Translated material
Is Ukraine preparing a counteroffensive?
At the “Direct Line” held last week, Vladimir Putin noted the “successes” of the Russian army, “liberating square kilometers” of Ukrainian territory and said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will definitely be “knocked out” of the Kursk region. Meanwhile, in Z-space, the main topic of discussion is not the president’s speech, but signs of an impending counter-offensive from Ukraine. Find out what these signs are in a new column by writer and Z-community researcher Ivan Filippov.
There is no direct evidence of this, but Z-bloggers are confident that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will soon go on the attack
If statements by Russian officials are to be believed, then the Russian army is doing well at the front. Judge for yourself. Here, for example, is what Vladimir Putin said about the progress of the war during his “Direct Line”: “Movement is taking place along the entire front line every day. And, as I already said, we are not talking about advancing 100–200–300 meters. Our fighters take and return square kilometers of territory. I want to emphasize: every day.”
Or another quote, but this time from Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov. Speaking to military attaches of foreign states on December 18, Gerasimov said that “all the tasks set by the country’s leadership have been completed.”
Well, isn't it beauty?
If Putin’s words were not commented on in any way in Z-space, because any criticism of the president is taboo , then many Z-authors found a few warm words about the Chief of the General Staff, whom military channels did not like at the best of times. For example, the servile and obedient Yuri Podolyaka wrote the following for his three million subscribers:
“I just want to ask the NGSh [ Chief of the General Staff ], is Kursk also such an example of implementation...? And in Volchansk everything was exactly as planned, how did it turn out?” (Hereinafter, the authors' spelling and punctuation are preserved).
Volchansk is a city in the Kharkov region, with a pre-war population of 17 thousand people. The Russian army has been trying to take it since May of this year.
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Podolyaka was not the only one who drew attention to the serious logical gap in the words of the chief of the general staff. “We are sitting in the Kursk region and are amazed by the number of questions that immediately appeared regarding the tasks of the RF Armed Forces, which were set by NGS Gerasimov! So wasn’t Gerasimov simply given the task of defending the Kursk region?” wrote military volunteer Roman Alekhine in his channel with 180 thousand subscribers.
“I look forward with horror to what other tasks Gerasim has set for himself and the army for the next 2025,” the author of the most popular channel Alex Parker Returns sarcastically wrote .
But, I repeat, military bloggers did not dare to argue with Putin, and he was telling the whole country that there were continuous successes at the front. And it’s not that Z-channels don’t write about these successes - and, unfortunately, they really do exist. They write. But if we single out a topic that has been really worrying them for the last 10 days, it will not be the victorious advance of the Russian army in the Donbass, but the anticipation of the New Year’s counter-offensive of Ukraine.
Military channels write a lot about the upcoming strike and in some detail.
“A number of factors that reveal preparations for it speak for a possible “New Year’s offensive.” For example, the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to save “Atakms” and “Storm-Shadows”, that is, they are stockpiled as an element of influence on command posts when everything starts. The troops involved in the Kursk direction have significantly reduced their offensive activity, which can be explained by a smaller influx of reinforcements, which, we assume, are used to form new strike groups,” writes Z-author, writer Alexey Sukonkin and adds: “The most important thing is conversations about problems with mobilization, with equipment, with the upcoming peace negotiations, NATO is masking the preparation of Ukrainian troops for the “New Year’s offensive.”
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The tone of almost all texts devoted to a possible offensive by Ukraine over the past week and a half has been approximately the same. Here's how the RIA Katyusha channel wrote about it:
“In November these were guesses, but already at the beginning of the month we were completely sure. The enemy has reduced activity along the border, stockpiling ammunition and FPV [ drones ] to create a barrage of fire along its entire length, in order to prevent the transfer of reinforcements from one side to the other. DRGs are being prepared for diversionary strikes; the new Ukrainian Armed Forces group has received its tactical sign. But the most important thing is that the Kyiv leaders started talking about a truce. This was the case before the raid on the Kharkov region and Kursk.”
Roman Alekhine tells his readers about the upcoming offensive in almost the same words: “The pre-New Year offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will most likely still happen, as we expected. The goal is to occupy more territories in regions of Russia recognized by the world for a stronger position in the event of negotiations after January 20 ( Donald Trump’s inauguration is due to take place on January 20 - Kholod’s note ) so that the military-political regime of Ukraine has something to trade.”
The channel “Witnesses of Bayraktar” writes : “AFU vehicles with new tactical signs in the form of white squares began to appear on different parts of the front. They were either seen in the Pokrovsk direction or on the border with the Bryansk region. <…> The Ukrainian fist is almost formed.” And the very prominent military channel “Archangel Spetsnaz” talks about how fighters supplied by the Western allies will take part in a possible strike: “For the first time in a long time, F-16s began to fly over Western Ukraine. Over the past two days, 14 F-16 flights have been observed over the Ivano-Frankivsk, Zhytomyr, Ternopil and Khmelnytsky regions. <…> It’s not entirely clear where they took off from, since they were already in the air.”
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And, on the one hand, the emergence of such rumors and conversations is absolutely natural. The front de facto lives in anticipation of Trump. It is the imminent inauguration that explains the desperate attempts of the Russian army to occupy as much of the territory of Ukraine as possible. Desperate, unfortunately, does not mean fruitless. But Z-channels have not written in such quantities about meat assaults and the desire of the command to capture this or that settlement literally at any cost for a very long time. As we see, they project the same logic onto the Ukrainian leadership, attributing to them a plan to seize another Russian region - so that they have something to bargain with.
It seems to me that something else is important. All these arguments and predictions do not demonstrate any special awareness, but only fear and uncertainty in the future, in which there may be either an offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Bryansk, or a treacherous “agreement”, a “new Minsk”, a freezing of the conflict “without victory”. You can expect anything from Trump. And from Putin, too, by the way.
The author's opinion may not coincide with the opinion of the editors.
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Author: Ivan Filippov Photo: Diego Herrera Carcedo / Reuters