US intelligence: the Kiev counter-offensive will not achieve its objective. the scenarios

US intelligence believes that the Ukrainian summer counteroffensive will not reach the key city of Melitopol in the southeast. This was revealed by well-informed sources to the Washington Post, underlining that, if this prediction is confirmed, it means that Kiev will not achieve its main objective of cutting Russia’s land connection with Crimea.

The assessment is based on the ability that Russia is demonstrating in defending the occupied territory, through minefields and trenches, and is intended to provoke mutual accusations between Kiev and the western capitals about the reasons that led to the counter-offensive, for the which tens of billions of dollars worth of Western weapons has failed to achieve its goals. According to US intelligence sources, Ukrainian forces, advancing towards Melitopol from the city of Robotyne, more than 80 kilometers away, will stop several kilometers away from the city crucial for the counter-offensive. Melitopol is, in fact, considered the access point to Crimea, the junction of two highways and the place where the railway is located, which allows Russia to transport vehicles and troops from the peninsula to the occupied territories.

The advance towards Melitopol is extremely arduous, and while the Ukrainians can recapture closer locations like Tokmak, it will be difficult, said Rob Lee, a military analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Russia has three main defensive lines and then fortified cities,” he said. beyond”. US sources reject criticism that with F16s or long-range missiles the result of the counter-offensive would have been different. “The problem remains to break through the main Russian defensive line and there is no evidence that these systems were a panacea,” they say of the Biden administration.