Ukraine is completing preparations for a long-awaited counteroffensive against Russian troops and is mostly ready for it, Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Friday, Reuters reports.

“As soon as there is the will of God, the weather and the command’s decision, we will do it,” Reznikov said at an online briefing.

He did not give a date when the counteroffensive would begin, but said that “at the global level, we are highly prepared.”

Kyiv hopes that the planned counteroffensive will change the dynamics of the war that has raged since Russia invaded Ukraine 14 months ago.

Russia holds Ukrainian territories in the east, south and southeast. The Ukrainian military said in its latest daily report on the war that the small town in the east of the country, Bakhmut, remains at the center of hostilities.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this week that Kyiv’s foreign allies and partners have delivered almost all of the promised combat vehicles to Ukraine.

Reznikov noted that Ukraine received a lot of modern equipment, including weapons that will serve as an “iron fist”, and training on some Western equipment continues.

Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers trained in the West to use a variety of military equipment in combination on the battlefield.

Panic and despair among Russian bloggers

Statements by Russian officials and prominent voices in the Russian media space continue to highlight widespread concern about possible Ukrainian counteroffensive actions, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) notes.

“The leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Wednesday that as soon as the weather conditions in Bakhmut improve, Ukraine will launch a counteroffensive, which may coincide with the Russian holiday of May 9, Victory Day (in honor of the USSR’s victory over the German Nazis). since 1945).

A well-known Russian military blogger also hinted that Ukraine may be planning counter-offensive actions to spoil the May 9 celebrations in Russia.

The May 9 invocation suggests that the Russian information space continues to give symbolic importance to data related to the Great Patriotic War in Russia, which continues to influence the discourse on the prospects of the war.

The increasingly desperate and panicked rhetoric coming from prominent figures in the information space suggests that the Russian information space has yet to draw a line on how to overcome serious and growing fears about the immediate future,” ISW said.

It seems that the counteroffensive of the Ukrainians is approaching

Military analysts say that Ukraine is likely to launch a counteroffensive in the near future, and that one of the main goals may be to break through the southern land corridor between Russia and the Russian-annexed Crimea.

The return of the entire Kherson region would be an important step towards this goal, and there are signs that this is being prepared, in particular, Russian military bloggers admit that the enemy has taken up positions on the east bank of the Dnieper.

The Ukrainians are in a ‘good position’ to launch a counteroffensive against the Russian military, the top commander of US forces in Europe told a congressional committee on Wednesday.

“According to the modeling that we did with them very carefully, the Ukrainians are in a good position,” said the head of US European Command, General Christopher Cavoli, adding that the US is working with them on a possible surprise attack.

It will be recalled that over the weekend ISW estimated that the financier of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is probably trying to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to go on the defensive against a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive.

His rhetoric, misinterpreted as a call for an end to the war, is actually aimed at freezing the conflict, a pause that would allow Moscow’s severely weakened forces to rebuild.

Recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi appeared to tell his countrymen that the expected Ukrainian counteroffensive was imminent, asking them to remain united and mobilize, stressing that the front line was the number one priority, that the focus was on defense and that they were ready with new forces “that will prove its value at the front”.

The acting commander of the “Azov” regiment, Bohdan Krotevichy, said the other day that during the upcoming counteroffensive, Ukrainian troops may even try to capture small Russian cities.

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