“We Will Succeed”: Zelensky Says Ukraine Ready For Counteroffensive
But warns of heavy Ukrainian casualties if required Western military aid doesn’t arrive.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced Saturday that his armed forces are ready launch the long-awaited counteroffensive. “We strongly believe that we will succeed,” President Zelensky told the Wall Street Journal.
While confident of his country’s success on the battlefield, President Zelensky — warned of heavy Ukrainian casualties if further military was not delivered — particularly the U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems. The Ukrainian leader “said he was now ready to launch a long-awaited counteroffensive but tempered a forecast of success with a warning: It could take some time and come at a heavy cost,” the WSJ reported.
The German broadcaster DW News reported:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his army is ready to stage a much-awaited counteroffensive against Russia, but warned of mass casualties unless Western allies can provide more military aid.
“A large number of soldiers will die” if Kyiv is not provided with the tools needed to defend against Russian missile strikes, Zelenskyy told the Wall Street Journal in comments published on Saturday.
“Everyone knows perfectly well that any counteroffensive without air superiority is very dangerous,” he said.
“Imagine the feeling of a soldier who knows that he doesn’t have a roof and he doesn’t understand why neighboring countries have one.”
In particular, Zelenskyy called for more deliveries of the US-made Patriot air defense system that he said was the only weapon that could defend Ukraine’s skies.
“The reality is 50 Patriots will, for the most part, prevent people from dying,” he said.
The Western media anticipated a Ukrainian offensive in spring, but the military push was delayed as both armies fought a grueling eight-month battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Although actual casualties figure are difficult to come by, both sides are said to have lost tens of thousands of soldiers.
Bolstered with newly-supplied tanks, heavy armor and other military equipment, Ukraine is promising to field freshly trained troops as the Russian aggression enters its fifteenth month. According to the Irish Times, “Ukraine has readied 12 brigades, an estimated 60,000 troops, to spearhead” the counter attack. They face around 300,000 invading Russian troops along a 900-mile frontline, the newspaper estimated.
Russia fortifies frontline
Anticipating a Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russian forces are fortifying their positions. “Satellite images of thousands of new defensive positions …. show Russia has been digging in at key strategic points in readiness for an offensive by a Ukrainian military,” the Reuters reported late April.
The fortification work continues are summer approaches, frost recedes and the ground dries up. “Russian forces, meanwhile, have fortified their defences along a frontline that runs for 900 miles (1,450km) from the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, to Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south,” the BBC reported Saturday.
Meanwhile, Russian missiles and Iran-made drones continued to hit Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. “Russian drone and cruise missile strikes on Sunday targeted multiple areas of the country, including the capital, Kyiv,” The Associated Press reported Sunday. “The Ukrainian air force said that air defenses downed three of five Shahed self-exploding drones and four of the six cruise missiles fired.”
Russia claims it thwarted Ukrainian offensive in east
Media reports suggest an increase in Ukrainian ground offensives. Russia on Monday claimed that it foiled an ‘major’ Ukrainian attack in the occupied Donbas region.
“Russia’s defence ministry says it has thwarted a major Ukrainian offensive in Donetsk, claiming to have killed 250 troops and destroyed armoured vehicles, the BBC reported Monday. “Video of what Russia says is the battle appears to show military vehicles coming under heavy fire in fields.”
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I’m not sure they have the strength to accomplish much, after the recent losses they’ve taken.
Both sides are gouging each other pretty heavily.
What I have been reading is that Ukraine doesn’t have the manpower to support any operations now. They are like Germany at the end of WWII are down to using old men and boys to fill the ranks. Zelenskyy destroyed the bulk of what was left of his army in the pointless defense of Bakhmut. Zelenskyy and NATO have destroyed Ukraine.
I am reminded of the Germany Spring Offensive of 1918. Huge successes at first. Then, it eventually got bogged down. Everything reverted to static trench warfare.
Yeah–and they had no real plan other than “making a hole” as Ludendorf put it. But the Germans at least had a bunch of reinforcements to use, most of which were burned out during March and later attacking the French.
I think the Ukranians burned out much of what they had fighting in and around Bakhmut while the Russians lost…a bunch of convicts. Only a couple of Russian regular army formations were involved in that fight.
Good analysis of what happened here. Not sure who this guy is, but he seems pretty well informed.
