Berlin, Germany (Weltexpress). What is behind the rumours of a new counter-offensive by the Ukrainian armed forces in 2024? Reports from “experts” are also circulating in German newspapers. Our author Rainer Rupp’s conclusion: a weary smile.
Is Ukraine already planning the next spring offensive for next year? There are currently no official statements on this subject – neither from the political leadership of Ukraine, nor from the NATO leadership, nor from the leaders of the “collective West”. Even the leadership of the Ukrainian armed forces has so far said nothing concrete on this subject. In other words, most of the information about an alleged new Ukrainian offensive next spring are rumours spread as wishful thinking by media close to the Western warmongers.
Statements by Ukrainian representatives are generally limited to demands for new arms deliveries and complaints about acute shortages of ammunition supplies because the West is not honouring its promises. The communication from Kiev to the West can be reduced to the following statement: “We would like to continue attacking, but we don’t have enough material.” This is followed by a long list of weapons and military equipment.
In view of the sharp decline in military supplies from Europe, the current halt to these from the USA – probably until February next year – and increased uncertainty about a resumption of Washington’s massive support for the months thereafter, it is difficult to assess the prospects of new offensive plans by the Ukrainian armed forces in 2024.
Where do the reports about alleged new Ukrainian counter-offensive plans come from? As a rule, these are the private opinions of alleged “experts” and journalists who are increasingly desperate to reignite the US/NATO proxy war with renewed vigour.
In the German daily newspaper Die Welt, for example, security and crisis expert Alfred Hackensberger argues in his article of 15 December 2023 entitled “Ukraine war: 95 per cent unused weapons – can Kiev still win the war?” that Ukraine is probably (!) gathering resources for a new counter-offensive next year. The Ukrainian counter-offensive of the past five months has “clearly come to a standstill and the West is hesitating with its support. But is the situation on the front really so hopeless? Not necessarily. There are signs that Kiev is preparing a plan.”
What is such an opinion based on? Actually, just hot air. The article describes hypothetical military options for Ukraine, what a new counter-offensive could look like and what conditions would have to be met for it to be successful.
Hackensberger cites data published on the pro-Ukrainian open source website Oryx as his sources. It was this completely distorted Oryx data that Western mainstream media and think tanks (think tanks) in the field of defence and security relied on heavily when they predicted Ukraine’s absolutely certain victory and the conquest of the Crimean Peninsula as part of the planned spring offensive in early 2023. Due to many problems, however, this only came about three months late in the course of the summer and autumn.
It was this OSINT data, which was deliberately manipulated beyond all reality, that sent the politicians and press representatives of the collective West into a frenzy of war and victory in anticipation of the offensive by the Ukrainian armed forces. Yet this offensive should never have taken place if the situation had been realistically assessed. Despite unimaginable Ukrainian losses of men and material, the Ukrainian leadership was unable to even come close to achieving its military or political goals.
For the West too, the complete failure of the Ukrainian offensive, described at best as a “dynamic military stalemate”, is a political disaster. The same applies to the technological prestige of the Western miracle weapons used, which did not fulfil any of the expectations placed in them because the Russians either already had the antidotes or developed them in the shortest possible time, often within days.
And yet the media warmongers have learnt nothing. They continue to use the fake OSINT data and spread the Bellingcat narrative about invented huge losses of the Russian armed forces and their lack of combat readiness, while at the same time the Ukrainian soldiers and the combat capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces in general are grossly overestimated. However, this approach has proven to be a double-edged sword. As early as June 2023, these false narratives could no longer hold up in the face of reality, namely the successful operations of the Russian armed forces, which, to put it mildly, severely damaged the credibility of Western media and politicians, mainly among the non-Western public.
It is noteworthy that immediately after the failure of the Ukrainian “counter-offensive”, the Oryx project was hastily closed and all publications on the respective Twitter account with information about the supposedly great successes of the Ukrainian offensive were deleted. Previously, the project, which was controlled by the British secret service, had repeatedly shone with delusional statements about the failure of the Russians, which were obediently disseminated by Western, including German, press outlets.
Against this background, one can only smile wearily at rumours of a “second Ukrainian offensive”. In fact, chaos is currently reigning in the Western media circus, caused both by uncertainty about the future fate of the regime in Kiev and Ukraine as a whole and by a critical lack of reliable data, which openly pro-Ukrainian sources have not yet provided and will certainly not provide in the future.
