The long-awaited, long-expected, much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive is looming, forthcoming, set to happen, or happening imminently — go ahead, pick your preferred word combo. But the message is the same: The next stage of the Ukraine war is Kyiv’s spring push.
The Russians are readying for it. Western governments provided training and new military equipment in advance of it. Ukraine has promised it’s happening. But the timing, the strategy, the specific terrain or territory: the only people who really know that are the Ukrainians themselves.
Although Ukraine isn’t about to publicly advertise it. These are complex, multilayered operations, and surprise, actually, does tend to be pretty advantageous in war. As Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said this week, Ukraine is already conducting various counteroffensive “actions.”
None of that changes the stakes around Ukraine’s counteroffensive. The pressure is on for Ukraine to reclaim and liberate territory from Russian control, and prove it can put advanced Western military assistance to effective and successful use. Kyiv must demonstrate this attritional, exhausting conflict is not turning into a stalemate.
“It has to be a campaign in which even if Ukraine suffers some losses, or has to abandon some territories — for example, the city of Bakhmut — it still has to demonstrate unprecedented skill and strategic ingenuity that will be inspirational for the Western partners and Ukrainian society to keep supporting Ukraine in this war,” said Polina Beliakova, postdoctoral fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.
The demand for drama might not quite match reality. Any counteroffensive could involve multiple operations, spanning weeks and months. The dynamics of the war are different than they were even last year, when Ukraine liberated the Kharkiv region in late summer, and forced a Russian retreat in the south, near…
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