A quick check of the Met office forecasts for Ukraine suggests that over the next week or so the weather is going to get steadily warmer. The rising mercury has fuelled speculation that Ukraine’s much discussed spring offensive is just around the corner, the only questions being when and where Ukraine’s military planners intend to make their big push. Kyiv is being understandably tight-lipped about this, surprise and deception – as Sun Tsu noted in the Art of War millenia ago – being key to military success.
Some observers have noted that Ukraine has achieved a bridgehead on the eastern side of the Dnipro River, which could foreshadow a major push southwards towards Crimea. The big question exercising most military experts is whether Ukraine has received sufficient new military equipment from its western allies to achieve the sort of spectacular successes it managed in September and October last year.
But there are signs of war fatigue setting in among some of Kyiv’s friends, while – as we noted in the last Ukraine recap – an increasing number of countries are opting to join China in urging Volodymyr Zelensky to the negotiating table. Just this week the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, held a telephone conversation with the Ukrainian president, the first time the pair has spoken since the war began. Zelensky said afterwards that he had told Xi that: “There can be no peace at the expense of territorial compromises.”
