Ukraine has launched the main thrust of its counteroffensive, throwing in thousands of troops held in reserve, many of them Western-trained and equipped, two Pentagon officials said on Wednesday, hours after Russian officials reported major Ukrainian attacks in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
A spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, said the Ukrainians had mounted a “massive” assault with three battalions, reinforced with tanks, south of the town of Orikhiv, and then another a few miles farther south near the village of Robotyne, according to the state news agency Tass. Both were repelled, the ministry said.
Other American officials cautioned that the latest Ukrainian attack might be preparatory operations for the main thrust or perhaps just reinforcements to replenish war-weary units.
The previous strategy of sending a steady flow of Ukrainians to die for nothing at the foot of Russia’s multi-layered defenses did nothing to facilitate the promised capture of Crimea from Russia. So the doomed Ukrainian spring counteroffensive was paused. After much brainstorming, the US/EU/NATO cabal’s puppet government in Ukraine has settled on an updated strategy of blowing its wad.