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/the-battle-of-bakhmut-postmortem
That is a very interesting article. Quotes from Atlantic and WJS sure brings in the left leaning element. I guess this sums it up:
Ukraine was losing its army, Russia was losing its prison population.
Don’t forget the USA/Biden
Both sides are running out of men and ammo, and the supplies we can send to Ukraine are dwindling fast. What matters is who runs out first of the most critical supplies. But given Russia’s bad performance so far, I am not willing to predict a Russian victory – even if Ukraine runs out of what they need most tomorrow. We just have to wait and see what happens.
Mr. 10% is solely responsible for this war going on for ever and ever.
Instead of being a peace maker, Mr. 10%, is depleting our arms and demanded Putin be overthrown.
Mr. 10% has blood on his hands and promises to supply even more arms, which will mean many more people will die.
Biden is pure evil!
Mr. 10%, State Dept. Congress, DOD, NATO, all of the Deep State has blood on their hands.
This has been going on since the Orange Revolution and the US govt assisting in installing a pro western/anti Russia govt in Ukraine. There has been near constant low intensity conflict in the Donbas since 2014 backed by the US and UK.
Biden is absolutely to blame for most of what has happened from early ’21 forward but there is plenty of blame to go around for how we got to the precipice of an invasion and ultimately a decision by Russia to invade.
You managed to reach the correct conclusion except by a tortured set of illogic. The only way to make peace with a bully is to kick the ever-loving shit out of them and Biden is a foot-dragging coward which has and will cost incredible amounts of damage, atrocities, and innocent deaths.
Always announce your plans to the enemy in advance. This from the Biden College of Strategy & Tactics.
You really think this “long awaited counteroffensive” is actually going to take place? Hardly. Ain’t gonna happen. This is just another ploy by pretty boy Zelenskyy to get more money out of those Western Allies now that interest in Ukraine is waning as we get closer and closer to the 2024 elections.
“Please Sir, May I have more.” seems to be Zelenskyy’s motto in this war. And this is just more of the same.
Oh, there will be some kind of “offensive”. Ukraine has no choice. They are running out of air defense supplies. If they don’t attack soon, they pass up their one and only chance to go on the offensive.
Throw what little that remains of the Ukrainian military at the Russians and hope for the best isn’t really a winning strategy. Pretty boy Zelenskyy will have his hind side handed to him in any such battle campaign and that will be it for Ukraine. They lose. Putin wins.
But that was always the inevitable outcome.
Actually, George Doubleya really got it going after the 9/11 attacks. It seems like the 21st century approach to war is to telegraph your offensive battle plans. Rather that talk about it, Yaakov Smirnoff needs to just launch his attack and get it over with. (I’ve heard this type of chest thumping bravado likened to the display of a peacock, something states like Iran are known for. Of course with their plutonium enrichment program Iran is moving from peacock to great ape status.)
Imagine where we’d be today if the US and Allied forces announced D Day weeks in advance.
I heard we are out of ammo. Moon over Alabama site has some good links and discussions. Rumble Military Summary has indicated the Ukraine offensive has started. Based on WSJ video above Uk has some serious trench and mine field issues. YouTube Task and Purpose is good too.
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Russia is going on the offensive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16d9z0FlOaI
Just saw this. You mean Ret. Doug MacGregor? The man who gets air time and hasn’t been right yet in nearly 18 months about the Uk-RU war? Sorry.
All good sites with good info and analysis.
Another element in this war is having repercussions on the other side of the planet. The shockingly poor performance of the Russian war machine and the equally shocking unity of the Western nations is probably giving China pause in her pursuit of reunification by military means. It wasn’t lost on anyone that China’s summit with Turkmenistan and the other ‘Stans’ recently caught Moscow by surprise. The ‘stans’ are after all right next to China and there is no body of water in the way like with Taiwan.
Yea, those news reports of the Belt and Road deals are failing left and right because of it./s
Considering that we and the EU are being flooded with illegals is not helping matters. We have been invaded by the enemy under the cover of fleeing prosecution.
Not sure where you are getting your information from but I doubt China is pausing about anything.
https://turcopolier.com/china-prioritizing-turkmenistan-over-russia-in-next-big-pipeline-project/
Good article but has zero to do with war machine. I am a little suspect of it because of this statement bolded- I believe China does not care about carbon neutrality.
