(Dobbs) A Piece of the Counteroffensive That No One Saw Coming
Russia is fighting for its pride. Ukraine is fighting for its life.
While covering the buildup in Saudi Arabia for the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, I remember standing on tarmacs and watching with surprise as we brought in tanks and troops and planes in full sight of Saddam Hussein, whose troops we aimed to oust from Kuwait.
He and his army knew the counteroffensive was coming. They knew, but they couldn’t stop it.
Today, it’s Ukraine positioning its forces for a counteroffensive, in plain sight of the Russians. The outcome is anybody’s guess but it’s what they’ve been doing below the radar that’s intriguing: in the last few days, Ukrainians, or else pro-Ukraine Russians, have struck at targets in Russia. One reportedly was a drone attack on an oil refinery. Most were shells fired into Russian towns close to the Ukrainian border, forcing some evacuations. But in the most visible shock to Russia’s putative invincibility, eight drones penetrated Moscow’s airspace on Tuesday. Three of them struck apartment buildings in one of Moscow’s most elite suburbs. As you see here, the damage was minimal.
No one was killed and no buildings collapsed. But the drones made their point. Russia is vulnerable. Even in the nation’s capital, no one— not the politicians, not the oligarchs— is safe.
Could this be a calculated if unpredictable part of Ukraine’s counteroffensive? It might sound improbable but, given the spirit, grit, and innovation of the Ukrainians— even as they’re still outgunned and outmanned— it’s not implausible.
Of course Vladimir Putin has called these small strikes “terrorist activity” and accused Ukraine of a campaign of “intimidation.” In a normal world, it would be Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky making charges like that. But Zelensky’s reality isn’t Putin’s. From the first deaths of innocent civilians, it is Russia that has rained terror on Ukraine. From the first barrage of missiles against civilian targets, it is Russia that has waged a campaign of intimidation.
The statistics tell the story. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Russian missiles, shells, drones, air strikes, and out-of-control soldiers killed more than 8,000 Ukrainian non-combatants in the first year of the war. Almost 500 of them were children. Millions have been displaced. Livelihoods have been destroyed. All of this— attacking non-combatants— is the very definition of terrorism. On top of that, an estimated 150,000 buildings, including not just people’s homes but hospitals and churches, schools and stores are reduced to rubble. And half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is gone.
But this is not a normal world. This is a world where Putin is the invader but accuses Ukraine of being the aggressor. And he had the audacity to say it on the heels of yet another terrifying Russian missile barrage Tuesday against the Ukrainian capital of Kiev— the 17th bombardment in just the month of May alone.
If there is any good news coming out of Ukraine right now, it is that its long-planned counteroffensive evidently is imminent. As the nation’s foreign minister said early this month, “Despite the cold, darkness, and missile strikes, Ukraine persevered and defeated the winter terror.” Now it’s about to seize the initiative. It’s about to undertake battles to liberate provinces the Russians took in the earlier stages of the war. As we watch in the coming weeks, the most important thing to remember is, Russia is fighting for its pride. Ukraine is fighting for its life.
What the Russians have going for them more than anything else is manpower. With a population of more than 145 million people, they still can draw upon millions more men and force them into combat.
That doesn’t mean they would be strong soldiers, but they would give Ukraine a fight and be a formidable barrier to the Ukrainians taking back what’s rightfully theirs.
The Russians have more going against them. First, there has been brutal infighting, laid bare by the head of the mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has openly called Moscow’s top generals “fat cats” and “scum” and accused them of “high treason” for their failures in the fight to win the war.
Second, there’s the death toll of Russian soldiers. More than 20,000 of them by most estimates. Wagner’s Prigozhin said in an interview last week that if the losses keep coming, it can end “in what is a revolution, just like in 1917. First the soldiers will stand up,” he said, “and after that, their loved ones will rise up.”
Third, it would be naive to think that everyone in Russia sees through Putin and his phony rationales for the war. But at the same time, when drones hit civilian targets in Moscow, giving them even a small taste of their own medicine, and when some sanctions have begun to hurt the average Russian consumer, and with all those body bags, eventually support for the war might wane. Witness the public protests in America over Vietnam. Of course unlike a democracy where people push the government, Russia has become a fascist state where the government pushes the people. But even Russia might have a breaking point.
And fourth, their munitions. Russia’s prime minister yesterday told a government conference, “The defense-industrial complex is now operating under maximum pressure.” It might only be a small sign of shortages but he announced a ban on the export of cartridges for Russian rifles other than those in the hands of their soldiers. "The decision,” he said, “is aimed at ensuring the protection of the interests of the state.”
But munitions are at the top of the list of what the Ukrainians have going for them. Thanks to a new stream of allied weaponry, they have tools they didn’t have when the war started: long-range missiles and high-tech tanks, with F-16s on the horizon.
And they have the experience they’ve won through sacrifice and stress. Even the head of the Wagner Group said in that interview last week, “I believe Ukrainians today are one of the strongest armies in the world.” He called them “highly organized, highly trained, and their intelligence is on the highest level, they can operate any military system with equal success, a Soviet or a NATO one.”
What the Ukrainians have going against them is time. If they can’t push Russia out, Russia could grind them down. Beyond that, there’s the possibility that eventually, despite their rhetoric today, Western backers will tire of what might become a stalemate and NATO will lose its enthusiasm for having Ukraine’s back. Donald Trump sent an ominous signal the other day when he said that if he becomes president again, he will “fundamentally reevaluate NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.”
Putin tells his people that they are fighting for Russia’s survival. In a larger sense, between Ukraine’s new levels of boldness and the expansion of NATO because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, maybe there’s some logic to that. But despite the strikes inside Russia over the last few days, and even if they multiply, survival isn’t exactly something the Russian people see threatened.
For Ukrainians of course, it’s a whole different story. Zelensky doesn’t have to convince them of anything. The proof is in their daily lives.
They are the underdog and their very survival is at stake. As we’ve seen in wars over the past half-century, often when the underdog is fighting for its survival, the underdog wins.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Well Said Greg!
Thank you
“Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?” Asked Groucho Marx’s character. Putin must think he’s the wizard of Oz. But how many luxury apts must Ukraine destroy before Moscow asks Vlad for the keys?