The false counter-offensive and the refusal of good offices
Thierry Meyssan
Translation by Roger Lagassé
(Version française ici)
While the Western press glosses over military reality, the Kremlin
plays the transparency card. Specialized columnists are allowed to
circulate and publish what they think, even when they are critical of
the way the military operates and its results. President Putin received
them and answered their toughest questions live on television.
It’s a fool’s game. Kiev’s communication asserts that its army launched a counter-offensive two weeks ago. But this does not correspond to what can be seen on the battlefield. It also claims to welcome with hope the two missions of good offices from China and the African Union. But Volodymyr Zelensky has interrupted the negotiations he was conducting with Moscow and enacted a law prohibiting their resumption.
According to the authorities in Kiev, the Ukrainian army launched "a vast counter-offensive against the Russian aggressor" on June 8.
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A COUNTER-OFFENSIVE—Military literature prefers to speak of a counter-attack rather than a counter-offensive. A counter-attack consists in taking advantage of the enemy’s momentary weaknesses to launch an assault. We think of Napoleon at Austerlitz, who had some of his troops beaten back in order to trap his adversaries, from which he emerged victorious.
Choosing the term "counter-offensive" is not neutral. It’s a communication device suggesting that the Russians have launched an "offensive" to seize Ukraine. In fact, they fought at the capital’s northern airport before withdrawing. In reality, the Russians have never attempted to take Kiev and have no intention of invading Ukraine. That’s what their president, Vladimir Putin, said in the first week of his "special operation". Taking a military airport, even one north of Kiev, is just a battle to give the Russians air superiority. It does not indicate that they intended to take the capital.
The term "special operation" is not neutral either. Moscow is stressing that it is not waging a war of invasion, but is implementing its "responsibility to protect" the populations of the Donetsk and Lugansk oblates, who had officially been the targets of a punitive operation by Kiev, since 2014.
