The Ukrainian counteroffensive has begun. In an article entitled, “Ukraine Starts Drive to Regain Occupied Area,” from the Friday edition of the New York Times, the authors describe “Ukrainian forces [mounting] a major attack in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday, taking the offensive against the invading Russians in multiple places in the east and south, but there was no indication of a breakthrough in an operation that carries high stakes for Kyiv and its Western allies.”

By the end of the news day on Sunday, however, Ukraine’s armed forces raised its flag over no more than an a hallow administrative building from an undefended village located in the western Donetsk region (i.e., not in the Zaprorizhzhia region).

Called Blahodatne, the village’s capture is entirely inconsequential, especially in light of the overall strategic aim of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Ukraine’s brigades, nine of whom trained at the former Nazi base at Grafenwöhr, as reported by Time magazine in May, have failed to make a breakthrough in the more than 1,000 miles of Russian defenses, indicating that Ukraine’s armed forces appear to have effectuated no gains in terms of a Blitzkrieg.

The article, which the New York Times published below a full front page depiction of Donald J Trump’s reaction to a Federal indictment, indicates that no less than two of the brigades mentioned in Jack Texeira’s Classified NATO Documents are playing an active role in the fighting.

The authors quote Rob Lee, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, as saying, “It appears some of the new brigades Ukraine stood up for this counteroffensive have been committed, which indicates the counteroffensive is underway.” The Russian press is reporting that more than two of the brigades are engaged in the fighting.

It appears as though the brigades involved in the counteroffensive are the 81st Air Mobile Brigade and the 67th Mechanized Brigade, as according to reports on Russian media channels such as Russia’s Russian Information Agency or RIA for short.

“Russian forces have repelled attempts by storm troops from the 81st Air Mobile brigade and the 67th Mechanized brigade to launch an attack with armored vehicles,” the report stated. It is unclear whether other brigades are involved, as information on their number, activity, losses, or gains appears to be scant, if at all available.

In the immediate aftermath of the counterattack, Al-Jazeera has already reported in Arabic that Russian forces destroyed no less than eight German Leopard tanks. Entitled, “وزارة الدفاع الروسي : دمرنا ٨ دبابات ليبارد يقاتل بها الاوكرانيون واحقنا بهم خسائر فادحة,” the report showed a field with abandoned armored vehicles, the majority of which were tanks.

In an earlier reports on Russia’s preparations for the appearance of Challengers, Leopards, or Abrams, multiple articles in Arabic detail how a special team of anti-tank personnel began training almost immediately after Western countries announced their decision to supply Ukraine with the tanks. In one article, “في الاثياء رئيس مركز التدريب القتالي في الجيش الروسي اريفوين إن روسيا شكلت مجموعات لتدمير الدبابات القادمة من الغرب,” the authors explain how prior to Kyiv’s receipt of Germany’s tanks, the Russian armed forces trained a special team for locating, targeting, or destroying these tanks. Entitled, “روسيا تعلن تشكيلها مجموعات عسكرية لتدمير الدبابات الغربية القادمة لااوكرانية,” the authors of this article detail how Russia formed these teams to respond to incoming tanks along its defensive lines. As a reference, there is one more article, “.الجيش الروسي يشكل مجموعات مختصة بتدمير الدبابات الغربية في أوكرانيا”

In at least one of the videos circulating online where Russian forces locate, target, or destroy Russian tanks, the Russian spoken by at least one of the voices on the video indicate a high level of professional training. There are two people. One is the gunner. The other is a spotter.

In the scene depicted in the video the spotter identifies two tanks in a field. One is far away. The other is close. The spotter directs the gunner to take aim at the tank farthest away. The tank farthest away is the one most likely to move out of range after a successful strike on the closest tank. The distance the farthest tank would have to travel is much less than that of the closest tank. It is clear from his instructions the spotter directs the gunner according to a targeting strategy, one may assume to have been from a high level of professional training within a special team of anti-tank personnel.

The appearance of special teams of anti-tank personnel on the more than 1000 mile long front adds an additional layer of difficulty for Ukrainian troops, who face, as detailed in earlier reports here, a complex of multiple layers of defense.

In an article entitled, “The Russian Fortifications Ukraine needs to breakthrough in its counteroffensive,” the authors from the Telegraph admit, albeit unconsciously, that Ukraine’s armed forces cannot penetrate Russian lines of defense. The Telegraph’s admission confirms the author’s analysis from an earlier article on the counteroffensive.

“They have unbelievable trenches and unbelievable fortifications, it will be hard to break their lines of defense,” Serhii, a commander in Ukraine’s National Guards, told the Telegraph.

