US, Ukraine Officials Privately Say Counteroffensive Against Russia Has ‘Failed’

 Messenger - A series of meetings over the last month between U.S. officials and representatives of Ukraine’s presidential office and defense ministry concluded that the months-long counteroffensive against Russian forces has failed to meet its objectives and reached a stalemate, The Messenger has learned. Those objectives included driving Russian forces from land taken in the eastern Donbas region and reaching the Sea of Azov to cut the land bridge between the Crimean Peninsula – which Russia annexed and seized from Ukraine in 2014 — and the Russian mainland.

Amid the backdrop of a high-stakes debate in the U.S. Congress over continuing American military and financial support for Ukraine, multiple U.S. defense and intelligence officials told The Messenger that the meetings held in November and December surfaced a range of political and military issues which could undercut Ukraine’s war efforts. The American officials spoke under condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters. Beyond the slow pace of the counteroffensive, those issues included a growing rift over the course of the war between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his top military commander, setbacks in troop mobilizations and desperately low stocks of artillery ammunition. MORE