While Russia is attacking Kiev from the air, the Ukrainian army around Bakhmut is able to push back Putin’s troops. Has the great counter-offensive already begun? An overview.
The fronts have hardened, and there is currently not much movement in the Ukraine war. Nevertheless, the sirens wailed again on Tuesday night in Kiev: air alert. Russia attacked from the air, with drones and missiles.
It was the eighth such attack on the Ukrainian capital in May. The Ukrainian military claims to have intercepted most of the Russian missiles, but there are only a few photos of fires in Kiev. The night’s attack makes one thing clear: Russia wants to weaken Ukraine militarily before Putin’s army gets back on the defensive.
The Ukrainian leadership is preparing its military counterattack to liberate more areas of their country from Russian troops. But even if there are currently no major attacks on Russian lines, Kiev’s offensive has already begun. For Ukraine, the first priority is to secure enough supplies of weapons and ammunition while at the same time making it more difficult for Russian troops to be supplied.
During his European trip, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy garnered numerous pledges of further arms supplies from the West, which will allow the Ukrainian army to attack Russian arms depots and supply lines from a greater distance. At the same time, Russia already has supply problems, which is probably why Moscow is becoming increasingly nervous about Ukraine’s imminent counteroffensive.
“Time is against Putin”
The course of the front in Ukraine has hardly changed in recent months. There is still a large part of the fighting in the east of the country, with Bachmut in particular continuing to be the focus here. It’s basically waiting for the big storm.
“The essential part of the Ukrainian offensive is not the storming of the Russian positions, but the cutting of the Russian logistics,” says Christian Mölling, military expert at the German Society for Foreign Relations, in an interview with t-online. These attacks on Russian supply lines are already underway. Russia also repeatedly confirms sabotage attacks against Russian railway lines; Ukrainian sources are releasing videos claiming to show rocket attacks on Russian arms depots.
The Ukrainian leadership is currently aiming to weaken Russian troops in order to increase the chances of their counter-offensive succeeding. “If the Russian soldiers know that they can only hold their position for a few more days with their ammunition, that naturally also becomes a psychological problem for them,” says Mölling.
Accordingly, it is becoming increasingly clear that the already difficult supply situation for the Russian army in Ukraine continues to be seen in Kiev and in other western capitals as Vladimir Putin’s Achilles’ heel – and as a strategic weak point for Russia.
Christian Mölling is deputy director of the research institute of the think tank German Society for Foreign Relations (DGAP) and head of the Center for Security and Defense. He studied politics, economics and history at the Universities of Duisburg and Warwick and received his doctorate from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.
It is true that Russia can use the time before the start of the counteroffensive to further expand its defense lines. Nevertheless, Mölling is convinced: “Time is against Putin, because the Russian army obviously can’t just load up on ammunition,” explains the expert. “The nervousness in Russia is growing because there is no telling how bad the Ukrainian offensive will be. In addition, the Russian leadership is at each other’s throats, and that is in Ukraine’s interests.”
No Ukrainian attack on Bakhmut?
In fact, there have been repeated conflicts within the Russian military leadership in recent months between the army leadership and the head of the Wagner mercenary force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who lamented supply bottlenecks and openly criticized the military leadership. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov also wants to get involved in Ukraine. These internal power struggles in the shadow of the Russian war of aggression are weakening military operations – and Ukraine is benefiting from this.
