Within hours of the attack, the Ukrainian Post Office issued a stamp showing the Kremlin on fire with a drone in the skies above it, while the head of the Ukrainian president’s office had tweeted a picture of a rocket without any comment hours before the attacks.įollowing similar operations like the assassination of pro-war propagandists in Russia like Darya Dugina (daughter of Alexander Dugin, a key right-wing ideologue close to the Kremlin) in a car bombing and Vladlen Tatarsky in a St Petersburg café bombing, there can be no doubt that there has been a pattern of Ukrainian covert attempts at destabilising the Russian regime. Attacks on fuel depots in Crimea serve a military purpose, for instance, but are also intended to demonstrate the vulnerability of Russia’s major war aim: consolidating its control over the strategically significant peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea.įurthermore, the drone attacks on the Kremlin, dismissed by many Western media as a hoax, and denied by Kyiv, have all the hallmarks of a Ukrainian operation. Some of these targets are clearly chosen as part of what is best understood as psychological warfare.
With the aim of sowing confusion as it prepares to attack, the Ukrainian army has also increased the use of drones to hit enemy targets in occupied Ukraine and in Russia.
The Ukrainian army is regularly hitting Russian positions and infrastructure well behind the frontlines in an attempt at degrading the Russian military’s ability to re-fuel and re-arm. Psychological warfareĮven before the start of major operations, we are already seeing the first steps of the counteroffensive. But as fresh Ukrainian troops arrive from the rear, the situation is certain to get worse yet. The meat-grinder in Bakhmut in recent months has seen thousands on both sides perish as Russia inched forward in the small Donbas town. Initiated by Russia now well over a year ago, the war has been brutal. Armed and backed by the West, the armed forces of Ukraine are moving from defensive to offensive operations in an attempt to break the deadlock.Īs every previous phase of the conflict, this one will bring with it more death, uncertainty and risk. Ukraine is mounting a summer counteroffensive, designed to regain the military initiative after months of grinding deadlock. Its ghostly, grisly echo is haunting the killing fields of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
‘One more heave’ was the phrase the generals of the First World War used as offensive after offensive gained or lost a few yards or territory. As the British government sends cruise missiles to Ukraine, Vladimir Unkovski-Korica looks at the current state of the war and argues that there are likely to be no winners in its next phase
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