Editorial – The Ukrainian counter-offensive that does not (yet) say its name

She hasn’t said her name yet, but the signs are telling in these early days of June 2023. That Ukraine is now ready to launch the counteroffensive it has been preparing for months, President Volodymyr Zelensky n did not hesitate to affirm it on Saturday in an interview at the wall street journal. A first signal was sent in the south of Donbass on the night of Sunday to Monday, not with the “large-scale offensive” that Moscow claims to have valiantly repelled, but rather in the form of exploratory attacks aimed in a first time trying to cut the Russian lines where they are most fragile.

The war is in the headlines and kyiv must necessarily cover the tracks. Be that as it may, the correspondent of the Guardian quoted “ultra-nationalist Russian military bloggers” on Monday, starting with Igor Girkin, one of the most talkative, according to whom Ukrainian tanks had indeed succeeded in making one or more breakthroughs.

Ukrainian society is entering its second murderous summer praying that it will be the last. Supported at arm’s length by the West, the counter-offensive that is taking shape in the fog of war cannot fail. kyiv faces, in any case, an enemy who is almost everywhere on the defensive, 15 months after the start of the Russian invasion. Fresh proof of this is the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River overnight from Monday to Tuesday. There is little doubt that the Russian military is responsible for preventing Ukrainian forces from advancing on Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014. In Kiev, this sabotage presents a considerable strategic challenge. In that the floods which follow will cause serious damage on the human and ecological levels. The gesture again testifies to the destructive panic that dictates Moscow’s behavior.

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In the field of psychological warfare, Ukraine has been announcing its counter-offensive for several weeks, letting ordinary Russians know that they are not immune.

By interposed drones, first. Two targeted the Kremlin on May 3, without doing too much damage, but not without symbolic impact. Between 8 and 25 other drones, sources said, were intercepted over Moscow last week, most of them targeting beautiful areas in the west and southwest of the capital, including one a few minutes drive from Vladimir Putin’s residence.

Then, by bombardments and incursions on Russian soil, in the border region of Belgorod, which is not without annoying the Westerners, anxious to contain the escalation with Moscow. However, it appears that American armored vehicles, in particular, were used during these attacks. Still, for all the annoyance that Washington, London and Paris have ostensibly displayed over the offensive use of their weapons, the Ukrainians have not lost the freedom to do as they please.

Considering that Vladimir Putin launched his “special operation” in February 2022 in the name of the “denazification” of Ukraine, it is not, in this case, without irony that the attacks on the ground carried out in the region of Belgorod are by two far-right anti-Putin Russian organizations: the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), an ostensibly supremacist and neo-Nazi organization, and the “Russian Freedom Legion”, a hardly more commendable ultranationalist force. Mr. Putin is here in the position of the watered sprinkler.

Putin is delirious when he affirms in support of his aggression that the Ukrainian regime is Nazi – especially since Zelensky is Jewish. It nevertheless happens, and this is not insignificant, that these two small militias have been integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces, illustrating once again the disposition of theestablishment to ignore the presence of such currents within its army.

It is an army which, in some of its quarters, has an ambiguous relationship with Nazism and its imagery. Having suffered under the yoke of the Soviet dictatorship, many Ukrainians initially welcomed the Nazis as liberators in 1941. This past is part of the national consciousness. Politically, these are demons that will have to be tamed, the day the guns fall silent.

The counter-offensive taking shape, it is imperative that it prepares in the long term, on the diplomatic level, a way out of war. kyiv’s allies, who are increasing the negotiations, are clearly aware of this.

Now 100 years old, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, an unrepentant promoter of an unapologetic realpolitik, predicted in an interview with CBS that Russian-Ukrainian negotiations will take place by the end of the year, with probable territorial gains for Ukraine, but excluding Crimea. This is what others also affirm, such as the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs Hubert Védrine, when it comes to arriving at “the least unjust and most lasting peace possible”. In a way, this concludes, to begin to rebuild.

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