Combined, multi-year contracts worth tens of billions of dollars to bring gas via both pipelines would meet 20% of China’s current demand. The pipelines are key to Beijing’s goal of using gas as a bridge fuel towards its carbon neutrality targets and also helping to shield it from the volatile tanker-carried liquefied natural gas (LNG) market. Estimated in 2014 to cost $6.7 billion, Line D would carry 30 billion cubic meters of gas a year.
. “The pipelines are key to Beijing’s goal of using gas as a bridge fuel towards its carbon neutrality targets ”
Neither do I. But China knows the ‘stans’ have long resented Moscow’s heavy hand going back to the USSR days. When the ‘stans’ act on this resentment, Moscow will be hard pressed to intervene. The Russian army in the conventional sense is seen through out Asia as a paper tiger. Ukraine has pointed that out. Resentment also lingers across the Asian land mass all the way to the Sea of Okhotsk. Some of this territory used to belong to China. China has a long memory.
Go for it buddy, tell me where Colonel MacGregor has been wrong. Once a Col. always a Col. He has been consist with the so called drone strike. Several of the battle positions and relationship to several of the ongoing battles.
How about you share some of your source so we can compare? So did Russia blow up the pipeline?
If China memory was so long, then we would still be an allies. If it was not for us, they would be speaking Japaneses.
My sources based in Ukr. tell me that the Ukr. government have been crapping on the Russians that are Ukr. Citizens and treating them like second class citizen for a long time. This has been going on for quite awhile.
Our support for war instead of peace is getting a lot of people killed. But hey, AR15 for the Ukr, but not for US 2nd Amend Citizens.
How many people have we killed based on false information? Our record does not look too good since the 1960’s.
Something to think about:
Key Findings
387,073 civilians have died violent deaths as a direct result of the U.S. post-9/11 wars.
An estimated 3.6-3.7 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.6 million and counting.
More than 7.6 million children under five in post-9/11 war zones are suffering from acute malnutrition
War deaths from malnutrition and a damaged health system and environment likely far outnumber deaths from combat.
AR-15s, hell. Fully automatic M16s, which actual American citizens can not even drool over in shop windows.
I wonder if something’s going on with Zelenskyy – his face looks puffy, like he’s on steroids or something.
Cxan you sniff steroids?
Ask Marion Berry, Gunter Biden, or some other Democrat.
All of those are authorities on the subject.
Are there before and after shots to see if he has changed? Maybe the Russians put a little radioactive seasoning in his dinner – their typical MO.
Z won’t be happy till he’s completely drained the US of money/ammo and murdered all his people
Someone will assassinate him eventually
President Trump would not only put and end to this war in 24 hours, but it would never have started
And, no doubt, made himself and his cronies obscenely wealthy embezzling some of that money.
Trump could hire Hunter Biden to run the operation. He has connections in Ukraine and knows something about embezzling.
The most recent iteration began in 2014 and continued straight thru till today with primarily low intensity conflict in the Donbas including under Trump. Ukraine acted with US and UK support with arms, ‘advisors’ and Intel until the Russians finally felt they had no choice but to invade.
Ultimately, the only winner of this war will be China. Even if Russia wins, they still lose. A depleted Russia will be invaded by China within a decade or two, and bye bye Siberia.
I think you are on to something with China. They are supplying drones to Moscow and Kiev. Turkey is doing the same. Just business Vladimer. The stans and former far eastern Asian provinces can just tell Moscow to stuff it, they are going to align themselves politically and economically with China. Those European looking Russians in the West of Russia along the Sankt Petersburg-Moscow axis may want some new friends if this happens. They will look to a suspicious Eastern Europe.
I doubt it
China’s memory extends to long before we were a nation. The rest of that thread you posted I pretty much agree with, post 9/11. It should be no surprise RU is going on the offensive, they did invade Feb. 2022. So it will be counter to the counter. The proliferation of drones may be the new wrinkle this summer. Which side proves to be the best at it and the most innovative with them may win. No I don’t believe Russia blew up the pipeline. We’ll never know.
From what I heard, the Ukr drone were taken out by RU air defense. The one that got “close” was not close at all. Makes good PR. Russian trench warfare has been pretty successful. They have build over 70 miles of trenches.
