in the next few days and demonstration of first results in time for the NATO summit early in July (but too late to burden the summit with any excessively bad news). It has been announced that NATO’s wooden Stoltenberg is likely to be replaced by former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte if, as is now expected he is elected for a four year term of office. (The reappointment of the strongly pro-war Ursula von der Leyen as President of the European Commission is expected to take place next week in Brussls at a private dinner for representatives of 27 nations).

Rutte has been described earlier today by Glibert Doctorow as more of a politician (who has had to navigate the challenging politics of coalition governments), and as more of an intellectual, then Stolternberg. This would not be difficult to believe but, then, Dutch politics in recent years have, in a number of respects, shown elements both of neoliberal fantacism and self-desctructive environmentalist zeal.

The new measures include the mobilization of 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers (presumably freshly conscripted troops; 5,000 recently mobilized prisoners, volunteers, are already on the front lines in Kharkiv and Russia has already provided video evidence of how it has destroyed a battalion of them), who will fight in the North and in the South (expressly mentioned is, yes, you guessed it, Robotyne). 500 Macronian (i.e. French) warriors (“volunteers”) - I think I shall call them Macroons - will be going to Odessa and 300 to Kharkiv.

These measures are taking place in a conflict in which Ukraine is reported by the Russian MoD, to be averaging out at 1,500 to 2,000 men a day (dead and wounded) which would be utterly unsustainable in terms of available Ukrainian men. A senior officer of the Azov Brigade has told Ukrainian Television that Ukraine is losing on the battle fronts and has been pushed almost to its limits. Ukraine’s energy system is facing existential crisis. It only survives, according to Moscow correspondent John Helmer, at the grace of Russian reluctance to fire on the system’s switch nodes.

Russia is readying the use of FAB 3000s for use in Kharkiv (and has used these already near Lyptsi, says Dima), a measure that I do not find particularly reassuring (it is a highly destructive weapon but without subtlety or much mobility) and has reported the destruction very recently of a Ukrainian HIMARS launcher south of the border - but those kinds of events are happening all the time.

In Vovchansk, Russia has reportedly taken control of the southern end of the northern sector, above the Volcha, while conditions in the eastern half of the northern sector remain very much in the fog of war. Ukraine has extended its (re-)control over some territory to the west of Tyke (which it recovered yesterday). Dima notes that a large swathe of territory to the east and north of Tyke was never actually occupied by Russia as some earlier reports had suggested.

In Kupyansk there are indications of some Russian progress into Pishchane, and, in Pioshchanke area, Russian gains towards Makievka and Nevske. Elsewhere (e.g. Siversk; Chasiv Yar areas) there is little significant change to report. It is confirmed that Russia now controls most of Kalynivka to the north of Chasiv Yar. To the south, Russia continues its advance towards Toretsk by way of Druzhba and Kirovo. In the Avdiivka area, Russia has taken not only Sokil but the Ukrainian stronghold immediately north of Sokil. It has established artillery preparation in the direction of Kalynove, and continues to destroy a great deal of Western equipment at Novoselivka Persha which Ukraine was unable to move due to earlier Russian destruction of bridges along the evacuation routes. Russian forces have entered the residential area of Karlivka and are subjecting Ukrainian forces at the western end of Kostyantynivka to heavy artillery shelling.

Public Support for Zelenskiy in Ukraine

Natalyie Baldwin posted an article on her website (Natalyie’s Place) over the past day that addressed a current and significant issue - how popular or unpopular, really, is Zelenskiy. (See: Tarik Cyril Amar)? I have for some time been assuming, partly on the basis of selective or outdated figures, that he was wildly unpopular. But the situation is more complicated, and Amar’s article (BETTING ON ARMAGEDDON: WHAT IS ZELENSKY’S PLAN NOW THAT HIS TERM IS OVER?) addresses this at some length.

Zelenskiy’s five-year presidential term came to an end on May 20. He did not take the chance to call elections when he should have done in March. And yet he remains in office. As I have explained in previous posts, many of his critics, including the Kremlin, consider him constitutionally illegitimate. According to the Ukrainian constitution, notes Amar, presidential elections can be held during wartime. Yes, it is difficult to hold elections in wartime, but it has often been done, and sometimes with a good measure of validity. Russia organized elections in the four formerly Ukrainian oblasts in the leadup to their integration into the Russian Federation, and subsequently. Elections proceed as normal in Russia. Online voting is also a possibility.

By not holding elections, Zelenskiy evades public scrutiny of his record and converts anyone’s lack of support for his legitimacy into a de facto failure of loyalty test which, in itself, manifestly abuses basic principles of democracy. A February poll, notes Amar, found that 70% of Ukrainians agreed that Zelensky should remain president until “the end of the state of war,” a finding that prompts considerable suspicion on my part. But, given this poll, it is surprising that Zelenskiy did not then proceed to call elections in March (suggesting perhaps that he had contrasting intelligence). But then, respondents in February would not have known that he would not call elections.

In any case, Amar arues, widespread consent with postponing presidential elections does not translate into popularity for Zelenskiy personally. A previous, December 2023, poll found that 34% of respondents then believed that he should not stand for another election, and this had risen to 43% by February. The start of the SMO conflict in February 2022 boosted his public support from 37% to 90% but that had plunged to 60% by February 2024. At the same time, a majority of Ukrainians believed the country was moving in the wrong direction. Zelenskiy’s popularity, even though Ukraine’s military situation at that time was better than it is now, was fragile. Other factors almost certainly wearing at Zelenskiy popularity include the highly unpopular mobilization; his regime’s adoption of generally rapacious neoliberal legislation; his intensification of politics and the media (and, I would add, of religious practice). And now he has set himself up as a brutal recruiting sargeant.

Most important, he has not won the war. He long ago reneged on his promise to the people in 2019 that he would commit to negotiation and then became actively culpable of abandoning very productive negotiations in February 2002 at the behest of the West; and has since shown himself incapable of a genuine change of course. So his popularity would very likely have declined, perhaps significantly, between February and June.

Amar concludes:

“Zelensky, the former low-taste comedian, has become a desperate high-stakes gambler who has locked himself and his whole country into a devastating sequence of losing while constantly raising the stakes. His single most urgent remaining ambition is to draw more of the world into this vortex. Zelensky should never have been president; and it is high time that he ceases to be one. Ironically, since he would probably not have been ousted in elections, there is little need to regret their loss.”

Dipomacy and War

In his daily broadcast today, Alexander Mercouris predicts we have pretty much reached the end of the road for diplomacy and that the only resolution can be a military one, which he believes will be a Russian victory. Commenting on the possible availability of five million shells for Russia from North Korea, Mercouris speculates that the purpose of this otherwise seemingly redundant addition to Russian stocks is for stockpiling in advance of some upcoming and significant Russian offensive - perhaps in the context of the Ukrainian counteroffensive that is already beginning to appear and that I have discussed above. Putin has referred to a total of 700,000 soldiers in Ukraine but nothing like this number is evident in the current line of combat, suggesting therefore that the bulk of the battle-ready Russian army is being held back - perhaps in readiness for just such an event as a second great Ukrainian counteroffensive which, as we have seen already, is likely to test the limits from Kherson region up through Zapporizhzhia and Donetsk, to Sivesk and Kupyansk, the northern borderlands and Belarus. So - the shells, the men, a new batch of Su-37s and other such indications - are pointing to a major buildup and that buildup surely has a purpose. Heavy mechanized weapons are mostly still on the Russian side of the border. The glove has been barely removed from the fist. We are, warns Alexander, moving into the end game.