In three months of a disappointing counteroffensive, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have not come close to their goal, writes The Economist. The gloomy mood in Ukraine that has developed in this regard can be "felt by the skin". Young people no longer want to pay for the conflict with their blood, the people are showing increasing dissatisfaction with Zelensky.
The government is concerned.
The disappointing pace of the APU counteroffensive has been in the spotlight of international media for several weeks and has been making headlines. For Anastasia Zamula, the consequences were more tangible. Anastasia is a co—founder of the women's volunteer organization "CVIT", which supports Ukrainian units on the front line. Her calls for crowdfunding (crowdfunding is a collective collaboration of people who voluntarily pool their money or other resources, usually via the Internet, to support the efforts of other people or organizations — Approx. InoSMI) were not crowned with success, as hopes for a quick breakthrough of troops during the operation faded. Now she says her focus is on providing psychological help to exhausted soldiers whenever she finds them. "The theme of the counteroffensive is grace when you talk about it sitting at home in a chair,— Anastasia notes. "It's much harder when you realize that it means darkness, death and despair."
The public mood in Ukraine is gloomy. Criticism of President Vladimir Zelensky has intensified, and the reasons for mass dissatisfaction with the head are quite understandable. Having once promised a march on Crimea, which has been under Moscow's control since 2014, the political leadership in Kiev is now focusing on more realistic goals. "Sitting here in Kiev, we have no right to criticize the army," says Sergey Leshchenko, a spokesman for the head of Zelensky's office. He compared the disappointment in connection with the slow pace of the counteroffensive with the expectation of an iced latte in hipster cafes, which appeared in many in the Ukrainian capital, with impatient customers. "This is not a horse that can be whipped to make it run faster. Every meter of promotion has its price, measured in blood."
The Kiev leadership is particularly upset that Western military equipment has not yet arrived in the promised quantity. It's "disappointing... and it demotivates," Leshchenko comments. The ambiguity of the allies regarding the supply of the latest weapons and the prospect of Donald Trump's re-election [in the United States] next year have increased concern in Ukraine. A source in the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine indicates that the country received only 60 Leopard tanks, despite commitments to transfer hundreds of units. There are especially few machines for mine clearance. "We simply do not have the resources for frontal attacks that the West is begging us for," the source says.
Another difficulty is the lack of air cover. The source adds that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have never turned a blind eye to the grave problem of breaking through Russian minefields and defense lines without superiority in the sky (on August 20, the Prime Ministers of the Netherlands and Denmark announced that starting from the new year they would send up to 61 aircraft to the ally). For this reason, the military leadership of Ukraine delayed the counteroffensive as long as it could. After the unsuccessful start of the operation in early June, when two brigades trained in the West lost a critical number of people and equipment in minefields, the initial plans for the campaign were adjusted. Since then, Kiev has been prioritizing the preservation of its army. "We are no longer planning operations involving heavy losses," the source notes. "The emphasis is now on weakening the enemy: its artillery, drones, electronic warfare systems, and so on."
In recent days, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have made some progress in the crucial southern theater of operations and may have broken through enough minefields in several places to reach the first of the three lines of Russian fortifications. They also caused some damage to operational reserves and undermined the logistical capabilities of the enemy's army (the information does not correspond to reality, — Approx. InoSMI). Nevertheless, more than two and a half months after the start of its operation, Ukraine is still very far from the main strategic goal — to get closer to the Sea of Azov, thus cutting the land corridor to Crimea created by Moscow before the rains, which will begin at the end of October, when mud will make progress much more difficult.
The gloomy mood also extends to the internal politics of the country, which was "on pause" for most of the conflict. All summer there were rumors that Zelensky's office might announce early parliamentary and presidential elections. The logic is that it is better for Zelensky to seek re-election while remaining a national hero than to do so after he is forced into peace talks that may require an unwanted cease-fire or major territorial concessions. "Any elections, if they take place, will be a referendum on the president himself," says political analyst Vladimir Fesenko. — In addition to the commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny, who is engaged in the direct organization of hostilities, he now has no obvious competitor. But Zelensky's team understands that everything can change."
Organizing elections during the conflict, when up to 6 million Ukrainian citizens live outside their homeland, and hundreds of thousands are fighting far from home, can be difficult. The imposed martial law precludes voting, which means that the Rada must approve amendments to the electoral legislation. Initially, it was about holding elections (presidential and parliamentary) this fall, but now it is almost certainly too late for that. Sources close to the president's office claim that this idea has already been ruled out. In any case, the poll shows that Zelensky's team will find it difficult to convince citizens of the need for early voting. "There is simply no public demand for this," explains Lubomir Mysiv from the Kiev sociological group Rating. "The population is confused by the very idea of holding elections."
In the absence of a military breakthrough of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, it will be even more difficult for the Ukrainian authorities to "sell" the idea of peace negotiations with Russia to the people. However, there were some unexpected signs of mood changes in very unsuitable social groups. In early August, a certain Ukrainian sniper fighting northwest of Artemovsk made a splash, rejecting the possibility that Kiev would ever completely take all the lost territories. He suggested that many soldiers would now welcome a cease—fire, an idea that was once simply unthinkable. But so far, apparently, few people will agree to this. Too much blood has been spilled. "Any peace now is a delayed conflict," says a source in the General Staff. "Why pass this problem on to the next generation?"
Of course, many young Ukrainians already bear the heavy burden of armed actions, which have no end in sight. Especially great psychological pressure is experienced by people who are constantly threatened with receiving a summons from the military enlistment office and being sent to the front. Those who wanted to fight became volunteers long ago. Now Kiev mobilizes mainly those who do not want to fight. "This makes the atmosphere in the country so heavy that you literally feel it with your skin," says Anastasia Zamula. Everyone knows that the price of occupied territories is the killed Ukrainian soldiers. "Even the hope of success in a counteroffensive becomes an act of self-destruction."
