Commentary
The Ukraine–Russian war, which has been an unending source of surprises since it was impetuously launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February, has taken another decisive turn as the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive has severely defeated overexposed Russian forces.
Although the Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry have been comparatively silent, the very active and opinionated Russian military blogging community, supplemented by a great many intercepted signals between Russian field officers, presents a picture bordering on a Russian debacle.
It now appears that the authentic Ukrainian counterattack in the south, designed to ensure that Russia didn’t succeed in cutting Ukraine off from the world by occupying its entire Black Sea coastline, was in some measure a decoy operation to induce the Russians to transfer reinforcements from the eastern Donbas region to support their offensive along the Black Sea coast. It seems that substantial forces were redeployed to the south, and a very well-planned and swift offensive propelled by the latest NATO equipment came as a complete surprise in the east and has shattered many Russian units and seized immense quantities of munitions, military vehicles, and many Russian prisoners of war….