For weeks, the Biden administration has signaled its growing dissatisfaction with the way Ukraine has conducted the counteroffensive operations against Russian forces that began in June. Washington has reportedly communicated its “serious frustration” to Volodymyr Zelensky over the distribution of Ukrainian forces across the front lines and the focus of its efforts. In some quarters, the “grim” assessment is that Ukraine’s effort to retake its occupied territory is already a failure.
It’s not even entirely clear that the Biden administration’s advice to Kyiv is well intended. As Politico reported this week, the “remarkably similar details and specific scenes” of Ukrainian disarray reported in various U.S. media outlets suggest a campaign of leaks designed to undermine the Zelensky government. “Some people, somewhere in the bowels of government, want to pin Ukraine’s battlefield woes on Kyiv and deflect blame aimed at Washington,” the dispatch determined.
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