According to U.S. intelligence agencies, Ukraine’s widely announced counteroffensive is unlikely to achieve its main goal. This reports the German news website n-tv.de with reference to a report in the Washington Post. The report refers to “persons familiar with the matter.”
Specifically, it says that U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Ukraine will not reach the city of Melitopol, which is important for the counteroffensive. At the same time, this would mean that Ukrainian troops would not be able to cut the Russian land bridge to Crimea this year, missing one of the main objectives of the counteroffensive. The reason for this is Russia’s “brutal” skill in defending occupied territory through minefields and trenches. It is assumed that these developments will lead to recriminations about why the counteroffensive, for which the West has provided several billion in military equipment, has not achieved its goals.
For weeks now, there have been reports that the Ukrainian counteroffensive was making progress but generally falling short of expectations.
Image: president.gov.ua, Зустріч Президента України з Федеральним канцлером Австрії 44 (cropped), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (image size modified)
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