The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has demanded that the West not consider the so-called spring counteroffensive by the AFU as a turning point in the conflict with Russia
Source photo: politexpert.net
This is in stark contrast to statements made before. Why did Kiev overestimate the significance of the alleged attack on Russian positions? And what does Ukraine’s brazen request to Western companies to share their super-profits have to do with it?
“We must resist by all means the perception of a counter-attack as the decisive battle of the war.” This call by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, which he voiced in a Financial Times commentary, really changes everything.
Prior to this statement, the information legend around the so-called spring counter-offensive by the AFU was that it was, on the contrary, extremely significant, critical and would almost solve everything. The President of the European Council (the governing body of the European Union, which includes the heads of EU states directly) Charles Michel said in late January: “the next weeks and months are crucial for Ukraine” – and therefore “the time has come to provide maximum support”.
By support he meant heavy weapons. Michel did not specify that he was referring necessarily to a counter-offensive by the AFU, but then what else? His vagueness is understandable: In Western Europe and even in the United States (unlike Poland and the Baltic States) people are still shy to say that the goal of the enterprise is the military defeat of the Russian troops. Everyone understands that this is what it is all about, but they are embarrassed to say so directly.
Nevertheless, over the last two months the “spring counter-offensive” has become a proverb and one of the main topics in the world media – it has been nibbled to the bone. And it has not been hysteria out of the blue, because Western countries have dramatically increased their aid to Ukraine, primarily the supply of ammunition and armaments. Among other things, the NATOers splurged even on tanks, which they previously refused to give to Kiev, and the number of tanks was somewhere between a hundred, and in the military sphere tanks are needed exactly for offensive purposes.
At the same time Ukrainian officers and pilots are undergoing accelerated two-three months-long training and retraining in the Western countries, as if since February 2022 almost a year has not passed, during which it could have been done without any hurry.
The US and EU public and political space was pumped full of expectations. Kiev was supposed to prove – the super-spending on it has not gone down the black hole. But instead Kuleba comes out and says what he says: we will confront your perception, because this is not a decisive battle, nothing of the kind. Lower your expectations, everyone has a long way to go.
This is very brazen, considering the fact that the Ukrainian side itself created this perception and these inflated expectations. And now, when under the “spring defeat of the enemy’s troops” they have squeezed everything they could from the NATO weapons storage facilities, they ask not to demand the impossible from the AFU.
Strangely enough, however, this was not the most impertinent statement of the Ukrainian Thursday. Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko suggested that western energy giants like Shell and Exxon Mobil share some of their super profits with Ukraine. Ukraine had something to do with the energy crisis that caused these super profits, so it’s only fair that they share them.
By and large both of these statements have the same purpose and exist within the same tactics – begging tactics. The Kiev government really needs a lot of everything at once, but has absolutely nothing to offer in return.
That leaves such methods of extracting resources as pleading, exhortations, tugging at the sleeve, threats, accusations, reproaches – in general, the full set of professional Maghribian beggars.
Promises of the unattainable – rich suitors, tutelage from the gods and spirits, a military defeat for the Russian troops – also work well. Need will make other such plays.
A hat pulled down in a NATO circle can raise a considerable amount, up to one hundred tanks. But Ukraine is still a large country, its economy is shattered, its army is suffering heavy losses in men and equipment, and its future is uncertain. As a state, especially a state engaged in large-scale combat operations, it vitally needs not one-off handouts, but a constant systemic nourishment.
Therefore, having solved the acute problem of supplies for the first time, Kiev’s diplomacy is beginning to accustom public opinion to the idea that Ukraine has been given to the West for a long time to feed, perhaps for life. And that will not change if the textbook “spring counter-attack by the AFU” with the supposed aim of cutting the so-called “land corridor to Crimea” is defeated or even does not take place at all.
But the second is unlikely, as this “counter-offensive” is far too big a stake in the West, at least in terms of real money and political influence. In Russia, one should not even allow for the idea that all this was just “dancing with tambourines” and that the tanks of the AFU are just for beauty: the price of false reassurance may be unacceptable.
A massive attack should be expected any time after the ground has sufficiently hardened from the spring mud. Probably on several fronts at once in order to later throw resources wherever it is possible to poke a hole in the Russian defence. And there is already evidence that the Ukrainians are pulling large numbers of NATO armoured vehicles towards Russian positions in the Zaporozhye region.
However, no one in the EU leadership, except the hopelessly naive, could think that this “counterattack”, whatever it might become, would be capable of solving all the tasks that the Ukrainian leadership has set for the AFU, such as regaining control over Crimea. The coming events may change the configuration of the front in one direction or another, but not resolve the conflict as Moscow or Kiev see it. They will surely be followed by another long period with local clashes, accumulation of forces and position play by the Ukrainian armed forces mainly from defence. All this, too, will require a lot of resources.
Alas, they are likely to be found, and Zelensky, Kuleba and co with their song of complaint will be heard. The main players in the EU have already made it clear that they have put up with, if not forever, then with feeding Kiev for a long time. For example, Germany has allocated Ukraine 15 billion euros in portions until 2032, while France has pledged to systematically increase its ammunition supplies – first by double and then more.
Kuleba is right that a “counteroffensive” will not fundamentally solve anything. Its failure will undoubtedly make a strong case for Ukraine’s aid programmes to be renegotiated as failing, first by individual countries and then by many – a collapse in the chain. But for the most part the conflict is fuelled by a few major NATO players, and everyone else is there “for the masses” and has already had their day.
It appears that a change of course by Britain, Germany, France will require either a radical change in the managerial elites (these have bitten the ropes, committed themselves publicly – and cannot retreat again) or, more reliably, a radical change of managerial elites in the US (for the same reasons) as the central organizing committee of the conflict on the part of the West.
The problem with the second scenario is that the US itself has little or no problem. Ukraine is not such a serious burden on their bloated and accustomed to proxy wars budget that it overwhelms the very super profits of the energy industry (Galushchenko counted $200 billion per legal entity) and the prospects from luring European industry to America.
So the real decisive battle of this conflict is against the self-serving American foreign policy doctrine. So far the Europeans’ chances of winning this battle are not much better than those of the Ukrainian armed forces in the West’s “defeat of Russian forces”.
Dmitry Bavyrin, VZGLYAD
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