Ukrainians and the West should not be subjected to Russian information operations telling that the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south has failed. The Ukrainian command is acting cunningly and for a long time preparing the prerequisites for offensive operations that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are conducting today. The Ukrainian army saves strength and will not try to carry out a blitzkrieg, but will act in sync with the “degradation of Russian capabilities”. This is stated in the conclusions of the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) for August 31..

The Russians are spreading several narratives about the counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: the first one is “the counter-offensive is a failure”, the second one is that Ukraine went on a counter-offensive for “political” reasons, in particular under pressure from the West, the third one is that President Vladimir Zelensky insisted on the counter-offensive and, on the contrary, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was against him.

ISW urges not to believe any of these narratives, because " Instead, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been working for months to create the conditions for an offensive, attacking and disrupting Russian rear lines and supply routes, and the timing of the start of the counteroffensive is consistent with the degradation of Russian capabilities in the west of the Kherson region.

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“Military forces that have to conduct offensive operations without the quantitative advantage usually required for success in such operations often rely on the wrong landmarks and tricks to distract the defender from sectors of the line on which the breakthrough and exploitation effort will be concentrated,” ISW analysts note.. – The art of such feints is double. First, they must be held with sufficient force to be believable.. However, since these are feints and not deliberate attacks that are expected to succeed, they often look like failures - the attacking units will retreat when they feel they have convinced the defender of their seriousness.. Secondly, it takes time to achieve the effect.. If the purpose of the feint is to draw the defender's forces away from the intended breakthrough sectors, the attacker must wait for the defender to actually move the forces..

Therefore, as experts explain, there may be a pause between the start and finish of such steps and it may well look like the attack failed..

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Recall, according to CNN, the Ukrainian command initially planned a larger operation.. However, the United States called on Kyiv to limit it both in terms of its objectives and its geography in order to avoid overstretching and getting stuck on several fronts, as well as to save forces.