After months of speculation about when Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive will begin, we now have an answer: right now. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops, many of them trained at military bases in Europe and outfitted with heavy Western armor, are now launching simultaneous operations at several points along the 600-mile-long front line in the country’s east and south. “Counteroffensive and defensive actions are taking place in Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed during a news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last weekend. “At what stage, I will not say in detail.”
How well those operations are going is difficult to say in the fog of war, when conflicting information causes one to doom-spiral for accuracy. Success, or the lack thereof, depends on whom you ask. The Ukrainians have claimed successes in four small villages in the Donetsk region; whereas, the Russians are triumphantly touting their stiff resistance and publishing photos of destroyed German tanks. The United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry, which publishes daily assessments of the fighting, wrote on Saturday that Ukrainian performance has been uneven depending on which area of the front is being examined. The only thing that is certain in these early days is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley’s observation last week: “This will be a back-and-forth fight for a considerable length of time.”
Everything else is a mystery. This includes what “success” actually looks like. Even on this fundamental question, the answer depends on who is being asked. For the Ukrainians, success is straightforward: complete, total military victory over the aggressors. This translates into every Russian boot off every square inch of Ukrainian land, including areas of the country like Crimea that Russian forces have controlled for nearly a decade. Zelenskyy has been unequivocal on this point. Whereas Kyiv may have been willing to discuss Russia’s territorial claims, however unjustified they were, at the beginning of the war, the Ukrainian government’s position has hardened considerably as the fighting has gone on. Look no further than Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace proposal, which equates to a list of surrender terms for Moscow.
