UKRAINE WAR: Go Home, Everybody, Russia Already Countered the Counteroffensive

It was a nice Ukraine War but it’s all over now that we’ve seen the grainy video of Russian forces absolutely destroying Kyiv’s long-promised summer counteroffensive. “The enemy’s goal was to break through Russia’s defenses in what it considered to be the most vulnerable area of the front,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. But the attack was repulsed with losses of more than 250 Ukraine casualties and 16 main battle tanks.

War’s over. Go home.

I’m kidding, of course. While the counteroffensive does seem to be getting underway, it’s important to take Moscow’s claims with a salt lick the size of a minifridge. And take Kyiv’s claims with perhaps a slightly smaller one.

With that in mind, using public sources, can we get an idea of what’s going on in Ukraine this week? I think that yes, we can.

Moscow does seem to be correct that at least one Ukrainian attack was driven back. Below is a brief — and not very good — video of the attack described by the Russian MOD.

Geolocated Russian footage of UA battalion level attack to be west of Velyka Novosilka.

47.8243, 36.7393

"Footage of the defeat of armored vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the attacks on the Zaporozhye direction on June 4."https://t.co/c9BxZb6r6w@GeoConfirmed pic.twitter.com/zGmtCCrmgE

— John Helin (@J_JHelin) June 5, 2023

I’d gotten spoiled with the hi-def drone videos Ukrainian sources often post, which makes trying to make out what’s happening in this fuzzy and chopped-up clip that much more frustrating. That aside, trusted sources say the video has been properly geolocated to where Russian milbloggers say it is. But it’s impossible to conclude that anything close to a major battle is shown.

And in this clip, you can see what appears to be the destruction of a Russian tank destroyed in a rare tank-on-tank action.

The most interesting news might be the action going on around — and I do mean around — the pile of rubble once known as the town of Bakhmut. We could all be forgiven for thinking that the Battle of Bakhmut was over, with Russia taking the town in May after ten months of heavy fighting. New developments show that the battle might be far from over.

BREAKING:

Prigozhin claims that the Ukrainian Army has retaken parts of the village of Berkhivka, immediately to the north of Bakhmut. pic.twitter.com/7IFvgcg8UV

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 5, 2023

Ukraine continues to push against Russia’s flanks around Bakhmut, perhaps seeing if they can turn it into a cauldron — we used to call them encirclements — where Russian occupiers are cut off and defeated in detail. With Russia’s huge artillery advantage, that seems unlikely.

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Most importantly, there’s an update on last week’s Freedom for Russia/RDK raid into Russia’s Belgorod region. At the time, I wrote that the “raid on Shebekino will almost certainly play out just like last week’s, with Legion forces quickly returning to Ukraine and Russian troops restoring order on the Russian side.”

But that hasn’t been the case.

This is from a Russian source on the Telegram social media platform: “Voenniy Osvedomitel [a pro-war Russian analysit] says RDK [Ethnic Russian defectors fighting alongside Ukraine] did indeed infiltrate into the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka in Shebekino district despite the Ministry of Defence denying this. It is this village where RDK offered governor Gladkov to meet in person and exchange two Russian captives.”

The Russian military is so completely committed in Ukraine that they’ve been unable to dislodge what probably amounts to no more than a few enemy rifle companies inside of Russia herself.

When Russia was forced out of the Kharkiv region last summer and “regrouped” behind the Dnipro River last fall, the twin military defeats in the north and south had one net benefit: Russian lines were shortened enough that they could focus their efforts on the central front in Donbas.

With these incursions into Belgorod, Kyiv might have found a way to force Russia to lengthen those lines again — long enough to cover about 930 miles of border that were previously thought safe. For a small investment in their Russian volunteers, Kyiv might be able to force Moscow to thin their lines in Ukraine, or even to weaken Russia’s economy further by mobilizing even more civilians into the military.

It could prove to be that a tiny raid two weeks ago was the real start in Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive — a series of distractions inside Russia that Moscow can’t afford to ignore but that outnumbered Ukraine might be able to exploit.

Stay tuned…