Ukraine is ready to launch the long-awaited counter-offensive against Russia, Oleksi Danilov, a senior Ukrainian security official, said in an interview with the BBC yesterday. Danilov did not want to set a date, but he did say that the attacks could start "tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or a week from now". He also added that the Government of Kyiv "does not have the right to make a mistake in this decision", because "it is a historic opportunity that we cannot lose".
Danilov is one of Volodymyr Zelenskiy's closest collaborators and is currently Ukraine's National Secretary of Security and Defense.
The senior officer also confirmed that some of Wagner's men are withdrawing from the city of Bakhmut, the scene of the bloodiest battle of the war that began in February 2022. Danilov noted, however, that "the mercenaries will regroup to act in other localities on the front".
Ukraine has been talking about the counter-offensive since the front stabilized in the winter of 2022. However, it has bought as much time as possible to train the troops and have all the military equipment necessary to ensure the advance.
Ukraine needs to demonstrate to the allies that supply it with weapons that it is capable of launching a counter-offensive under conditions. Ukrainian strategists have pushed the demands of armaments on Western countries as much as possible. At the last meeting of the G7, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, undertook to train the pilots who will fly the F-16 fighters, the object of desire of the Ukrainian army.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is pressuring the Russians on all fronts. Yesterday, Russian media reported that Ukrainian drones had hit pipelines and oil facilities inside Russia. One of the attacks took place at a maintenance station on the Drujba pipeline, which supplies oil from western Siberia to Europe.
According to Kommersant, two drones targeted a station located northwest of Moscow - Tver region - that serves the Drujba (Friendship in Russian) oil pipeline on Saturday. Local authorities in Tver said a drone had crashed near the village of Erokhino, about 500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Built during the Soviet years, Drujba has the capacity to pump more than two million barrels a day, but has been severely underutilized since Europe reduced its dependence on Russian energy. Transneft, operator of the oil pipeline, confirmed the drone attack.
In recent weeks, drone attacks (not claimed by Ukraine) on Russian territory have intensified as a way to distract the adversary. The drones have appeared in border regions such as Belgorod, but also in the interior (Krasnodarsk) and even in the Kremlin, in the days before the celebration of Victory Day on May 9. Ukraine has always denied it, but American intelligence says that the drones that crashed into one of the domes of the Kremlin were controlled by Ukrainians.
The United States is more concerned about the appearance of American-made war material in the hands of the groups of Russian dissidents and defectors who penetrated Russian territory this week. John Kirby, spokesman for the White House, reiterated this week that they are opposed to this use to the extent that it reinforces the Russian narrative of Western harassment and increasingly involves American power in the war.
Ukrainian sources have denied that they supplied this weaponry to the groups that penetrated Russian territory from Ukraine this week and that they probably obtained the armored vehicles they used on the black market.
Ukrainian intelligence has also warned of Russia's intention to seek "a large-scale provocation" at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant to stop the Ukrainian offensive. According to this version, for which no evidence has been offered, Russia is ready to bomb the plant to cause a radioactive leak and seek international intervention to hinder military actions in the area, the likely scenario of the counteroffensive in the south.