In an article describing the Ukrainian army’s last assemblage (i.e., “On the Eve of The Fourth Ukrainian Army’s Counteroffensive”), the author explained that there is no reason to believe that Ukraine’s new army is capable for overcoming the multilayered complex of defenses Russian established during the time in which the Wagner Group encouraged Ukrainian forces to feed men into the ‘meat-grinder’ at Bakhmut.

As stated in that article, “In the various reports recently published by the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, there does not appear to be any information with which one could come to the conclusion that the Ukrainians have developed solutions for any one of the challenges its counteroffensive faces, especially” Russia’s defenses.

In the same article, the author stated: “There is absolutely no reason to believe that Ukrainian armed forces are capable of penetrating Russian defenses.”

As the Telegraph’s admission confirms, “[this] time has given Russia ample time to build fortifications in the areas most likely expected to be targeted by Kyiv—occupied Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine’s south and the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east.”

By “time,” the authors of the article from the Telegraph likely do not mean the term in the abstract but the opportunity Russia’s military strategy enabled. The time Russian acquired through the canalization of Ukrainian troops into the ‘meat-grinder’ at Bakhmut after its withdrawal from the Western bank of the Dnipro enabled its forces to construct defenses against a counteroffensive. The fact that the battle of Bakhmut afforded the Russians time to build fortifications dictates the ultimate outcome of the counteroffensive. The Ukrainian armed forces are not scheduled to prevail, breakthrough, or develop a point of attack from which Russian armed forces may suffer a strategic defeat as a result of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. The decisive battle of Bakhmut therefore continues to exert its influence on the battlefield.

The United States decision to train, arm or deploy the Zelensky regime’s military against Russia as a prevailing NATO proxy fighting force terminated in defeat at the battle of Bakhmut. The decisive battle of Bakhmut not only resulted in the fall of the city. The city’s fall decided the outcome of the entire Ukrainian war.

Nonetheless, the fact that the battle of Bakhmut decided the outcome of the war in no way detracts from the lethality of Ukrainian armed forces. The Ukrainian armed forces are still an extremely lethal fighting force. The Russian armed forces, who have fought in open battles against these forces, have suffered immensely. The battle of Vuhledar, for instance, is a case in point. Coinciding with the battle of Bakhmut, the battle of Vuhledar demonstrated that Ukrainian armed forces are far from impotent.

In an article entitled, “Russian Forces, Repeating Strategic Errors, Lose Epic Tank Battle,” which New York Times published on March 2nd, 2023, the authors explain how “Ukraine’s military said Russia lost at least 130 tanks and armored personnel carriers in the battle. That figure could not be independently verified. Ukraine does not disclose how many weapons it loses.” In a situation where Russia’s strike capability appears to be incapable of forming spearhead in open fields, the fiasco at Vulehdar mitigates the likelihood Russia launches a successful campaign to lay siege to Kyiv in the north west or Odessa in the southwest.

Nonetheless, the idea that Ukraine, however, is capable of combining deception, speed, or synchronization in a lighting campaign of combined arms against Russian defenses, however, is far less likely but continues, nonetheless, to play into ‘meat-grinders’ just like Bakhmut. This is despite Ukraine’s arsenal of different weapons.

It is clear that as the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania approaches, many of the alliance’s most powerful leaders have already started to take stock of the current alignment of forces in the Ukraine war. In reports circulated throughout the Russian media, German Chancellor, Scholz, for instance, openly declared after months of silence that he would like to speak to Vladimir V. Putin. In an interview with the German daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeige, Scholz first announced his intention to speak with Putin in May. Recently, Scholz reiterated on a television show on the Phoenix network, as reported in the Russian article, “Шольц заявил о желании поговорить с Путиным по телефону.”

It is not necessarily that Scholz fears the further loss of life associated with details on the battle field such as those his foreign intelligence agency leaked to the Der Spiegel in January about Ukraine’s daily triple digit losses in the battle of Bakhmut, as much as the thought that he may face a situation far worse than Emmanuel Macron, should NATO invoke Article 5 or dispatch ground troops to save Ukraine’s collapsing military forces. Scholz imagines that members of the working class may not only heckle him but his entire government.

No matter the outcome of the Ukraine war, the contradictions, which have given rise to largest military conflict on the European mainland since the Second World War, cannot be resolved through an agreement like the scraped Minsk Accords. The intensity of the struggle for access, control over, or exploitation of space, raw materials, or cheap labor may only be temporarily frozen.