It’s not impossible, but it will be difficult, US Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley said earlier this year. He thus assessed the chances of the Ukrainians to conquer their territories occupied by Russia within a few months. Newly leaked US military documents and also British analysts say the same, according to which the Russians expect the Ukrainians to try to strike at Melitopol.
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The Ukrainian army has published footage from the upcoming offensive | Video: Reuters
Documents from the US Department of Defense that largely agree with Milley’s sentence appeared on social media last week. They cover several areas and include military intelligence reports regarding the offensive capabilities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Although no one has officially confirmed the authenticity of the documents, Washington has admitted that at least some of them are authentic.
The texts state that the war will probably last a long time, because Russia is not capable of a quick and decisive advance on the Donbass. The Russians have been conquering the towns of Bachmut, Marjinka and Vuhledar for months, but very slowly and with huge losses in people and equipment.
On the other hand, according to the published texts, it is not certain that Ukraine has accumulated enough equipment, ammunition and soldiers for a successful counter-offensive. “From the texts it follows that the war will last a long time and will probably be frozen for a long time at a certain point,” according to the American television CNN.
According to her, the so-called daily reports prepared by Pentagon reporters and analysts for the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and the US Army, including Milley, mentioned in the introduction, were leaked to the Internet. In them, military correspondents also compare the number of dead soldiers of both sides, killed since the start of the war last February. It follows from them that approximately 43,000 Russians died and over 17,000 Ukrainian defenders.
The impact of documents on Ukraine
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s Security Council, said in an interview with Germany’s ARD television that the information released in connection with the leak was not actually classified. Kyiv claims that it does not need to change anything in its plans for the offensive.
Photo: Aktuálně.cz
“There is no need to deal so much with information leaks. It would be better to focus on the supply of weapons capable of hitting distant targets in order to end the war quickly,” Mykhaylo Podoljak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also wrote.
One document also shows that the US government allows for a “dramatic escalation” by Moscow in the event that Ukrainian attacks reach deep into the Russian interior. After all, the USA is still refusing to supply Ukraine with rocket launchers that would be capable of such interventions.
Key Melitopol
According to the analysis of British military intelligence, the Russians clearly expect that the Ukrainian army will try to capture Melitopol in the Russian-occupied part of the Zaporozhye region. The city lies between Zaporozhye and the Sea of Azov, and its capture would allow Ukraine to cut off Russia’s land link with the Crimean peninsula, as well as to strike targets in Crimea, such as barracks, airports or fuel depots.
The Ukrainian side needs to make some more gains after regaining control of Kherson or the vicinity of Kyiv, in order to be in a stronger position before a possible ceasefire negotiation.
“The Russians are building a defense consisting of three circles around Melitopol. They are about twenty kilometers apart. But the effectiveness of such a defense will depend on how the Russian side uses artillery,” reads the lead of British newsmen, which is regularly published on Twitter.
The daily Ukrainska pravda, citing its sources from the scene, writes that the Russians also have a plan to evacuate workers of the Russian company Rosatom from the occupied Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. This suggests that both sides expect the situation to escalate in this area.
Video: Director Yevhen Titarenko in Spotlight about his documentary from Ukraine
Spotlight Aktuálně.cz – Jevhen Titarenko | Video: Jakub Zuzánek