Ground game is a waste of time and life. Ukr is the bread basket of Europe. The war is messing that up and the people will suffer.
I have not really seen any real reports of Ukr. major successes. Mostly minor ones. Surprising, when the “true” reports came out the UKr. had a lot higher causality rate than reported. What Nuland has done is criminal and costly to the world. I wonder how many causalities the US has taken in this war? Will we ever see the report?
“Imagine the feeling of a soldier who knows that he doesn’t have a roof and he doesn’t understand why neighboring countries have one.”
I paid for my own roof.
Maybe people who live in roofless houses shouldn’t throw missiles.
Not a fan of Sacks, but a subset of his tweet:
Important recent talk by Mearsheimer on current status of Ukraine War and what’s likely to happen next. Mearsheimer is the leading scholar of International Relations, and his predictions about the conflict have been highly accurate going back a decade.
Key points:
(1) Current status:
— The Russians are winning the war. Ukraine had the upper hand in 2022 but Russia has it in 2023. The Russians have not won yet, but Mearsheimer believes they are winning and will win the war. ….
— Who wins a war of attrition? 3 factors decide: (1) Balance of resolve. (Both sides are resolved.) (2) Population. (3) Artillery.
— Russia had a 3.5 to 1 population advantage at the beginning of the war. This has grown to about 5:1 as a result of 8+ million Ukrainian refugees, 3M of which have gone to Russia.
— Artillery is the “king of battle.” Balance of artillery is somewhere between 5:1 and 10:1 in Russia’s favor. ….
— Casualty Exchange Ratio is at least 2:1, meaning that two Ukrainians are likely dying for every Russian. The Ukrainians’ claim of 7:1 CER in their favor is ludicrous. …..
— Ukraine pushed large numbers of troops into Bakhmut in a losing effort. Ukrainians are becoming desperate to conscript men. Russia has not fully mobilized yet.
(2) What’s likely to happen next:
— Russia will take the 4 oblasts they already annexed plus (if they can) another 4 oblasts to the Dnipro River including Odessa and Kharkiv. The goal would be to bring all the ethnic Russians under their control to avoid another “Donbas problem.”
— Russia doesn’t want to take western Ukraine (trying to conquer ethnic Ukrainians who hate them would be like “trying to swallow a porcupine”); but their goal is to turn Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state so it can’t threaten them or be used as a Western bulwark on their border.
….
— George Kennan, Adm. Bill Perry, Amb. Jack Matlock, and Gen. Shalikashvili said that NATO expansion was a prescription for disaster. They were right. It’s only going to get worse. Mearsheimer hopes to be wrong about this, but this is his prediction.
””’
If the Russians lose the war, nukes come out.
Link to Mearseimer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-rHBRwdql8
Russia may not have fully mobilized yet but that is not taking into account the huge assumption everyone there will be willing to serve in this conflict. The Russia today is not the authoritarian Communist country of yesterday. If Putin tried to force people into the Army at gunpoint then there would be a revolution.
He’s already doing that. They raised the draft age and now are taking men from their homes. The Russian people are not happy no matter what you read. The bottom line without nukes is attrition, Russia has a bigger supply of bodies than UK does and that will be the determining factor. The Patriot missiles that we gave them are being destroyed because they are not readily mobile. Russia, as do most modern armies have reverse radar which allows an incoming projectile’s track to be used to determine where it came from immediately and counter-weapons are then brought to bear.
I am talking regularly with someone I trust in Russia on the situation both in domestic policy and military policy. There are a whole lot of people not happy with this and see no reason why it is going on much less be willing to die for it.
That was very thoughtful analysis.
Brandon cares more about a border in Europe than the one he is Constitutionally required to defend. I had to laugh at the hysteria over the “debt crisis” Brandon was whipping up all while sending 10’s of Billions to Ukraine without having any idea where that money was going.
“We will succeed filling Chairman Xiden’s pockets with laundered American Taxpayer dollars.”
Exactly correct. Why do you think the left, Deep State and Brandon have fought so hard to not let anyone see what was going on over there.
How will they “succeed” when within the next 5 years there won’t be a building left standing in all of Ukraine and all of the citizens will have migrated to other countries. Zelensky is just such a fool….well,maybe not. By then he will be living in Switzerland with all of his Swiss bank accounts that he created with US money.