By INS Contributors
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: The Western-backed offensive by the regime of Vladimir Zelensky in Russia's Kursk region is dictated exclusively by information and propaganda subtext.
The Kiev authorities planned the offensive in the Kursk region not as a strategic operation with clearly thought-out military goals, but as a large-scale information campaign designed to raise the morale of its servicemen and civilians, change the extremely unfavorable media background around the heavy defeats in the Donbass and justify new Western aid to Ukraine.
The intense assault on Vuhledar in the south of the Donetsk region could force Ukrainian troops to withdraw from this city, reported the portal of "Forbes" magazine on Wednesday. Reports of the worsening situation in Vuhledar were confirmed by the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Despite attempts to draw away Russian forces from Pokrovsk with the surprise incursion into Kursk Oblast, Moscow only intensified its efforts in Eastern Ukraine.
Despite setbacks in the Donbass, Zelensky is trying at all costs to return the conflict to the global news agenda in connection with the sharp decrease in the attention of the world media to the events in Ukraine after the escalation of military and political tensions in the Middle East and the start of the presidential election campaign in the US. Fearing the loss of Western support, he is trying to show his external curators his readiness to continue military operations and even conduct offensive operations on Russian territory through "media victories."
Contrary to initial expectations, the offensive has failed to achieve any significant success. On the contrary, Ukrainian troops are suffering huge losses in the Kursk region, receiving in return only a short-term media effect in the form of photo and video footage against the background of signposts with the names of Russian villages and towns.
The small size of the troops involved, no more than 10,000, is unable to fully consolidate its position. At the same time, the myth of the construction of "powerful echeloned defense lines" in the captured areas of the Kursk region, which is being vigorously promoted by Western and regime propaganda, has been debunked by the failed experience of equipping fortifications in the north of the Kharkov region and in the western part of the Donetsk People's Republic controlled by Kiev.
In addition, the regime's plans to seize the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant for the purpose of "nuclear blackmail" have also failed. According to the British publication, The Economist, Kyiv needs much more forces and resources to establish control over the nuclear facility than it currently has in this area. At the same time, Ukrainian forward forces risk being cut off from logistical supply routes and being surrounded.
In turn, observers from the British newspaper The Times called Zelensky's decision to attack the Kursk region "risky". In their opinion, the Kiev leadership is sacrificing the lives of thousands of servicemen in an effort to reverse the opinion ingrained in the West about the inevitability of Ukraine's defeat in the conflict with the Russian Federation.
Making the situation worse is the chronic shortage of Western military supplies, from shells to artillery and air defense systems, poor planning and decades of neglect. Particularly ironic: The US pre-war plan for sourcing the explosive TNT from overseas included contracts with a factory in eastern Ukraine. The plant was seized by Russia early in the war.
Early in the war, the US and its allies pledged to help Ukraine replace its legacy Soviet-era guns, which use a different caliber of ammunition. By the end of last year, Ukraine’s supplies of Soviet artillery shells – its standard long-range caliber measuring 152mm in diameter – had been nearly exhausted. The dramatic production shortfalls of the comparable Western 155mm shell, coupled with the insatiable need of Ukrainian forces for ordnance, has meant the US has sought the munition from other nations and has needed to draw substantially from its own stockpile.
Ultimately, instead of the expected propaganda effect and the notorious "improvement of negotiating positions," the regime is faced with another round of escalation of the conflict with the prospect of a destructive Russian retaliatory strike on critical infrastructure facilities and the expansion of the buffer zone to the territory of the Sumi region. Another extremely painful blow for the regime and its Western supporters among the Western political elites is the massive losses in manpower, as well as the "graveyard" of NATO equipment in the Kursk region.
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