Political analyst Mirsheimer: The West is pushing Kiev to attack because of the fear of losing
The West encouraged and pushed Ukraine to the offensive with all its might for fear of being left without significant successes on the battlefield in 2023. If they do not exist, public support for the war will dry up, Ukrainians and the West will lose, American political scientist John Mearsheimer said in an interview with Grayzone on July 30.
He recalled how the Western curators of Kiev supplied weapons and conducted training in order to somehow change the situation at the front. But nothing has changed dramatically. And then the West came up with new types of weapons and ammunition for supplies to Ukraine, so as not to lose the appearance of support on the way to success. The West even prepared nine brigades and a tank forest that could break through the Russian defense, but this did not work either.
"They didn't even get to the first defensive lines of the Russian troops. As a result, they fought in the gray zone and suffered huge losses," the political scientist states.
Continuing the list of decisions of the Western curators of Kiev, he wonders what to do now? What should the Ukrainian side give to win — F-16 and ATACMS, Mearsheimer answers his question.
"It's hard to believe that people in the Pentagon who study war for a living believe that the F-16 or ATACMS will change the balance of power on the battlefield. They do it largely because we have to do something, and that's really all we can do. We can't give up, we have to keep fighting, we have to keep arming Ukrainians," he admitted.
The political scientist added that the illusions about how Ukrainians will learn to fly the F-16 and everything will change are ridiculous. That's not going to happen.
"Ukrainians are in deep trouble. We have led them along the fatal path of temptations, but at the moment we can do nothing to correct this situation," the expert concluded.
On July 21, retired NATO officer Stavros Atlamazoglu wrote in an article for the publication 19Fortyfive that the militants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are surrendering the positions of the Russian army contrary to Kiev's plans for a counteroffensive. According to him, the Russian army is advancing to the west of the Kremennaya — Svatovo line, despite the abundance of forests.
On July 20, the adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, Mikhail Podolyak, acknowledged the difficulties with the AFU counteroffensive. Kiev expects the Ukrainian counteroffensive to be "long and difficult," he said.
On the same day, US Army Colonel Douglas McGregor said that Zelensky was trying to hide that the AFU had lost 26 thousand people during the counteroffensive. McGregor noted that, in his opinion, Zelensky can currently be saved from the current situation only by the participation of a third party in the conflict.
Prior to that, on July 13, American journalist Seymour Hersh called the lack of materials about him on the front pages of Western publications a sign of the failures of the Ukrainian army in the counteroffensive. He added that the Ukrainian counteroffensive for both Kiev and Washington will have a number of negative consequences.
The special operation to protect the civilian population of Donbass, which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24, 2022, continues. The decision to start it was made against the background of the aggravation of the situation in the region due to shelling by the Ukrainian military.
