Democrats and Republicans in Washington D.C. have been shown an intelligence report warning Ukraine’s counter-offensive will likely fail, as Volodymyr Zelensky’s government grows increasingly prickly towards its Western backers, but the Biden regime continues to throw billions at the perceived problem.
Melitopol, Russia’s de facto capital in the Zaporozhye (Zaporizhzhia) oblast – one of four regions partially annexed to the Russian Federation since the invasion in February 2022 – is believed to be the main objective of the counter. Reaching it would restore Ukrainian access to the Sea of Azov, where the entire coastline is currently under Russian control, and snap the “land bridge” between the Donbass, where Russian separatists have been fighting since 2014, and the Crimea, which was annexed by Russia following the Euromaidan coup the same year.
But with Ukrainian forces having made extremely limited progress, and much of their Western equipment savaged by Russian minefields and artillery fire, the U.S. intelligence community no longer believe Melitopol is within Zelensky’s reach in 2023.
Sources have denied the Biden government’s refusal to strengthen the counter-offensive with F-16 warplanes or ATACMS missile systems is responsible for the failure, saying that “[t]he problem remains piercing Russia’s main defensive line, and there’s no evidence these systems would’ve been a panacea.”
Facing further criticism from their Western sponsors for failing to make progress and, as some see it, squandering the billions of dollars in Western arms and ammunition supplied for the counter-offensive, the Ukrainian government has bridled, with Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba insisting telling Westerners who want quicker results to “go and join the foreign legion.”
“It’s easy to say that you want everything to be faster when you are not there,” he complained.
